It's Here! It's Here!

It's blogfest day!

Yaaay!

For those of you scratching your heads, today is the start of my Catch Me If You Can blogfest! The idea is pretty simple--I want everyone to have an answer to that pesky question we all have: "Does my WIP catch people's attention right away?" Post up to 550 words from the beginning of your WIP and let's find out!

And there's a $20 Amazon gift card up for grabs, so yeah...there's that :)

If you haven't already signed up, there's still time!

CLICK HERE!

I'm going to be posting the first 500 words of DARK WATER. I was originally planning to post from BROKEN, but I'm trunking that project for a while.

 I'm still going to be putting BROKEN's first chapter on a page all it's own. More info on that on March 9.

Annnnnywho--here's the beginning of DARK WATER. It's a first draft, so I know it needs a lot of polishing. Any feedback (positive and negative) is awesome and greatly appreciated. If your critique is running a little long, or you've got something you'd prefer to tell me in private, feel free to send me an email!

Kristina(dot)Fugate(at)yahoo(dot)com

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Today should be a happy day. A day for giving thanks to the sea for the bounty we’ve received this year. But we have no thanks to give--not today. Not as we stand, speechless, around the mangled body of Lundy MacLochlan.

I keep my distance from the quickly-gathering crowd, watching the waves clean away the puddle of vomit by my bare feet. What can I say--I’m the one who found him, and I just couldn’t keep my breakfast down. My stomach still quivers, trying to send up food that isn’t there. I glance over my shoulder at the lighthouse, its lanterns still burning and lenses waiting to be polished. For a split second, an image of Pa flashes into my mind, barking at me to never, ever neglect the lighthouse. But those thoughts are short-lived.

My eyes wander back to Lundy and I cringe. His flesh, torn and scratched; eyes, wide open but seeing nothing. Sea-green froth oozes from his mouth. Chunks are missing from his arms and stomach, revealing the dark pink meat beneath. His left hand and most of the fingers on his right are gone, leaving nothing but grisly stumps. My skin prickles with revulsion and I turn away.

A mournful breeze washes over the beach, kicking my nightdress back against my legs and making me shiver. Or perhaps I’m shivering for Lundy. Oh, gods, poor Lundy...whatever he went through, it had to be horrible. And Bren. My knees weaken. I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he finds out--

A shrill cry breaks my train of thought and I reel around. Azelie--Lundy’s wife. She throws herself down in the sand, pulling the mauled body into her arms. A few of the men from the village pull Azelie back, but she breaks away from them.

“Who found him?” She glares bitter daggers at the crowd. “Who?”

“I did.” My voice is a thin rattle in the silence.

She skitters through the sand, jumps to her feet, and grabs my shoulders. Her fingernails dig into my skin. “Vidette, you had to see something! Who did this to my Lundy?”

I shake my head, wide-eyed. “N-nay. I didn’t see a thing.”

“You had to!” Her nails nearly slice into my arms.

“Azelie!”

My head snaps up. Bren steps off the dunes, his face hard with disapproval. Azelie releases me and I slink back as Bren shoves through the pack of people. His hazel eyes flit to his uncle’s body.

Dismay melts the stiffness in his features and turns the blood in my veins to ice. He drops beside the corpse, reaching toward it with quivering fingers. I look to the others, begging them silently to pull him away as they had with Azelie. But they only squirm and mutter between themselves and steal uneasy glances at Bren and what’s left of Lundy.

“This makes...what? Three?” someone says.

“Four,” another replies.

“It’s a damn shame.”

Someone else scoffs. “It’s a damn curse is what it is.”