It's going to be a scary week! So I have decided to post a couple of excerpts from my old fantasy/horror YA novels.... just the first scene or chapter as the case may be. Today is from a novella (unpublished) entitled, "To Dance With the Dead" Enjoy and Happy Haunting!

These are also to show how a hook works in writing.

 A Fatal Omen

'Breathe! Just breathe! One lung full of air… that's all!' thought Avanterus. He clawed frantically at the top of the closed mahogany box, trying to will it open with nothing more than bloody fingernails and sheer desperation. 'The fear of a coffin is too large to live in and too small to die for.'

He urged himself to keep struggling… keep fighting. As long as he kept his focus he would live. It was a simple and beautiful thing. If the fear did not wrap itself around his soul and suffocate him… at least then he might stand a chance.

He could block all of it out. The close proximity of his wooden cell, the smell of damp earth, even the slimy decaying corpse beneath him would dissipate if he only held his concentration for just a little while longer.

Eventually there was nothing left of the extensive studies. All the knowledge obtained in hours of pouring over books… gone. His flesh seemed to be an invisible wish stripped down to an open soul. His thought process was absent. There was only one word left in his vocabulary… and everything came down to that one word… "Breathe!"

He tried for awhile to reason it out. 'A cube can have only so many sides… only so many angles. This must apply to a submerged casket as well. A base, a lid and four sides… how hard could it be?' Simple geometry … finally something that he could understand. Every equation has its solution.

He repositioned his lithe elfin body. He tried to stand upright, placing his feet on the bottom of the coffin. He raised his hands above his head and summoned every instinct within him.

'The shortest distance between two points is a straight line,' he recalled an old professor saying. He remembered asking himself why this knowledge should ever be useful. And finally his muscles grieved under the burden of his short attention span.

He kicked against the lid and beat upon the sides and after a lifetime he heard that erotic response. Crack! The top of the coffin busted, and rocky soil crashed inwards filtering down to take its place. Avanterus pushed sideways with both hands clawing through rock and dirt feverishly. Upward and onward towards the freedom that is life.

He kicked his powerful legs back and forth; he thrust his arms outwards shoving the heaviness of the dirt off of himself, only to have it return to him. Burying his face, chest and limbs repeatedly. His nostrils burned with the fiery hatred of inhaled mud. His mouth prevented hysterical screams with dirt encrusted silence and he realized to his terror, that he was still descending. He was drowning in earth.

His palms burst upward once, then again. Triumphantly his fingers stretched forward until he touched nothing.

He pushed his arms sideways with circular motion. His fingers had found their prize and now all that was left to do was claim it. He grasped wildly at solid earth above him and forced his legs to the assistance of his weakening arms. At last he felt it… the most invigorating lover of all… air!

Atop solid ground he vomited mud but the wrenching in his gut did nothing to darken the luminous threshold of victory. He looked to the tower of Dark Sorcery and dared it with complete arrogance.

"You'll have to do better that that boys!" he ridiculed the unseen wizards beyond. "I have passed your first test and I am hungry for more! Bring it on!" he crowed and suddenly he was falling.

The hook I wrote was in the first sentence wherein the elf is struggling to breathe. I carry this though out the scene building intensity of the story by begging the question.... why is he buried alive and can he escape. Action and the unexplained create a hook that makes the reader want to read. I'll have more of these this week! Happy Halloween!

That's my side of it,
Angel