I love fight scenes. I’ve been mulling over what to enter for this blogfest–I’d hoped to write something new, but just don’t have the time. Since I’ve featured a few excerpts/alternative scenes from Watcher lately, I’ve decided to give you all a taste of something a little different.

This is from the Forbidden Doorways young adult series I’m working on. The characters are Mason, a rather nasty vampire, and Crit, his reluctant shapeshifter partner.

Enjoy…

~~~~~~~~~

“Crit, they’ll be waking soon and we are completely unprepared. Keep a watch over them ‘til I get back.”

Groaning, I nod again. I hate being there when newborns first wake up, especially if Mason’s not. But I can generally tell when it’s useless to argue with him, and this is one of those times.

He walks to the door and looks back at me.

“Don’t leave them alone or they may turn on one another. You need to be in there, now, in case they wake early.” He pauses. “And stay out of their teeth.”

Giving him a mock salute, I head to the back room as he slips through the alley door.

~~~

The darkness of the small room has an eerie feel to it. I turn the lock on the outside of the door as I walk in, then close it behind me. My leg bumps the table. I grope its surface for the flashlight and, finding it, flip it on. The beam bounces around the room, coming to rest on the graves.

Good. There’s no sign of movement yet.

Turning, I kick the floor bolt closed at the bottom of door and set the flashlight back on the table.

I shift, tissues squirming, compressing, and the bones click into place. The inky feathers feel so weird as they burst through my skin, much weirder than fur. A big shudder settles them into place, all but one that’s poking me, and I reach under a black wing with my beak and smooth it out. A second shake and I push up into the air to hover at the top of the door next to the upper latch. Wrapping a foot around the knob, I tug it and it falls into place. I drift down, then circle back up to the perch anchored into the wall near the ceiling and settle onto it to wait.

Mason better get back here soon. He should’ve let me round up dinner, like I usually do. One vamp wakening I can handle, but I don’t know about two, especially a couple. I dunno why he decided to do this– a couple is always more difficult to deal with than two people who didn’t know each other.

Sounds from below interrupt my musings and I fix an eye on the graves. Bits of soil are starting to tumble down the mound closest to the wall. Brent.

Aww, crap.

A hand shoots through the earth, startling me, and waves around in the air, then is followed by the other. They drop, and feeling the soil around them, start clawing it away as fast as possible. Brent’s torso bursts through the surface and he sits up. A squawk escapes me as I nearly fall off my perch. This stuff still creeps me out, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Blinking, he brushes the dirt from his face and looks down at the lower half of his body that is still buried.

“Uhhh…” Black eyes wide, he panics and launches himself out of the grave. He hits the door and starts pounding on it, still making the ‘uh’ sound. After several minutes he spots the doorknob, grabs it and pulls. He keeps pulling, jerking it back and forth, but isn’t thinking enough to try and turn it. He goes back to pounding, then switches to yanking.

Lame brain in life, he’s even lamer in death.

He finally stops and looks around the room, then starts circling it mindlessly, round and round, like an animal in a cage. Which basically he is. Wonder if his brain is going to kick in at all.

A sound from the middle of the floor snatches my attention away from Brent.

Uh oh.

The soil moves and goes still for a moment, then Kelly explodes out of the mound. Brent shrieks and tries to hide in a corner as Kelly hits the door, hard. She pounds twice, grabs the knob, and gives it a single tug before trying to turn it.

Oh, bad sign. They don’t usually remember how to work doorknobs right outta the hole.

She looks closer at it, then notices the latch at the bottom of the door and starts kicking it.

No problem with her mind, which could be a big problem for us. We count on them being zombied when they first wake–it’s easier to control them. It usually takes a few days before they start to think again.

Kelly stops kicking and looks around the room. She zeroes in on Brent, who’s nose-first in the corner stepping back and forth, still making that ‘uh’ sound. In a flash she crosses the room, grabs his hair and yanks his head back.

He screams and shoves off the wall against her just as she’s opening her mouth to bite him. They both go down into the dirt, and I’m on them, beating their faces with my wings in an effort to distract them from one another.

I squawk as one them gets hold of my tail feathers and barely manage to pull myself free. I fly back up to my perch as Brent, still lying in the dirt, examines the feathers. Kelly rolls away from him then turns, seizes his arm and sinks her fangs into it. I dive down into her face and she snarls and grabs at me as I flap away.

