I fall into a nightly trap of reading through one blog, then following their blog links to other blogs, so many writers with so many great tips and tricks and thoughts on the writing process... Not to mention Tweets on Twitter from published authors who are working on their own work in progress. It's endless! But through my blog surfing and Twitter and Facebook, I have gathered a solid base of writers working and publishing in today's world. Reading their words and seeing photos of their desks and WIPs has inspired me to get back to work. I can't publish anything if it isn't letter perfect, and I can't get anything letter perfect without first putting the words on the page.
Here is an excerpt from the first draft of Drowning Summer... the second book of the Elliot Lake Series. Enjoy!
From Chapter 1 --- Drowning Summer By C.L.Moyer
“I love her, Vihtori.”
“You don’t get to love her, Veli. Put her out of your mind. We don’t have time for this bullshit. We have a mission.”
The brothers trudged their way to the house they were crashing in while Veli’s mind dreamed of the woman he knew he could no longer live without -- Dawn.
Her hair was long and straight and the color of the foam floating on the drink they called Guinness draught. He could get used to that, too. To everything, to freedom, to life.
Her breasts were huge, much bigger than any he had seen in the north, they filled his hands. He could still remember the incredible weight of them, how they tasted. Her hips were wide, a promise of children and a warm harbor for long, winter nights. And Veli had had enough of long, winter nights.
He couldn’t believe he’d been inside her only a few hours earlier. That she let him take her into the woods behind the shared house she lived in, and on a blanket he’d spread on the mossy forest floor, she’d taken him inside her and changed his destiny.
Veli had still been a virgin at twenty-five. He had spent his life taking orders, doing his duty, and he never questioned his superiors until this trip. This assignment that brought him and his twin brother to the remote rocky coast of Oregon opened a door, and Dawn had stepped through.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d trained his entire life to be the front line, to be the security that would maintain his society’s secret, and now all he could think about was staying here, in Oregon. Becoming a turncoat, the same as he hunted now.
“Veli, you have to focus. Now is not the time to have your head turned by someone from the outside. You know why we are here. We have to finish this mission and get back. This has already taken longer than it should have. They are waiting for our report!” As if on cue, Vihtori’s cell phone rang. “There they are now.” He scowled at his brother as he took the call.
“I know,” Veli said to his brother’s back as he pulled ahead in the sand. Most people would imagine walking along the sand of the Oregon Coast would be relaxing, but not in the middle of the night under a cloudy sky. No moon in sight. It doesn’t get any darker than that. Veli’s watch showed the time to be past one in the morning. They’d spent too much time that evening at the encampment they’d found a few miles up the beach from the home they were staying in, and now they were paying for it.
“Too bad we didn’t bring the car tonight,” Veli said.
“We would have been back sooner, but I couldn’t pull you off of that cow.”
Veli grabbed his brother’s shoulder and spun him to face him. He grabbed the front of his brown suede jacket and growled, “Don’t ever call her that again.”
“Veli, for the love of God, have you lost your mind?” Vihtori threw his brother’s arms off of him and pushed him back. “I think you have! What -- you’re going to stay here with her? Raise stupid little brats on the beach? She doesn’t have a fourth of your intelligence. It would be like mating with one of those pet dogs so popular with these people!” Vihtori grabbed Veli’s shoulder and said into jade green eyes identical to his own, “You are better than this. We are better than this.” His hands dug into Veli’s collarbones, causing pain.
Veli threw off his brother’s tight grip and pushed him back. “Better than what, Vihtori? What’s wrong with how they live? At least they have freedom and a say over how they live their lives. They can have as many children as they’d like without someone sending them a DNA-testing kit to make sure it’s an advantageous match for our community! Talk about bullshit! Why would you want to go back to that? Think about it, brother -- we could be free here!” He headed toward an outcropping of rock marring an otherwise perfectly smooth beach. Veli turned and leaned against the rough rock wall, unable to bring his thoughts together.
Vihtori yelled over the sound of the crashing waves as he made his way to his brother’s side, “You are insane, my brother! We’re almost done here and you know how important this is to our leader! I will not let you jeopardize this mission! We have to bring these people in. Think of our reward for this one!”
Veli was crying, shaking his head, looking at his twin’s face through tears and ocean spray. “A reward? I don’t care about a reward, Tori. I care about my life. As in, I’d like to have one. I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here. I want to stay with Dawn. Have babies. Have bacon and eggs with my whole wheat pancakes once in a while.”
Making an attempt to reign in his anger, Vihtori ran his fingers through his black hair and tried to reason with his brother one last time. “I can’t go back without you, Veli, you know that. If I show up without you, they will punish me and then send another team to find you.”
“I’ll help you finish the mission, Vihtori, but go back by yourself. Tell them I died or something, then they won’t come looking for me.”
“God damn you, Veli! You cannot be serious!” He pushed his brother again, and Veli pushed back. Years of competition between the two and decades of neglect from the people who raised the brothers to be the agents they were today found its release on a deserted Oregon beach.
When the struggle was over, one brother lay in the surf, blood oozing from a crack in his skull from the jagged rock wall, his body drowned by the saltwater of the sea, and the other was on his knees, shattered. Nothing would ever be the same again.
He lifted his brother’s body from the water and carried him to the house they’d been using. As the flames began to lick up the side of the living room walls, a shadowy figure disappeared into the night. He had a mission to finish.
