Nailed the Opening for NIGHT ECHOES

After floundering on this book, ditching a bunch of it, and panicking more each day at the impending deadline and my lack of progress, I mowed the lawn last night. This is a process that takes about three hours (about an hour an acre) and that allows me to disconnect conscious thought. I mow, I take off my glasses and see everything blurrily, I smell the grass and the blackberries in the woods to the back and the rich scents of field weeds that are like perfume when cut, and my mind quits worrying for a while.

About two hours into the process, out of nowhere, my subconscious tossed me this. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of my own way when things are tense; when I do, I’m amazed at what happens.

Here’s the opener:

Three AM, and once again Emma Beck stood in her bare feet, in her sleep shirt, with her eyes almost closed, painting. The gessoed board sat unsecured on her easel, bouncing as her palette knives gobbed paint onto the board in a dark, impasto style she would never have recognized as coming from her hands. The painting that grew out of her frenzied work was of a subject that she would never have chosen to paint—one man in 19th century garb feeding wood into a bonfire on which burned the bodies of a Confederate soldier, a young woman, and a small child. The painting, technically proficient, was ugly, angry, frightening, disturbing.

More disturbing, though, was the fact that Emma Beck had arisen shortly after falling asleep nearly every night since she had moved into the house a little over a month earlier, and each of those nights, she had created another angry, strange painting. Each night when she finished, after no less than three hours, but no more than five, she had cleaned up her supplies and had hidden the canvases away in a secret room in the rambling old house—a room her waking self did not know existed. She had then returned to bed, unaware of anything she had done since going to bed the first time.

This night, though, something changed. This night, she did not close the door to the hidden room when she left it. In the morning, she would wake tired and inexplicably sore, as she had nearly every morning in her new home, and she would discover the secret room while awake for the first time, and find the paintings that were signed with her name, paintings that she could not explain.

In the afternoon she would tell the wrong person about these paintings, and all hell would break loose.

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By Holly

Novelist, writing teacher, on a mission to reprint my out-of-print books and indie-publish my new ones.

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EileenWalters X
16 years ago

So sorry to hear of Jim’s stroke. I hope he wll recover shortly.
Eileen

wolverine
wolverine
16 years ago

I really liked the situation, and all the paragraphs. Somehow, though, I don’t like the last line. It feels like telling too much, maybe? The rest is all mystical, very ‘watched’ in a scary way, but the last line just feels like you’ve cut out a scene. Hope this doesn’t cause offense, just my opinion, and hope the rest of the book is going well.

Wolverine.

PolarBear
16 years ago

Ah. Thank you. Trust the gut. I thought that was it, but, as you noted, you use it so rarely, I was afraid I couldn’t be right.

nienke
16 years ago

I was hooked even without the last sentence.

shawna
shawna
16 years ago

That would certainly catch my curiousity enough to take it home…

PolarBear
16 years ago

I like it. How do you define the POV? (I’m really not good at picking that out in a book, and, somehow, I believe I should be.

I can wait for the answer to the next question, but I imagine you’ll shift to another one and return to this one periodically?

(Actually, since you’re the one answering or not answering, I do understand I can wait for any answer to answer question I may ask *grin*) Thanks for posting.

Adam101
16 years ago

I am not going to go over the top like my previous posters.

I thought this was good although, as I know from Talyn you like the word “garb”. (lol)

I look forward to reading more maybe here or when the book is released.

TinaK
16 years ago

Ohhhhh…..more! This is a great start!

Rick
Rick
16 years ago

Awesome.

BJSteeves
BJSteeves
16 years ago

All I can say is: WOW!

firelight
16 years ago

More! More! More! Thanks, Holly. Now I won’t be able to sleep…at least until I get my grubby fingers on that book.

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