First Fight, First Kiss Blogfest Part II

Danielle at Entertaining Interests and Jackie at Bouquet of Books are having this action packed blogfest where they invite us to share our first fight and first kiss scenes in our WiPs.

Tuesday's was sharing 1st FIGHT, you can read mine here if you like.

Today, June 14 - We share our 1st KISS scene. It can be a peck on the cheek or a full fledge kissing session.

This is from MY PROTECTOR: THE CALLING (surprise, surprise). Eri had to re stitch Grayson's wound after fighting a beast.

            Finnley strolled back in with Grayson’s cleaned-up shirt as I finished the second set of sutures. “If you keep ripping those open, Nurse Eri here won’t be able to keep you so pretty,” Finnley teased him. “And, what was it Doctor Simone said to you? Oh yeah, ‘Your future wife will be able to see those scars if you’re not careful.’ ”

“As far as I’m concerned, she already has,” Grayson joked back.

“Oh,” I mumbled, my cheeks flaming. “Well that should do it then,” and I walked out the door as fast as I could and kept walking.

How could I have been so stupid! Of course I wasn’t the only one who had seen Grayson’s injuries. After all, the other Protectors weren’t the least bit surprised he had a woman in his room the previous night. Obviously it happened before. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I was so far inside my head, determined to put as much distance between me and the source of my infinite anguish, I hadn’t heard Grayson running up behind me.

“Eri!”

Oh crap, keep walking, act like I don’t care.

“Eri, wait.” He jogged in front of me, forcing me to a stop. “What’s gotten into you? Why’d you leave like that?”

“Um, I need to get this stuff back to the hospital,” I lied not looking directly at him, afraid my heart would break.

“Did I offend you by saying that?” His eyebrows scrunched in misunderstanding.

“By saying what?” I tried acting as if I hadn’t noticed his words back in my cabin.

“By saying my future wife has already seen my scars. That didn’t affect you at all?”

Feigning nonchalance could only last so long. I raised my head to look into his eyes, tears glossing mine. “Did you run after me to rub it in? I think you know how I feel about you. So you’re trying to hurt me, is that it?”

“God, Eri, you can be so blind sometimes!” He grabbed his hair as if pulling it out. “It’s you. You’re the one I want to see my scars. No one else.” He placed his hands on my arms and bent down to get directly in front of my face. “Only you, Eri.”

I stammered, unable to speak. My mouth tried to move, attempting to spit something out in response, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate.

His lips saved me, pressing against mine before I realized his intention. Tender, light. A million times softer than I imagined a billion times before.

Breaking our connection, he held me at arm’s length, locking his magnetic eyes on mine. If I had to bet on it, I could’ve sworn tears painted them a shade darker. Grayson’s mouth crooked up at the corners before falling back into a straight line.

My eyebrows hitched into my hair, my mouth hung open, words hated me. A strange sound crawled its way out of my throat, but refused to turn coherent.

“I love you, Eri. How can you not know that?” He leaned down again, his lips grazing mine.

A murmur escaped from somewhere in the tangle of my emotions. My mind shut off and my body responded letting my lips take over, moving with his, opening in surrender. I squeezed into him, his arms locking my body against his, months of restraint released, flooded with the heat blooming between us.  

A whistle pierced our kiss.

“It’s about time you two idiots figured it out!” Finnley yelled, laughing from the porch swing beside Jen.

Thoughts? 
Do you like writing kissing scenes?

Now you can go check out some more hot kissing scenes here...

First Fight, First Kiss Blogfest

Danielle at Entertaining Interests and Jackie at Bouquet of Books are having this action packed blogfest where they invite us to share our first fight and first kiss scenes in our WiPs.

Today, June 12 - Share your 1st FIGHT scene. It can be a lovers spat ...or a battle scene ...or a classic fist fight. It can be physical or verbal, fists or magic.

Thursday, June 14 - Share your 1st KISS scene. It can be a peck on the cheek or a full fledge kissing session.

This is from MY PROTECTOR: THE CALLING (what else do I ever post about?). Eri is at a training session with Grayson, Finnley is off doing 'Protector' things. Sorry for the length. I had a hard time finding a starting point without cutting too much set up.

