Balancing Act

#saturdayscenes #samanthascenes From my work on #thursdayschildren this week:
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Sunrise was already starting to come later. Kye’luh sat up on the edge of her bed, groaning as she rubbed sleep sand from her eyes. Her eyes ached and she wondered if she’d slept with them open, or if it was just that she’d slept so little.

She and Jason had sat up talking for hours, and once she’d gone back to bed, she’d laid there waiting for her head to stop spinning on the possibilities, good and bad. She’d probably only had a couple of hours of solid sleep.

She picked up the windup clock at her bedside. Almost eight. When they’d first arrived, the sun burned the sleep from her at closer to six. Winter really was coming. She hoped they were ready for it. She’d never been up the mountain for longer than a weekend in the winter. The cold was going to make everything more complicated.

She picked up her mother’s flannel shirt and pulled it on, noticing that it smelled of liniment now. The minty smelling stuff Alecia used to take down swelling and take care of pain. Kye’luh had used the shirt to prop Jason’s foot up last night, and the fabric must have absorbed some of the scent. It wasn’t a bad smell. It was kind of comforting. It smelled like being taken care of.

She made her way to the outhouse, smiling a little remembering the posh accents and water closet jokes from the night before. She tugged the handle and it resisted. Someone was already inside.

Kye’luh leaned against a nearby tree, letting her head fall back and looking up into the leaves, already changing color and beginning to dry and blow away. She stood back up when she heard the door clatter open. It was Alecia. “Jeez, K, you look awful.”

“Thanks, Leesh.” She pushed past her cousin to make use of the facilities. This part wasn’t going to be much fun when the weather got colder either. The seat was going to be cold and the chinks in the wood that helped ventilate would let in the winter air.

When she came out, Leesh was still standing there, hands on her hips. “Bend down here.”

Kye’luh complied. “I’m all right. I just didn’t sleep enough.”

Alecia felt her head and nodded. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but your eyes are bloodshot. Bad dreams?”

“No. It wasn’t that. I stayed up late talking to Jason.”

Alecia crossed her arms over her chest. “I see.” Disapproval wafted from her with a scent stronger than the outhouse fumes.

“I don’t know what you think you see. I was trying to get him to explain himself, tell me why he was really here, and what he wanted.”

“And did he tell you?”

“He did.” She left out how touched she was by his belief that his father must still be alive and by his determination to save him. She didn’t tell her cousin about the way he made her laugh, describing his misadventures on the way up the mountain. “He was sent by the Underground, by Malcolm. They’re hoping to recruit us to help the mission, to get more kids out.”

“And you believe him?”

“I do.”

Alecia narrowed her light brown eyes. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s—well, if he was dangerous, he would be better at it. Don’t you think? What kind of government operative gets lost and loses his food supply?” To a raccoon, of all things.

A thoughtful look softened Alecia’s expression. “There is that. He didn’t exactly arrive ready to overcome us and take over.” She turned to walk back toward camp. “Nyaysia is going to be a hard sell. She doesn’t trust him.”

Kye’luh sighed. “I know.”

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Thanks for reading! You can learn more about me and my writing at http://samanthabryant.com or follow My Saturday Scenes collection here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/Y5kMoB There's also a collection for ALL the Saturday Scenes by ALL the participating authors here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/4XjIWE

#saturdayscenes #samanthascenes I worked on Thursday's Children, my young adult dystopian novel this week. Here's a bit of what I wrote. Poor Malcolm is having a bit of a crisis.
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Malcolm climbed into the car, tossing his bag into the back seat. Coach took off before he had even finished fastening his seatbelt. “You’ve got to be smarter than this,” he said, turning a hard left out of the parking lot and gunning the engine to stay ahead of the pickup truck that loomed too close in the rearview mirror. “This is no time to fall apart. There’s too much at stake.”

Trees seemed to blur into a sheet of green alongside the road. Malcolm couldn’t think of anything to say, so he stayed quiet. Coach took a sudden right turn onto a dirt road, throwing Malcolm against the door. He scrambled for the hand-hold. He had barely righted himself when Coach threw the SUV into park, got out of the car and started walking.

Malcolm hurried to follow him. It was an awkward slow speed chase for a few minutes, down a wooded path to a wide creek. Tackett didn’t look back to see if Malcolm followed, but just walked at a steady clip, faster than his usual gait. Malcolm wondered if the man’s limp was real either.

