A meme of seven ~ lucky for some!

A meme of sevens ~ lucky for some.

I’m not one for the memes that go across the blog-o-sphere but Gordon Bonnet tagged me in one that intrigued me somewhat.

The idea was that you go to page 77 of your current work in progress, or most recently completed story (or page 7 if you prefer) and you go to the 7^th line and then cut and paste the next 7 sentences, or paragraphs. Then you tag another seven writers whom you’d like to find out more about their work.

Now the trouble with this is that while I know a lot of writers I don’t want to put upon them by tagging them. So consider this an open invite to use the same meme. You can do it here in the comments, or on your own blog, or even both.

The following extract is from the novel I’d like to release next. I would have had it out for Easter but I can’t seem to get a cover sorted for it. Provisionally titled Square Peg (but I may change this) the novel is the story of Chloe (best friend to Isobel from Away With The Fairies; she appears about half way through the story and the girls team up to fight back with disastrous consequences) and her struggle to get through three years at theological college where her husband is training to become a minister. Brought up by her unconventional grandmother, her arrival at the college is shortly after her Gran’s death, and Chloe finds it very hard to cope with the very narrow and stifling atmosphere. In this extract she is going through some of her grandmother’s most treasured belongings; they have just found a crystal ball and a set of Tarot cards. 

“Well, you know she used to help out with the travellers from time to time? Stitched up wounds and dug out shotgun pellets and said nothing? That sort of thing. She used to get me up in the night sometimes when I was little, when someone had come to the door at the dead of night asking for her help. She couldn’t leave me at home on my own so she used to pack me up in the car with blankets and sometimes I’d get out of the car and wander around the camps. I loved it, actually, and they were always kind to me. Anyway, this old lady, I think she was a real gypsy, a real Romany, called my Gran out to see her. She wouldn’t go to the hospital, obviously, but she needed help. Apparently Gran told her exactly what was wrong with her; which is what she wanted, not someone lying to her with hopeful lies. So she told Gran that she didn’t want any of her special things going to the wives of her sons; she didn’t like them and they’d gone into brick anyway, that is left the travelling life. So she gave Gran her crystal ball and her cards and that was that. She died about three days later. Gran said the ball had been in the old lady’s family for hundreds of years; she’d been worried about accepting it on that account, but when she met the daughters-in-law she realised the old woman was right. They’d have sold the crystal and binned the cards.”

Chloe took the crystal from him and gazed into it. The room was reflected back to her, upside down, but her vision was drawn deep into the rock, following the tiny flaws and rainbows, till she felt almost dizzy as if she’d been gazing down from a great height.

“It is really beautiful,” she said. “It does sort of quiet the mind looking into it. Odd.”

“Let’s have a peep at the cards, then,” Clifford said, and Chloe unwrapped them and they looked through them in fascination.

After a while, Chloe sighed.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” she said. “I can’t understand why there was such a terror of this sort of thing when I was hovering on the fringes of the CU. They’re just pictures; interesting pictures. I think they’re archetypes, like Jung wrote about. There’s nothing sinister here at all.”

She sounded disappointed, and Clifford laughed at her.

Anyway, if you fancy playing along and sharing, please feel free to do so! It’s also my birthday today so knock yourselves out and have fun!