Book Launch Week should have ended, since my #MeToo novel Horseshoes and Hand Grenades was officially released on Friday, Sept. 27th. But I’ve got a few more excerpts I’d like to share. I hope you enjoy reading them.
Today’s excerpt is called Shelby Reflecting. One of our heroines is finally accepting that she needs to come to terms with her past.
Lying in bed that night, I had the strangest feeling I was back in Newfield as a girl. I sat on the back porch steps in the sun, which I did a lot then, rubbing my bare feet over the sand and small rocks that collected between the bottom step and the driveway. I sat there when I was little and everyone else went about their business inside. I sat there as a teenager, usually at ten in the morning when all self-respecting teenagers were still hours from waking.
I remembered a permeating melancholy with no nameable cause. As a girl, I was troubled by a general sense that time was speeding up so fast that soon I wouldn’t be able to keep up. As a teenager, I attributed my malaise to a fruitless search for the meaning of life.
Maybe it was neither of those things.
Maybe those warm steps became a refuge after Norman started touching me. And maybe the melancholy was my soul shutting itself off from the world’s pain and confusion.
(This beautiful photo is from Paige Cody, @Paige_Cody, via Unsplash.)
