I’m Not Looking for a Way Out

Challenge 9/20/11

I’d settle for a way back to myself.  Do you know what I mean?  I used to be a survivor—the kind of would do everything and has done everything in order to survive.  And now that I have the perfect family and I’m living in the lap of luxury, I have absolutely no idea who I am any more.

It’s not that all my problems have just magically disappeared.  I miss my Ama—my grandmother—who died because I failed her.  And there’s something very, very wrong with my new sister, all of her perfect children and most of all, her creepy, bearskin wearing husband.  He’s having an affair with a woman who’s living on the other side of our mansion.  I hear them at night.  Her emo son might want to kill me.

You don’t have to be some kind of hero.  I just want someone who makes me feel like the world is right side up again.

~Sophie, The Bearskin's Wife

PS.  Marcia Hoehne is hosting a MG/YA critique give away on her blog.  It sounds like she's quite good.  Enter Here.

Six Sentence Sunday

Right now, I'm in the process of reviewing my Gothnowrimo project.  It started as Prompt #8 over at The Chrysalis Experiment and quickly spiraled out of control.  For about a month, it was hard to even think about anything else.  I used to dream about these characters.  The idea was inspired by a) incredibly bad weather b) Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca c) Alfred Hitchock's Rebecca.  (Detect a theme?)

While I've read other gothic novels, I think that Rebecca was the book that really taught me what the gothic novel was--an unsure, but personable heroine, an untouchable Byronic-type hero, a gorgeous, but very spooky and isolated house, lots of mystery, religious/supernatural overtones, heightened language, over-exaggerated physical reactions (fainting, fevers, hallucinations, etc), constant portents of doom, lots of surprise twists and misdirection.

Anyway, here's a six sentence sneak peak at that project for Six Sentence Sunday:

My new sister valued closeness more than I did. The way she was hovering over me felt indecent. Ama had barely touched me all of these years. “She never said anything about you. It was Mr. MacAfee that told me that I had a sister.”

“You found out about your mo—sister from a lawyer?”

~The Bearskin's Wife