Lucky Seven

The other day, the lovely Laurel Garver of Laurel’s Leaves tagged me with the Lucky Seven meme. To fulfill the meme, I have to post a section of my current WIP. For this blog, I chose to post from my literary/upmarket women’s/historical  fiction Dark Mercy, which I call The Platypus.  The tag requires the author to post from p.77, seven lines down. But when I looked that section up, I discovered that it's a birthing scene.  And since I have several blog readers who are quite young and the scene is somewhat graphic, I decided to post a section a few pages earlier leading up to the birth scene.  So this is from p.70, seven lines down:

She staggered to the drapes and peeked into the streets, but they were empty. Was that good or bad? She made her way to the stairs, grasping the back of the couch as a contraction wrapped its iron fingers around her spine. Her legs quivered. She moaned and grasped the silk upholstery so hard that her nails cut into the fabric. Her fingers curled with pain and tore the fabric into ribbons.

One by one, the painful talons slackened, but she knew that they’d return and with more virulence. A few hours ago, she’d woken with pain in her back. She’d tried laying on her side and then her back. But like hunger, the pains got worse. Then the vomiting began. She called the doctor, but he wasn’t there. He had left during in the night and hadn’t come back. His wife warned, “Even if he gets home, I don’t think he will come—who knows where the fighting is or if it’s safe to travel.” When she couldn’t endure the pain any longer, she called Lianda. She knew Lianda would come.

The final requirement of the Lucky Seven is to tag another seven writers. (I can’t wait to read their excerpts. I can’t remember who’s already been tagged—so if you’re getting tagged twice, sorry.)

1.    1.  Melissa Pearl

2.    2.  Anne Riley

3.    3.  AB Keuser

4.    4.  Misha Gericke

5.    5.  Lydia Kang

6.    6.  Krispy/Alz

7.    7.  Theresa Milstein

Also, as a treat I’ve also decided to post from the sequel to Screwing Up Time on my Screwing Up Time blog. So click over if you’d like to read that.