He lost track of Tackett when the path took a bend, but spotted him squatting beside the creek, looking down into the water. He crossed the remaining terrain in a few strides and sat down on the ground next to the man he’d always thought was his enemy, waiting.

“I get that this is confusing for you.”

Malcolm laughed. “You think?” 

Coach shot him a withering look. “We couldn’t just tell you. You were just a kid. We couldn’t be sure you could keep the secret.”

Malcolm opened his mouth to argue, but Coach put up a hand. “Every kid thinks they’re special, but the EBC is no joke. If they took you in and you knew the whole story? They’d get it out of you.”

Hot tears gathered in Malcolm’s eyes and he looked up at the sky willing them to absorb back into their ducts and not embarrass him by falling onto his cheeks in front of Coach Tackett. “So, I was just an errand boy?”

Coach sighed loudly. “You were always more than that. You were—you are our future.”

“But Sheila.”

“Sheila didn’t lie to you. She just didn’t tell you everything she knew. We had to protect you, protect the mission.”

Malcolm stood and walked downstream, watching the water bubble over the creek rocks on its way to the river and eventually to the sea. He wondered if this creek connected with the ones in the mountain pass, if Jason might, even now, be walking alongside this same water.

He’d felt so powerful and sure when he’d sent Jason out there, ready to take the bulls by the horns. Knowing one of the bulls was fighting for the same side he was left him deflated. He hadn’t been getting away with anything, stealing documents for Sheila and ferreting them out of the Center. Tackett hadn’t been trying to stop him. It undercut everything he’d done in the past few years, left him sinking in the quicksand of doubt just when he needed to climb the next peak.

Hurling a rock into the stream, Malcolm turned to walk back to where he’d left the man he’d always believed was his enemy. The riverbank was empty, but Tackett was sitting at the top of the hill, on a wide tree stump. Malcolm trudged over and sat beside him.

“Feel better?” Tackett asked.

Malcolm shrugged. “I guess.”

“Listen, son.”

“Don’t call me son. I’ve always hated it.” If it was time to be honest, then he might as well stop all the games.

Tackett looked surprised and thoughtful. “All right. This doesn’t change anything. Not in the scheme of things.”

“What? This changes everything.”

Tackett shook his head. “No. Your job is still the same. Pass information. Stay one step ahead. Don’t get caught.”

“You don’t get it, Coach. If you’ve been protecting me all this time, then nothing I’ve done counts. I didn’t actually do it.”

Tackett laughed. “You think that’s what’s going on? Jesus Christ, boy. I didn’t know you were the mole until last night. Sheila called me only because she didn’t know how else to save you from your own bullheadedness.”

Malcolm’s skepticism must have shown because Tackett tried again.
“Seriously. It was brilliant thinking on her part, using you to steal documents. I already trusted you enough to let you work in my office. If you ever got caught, I’d have had plenty of room to be shocked and dismayed at the betrayal by a boy I’d known nearly all his life. Beautiful. Nobody can weave a web like Sheila.”

Malcolm considered it. He wanted to believe Tackett, but the very fact that he wanted to believe it triggered doubt. So many confusing emotions were bubbling in his guts that he began to feel like he might throw up. “Gah!” He threw up his hands and shouted at the sky. A flock of dark birds ejected from the tree leaning over the river, their cries angry and threatening.
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Thanks for reading! You can learn more about me and my writing at http://samanthabryant.com or follow My Saturday Scenes collection here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/Y5kMoB ; There's also a collection for ALL the Saturday Scenes by ALL the participating authors here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/4XjIWE

#bookeveryweek Just Cause by Ian Thomas Healy

The Just Cause universe is a fascinating one, with a long history, and the world building is quite good. Our main character, Mustang Sally, is a third generation speedster in a world that has known about and organized parahumans for at least that long. I liked her and was cheering for her to find her place in this world.

There was a lot of potential for good conflict in this plot. Sally's father was killed by the big bad guy (Destroyer), so she had a personal stake in the fight when he reappears on the scene. Her relationship with her mother was a bit strained. She was falling in love. She had a strong desire to prove herself. Unfortunately, things overall went a little too easily for Sally. She felt almost charmed in that she was successful at everything she tried without much struggle, failure, or serious roadblocks along the way. So, while I still enjoyed the story, the overall effect was that it lacked tension or a sense of urgency. Too smooth.

