I’m not a person
susceptible to peer pressure. I dress up for Comic-Con no matter which day I attend. I drive
the speed limit, even on the freeways in California and no matter how fast the
other traffic is going. I used public transportation
to commute to work daily when I lived in the Central Valley even after another
passenger told me that only ex-cons and homeless people rode the bus. And while it took me ten years to get my
undergraduate college degree, I never smoked pot. Not even once.
So I would seem unlikely
to fall for a facebook-posted challenge from a friend. Except for the fact that the friend is Gayle Carline and the challenge is writerly.
In an electronic twist to the old-fashioned chain letter, she included
me in something called the Lucky 7 Challenge which basically goes like
this:
1. Go to page 7
or 77 in your current manuscript (fiction or non-fiction)
2. Go to line 7
3. Post on your blog the next 7 lines, or sentences, as they are – no cheating
4. Tag 7 other authors to do the same.
2. Go to line 7
3. Post on your blog the next 7 lines, or sentences, as they are – no cheating
4. Tag 7 other authors to do the same.
In the spirit of
the game, here are the seven lines from the romantic suspense novel I entered
into this year’s Golden Heart contest from the Romance Writers of America (and
currently undergoing revision):
“Thanks.
I want each of you guys writing up your own statements. Nothing fancy, just how you remember things
from the time we got separated from the rest of the task force until the
chopper found us.”
“We’ll put our heads together,” Jake said,
“and give them an ironclad textbook example of good old-fashioned American
firefighter heroism in the heat of battle.”
Danny laughed. “I’m not looking for a Nobel prize winner for
literary fiction. Both of you grab a
pen, a piece of paper, and a separate table.
This isn’t a group project.”
Now let’s see
what we get from my seven writer friends:
