Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet - Sleeping Ugly pg 7

Okay, I'm tiptoeing out this week with a snippet of the very raw first draft of my WIP - Sleeping Ugly - so don't expect scintillating prose.

If you're not familiar with Sleeping Ugly (and why would you be - this is too new) the basic premise is a supermodel who wakes up after a one-night stand to find she's turned ugly overnight.  Throughout the day Jeni becomes herself again, but sometime between closing her eyes and opening them the next morning, she's ugly again.  The only explanation she can come up with is that a witch has cursed her - but which one.  And why?

At pg 7 in the story, the guy she slept with has just shown up at her place several morning's later when she's at her ugliest.  He doesn't recognize Jeni, so she uses that to try and get some information from him.  Turns out he's got a problem, too, and he thinks Jeni's the cause...

“Hair of the dog?  I think we both need to stay away from the joy juice for now.”  I took a chair opposite the man.  “Now tell me what you think she did to you.  I swear it won’t leave the room.”

“I don’t care about that.  No one would believe you anyway.”

I thought about my own situation.  “I totally understand.”

“Did she do something to you?  Is that why you’re…?”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence and I appreciated him not doing so. 

“As far as I know, she didn’t do a damn thing to make me this way,” I said.  “Could be she didn’t do anything to you either.”

“It’s not in my head.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.  I just think you have a problem and maybe Jeni isn’t the cause of it.”

“The hell she’s not.  The whole thing started after I slept with her.  She has to be the cause.  If she isn’t…”

Then he was as screwed as I was when I realized he didn’t have anything to do with this damn curse.  Somehow, some way, we’d both pissed off someone either very powerful or very wealthy. 

“What?” he said and I realized I’d mumbled that last part out loud.  I still wasn’t sure I trusted Gus, but it seemed like we were traveling down shitcreek in the same boat.

The idea of the Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet is to take a manuscript (doesn't have to be your own if you don't want - just make sure you're not violating someone else's copyright), go to any page ending in a 7, and paste a snippet of that into your blog.  After that, let me know, so I can add your link to the bottom of this post.  (If you don't have a blog, or don't want to post your snippet there, feel free to paste it in comments here.)  Easy peasy.

Have fun and enjoy!

The Other Lucky Players:

Janet from Janet's Journal with a snippet of Lady Bells.
Keith of Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness with a bit of his novel.

Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet - Unequal pg 77 minus 1

Here we are again for another Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet.  Today we're going back to Unequal and spending some time with Rue while she thinks about her past.

As always, with the LSSS, I went to a 7 page to pick a snippet, but today I cheated a little.  Page 77 is part of an important point in Rue's life, but without a lot of explanation, there wasn't much I could snip from there.  So I went back one page...

At this point, Rue's escaped from the DOE (the Department of Equalization) and is being led someplace safe by a man named Crispin.

The last time she wandered alone in the outdoors had to have been the night before she was released from education and given her first assignment in the working world.  Even though it was her last night with her mother, she felt the need to get away.  To walk amongst the trees and the vacant lots seemed a proper end to her childish adventures.  She strolled to the bank of the thin waterway and threw pebbles into the sluggish trickle.  She caressed the trunks of trees she was too old to climb.

Then she’d been alone.  Curfew was several hours past.  In the danger of possibly getting caught, she found a kind of freedom she knew she wouldn’t taste any time soon.  The very next day, DOE workers would arrive to transport her belongings to a new set of quarters.  She would awaken in her own bed and fall asleep in a strange place. 

She shivered and Crispin tucked her closer along his side, playing the perfect mate.  For a moment, Rue let herself revel in the feeling.  If she could spend years pretending to be a doctor, a few moments of pretending she belonged to someone who belonged to her couldn’t hurt.

When she was walking in the darkness and solitude, she dreamed of being assigned such a mate.  She created a whole fantasy future for herself—one where the DOE assigned her to be a doctor, and she experience love at first sight with the man who was appointed as her spouse.  She never imagined being stuck into a hovel on the other side of town.  She never conceived of being told the best way she could serve her fellow man was as a janitor.  Even in her nightmares, she didn’t envision finding an appointed mate waiting for her at the start of her new life.