I definitely enjoyed the descriptions of powers and the considerations of drawbacks and idiosyncrasies that might come with certain power sets. A lot of interesting characters were introduced in this book, which leaves the author plenty of room to play in this universe for quite some time to come. In fact, I sometimes wished the book would slow down a little and take time to build relationships a little longer before letting bad things happen to characters. The emotional impact could have been stronger if I'd had more time to get to know and care about the supporting characters.

Overall, good and enjoyable. I would read more by this author.

 #bookeveryweek Kimberly Lynne's A Pocketwatch, Spraypaint and Morphine: How Viv the Librarian Weathers the Boom. 

 #bookeveryweek Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 

#bookeveryweek Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.

Maggie Hoskie is a wonderfully complicated character at the center of an epic struggle with cosmic implications. A fast and engaging read that left me wanting more without leaving me unsatisfied with the ending of this first book in the series. I hope it continues well!

The best part:  a woman character with tragedy in her past who is realistically impacted by that and who grows through her relationships with others without finding that love is a miracle cure. Maggie is functioning in a difficult world despite her pain when the story begins and I found myself cheering for her from the get-go, hoping that she'd find her way to a better and fuller life on her own terms. Really liked a lot of the supporting characters as well.

The second best part: the mythological bits. Big Water and the Sixth World, Clan Powers, Coyote (Ma'ii), Neizghání, witches. This is not mythology I've read over and over again, so it felt fresh to me, and I really loved the way magical/mythological elements were commonplace and known to everyone without question.

The less good parts: the makeover scene (I think I'm too old for that "she cleans up so hot" moment to have the impact it might if I were actually a young adult), the wandering (I was never clear on what was guiding this journey, but they were always right about where they went next to look for a clue), and. Neizghání.  

When we finally meet Neizghání, Maggie's former mentor, "in person" he is NOT AT ALL what I was expecting based on what we'd heard about him up to that point. He seemed, well, stupid (as in un-intelligent, brutish, no subtlety) and I had trouble parsing that with Maggie's obsession with him, even given the rescue angle. I like surprises, but only when they fit in with what I do know. He didn't fit.

So, I would read more, but the story is not without its flaws.

 

 #smileaday Book birthdays.

I had triplets today. Three brain children.

Three of my book babies were sent out into the world to seek their fortunes. Hmmm . . .may have to work on that metaphor. Makes me sound too much like the mother in the three little pigs, and I'm hoping to avoid the wolves.

It really is such a lovely feeling though, getting your work out there into the world. So grateful for all the help I've had getting this far.

It's time to celebrate so the youngest and I made cupcakes. :-)

 Thanks to the very popular 1970s miniseries and another newer adaptation (neither of which I've yet seen) as well as the widespread popularity of the book, I knew a lot about this book before I read it. Many plot points were things I had heard talked about when I was a child, or heard referenced since in discussions or in other works. I even already knew the name of the patriarch of the family the book chronicles: Kunta Kinte. 

 #smileaday Book Club night!

 I recently read The Stargazer's Sister by Carrie Brown, which is a historical fiction piece about Lina Herschel, sister of William Herschel, astronomer of the Romantic period. I was fascinated as much by the description of the small, domestic aspects of Lina's life as I was by her role in her brother's discoveries and her own scientific life. (It's a quiet book about a quiet woman's quiet life, but I loved it). 

Caroline Herschel, at least as depicted in this novel, kept a Day Book. I'm so attracted to the idea of this! 

I've kept various kinds of journals throughout my life, but never something quite like this. It seems to be less about reflection and confession than it is about tracking. Caroline wrote down things like purchases and prices, task lists, major life events. 

I do a fair amount of tracking. I keep a database tracking my word count on various projects. I've used tracking apps to monitor my sleep and my exercise. There's something comforting in being able to go back and look at something like that and have "hard data" rather than faulty memory of what happened to rely on. 

So, I'm thinking of keeping an old fashioned Day Book in 2019. Part journal, part tracking artifact. If I can be consistent about it, it might make a nice, reflective habit. I could see it bringing me some brain quiet when I need it, by letting me offload. I already get a lot of comfort from different kinds of lists, and this seems like an expanded version of that. 

Some categories I'm thinking of using: 

• Date:
• Weather/World:
• Schedule Notes/Goals:
• How I feel:
• What happened:
• Exercise:
• What I ate:
• What I’m reading/watching/listening to: