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Okay so, as far back as I can remember, I've always loved YA books, so I knew I'd inevitably throw my hat into the YA ring someday. Well, for a few months now, I've been working on a YA series about a small-town girl who moves to the big city, where she soon discovers that the world around her isn't what it appears to be, and neither are the new people in her life...namely, her new friends and Jack, her first love. So, I really would love to get some feedback here on this, the first chapter of the book.
Enjoy!
Cindy
When I got home from school, I found my parents huddled at the rustic, dining room table, grinning like kids with a juicy secret. It didn’t surprise me to see them there since they were both authors and were virtually always around. But Dad, he was currently working on his second novel, with a nagging deadline right around the corner. And Mom, she was in the I-can’t-wait-for-you-to-read-this-chapter stage of her first book; she’d been raving for the past few weeks about how she was dying to finish it. So why they were slacking off in the middle of the day like that was beyond me.
Tempted as I was to ask them about it, I just sighed and went to my room. I felt kinda bad not feeding into whatever surprise they clearly wanted to share with me. My parents, Jessica and Jonathan Chase were, without question, the only interesting people I knew. They were the highlight of my life, and no, that wasn’t sarcasm. I really do love being around them. They’re easy-going, laid back parents who actually see me as a person, and not a mindless, fragile object they have to watch over until it’s time for me to head out into the world.
But it had been a long day, fraught with boring classes designed to lower I.Q. points by the second, and an endless parade of gossipy, dim-witted, hum-drum nimrods that share the collective belief that all is great and dandy in Bumpkin Land, the tiniest, most uninteresting hole in America.
Honestly, the only smile-worthy moment of my day was when I punched one of the brainless Bumpkinites that I’m always oh-so-thrilled to be around every freakin’ day of my life. Her name’s Marley Waters. She’s this horse-faced pig in my English class who’d decided that this would be a good day to test her chances of survivability by telling the entire small-town-and-still-smaller-minded school that I had a crush on our tenth-grade history teacher, old Mr. Anderson, a bald, bow-tie-wearing relic who smelled like feet and a variety of foul and mysterious cheeses.
“Zoey?” Mom’s voice seeped through my door, deep and serious, which alone was enough to rattle me; she’d never taken that tone with me before.
“What?” I grunted, hurling my plaid backpack at my closet door.
“Zoey, your mother’s calling you. Now get in here.”
I kicked off my sneakers and shot them at the wall beside my wooden dresser, then popped my head outside my room. “What?”
“Zoey Chase, get over here this instant, Young Lady!”
Great. First Mom, now Dad? He’d never Young-Lady’ed me before. Not even when I got into that fight with Cheryl Mosley, back in eighth grade; I’d discovered she was the one who’d told everyone I was born a boy because someone had told her that her boyfriend liked me.
Somewhat shaken by Mom and Dad’s newfound experiences, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Principal of my school had called to rat me out for punching Marley, the horse-faced pig.
“Zoey!” my parents shouted as one.
“Coming.” I lumbered into the dining room with as much interest as I had in throwing on a wicker hat and dancing around a haystack; sadly, that was the pastime of choice in this kill-me-now part of the world. “What is it? I’m tired.”
“Tired?” Mo
1 Comments on First Chap of my new book, last added: 2/1/2012
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Okay sis, this is coming from your brother and fellow author...remember its just one person's opinion...FREAKIN AWESOME!!! Very descriptive, well paced and written for the perfect market you are looking for. Incredible writing!