Sickness and Sevens

Many thanks to my charming and entertaining guest, Toni Sands, for visiting Home Thoughts Weekly. Actually, you had quite a long stay, Toni… I hope you managed to find the coffee and biscuits whilst you were here. 


The reason I’ve been such a poor hostess is that my normally rude health took a battering from the most debilitating sinus infection and industrial-strength antibiotics, both of which have left me feeling pretty wrung out. Home Thoughts? Mainly, ‘Ooooh, I feel soooo ill.'

It’s lucky, then, that new Twitter friend @voula invited me to join in a game for writers, published and unpublished. The instructions for Lucky 7 are:

• Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript 
• Go to line 7 
• Post on your blog the next 7 lines, or sentences, as they are – no cheating 
• Tag 7 other authors to do the same 

‘Current manuscript’, for me at the moment, could apply to the several levains fermenting on my desktop, including a novella and my third novel. I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite a secretive writer. I’m reluctant to talk about work in progress, but only because I believe that giving too much air to the mix at this stage can make it flat and stale. This is also the stage where my manuscript is subject to some pretty brutal culling as scenes and characters are taken out and thrown into a limbo file where they may languish forever or be resurrected when their proper place becomes apparent.

That said, I’ve gone to page 7 of what, hopefully, will be my third novel, Clearing the Decks. To set the scene, kind, responsible May Starling has had enough of clearing up after everyone else. Acting on impulse, she responds to a personal ad on a yachting internet site for a female cruising companion to assist with a delivery trip. May’s plans change tack the moment she arrives in Little Spitmarsh. The retired gentleman she’s expecting to sail with is far younger, twice as big and much angrier than she anticipated. In fact it’s his nephew, Bill Blythe, who meets her from the train with some unwelcome news.

May longed for the ground to swallow her. How many more double entendres had her drunken brain found amusing?
    ‘Since this boat means so much to Henry, I’m going to make sure that it’s waiting for him as soon as he’s better,’ he continued. ‘It’ll give him an incentive to get well.’
    ‘That’s kind of you.’ May was relieved Bill sounded so sure of Henry’s recovery. He might even give her a lift back to the station instead getting her charged with attempted manslaughter.
So, by page seven, I know that May’s unhappy with her old life and wants a change, but how big a change is she seeking? Will she accept that her attempt to breakaway has failed and get on the next train home? Or does Bill have something else in mind?  I guess I’ll just have to finish the book to find out.

Now the next part of the game requires me to pass it on to seven more writers, but I’m struggling to find friends who haven’t already played, so this is where I throw it over to you. Anyone out there like to join in? Come on, don’t be shy…

 The epainting's by Tom Tomos and very nice it is too.