But I’m not fast enough. She catches my wingtip and yanks me down. I hit the ground shifting and she lets go. Her surprised expression is quickly replaced by that of bloodlust at the sight of my human form. I barely shift into the wolf in time to leap to the other side of the room.

But now I’ve got Brent’s attention as well, and as the bloodlust flares in his eyes, I realize I’m in big trouble. I double-shift back to the raven and hurl myself into the air just as they both launch at me. I feel the brush of fingertips as I push higher. With great relief I settle back onto the perch. Beak open, I pant from the efforts of the last several minutes as I watch them circle below me.

Kelly studies me a moment, then suddenly springs straight up and grabs the perch. It snaps off from the wall as I take wing and she smiles at me in triumph.

This sucks. I can only stay in the air in this small of an area for so long.

A tap from outside the door is the best thing I’ve heard in awhile and I start cawing up a storm. Mason unlocks the door, then slams into it. The latches I’d installed tear through the wood as the door bursts inward and I hightail it out into the warehouse and land.

“STOP!” Mason roars.

I listen with satisfaction as first one body hits a wall, then the other. Shifting into the wolf, I race back into the room.

~~~~~~~~~

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

But then this scene came flooding into my head, and I had to write it.

When ya gotta write, ya gotta write.

So here’s my entry for Dawn Ember’s Word Paint Blogfest – be sure to visit her site to read the other entries.

This is an alternate scene from my WIP, Watcher, the story of Sunny Martin and her struggles to survive in a personal hell from which she cannot escape.

Hope it’s been a little while since you had breakfast (or lunch).

~~~~~~~~~

A red river tumbles over me, creating eddies around the angles of my body. I lift my head from the crimson flow, gasping, choking, as I struggle to escape its sticky clutches. My arms claw the air in vain, and when I open my eyes, all I can see is a wall of blood bearing down on me. As it crushes me, shoving me deeper and deeper into the thick torrent, I scream.

I’m still screaming as I climb from the coma-like sleep that the sun forces upon me every morning. The horror coursing through me is nothing compared to the hunger burning through my veins. It rips through my belly into my throat, its fiery need sending waves of agony into my very soul.

Nicolas appears next to the bed, concern etching his brow.

“Oh, Nicolas! What’s happening to me?!” I cry as I fling myself into his arms.

“Sshh, my sweet. It is just a blooddream.” He strokes my hair, as though calming a frightened horse. My body responds, as it always does to him, and begins to relax.

He eases me back, his eyes searching mine, and asks, “Haven’t you had them before?”

“No,” I whisper. “Never.”

His silence tells me this is unusual, and I can visualize the checklist in his head as he adds another item to the list of my oddities.

The hunger flashes through me, reminding me that it will never let me go. I press myself tight against his chest, and as he wraps his arms around me, I know he’ll never let me go, either.

It’s a heavy price for his love, and sometimes I wonder how long I can pay it.

~~~~~~~~~

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

It’s kinda hard to think about rain right now. It’s over 100° F  outside and temps are expected to reach 103° by this evening. Not a cloud in the sky…

But today is the Rainy Day Blogfest, hosted by Christine at The Writer’s Hole, so to help remember what it’s like to be cool and damp, I’m featuring a short excerpt from my WIP Watcher. We join Sunny just after she’s had ‘dinner’ and is feeling content for a change.

To help set the mood, here’s a quiet little piano tune by Justin St. Charles and Nine Inch Nails:

It starts to sprinkle as I run along the shoreline of Lake Cachuma. I don’t care. Being wet doesn’t bother me and neither does the cold. In fact, sometimes I find the cold invigorating. Warmth, on the other hand, is quite pleasurable, especially on the inside after a hot meal. Warm days are great too, if I can protect my skin from the direct sun, which isn’t easy. People look at you funny when you’re wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck and gloves and it’s 90 degrees outside.

Jogging back to the BMW, I catch the scent of wild pig and veer off to follow it. Pigs are tough to kill because they’re so low to the ground and their barrel-shaped bodies are difficult to grip. Their necks are short and stout – breaking them is not very feasible. And they have tusks, right near my target area. I did kill one once, though, a young adult, and I thoroughly enjoyed his buttery-sweet blood.

Scent trails are easier to follow when the weather’s damp. I detect several now and slow as the scents become stronger. Weaving through the bushes, I freeze – foraging along a marshy area are three adult females and six babies. I watch for a moment, then melt into the brush.

That is one thing I will not do. I will not kill mothers or babies – of any species.

Retracing my steps, I pick up my trail again and continue on to the car. Between the deer and my twenty-mile run, I’m finally relaxed, and I smile from the sheer joy of being in the woods.

The sprinkling has turned to rain, and I stop and lift my face to the sky. I rejoice as the drops hit and trail down my cheeks, and open my mouth to see if I can feel them on the inside as well. Rain dances across the leaves and rocks in a liquid ballet, and I listen as each drop makes its own music, creating a soft woodland symphony.

Laughing, I shake my head, flinging water off my hair to add to the concert, and take off running again.

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~

click here for enrollment info!

But you might be asking, “Uh, third place in what?”

Miss Snark’s First Victim August Secret Agent Contest, that’s what!

The ’secret agent’ was revealed earlier this morning: Cameron McClure, of the Donald Maass Literary Agency!

I’m stunned – she is at the top of my intended submission list! I had actually planned to start querying by the end of the month.

Entrants for the contest were to submit the first 250 words of a completed novel. Submission windows were limited in both time and number of entries. A total of forty-four entries were submitted.

There were a number of great ones. I’m hoping the other winners will announce soon who they were – I’d love to visit their sites to see more of their writing!

In the meantime, I’m off to do my happy dance!

Blogfests!

I’ve decided that I really like them.

They give me a chance to visit other blogs and discover new writers that I enjoy.

And they force me to write–something short and sweet, something without the emotional investment and time commitment of a novel.

Blogfests allow me to play in my WIP if I’m in the mood, by either reprinting a scene already written, or creating a side story for a minor character.

But they also give me the freedom to write about something completely different, a way to step foot into another world. And if it’s a world I find intriguing once I’m in it, I may explore it more fully in future works.

So in honor of the blogfest, which in reality is a form of writing exercise, I’m going to host my first one.

In fact, I’m not only hosting one, I’m going to jump in with both feet and host TWO.

The first one is in honor of the month of September, the month when the heat of summer fades and the cool, crisp air of fall begins to creep in.

It’s also the month many schools start their year after summer break (although some jump the gun and start in August).

I’m calling it:

September’s Back-to-School Daze Blogfest

Your assignment?

Write a scene that takes place on a campus. It can be in a classroom, on the football field, in a locker room… (grin – but nothing explicit, please!) – just as long as the setting is on school grounds.

That’s it. Keep it short – 999 words is a nice length, but if you go a LITTLE over, I won’t slap your knuckles with a ruler.

AND – if you’re late to class, I won’t send you to the principal’s office. In honor of those of us who are always tardy, I’m running the blogfest through Saturday, September 18 to give everyone a chance to contribute and time to visit all the blogs. However, you must sign up on or before the blogfest date of September 15.

Oh, and please spread the word – copy the banner at the top to paste on your blog and link back to this page so that visitors can read the other entries. I’m sure there are some GREAT school stories out there!

I also ask that you leave comments on the blogs you visit. Let the writers know their works are being read – they’ll appreciate the time you take to acknowledge their efforts.

September’s Back-to-School Daze Blogfest date: Wednesday, September 15, 2010.

You can sign up with the Mr. Linky thingy below.

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But – before you go any further, make note of my second blogfest.

It’s taking place on October 23, 2010, and is called:

October’s Monster Mash Blogfest

The title should tell you all you need to know for now, so mark your calendar – I’ll announce more about it as we get a little closer to the date.

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That said, here’s the sign-up for September’s Back to School Daze Blogfest:

Posted with the permission of the artists who believe in sharing their creative passions, here’s Reckless and Drowning Without Me:

~~~~~~~~~

Did ya happen to notice today’s date?

Yeah, today is a nine day. For those who are new to my blog, I have a thing for the number nine – it’s a really cool number.

Why, and why is today a nine-day, you ask?

Just add up all the numbers in the date, then add the numbers in the sum. So 16 August 2010 is: 1+6+8+2+0+1+0=18;  and 1+8=9!

Nine’s a special number and has all kinds of strange effects on numbers involving it. For example, multiply any number by nine. The result is a product whose integers also add up to nine (ex: 9 x 5 = 45; 4 + 5 = 9). Multiples of nine are kinda weird in another way – the first digit increases as the second digit decreases. For example:

9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. The pattern resets itself when 9 is multiplied by any number ending in 1, such as 11, 21, 31, etc.

Cool, huh?!

Which leads me to my next weird little factoid, only this one is a word.

Interrobang.

Yes, it’s a real word.

Want a clue as to its meaning?

You can find it at the end of the line that begins with the word ‘cool’

Huh?!

Yeah, that’s it.

An interrobang is a special symbol that’s the combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark. From Wikipedia:

The interrobang, interabang[1] (pronounced /ɪnˈtɛrəbæŋ/) or quesclamation mark, ‽, is a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the bang). The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks. A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

It looks like this:

‽

It can be created in HTML or XML documents by typing ‽ or ‽ and some word processors will display it using the alt code ALT+8253 .

Just imagine – if this symbol were widely used, there would be no more confusion as to which order to place the question mark and the exclamation mark for those instances when you need both.

Pretty cool, huh‽

Something I seem to have precious little of, at least to call my own. It slips through my fingers, a stream flowing into the ocean of the past, never to be recovered.

I sell most of my time. My employer buys the biggest chunk of it for the cold hard cash necessary to keep a roof over my head and eat regularly. It’s a fair exchange, and one I shouldn’t complain about in this day and age of joblessness and uncertainty. But I sure wish I could figure out how to sell just a little less of it.

Trading my time with others is another avenue of loss. In my critique group, we trade reading time to help one another learn and grow. It’s also a fair exchange, for how can I expect someone to give me feedback on my writing without offering the same in return?

I tend to be selfish with the amount of time that is left, reserving it for writing and all the things that go along with trying to get published. My horses whinny at me as I go to and from the house, their voices questioning why I no longer spend hours grooming and riding them. Hobbies I once obsessed over, such as scrapbooking and costuming, gather dust as projects sit neglected in corners. Fan conventions and renfaires no longer fill my calendar – a calendar that tells lies with its emptiness.

I’m fortunate that my husband supports my writing efforts. He shares my frustrations when I cry at the end of a weekend because the writing or editing that I’d planned to do kept getting bumped to the bottom of the list, falling off of it completely when the clock strikes midnight on Sunday.

One of my biggest time-sucks is blogging. But I’ve found it necessary to my growth as a writer. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about writing and publishing from the other writers, agents, and editors who blog. Hopefully my investment of time in the blogosphere will pay off and bring me closer to a publishing deal.

So I’m at a loss on how to gain more time to actually write. For now, I steal it – some from the time I should be spending with my husband and animals, other bits from my neglected  friendships.

But mostly – I steal it from my sleep. And that’s hard on the body and the mind, and night after night of less than 6 hours of rest really takes its toll.

How about you? Where does your writing time come from? Is it yours to do whenever you wish, or do you have to squeeze it in between work and family? Or are you like me, stealing it from precious sleep and cringing at its cost when you peer into the mirror the next morning.

I’d like to hear from some of you about how you manage your writing time. And perhaps we’ll exchange comments and bemoan our lack of time while writing beneath the bright light of the moon.

Today is the last day for the 100 Followers Contest over at  Critique This WIP. Prizes are chapter critiques by the gang over there – click on the link now to enter!

Roni, of Fiction Groupie, and Julie, of  Diary of an Unpublished Wanna-Be Writer, are hosting Roni and Julie’s Totally Epic Summer Contest.  They’ve been interviewing authors and agents all week, and are offering a variety of fabulous prizes, including books, critiques, and query opportunities. Hurry on over there to enter – contest deadline is Sunday, August 8.

And now, to introduce you to a new blogger!

Melanie Smith is a member of the Fresno Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers and a dear friend of mine. She’s also an editor and a word-crafter par excellence!

Mellie’ new blog is called Thursday-ish. Why? In her words:

“Why Thursday, you ask? Monday and Tuesday are very busy for me.  Wednesday is too finely balanced in the middle of the week, and Friday is busy again, with my mind on other things. Thursday, though, is like an eddy of time in my busy life.  It’s the day I’m most likely to spend with a friend, or painting a watercolor, or writing.  I’m not all that good at deadlines, however, so I’m only promising Thursday-ISH.  It might be later, or I may feel perfectly balanced and write something brilliant on Wednesday.  One never knows…”

So join me in welcoming her, and hop on over to see what she says about her love affair…with words.