Monday, January 10, 2011

Section of new book

I thought I'd post a short section of a book I'm getting ready to submit for publication. I seem to have a case of "rewritise." Everytime I look at one my writtings I want to improve it. At some point I'm going to have to be able to say, "It's finished."

It took them a half hour to get to the falls but they had to stop and talk before they reached this point as the noise of the falls would prevent them from hearing each other. “When we get outside of the valley you two,” Joseph said as he looked alternately at Cephas and Jael, go up the trail where the trees come together and set up the net. We'll get in the bushes along the way and observe our young hunters as they approach. If we decide they should be captured I'll whistle like this. If they’re not to be captured Adina will jump out, making a lot of noise and run down the hill. She’ll slip as she runs along the narrow path above the deep water below the falls, where the surface of the water isn’t smooth. The path turns and will hide her from them. She’ll scream and fall into the water. She’ll stay under and swim behind the waterfall and wait for us. Hopefully the young men will think she has drowned and will go home.”
They managed to get into position before the two hunters could get past them.
As the young men came abreast of the bushes Adina, Jabin and her father were hiding in she jumped out before her father could stop her. She did this quickly and bumped into Abram, knocking him down. Shad attempted to leap over Abram to grab her, but in his haste to catch her he knocking Abram down, just as he was starting to get up. This resulted in both hunters being piled on top of each other on the ground. This gave Adina over a hundred feet head start.
“Well Jabin it's apparent that she didn’t take a liking to them,” Joseph said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, but it’s sort of strange for her to decide so abruptly and risk so much by almost getting caught. She doesn’t always seem to have good judgment," Jabin said.
"Let's wait and see what she has to say," Joseph replied.
Following a fruitless search for Adina the two hunters left the area. Everybody else stayed where they were until they left. When all was clear the men left the bushes and started towards the waterfall where they met Adina as she walked towards them from the direction of the waterfall.
"Adina, you have long been known as a woman of quick decisions but did you have to reject the two young men so rapidly,” Joseph said. “Did they have the wrong color hair or something? Perhaps they had the wrong type of clothes on?" This was asked with more than a bit of sarcasm in his voice. His daughter had disappointed him. He truly wanted her to accept one of the young men as her mate. He wanted her to take over as head of the group; he knew Jabin really wasn’t capable of running the valley and city properly, at least in his opinion.
"Father you saw what I did and yet you saw not,” Adina said. “While we were setting up our trap for the young men I got to thinking what would we do with two of them? Won’t their group come looking for them? It would be a catastrophic blow to them to have two young men missing at the same time. Also they appeared to be heading directly towards our eastern entrance. Even though the entrance to our valley is hidden behind the waterfall they could find it if they looked hard enough. I do like the looks of one of them. I’d be prepared to accept either one. I think we had better try and lure just one of them here. I don't know how we're going to do it yet, but I think we should discuss ways. I’m sorry to have messed up your capture but I feel it may be best this way.”
"Yes, your reasoning is sound, but you should have let us handle scaring them away," her father replied.
"If I'd have let you scare them away they would have found out something about our group. It’s best they only saw me and they think I'm dead.”