I'm working on writing a selkie tale (if anyone is familiar). I've always wanted to write a book-this one will be for a teen audience, and so I've begun to set aside a half hour each day to work on it. I guess it's decreased my appetite for blogging (not reading-just writing). So I'm thinking of sharing an exerpt from my story if anyone's interested. It's about a teacher who is having marital problems and heads on a vacation with her husband to try and work things out. Her husband is a total douchebag, however, and seems to enjoy the maital discord (which is evident in his antagonistic, sometimes cruel, behaviors). The two, however, share a common passion for fishing, and on several of their trips to the sea, a bold new "player" is introduced to the couple...
I'd more than welcome any feedback!
"Several lazy minutes later, I felt it again, but this time I would control my impulse to whip around and startle it. I peeked out of one eye and slowly tilted my head toward my stalker. There it was again-that coconut-thing, or whatever it was had returned. I let my other eye bounce open and realized that the coconut had whiskers and big, brown eyes, and…bloop…before I could alert anyone it had vanished. A baby seal was following us, playing hide-and-seek. He looked like a little shiny, wet puppy, and each time he popped up for a visit, he raised the nerve to stay a little longer than the last. If I had stayed in Maine any longer, surely he would have been the reason!! I wondered if seals make good pets, and returned my gaze to the hypnotic sight of sun on water and contemplated what it would be like to live in Maine. Summers were beautiful, but too short for my taste. Winter was long and much more harsh than in Pennsylvania. Sometimes a snowfall could land as much as 40 inches, and since I don’t really ski or snowboard, I decided that Maine was a great place to visit, but not somewhere I’d want to call home..."
My Pride & Joy
Bella G.
My old band
About Me
Me as a Simpson
I Simpsonized myself
sitemeter
These are a Few of My Favorite Things
- Micah's Peter
- singing with Abby
- singing with Chris
- kisses from my Bel
- Jennifer Karsten
- grilling
- Bloody Marys with old bay seasoning around the rim
- snapper fishing in the Keys
- breakfast, for dinner
- those trees that smell like sperm
- Sneakers that have been tied together at the laces and thrown up onto the telephone wires
- Raindrops on roses (okay, I stole that one)
5 comments:
just passing by and thought i could leave a helpful comment...
selkies are people that are also seals sometimes, right? i think i remember that from some mermaid anthology i had back in elementary school.
a few things about the book:
first off, and this only applies if my definition of selkie is correct, there aren't any seals in or near maine. while the selkie isn't a traditional seal, the presence of a creature that appears as a seal in an area where they are not normally found would be highly unusual and would most likely attract more attention than you're intending to be given to it.
next, you're going to want to review some of your grammar rules. some of the sentences in the passage are clumsy and you have a tendency to overuse/misuse commas.
and finally, i'm not sure that a teen audience is what you should be shooting for if your story is about a disharmonious married couple. teens like to read books about other teens [i'm speaking as both a former teen and a former children's librarian]; having the central theme be the struggles of a married couple is likely to turn off your readers. if you're dead set on being a teen novelist, my suggestion would be to make the main character the teenaged offspring of the couple.
hope this was helpful!
Theanks much for the input. Everything was helpful, but I have to correct you on one thing. I actually saw a seal in Maine two summers ago. My friend, Breezely, who lives there full-time indicates that this is the norm and that seals do live in maine (along with puffin and other "cold water" creatures). Thank you, though, for the rest of the input. You're totally right about the couple needing to be younger!!
So, selkies turn into seals? How lame. I mean, I'd love to turn into a wolf or a unicorn, but a seal? Well, could be worse, like a fat, old walrus.
I guess I wouldn't mind being a seal if there were no great whites around (except I'd prefer warm water to cold water). HMMM...food for thought. If I could choose, what animal would I be??
I guess a housecat(preferably orange tabby) owned by a rich old widow who lived in a sweet pad on the southern coast of CA or in Key West.
www.hardyboat.com/seals/seals.html
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