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Portions of this blog appeared last month on a Daily Dose of Decadence and includes an excerpt from RESPITE.
Enjoy!
If you haven't seen it yet, check out the trailer for RESPITE. This is a wonderful little piece put together by a very talent young lady, Katelynn Phillips. She told the story of Maddy and Ryan with just the three paragraphs of a blurb to go on. And she hit the mark perfectly!
So, if you watch the trailer and read the excerpt below, you'll get a little taste of my 'baby.' RESPITE was originally the prologue of a contemporary story I was working on, but my Beta Buttkicker, fellow DPer Deanna Wadsworth, insisted it had to stand alone and forced me (with the threat of withholding beer!) that I finish and submit it.
So, thanks to everyone who helped this story on its way - DW, Katy (!!), Meredith and Heather & Lisa. Soon it will be absolutely 'real.' Enjoy!
Madeline was hot, thirsty and dirty. She wanted to sit under a moving fan, in an unladylike manner chug a few continental beers, and then wash her face…and in that order. Maybe she had entered the establishment a bit more noticeably than she would have liked; after all, she wanted to appear she actually belonged in this part of the world as opposed to running away from another. She centered herself, took a deep breath and tried not to get angry with the somewhat backward way of thinking that many of the men in this region exhibited.
“No ladies!” the bartender admonished, “No alone ladies.” He waved his hands across the bar, insistent that she not sit. Ignoring the barkeep, she stripped off her fedora, shaking out her thick, dark curls. “No alone ladies.”
Madeline tossed her hat on the bar, then carefully eased herself onto a stool. After stretching her neck for another good look out into the street, she relaxed a bit. Without thought of local mores, she dug into her shirt and pulled out a slightly damp ten franc note. “Whatever you have that’s cold will be fine. I have my own money.” The owner glared at her. Maddy was sure he’d never seen a woman touch herself in public in such a manner. “I’m not looking for a date…I’m not a prostitute.” His eyes widened, but it didn’t faze her. “Listen, I’m hot, you have cold beer and I have money. Let’s do business.”
“Fahz, give her a beer,” a male voice called.
“You vouch, Mr. Ryan, you vouch?” The proprietor wanted to know.
“Give her two, Fahz, my tab.”
Madeline turned toward the comforting American accent. “Really, that’s not necessary.” She hadn’t travelled alone all this way the last two months, to suddenly need the assistance of a man. Especially since she was still trying to make sure she had ditched the two who thought she needed their accompaniment. She was a young independent woman and could take care of herself. Her autonomy came much to her parents’ dismay. They were the old-fashioned type, wanting her to find a nice young Italian man, settle down and happily crank out a plethora of progeny. That life was theirs, however, not hers. Maddy wanted adventure.
As much as she flaunted her unwillingness to need the assistance of the male gender, one glance into this American’s cobalt eyes had her thinking about bending her own rules. Maybe she could make an exception.
Wendy Burke blogs regularly for A Daily Dose of Decadence and is dangerously close to getting RESPITE, a post-WWII romance published by Decadent Publishing. She can be found on Facebook – Wendy Burke Author, at her local writers’ group site, MVRWA and Twitter - @WendyBurke1994. When not playing with the people in her head, Wendy has a wonderful life with her handsome chef husband and two furry feline kids. She has a full-time job behind the scenes at a Toledo, OH television station which keeps her from writing fulltime, but does give her great ideas and interesting contacts which somehow end up in her stories.
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