D. Lynn Smith

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Excerpt

Sonya stood at the foot of her long drive, staring at all the flickering and the pictures of herself, wondering, Did I die and not know it?

Trina. It had to be. Today was Sonya’s seventeenth birthday. They’d been pulling pranks on each other since Sonya was five years old and smeared a piece of cake in her older sister’s face on her seventh birthday. Trina had been teasing Sonya for days, saying that turning seventeen was the beginning of the end – leaving behind the carefree years of childhood and slipping into the responsible years of adulthood. Never mind that Trina was only twenty months older and still living at home enjoying the same carefree years at age eighteen.

Arranging a shrine as if Sonya were dead, however, didn’t really seem like Trina’s style. Black balloons with Over the Hill emblazoned on them and a coffin-shaped cake, yes. But this? Sonya rubbed her arms and the saying, someone just walked over my grave popped to mind. Trina had gone too far this time, and as much as she adored her older sister, Trina was going to let her know it.

She walked up the drive, the scent of night blooming jasmine welcoming her home. The walkway was lined with pansies, their color lost in the dark. Sonya stopped dead in her tracks. Pansies? What happened to her mom’s lavender bushes? They were there when she left the house--weren’t they? She thought back, trying to remember, but her mind fuzzed over and she had a moment of vertigo that made her stumble sideways.

She closed her eyes and fighting back a dizzying mist descending on her mind, trying to picture the drive when she’d left – this morning? This afternoon? But the spinning fog prevented her from remembering.

Bio

Debbie is a 2004 graduate of Clarion West. She then went on to get her Master of Fine Arts in Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast, studying with Clarion West teachers Jim Kelly and Kelly Link and Clarion San Diego teacher Nancy Holder. Her career has mainly been in television, writing for such shows as "Murder, She Wrote," "Touched By An Angel," and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." She is happily pitching television pilots this season. She also has a novel out to agents and is working on a new novel, the opening of which is excerpted here.

Publications

I've published short stories in Dark Delicacies, a Bram Stoker Award winner. I also have stories in the anthologies Dark Passions: Hot Blood 13 and Summer Chills. My fantasy has appeared in Shimmer. The most fun I've had is writing three Dark Shadows audio dramas, available at Big Finish.com: Echoes of Insanity, Final Judgement, and The Lost Girl.

Writing Description

When I was eight years old I discovered my love for writing. Since then, I've written short stories, very bad poetry, three novels, nonfiction articles, screenplays, teleplays, and now audio dramas. I love writing horror, but I'm equally happy writing urban fantasy. Truth is, I just love writing, whatever it is.­

Writing Goals

I'm attending the WellSpring novel writing workshop at the end of August. This means I need a completed novel. So, my goal is to plow through my novel and get a completed rough draft by the end of this Write-a-thon.


Website

http://dlynnsmith.com


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