Safe And Sound

My thoughts are with my wonderful reading and writing friends today on the East Coast - STAY SAFE if you are anywhere near the path of the storm :) 

NEW NOVEL TRILOGY

While TRULY is going through the review process, I thought my lovely readers might like a sneak peak of something different. This is the first page of a trilogy I have been working on for years. It's about a group of teens. At the moment, this first novel is called Adam & Amber but I have a title for the trilogy in my mind that I shall share with you when it's final. What follows is one of the first drafts of the first page. *Please note, in no way is it the final product. Names, places, spelling and punctuation are sure to change! 

Adam

    Infinity is a magical place few have visited. I went there first with Adam Barclay, a boy I met after my parents moved with me from Los Angeles to Phoenix during my first year of high school. At my new school, in the tiny town of Infinity, on the edge of the Arizona desert, I was rendered silent. I only spoke when I had to. That was until Adam, Rufus and Lena Barclay arrived in junior year and I found my voice. I had to know everything about them. They were the subject of school gossip for so many reasons… but I’m moving ahead of my story.  

     People ask me what I remember most about the summer I turned sixteen. They expect me to say the blistering, orange heat or the endless attempts I made (practising in the concrete car park of the local supermarket) to gain my learners permit. Who knew I’d never need it?     

      My oldest friends, the girls I went to school with in Los Angeles, wanted me to describe the desert and the boy I met there. But how could I describe a place I’d never really been to, a boy who remained a secret? Infinity loomed beyond the main town of Phoenix and sprawled out into a tiny maze of suburbs. My uncle lived very close to the desert, in a trailer park an hour’s drive from where we now lived and so close to Infinity he could almost touch it.  Once I'd visited, I promised my friends, I’d tell them more.

      I vowed to describe the ‘vacation’ I intended to take to visit Uncle James. The trip would go beyond the desert, through pure water and a golden sunset that spread across dawn till dusk.  Beyond talk of desert animals or air that smelt like sun and sand, my old school friends would never believe me if I told them the truth; that I disappeared in time, leaving only dust and the red earth behind me.

PERFECTION IN WRITING: THE NIGHT CIRCUS

PERFECTION IN WRITING: THE NIGHT CIRCUS:

Just in case you haven’t read my obsessive tweets (@summerdaylight) about this glorious novel, THE NIGHT CIRCUS by ERIN MORGENSTERN (@erinmorgenstern) is amazing. I read it in January and it cast a spell that has stayed with me. The writing is wonderful: perfect exposition, breathtaking descriptions and characters that are unpredictable and enchanting. The story is complex without being pretentious and extraordinary without being annoying. Quite simply, The Night Circus is one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read and one of the rare novels I would like to read again. There are only a few writers who change your ideas about writing (and in this case, art) and all it could encompass. I’d put this writer and this novel in that category.  I know many of us happily survive on a diet of YA ‘literature’ and some of it is awesomeness in a chocolate wrapper, but do yourselves a delicious favour and read a truly great novel: Erin Morgenstern’s THE NIGHT CIRCUS.  You open the first page and enter the Circus of Dreams where a cast of characters reveal themselves in an unforgettable and unimaginable tale of beauty, love and deception. THE NIGHT CIRCUS is the story of the birth of a circus of dreamers, magicians and gifted conjurers. It is the tale of a devastating bet between two magicians and their equally talented prodigies. This novel is beautiful beyond reach, intangible yet wickedly good. Have I encouraged you to take a peek yet? Oh, and Summit better do it justice, ‘cos I cannot wait for the movie. *Just don’t expect everything to be spelled out. Why? Because, THE NIGHT CIRCUS is EXTRAORDINARY: the writing employs your imagination to actively visualize the scenes and events that take place, it's a trip to the circus you'll never forget. Take it now!