Category: 100 Day Challenge

Voice I’m Studying – Kristin Hannah – The Nightingale

The winter of 1940 was the coldest anyone could remember. Snow fell day after day, blanketing the trees and fields; icicles glittered on drooping tree branches.
And still, Isabelle woke every Friday morning, hours before dawn, and distributed her “terrorist papers,” as the Nazis now called them. Last week’s tract followed the military operations in North Africa and alerted the French people to the fact that the winter’s food shortages were not a result of the British blockades—as Nazi propaganda insisted—but rather were caused by the Germans looting everything France produced.
(Excerpt from The Nightingale)

What I Wrote:

The year of 2020 was the strangest year. An unknown virus-like plague unleashed on our land, domestic terrorists flooded our cities streets with fire, burned buildings down and killed innocent people in cold blood. Months went by, that were filled with more violence in the streets. Technology censoring citizens, channeling the kings and queens of old, just short of beheading you for speaking out against them.

I woke every morning to cover what was really happening. You see, I am a citizen journalist. I can’t tell anyone my real name, for fear that big tech and big media would come after me. 

Voice I’m studying – C. S. Lewis – The Horse And His Boy

The Horse had lifted its head. Shasta stroked its smooth-as-satin nose and said, “I wish you could talk, old fellow.” And then for a second he thought he was dreaming, for quite distinctly, though in a low voice, the Horse said, “But I can.”  (Excerpt from The Horse And His Boy)

What I wrote:

The cat lifted its head. Miss. Turnvahl soothed its little head with pats, “You look like you’ve been through a lot. Lucky we’ve found you.” She glanced around at the grass huts and dirt roads. They were on a mission of sorts to find underprivileged gifted kids to help. She looked at the cat again and smiled, reaching down to pick it up. Their eyes met. The cats ears twitched as a small innocent voice escaped the small floof, “You wouldn’t believe everything I’ve seen.”

Voice I’m studying – Little Women — Louisa May Alcott

What I Wrote:

“How are you?” The girl leaned over in the dirty parking lot and held her fingers out to the stray cat with a bony structure. It cowered, staring at her with its gibbous eyes.

“It’s alright. I won’t hurt you.” She pulled a piece of jerky from her back pocket and held it out for the cat. “Looks like no one wanted you either. I know how that feels, to be alone and afraid. We can look out for each other.”

With that, the cat was curious and slinked closer to the girl and the jerky. It’s nose wiggled at the smell of the salty meat. The girl set it down on the ground for it to eat. The cat moved closer when she took her hand away.

“It’s alright.” The girl smiled. The cat smelled the piece of meat and began eating it ravenously.

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I’m so excited about this, as it’s a snippet from a book that will be published! Love it!! Hope you enjoy it too!

Voice I’m studying – The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

What I wrote:

They’d been in the ship for a week so far and it was dank and dark. Caden had passed in the night. It was early morning now, as the mother held her wilted child in her arms and rocked him back and forth in the darkness. Tears dripped down her eyes. All three of them were supposed to be going to America to meet Papa, to make a new life. He’d gotten to America before them and now they were following. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She’d imagined stepping off the boat the way she’d stepped on, with two laughing children. She had to keep him hidden.

She’d seen what happened to the last person who passed away — an elderly man. Buried at sea. She understood the idea of keeping the disease out of the ship, for others safety, but surely they didn’t mean her innocent Caden. That’s why they had to keep him hidden. That couldn’t be the way that Caden would leave them. They couldn’t ever tear him from her chest. 

Creaks and cracks could be heard from above as people walked about on the deck. Waves hit the side of the wooden ship which cradled them all. What would be ahead for them? She couldn’t see her life past Caden and Marissa. The little girl stood next to her mother with a somber look filled with loss. Tears dripped down her face. She didn’t know what was happening and why her brother was there one moment and the next he was gone. The mother lifted a finger to her mouth and let a shoosh escape from her lips to stay quiet. She felt the tears drip down her own face. Then she wrapped her arm around Marissa and hugged her little girl. They cried together in the secret shadows of the ship knowing what await them if he was found.

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I’m so excited about this, as it’s a snippet from a book that will be published! Love it!! Hope you enjoy it too!

Voice I’m studying – All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr:

What I wrote:

Oil derricks

At sunset their dark silhouettes sit against the red and orange sky. They continuously work, never stop churning, like the inner workings of a ticking clock, with a rowing motion, machine power, penetrating the earth. Working men from all over the nation flooded the small Western North Dakota towns during the Bakken oil boom of 2010. I returned after getting a letter from my sister. You could come back and make big bucks on the oil fields. It read, And you can come stay with me. Since it’s pretty spendy elsewhere. The remote place I grew up in had quickly transformed in my absence. The apartments and townhouse prices skyrocketed, since the men working on the oil rigs were making millions, some women went missing, man camps of trailers, small uniform buildings shot up across the state. It wasn’t as safe as it once was. It was the wild west in reincarnate.

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I’m so excited about this, as it’s a snippet from a book that will be published! Love it!! Hope you enjoy it too!