LOVIN THE LANGUAGE BLOGFEST!!!

HERE ARE THE RULES:

Pick any five lines or any five SHORT exerpts from one of your WIPs. If you're feeling shy, and don't want to share from your own work, share from something you LOVE.

AND IT'S TIME PEOPLE!!!!

This is a book I was offered representation on, and I TOTALLY TOOK IT! More info when papers are signed on BOTH ENDS :D

Joy Neilsons grew up in a house where she was rarely let outside, where her mother hit and burned her, and her mother’s boyfriends did worse. Now that she’s in a loving home, and in a good school, Joy should be thriving. But their normal is Joy’s fairytale and she has no idea how to survive in it.

This book picks up where a book like The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams leaves off. It’s a story of a girl who’s terrified of hope, mixed in with a great little love story and a slow understanding of her self-worth.

I actually did narrow it down to five, but it was WAY FREAKING HARD! Whose idea was it to do only five?

Oh, right. That was me. And I sort of cheated, because my last one is WAY long :D

***

Someone once told me that happiness is fleeting, but joy sticks with you, holds onto you, and fills you up. The fact that my name is Joy is sort of a lesson in irony.

***

“She has my file. I don’t get to choose what she does or doesn’t know about me.” I hate that I don’t get to choose what she knows. Sometimes I wonder if she read it all right away, or if it she thought, okay, ten minutes on the horrible life of Joy tonight, and I’ll do ten more minutes tomorrow. My, it’ll take me a long time to get done with this large file…

***

The meds are supposed to help with depression, but one of the side effects is anxiety. I think I suffer more from anxiety than depression, but one of the possible side effects of the anti-anxiety meds is depression. Everyone’s just sure I’m going to “off” myself, so I’m stuck on the depression meds. No matter how I look at it, all of this just adds to the list of reasons I’m crazy. It sucks that I’m smart enough to be aware of how long my list is.

***

Right. Baby steps. One tiny step after another. Maybe when I’m eighty I’ll really start to get somewhere.

***           

He puts my hands together, almost like he wants me to pray. Palm to palm, fingers outstretched. He rests his hands over mine in the same position.

            “This is Joy. Inside here. No one can touch her, she has protection, see?” His hands press into mine, keeping them flat together.

            I’m confused. “But you won’t be there.”

            “My hands aren’t me.” He chuckles. “Not really. This just shows how strong you are, you have this shell around you when you want to. It made me afraid to talk to you at the beginning of the year. It made you jump off the dock at Daisy’s house, and it makes you one of the tough girls in your martial arts class. The real Joy’s still in here, and I love to see her, like right now, but you have all this protection, and you don’t even know it. So, I guess, just know it. Know you have that.”

            He presses his lips to my fingertips, taking my breath as he pulls away.

***

So, I LOVE some of my quotes near the end, but that’s not really fair, I might let on what HAPPENS!!

I’m SO SO SO Happy that so many of you decided to participate in this! This means that I’m TOTALLY going to do it again!