            The hillside where we practiced wasn’t far from this peak. I thought Grayson chose that spot so no one would catch him training me. I guess it wasn’t the only reason.

“They’re far out this evening,” he said. “Doesn’t feel like one is approaching.”

“I agree.” I spoke as if he asked my amateur opinion. I took a couple steps forward, more to put space between us than to get closer to the creatures dwelling in the foothills.

“What does it feel like to you?” he asked.

I continued facing away from him to keep my emotions from flipping back to how he made me feel rather than what he asked.

“Um, it’s like I’m mad at something. Then it sort of grows to feeling furious. An all over furious, like if I move in a certain direction the rage will be satisfied.” I tipped my head, letting my hair fall around the flush coloring my cheeks. “That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

He huffed a rueful laugh. “You’re not crazy.”

I raised my eyes from the ground. “How does it make you feel?” I asked not sure what answer I wanted.

“It’s something like what you said. A powerful anger coming out of nothing. It scared me when I was younger.”

“Really? It scared you?”

The corner of his mouth crooked up. “Yeah, go figure, huh? I’m not as tough as everyone thinks.”

I doubted that. He fought the beasts for years, probably since before our people even settled here. I turned around again to center on the creatures, trying to ignore his display of vulnerability. The beasts seemed safer than he did, or how he made me feel anyhow.

“So does it still enrage you? Consume you?” I asked, hoping for some revelation to make the irrational bond make sense.

“Yeah, I suppose it does. But I know how to… exploit it, I guess would be the closest way to put it. I learned to get a handle on the aggression by enduring a lot of encounters with the creatures. A lot of bloodshed.” Darkness settled over his expression, making his features more severe before he looked away. “Too much blood.”

I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to run from him. This was way more than I could handle, more than I ever asked for. Not that I had asked for any of it. But I was stuck with it and that was a problem I couldn’t hide from.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this, then? I’m a girl, for Christ’s sake! I can’t be one of you! I don’t get to have those encounters. And if I can’t learn to control this feeling without fighting the beasts, you’re telling me I’ll be a slave to this rage forever? Or until one of these spells leads me to their claws?”

He spun and closed the distance between us with one stride, gripping my arms again. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I believe you can learn to control how you feel. I think you can learn to use your rage.” He dropped his hands away, squinting down at them as if I was poison to his skin.

“How can I do that if I’m not allowed to be a Protector? That’s the only way to learn, to get the experience I need. You said so yourself.”

“No, it isn’t. If you’ll let me, I think I can teach you how to harness the anger. I can show you how to use the ugliness from this horrific curse.”

“You think it’s a curse?”

He said nothing.

Taking a deep breath, reigning in my emotions, I continued evenly. “I think it’s a gift, Grayson. Even though it’s a total pain in the ass, there is purpose behind this link. How many people can do this? How many of us have been given something that can save the lives of others? How can you believe this didn’t happen to you, to me, for a reason?”

“You think literally being drawn to the feet of a monster is a gift? You think having your free will stripped from you when confronted with a human-eating beast is a good thing? You’re wrong, Eri. It is a curse,” he seethed, teeth bared, lips pulled tight.

I refused to back down. Taking a step forward, I stared into his piercing eyes with as much conviction as I could possibly convey. “I was given this connection for some purpose. I’m certain of it.”

With that, I turned and headed in the other direction. Away from him and away from the creatures. 

What'd you think? 
Are fight scenes fun for you to write?

Now you can go check out some more intense fight scenes here...

WiP The Movie

Thanks Kyra and Rachel for hosting this fun bloghop!

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to post a photo of the actors or actresses you would like to play the characters in your WiP if it were to be made into a movie. It can be just one character, or the entire cast!

Secondly, soundtrack your movie! Head over to YouTube, and post a song that best describes one of your characters, or your story as a whole. Again, you can pick one song, or several, it's entirely up to you!

