Somewhere amidst the natural disarrangement of schedules that comes with a week of family vacation, and the added complication of nursing an injured dog, I did manage to complete my main goal for August: editing the first draft of The Mountain of the Wolf. (And now I can stop referring to it as “the first draft of” and be glad of it, for with that title there are entirely too many “ofs” in the sentence.) It is a great and happy relief to have it finished and on its way to beta-readers.
The Mountain of the Wolf will be coming to an e-reader near you in late 2016—as a matter of fact, I have some rather exciting plans afoot concerning this story’s publication. I shall say no more just yet, but watch this space for an announcement sometime in the next couple of months! In the meantime, to celebrate the wind-up of this draft, here are a few snippets:
Somehow he and his noisy voice and presence were out of the house, and Rosa Jean hastily closed the door behind him. She wanted to think. She felt she had been given the key to a riddle, if only she could pick it out of everything else jumbled in Charlie’s speech. She went in and sat on the edge of her bed, one hand on either side of her, and stared at the opposite wall.
He was hardly in the saddle when a wolf’s howl rose loud from somewhere close by and both horses jumped. Quincy steadied Pheasant with the reins and spoke to them in low tones, meaningless words, while his mind was occupied with a pithy and fervent prayer that the wolves would mind their own business tonight.
Rosa Jean heard the thunder of hooves and dropped her rolling pin to run for the door, only to falter to a stop halfway. It was queer the way that sound still made her heart give a little jump of excitement and then just as quickly the thud of sickening remembrance.
Again he saw it—her expression shut up like a door being closed; her mouth set straight and her eyes offering no clue to her thoughts. It must hurt, he thought involuntarily, to do that…he did not know where the unsettling thought sprang from.
The white head swung slowly toward him, and the old man’s blank eyes stared. Quincy nodded to him. “Your name’s Sullivan, isn’t it?”
The old man bent over and began doing something vaguely with a rope and bucket at his feet—he half glanced sideways at Quincy without looking up at his face. “I ain’t got any whisky,” he mumbled. “I tol’ you I ain’t got any.”
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