Sunday, March 13, 2011

Six Sentence Sunday - Wolf & Huntress opener

After posting the opening lines from my April release, A Marriage of Inconvenience, last week, I started looking at some of my other manuscripts and noticed I've got something of a pattern of opening stories with a heroine either planning to marry or being forced to marry someone who in fact is all wrong for her. Sometimes she has misgivings. Other times, as in this week's entry, she thinks it's exactly what she wants.

These are the current, rough and unedited, opening lines of my historical fantasy WIP, working title Wolf & Huntress. The setting is Scotland, the year 1809.

“You cannot be seriously intending to wed Angus.”

Cass looked up from the rowan wood stake she was sharpening to glare across the fire at her sister Mary, who was stirring the potatoes with an entirely too complacent expression. Cass could hardly wait for Angus’s mourning for poor little Elspeth to end. Then she would not only wed the man she had wanted for these seven years and more, she would also be free of having this same fight with her sister, night after night.

“And why can I not?” Cass gave her stake a fierce swipe with her knife and watched the shaving fly into the fire and curl into flame.


Feedback appreciated, and drop by the Six Sentence Sunday home blog to check out other writers' excerpts.

22 comments:

  1. Seven years is a long wait! Great six.

    ReplyDelete
  2. OK, I have to know why her sister doesn't think she should marry him.

    ~Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  3. Patricia, she can do better. And fortunately, by the powers vested in me as her author, she will. ;-)

    Sarah, her sister is the one with a clear, objective perspective in this case. Cass and Angus fell in love very young, their families forbade the match, and they've been idealizing each other ever since. Mary realizes, as Cass doesn't, that they're more in love with the IDEA of each other, and of defying their families now that they're old enough to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice set up and great visual imagery.

    Great six!

    gem

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice six! Makes me want to read more. Isn't that interesting about the pattern you found in your works?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, I want to know what those stakes are for!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Historical fantasy. Wolf. Scotland. You had me before I even hit the six sentences. I want to know what the stakes are for too!

    ReplyDelete
  8. good historical story - yummy

    ReplyDelete
  9. Love the tension in these opening lines.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Beautifully imagined scene, and very convincing conflict. I'd love to see the heroine's decision-making process.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thrown right into the scene. Great tension between sisters. Itching for seven years? This guy is someone I'd flip the pages to meet.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Seven years? This Angus must be special!

    ReplyDelete
  13. The stakes are for just about what you'd expect in a paranormalish historical fantasy. :-)

    Angus isn't one of the two men who are destined to be the great loves of Cass's life--but she hasn't met them yet, or much of anybody, really, so she's not yet in a position to know what she's missing.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Very good use of description, Susanna. Thanks for sharing these six.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Great tension and show of conflict between the two sisters.

    Love the "fierce swipe with her knife" to punctuate her words and show her emotions. Nice!

    ReplyDelete
  16. The obvious tension between the sisters is great and can lead terrific stuff. to all sort of

    ReplyDelete
  17. What a very question. She wants to marry him, but she has a weapon in her hand, which begs the question of WHY she wants to marry him. Excellent hook. I look forward to seeing more.

    ReplyDelete