The next day she went to work and never went back to either the man or the dwelling.  As far as she was concerned, he could have the apartment and her earnings.  All she wanted was to be left alone—even if it meant living in a basement and scrounging for food.

Hope you enjoyed it.  If you play along, please let me know so I can post a link to your page.  I can't wait to see what you're working on.  =o)

Additional players:

Janice from Figuring it Out: Murder in Camera

Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet - Unequal pg 37

Here we are again with another installment of the Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet.  Last week we had two new players.  Who'll join us this week?

The rules are simple.  Go to any manuscript of your own.  Pick a '7' page (7, 97, 147... you get the gist) and post a snippet from that page on your blog - or here if you don't have a blog.  It can be a sentence, a paragraph... the whole page if you want. When you get done, come back here and let me know so I can link up to your snippet and visit to see what you've written.

Today's snippet again comes from Unequal.  Here we're farther along in the story.  Rue's secret has been discovered and she's about to escape from the hospital with her only ally when she realizes there's one patient she can't leave behind...

“We can’t leave later.  Now come on.”

“I have something I have to do first.”

“You can’t help your patients now.  Trust me, they’ll be better off if you aren’t caught with any of them.  And if the DOE talks to any of them, you’ll be surprised how fast they turn you in.”

Rue shook her head.  “Not the one I’m thinking of.  He’s too small to tell anyone anything, and he’s too damn small to leave here unprotected.”

Hubert’s mouth opened to argue, but something in Rue’s face must’ve told her it was no use.  “Fine, but you do realize he won’t have to talk to turn us in.  All he has to do is cry.”

Hope you enjoyed.  Anyone else playing along will be added below as the links come in.

And just a disclaimer.  The above manuscript is in first draft form, so I know it's not perfect.  This is about sharing your work, not offering critiques.  ;o)

Also participating...

Janet at Janet's Journal

Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet - Unequal pg 17

Hello again.  I think we'll have a couple other blogs playing today, but I'll have to come back later and insert the links.  (ETA: The first of the links is below.)  For now, you just have me...

I was going to do another bit of Djinnocide, but then I realized every 7 page had spoilers and it got worse the farther I got into the book, so I had to go a different way. Today's installment of the Lucky Sevens Sunday Snippet comes from a book I haven't quite finished yet, but that I'm totally in love with.  It's a dystopian set in the U.S. at a time when it's a crime to be what the government considers 'Unequal'.  Rue Logan's about as Unequal as they get, but so far, she's done a pretty good job hiding herself.  In this scene, the jig is finally up.

Here's page 17 of 'Unequal'...

Rue swallowed hard.  That was her first mistake.  By the time she found the words she wanted to say, it was already too late for any lie to seem like the truth.

“What are you talking about?” she said, trying in vain when she knew it was pointless.  “I came down here to get…”  The excuse dried up in her mouth as the man flicked on her little bedside lamp.

“This isn’t any place the hospital employees are likely to come.  Not unless they already knew what was here.  Or unless the person who’s residing here told you to come down.”  He picked up Rue’s journal and flipped through a couple pages.  “The person who wrote this doesn’t seem likely to let anyone in on her little secret.”

“I don’t know what…”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Logan.  You’re not in your assigned housing, eating your assigned meals.  You’re not thinking your assigned thoughts and you’re reading books that ought to be way beyond your skills.  Hell, some of these things are way beyond my skills, and I’m definitely not Equal.”

His words fell like hammer blows until his final admission.  “You’re not…”

“I’m not.”

“Then you’re…”

“Unequal?”  He shrugged.  “I guess I am, but I don’t like to use the terms they use.  I’m just a person, similar to you, but exactly like you.”

He set her journal down.  “Sorry for touching your things without permission, but I had to see if you were who we heard you are.”

“I don’t understand.  Who did you hear I was and who did you hear it from?”

Who else is with me?  The rules are simple:  Go to any '7' page within the manuscript of your choosing - be it pg 7, or pg 27, or pg 207 - find a snippet you'd like to share and post it - either in comments here or on your own blog.

And if you play along, please let me know.  Also, link back here so everyone can see where this thing got started.  Thanks.

Playing Along:

Janet Corcoran over at Janet's Journal.
Keith over at Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness.