Just for fun, let’s post the first paragraph of several chapters from our current work-in-progress. You pick the number of excerpts and which chapters. Mine are from The Realm of Silence, book 3 in The Golden Redepennings.
Chapter Two:
Four years since he had last crossed verbal swords with Susan Cunningham, and she looked no older. Did the infernal woman have the secret of an elixir of youth? She had been widowed long enough to be out of her blacks, and back into the blues she favoured: some concoction that was probably the height of fashion and that both hid and enhanced her not insubstantial charms.
Chapter Four:
The goddess fought him every inch of the way right through dinner, and went up to her room still determined to do without his support. Gil’s blood ran cold at the thought of her facing the perils of the road with none but her elderly groom to defend her safety and her honour. Especially a groom who would take bribes, as the man Lyons did when Gil found his room above the stables. Gil paid the old man to warn him when the goddess ordered her carriage, and set his own man to watching the groom.
Chapter Seven:
180 miles north, in Newcastle
“No dawdling,” Mam’selle Cornilac commanded, setting a rapid pace through the busy market. For the first time on their travels, they had stopped for the day in the mid afternoon, and Mam’selle had taken full advantage of several used-clothing vendors, determined to reclothe her two unwelcome companions.
Chapter 3
Under the excited guidance of Eli, who apparently hadn’t been on the back of such a fine horse before, Simon soon reached the village, where there was a considerable crowd gathered in front of the Green Man. The focus of attention was a small, red-faced man; Simon was not certain if the ruddiness of his complexion was due to natural causes, or to the barracking he was receiving from the crowd of women in front of him. On seeing Simon’s arrival he bustled forward.
Chapter 4
Simon slipped into the little stone village church the next morning, just in time to see Mrs Ampstead take her position at the small fortepiano at the side of the chancel. She stretched her hands over the keyboard, paused while the congregation came to attention, then attacked the keys as if they were all the armies of Napoleon rolled into one. The congregation came in with the words, a little ragged to begin with, but soon they caught up and a pleasant harmony rose.
Oh, those are nice. I particularly like the description of congregational singing.