My Protector: The Calling

Pitch: When Eri becomes the first girl to receive the Calling, an internal link to the man-eating beasts plaguing her planet, she must use her inherited skills to stop the creatures from destroying everything she loves.

Eri meets Finnley after they're both drawn out into the darkness by the Calling, ultimately forging a friendship once their secret bond is revealed. Grayson is the Protector who saved Eri from the claws of a beast when she was 14 and is later talked into helping her train thanks to Finnley's jabber mouth and undying loyalty to Eri.


Eri
(Chloe Grace Moretz)

All Around Me by Flyleaf

Finnley
(Taylor Kitsch)

Timshel by Mumford & Sons

Grayson
(Paul Walker)



Crawl by Kings of Leon

I know, I'd need a time machine for these actors to play Finnley and Grayson, but the world inside my head does not comprehend such trivial limitations.

Who is running around in your head?

Now it's your turn to hop around and find out what characters are living inside other people's imaginations :)

First Page Critique

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Jamie Ayers is hosting a First Page Critique contest where you post your first page on your blog and then hop around to the other entrants to read and comment on their first page. Five people will receive a critique from author Heather Burch who has a debut book called Halflings. You can read Heather's interview and more information about the contest on Jamie's blog here . You have until Wednesday to email Jamie and post your first page for critiquing.

Here is my first page of MY PROTECTOR: THE CALLING

Going to the river was forbidden. I knew this, yet it didn’t keep me from stepping off the gravel path or walking into the field.

My heart banged against my ribs. The space in my lungs folded in on itself. I sucked in a shallow breath, enough to nearly taste the crisp grass beneath my feet.

Stop your feet, Eri.

The early moonlight sparkled off the few remaining patches of snow, even it knew better than to dwell there.

A gong sang out across the village, ringing through my insides. The warning bell.

Half way between the nearest cluster of cabins and the safety border, I glanced over my shoulder to find the dark smudges of people fleeing for refuge, their shouts dying across the distance growing between us. I should have turned back. But the charcoal sky and inky river invited me forward.

An overwhelming need tumbled and collided like the rapids crashing against rock. Conflicting thoughts swirled through my head and I reached up to steady myself, squeezing my eyes shut against the confusion. I pressed my hands over my ears, begging the pounding inside to leave me alone.  “Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop—”

A current of adrenaline flooded my core. The blood tsunami in my veins propelled my legs faster, rushing through the forbidden, content to ruin me. My brain searched for one sane thought, something to stop my muscles from carrying me out there.

Suicide. This is suicide.

Something broke through the tree line. Blurry with speed, eerily dark within the dusk, features impossible to decipher.

A blanket of anger draped over my world, muffling sound, wrapping me in rage. 

What did you think? Any feedback would be awesome, thank you!!!

Can You Hit a Perfect Pitch?



Title:  My Protector: The Calling

Genre: YA post-apocalytpic

Word Count: 70,000 words

Pitch:  When Eri develops the calling—an internal link to the man-eating beasts plaguing the planet—she must learn to control it or gain skills to fight before ending up in the belly of a beast.

150 words:

Going to the river alone is forbidden.  Knowing this clear-cut rule of our people wasn’t enough to stop me from stepping off the gravel path and walking deep into the vacant field.  I no longer controlled my body.

Adrenaline thrummed inside me as I drifted closer.  White-hot anger burned in my belly, if it was even anger churning there.  I had never felt anger creep through my veins before.  Whatever this was, it pulled me toward the unknown.

I didn’t belong out there.  I knew better.  I should’ve run in the opposite direction, back to our village.  But I couldn’t turn away.  With each step into the darkness, the foreign emotion intensified, guiding me forward.  I surrendered to the aggression.  I had no choice. 

The warning bell struck, ringing through my insides.  My people had fled for safety into the closest shelter possible when it sounded the first time.

Not me.

Contest Description:

On January 15th post a two sentence pitch (no more than 35 words) along with the first 150 words (if it falls in the middle of a sentence, go to the end of that sentence) of your finished Young Adult or Middle Grade manuscript to your blogs.

To participate, sign up on the linky at  Brenda Drake Writes...Under the influence of coffee

Good luck!