Beth Williamson’s Blog

I had my second bellydance class last night. It was much different than the first one - she really worked us more this time. We learned how to use our veils (3 yards of polyester chiffon, badly hemmed, in a cacophony of colors). We stepped on each others veils, couldn’t get our arms and feet, not to mention our hips, going in the right direction and ended up laughing all over each other. It was so much fun!!

My arms are sore - I’m used to typing all day for God’s sake. Yet I spend an hour with my arms up and moving almost constantly. It’s a good thing because my shoulder muscles are pitiful… make that Pitiful (with a capital P).

Anyhoo, I bought a purple (what other color is there?) hip skirt on ebay with lots of jingling coins and it felt fabulous last night. Jingly, jingly, jingly like a real belly dancer. I’ve got five more classes (I’m going to miss the last one for RT) and hoping my coordination will come together before then. Seriously, your feet, legs, hips, arms, fingers, shoulders and wrists are all doing different tasks. And I am incredibly ungraceful.

I am going to try my damndest to get my proverbial shit together and do this without looking like an idiot. If any of you are going to be at RT, I’ll bring my stuff and prove it. Yeah, there, now I said it! I must do it!

Well the second morning of post daylight savings time wasn’t any better than the first. The sucky thing is that my phone at work (we use Cisco IP phones) hasn’t been updated yet so it still shows standard time. Ugh. Like what the hell am I doing here at 6:30 in the morning?

Enough bitchin, let’s move onto today’s post, Tuesday Tango. I was surfing Nicole Austin’s blog this morning (way cool design Nic!) and she has a fun writing post.

As Nicole says: This is fun! To any other authors reading this, please feel free to join in and add a bit of your WIP!

The instructions: Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

Here’s an unedited piece of The Legacy, my current WIP, book 7 of the Malloy family series. The last book about the wonderful family that I’ve come to know and love. The Legacy is Noah Calhoun’s story… This is from page 23 (I haven’t gotten to page 123 yet - Sasha K., cover your eyes so you can’t see).

****

Noah hauled her out of the trough as quickly as he’d thrown her in. She flopped onto his shoulder, stomach down and the water in her throat ended up on his backside. If she wasn’t gasping for air, she’d have laughed at the idea.

The sheriff spanked her behind once. “That wasn’t very nice, Rosalyn.” He stomped into the jail, slamming the door behind him.

A shiver of fear ran down her back and she struggled against him. Just because he was sheriff didn’t mean he wouldn’t throw her on the mattress and stick his prick in her. She’d promised herself years ago to protect herself from any and all men.

“Relax, little one. I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice echoed with sincerity, yet Rosalyn couldn’t stop the panic.

He set her on her feet and stepped back, closing the cell door in her face. Rosalyn gaped at the bars then at him. He’d lost his hat somewhere along the way and his wavy brown hair hung in wet strands down his cheeks. A bit of green from the trough stuck to his jaw and she had the mad urge to wipe it off.

“What are you doing? Let me out of here.” Rosalyn touched the cold metal bars and shivered.

“You just assaulted an officer of the law, therefore, you broke the law. I’m within my rights to arrest you.” He put his hands on his hips and glared. “You had no call to push me in that trough.”

“You did the same to me.” Rosalyn didn’t mean to sound petulant, it just happened.

“No, I didn’t. I dunked you to teach you a lesson.” He pointed at the bars. “Just as this is meant to teach you a lesson. My Pa believes the hardest lessons are the ones we remember the best.”

Rosalyn swallowed, the tang of the water on her tongue. “I learned my lesson, now let me out.”

“You can stay here for tonight. I won’t let anyone else in here so don’t worry about that.” He swiped his hand down his face. “In the meantime, I’m going upstairs to get you a towel. I don’t suppose you have another set of clothes?”

“You can’t be serious.” Rosalyn’s anger kicked aside her apprehension in seconds.

“Oh, I’m serious.” He turned away, heading for the stairs at the end of the room. “Be right back.”

Rosalyn listened to his boots on the stairs, punctuated by a squishy sound from the water within them. She stuck her tongue out at the empty space. “Ha! That’ll teach you.”

***

Intrigued? Yay! Here’s the blurb in case you wanted to know more:

The Legacy
Noah Calhoun always felt like an outsider in the Malloy family, even though he’d been legally adopted at age fifteen by Nicky, the only sister in the pack. After an accident nearly kills his father, Tyler, Noah decides to leave and find his own place in the world. Using the skills his ex-bounty hunter father taught him, Noah finds a job as a small town sheriff.

Rosalyn Benedict didn’t need a fresh-faced do-gooder sheriff trying to help her. She’d been surviving just fine on her own. Living on the streets since she was a child, Rosalyn was smarter, tougher, and stronger than most people ever hope to be.

With her stubbornness or his pigheadedness, will Noah and Roslyn find that one place where they both belong?

Whisper “Seventy-five percent off” in my ear.

I am simply addicted to clearance items in stores. I can spend hours digging through the racks at Belk’s or Kohl’s looking at clothes to see if anything there might fit me/DH/DS or anyone else in my family or circle of friends. Another thing that always gets me are those extra percent off coupons.

I will also dig through loads of stuff at flea markets and garage sales hunting for bargains too. For example, DH and I were looking for a new loveseat/sofa and right next door to our local furniture store is a “flea market” which we call the junk store. The man that runs it is the father of the fella that runs the furniture store.

This older man just loves to collect piles and piles of stuff. Everything from old tools to license plates (bought one for the 15 YO) to kids toys and typewriters. He’s got some really old stuff (like vintage hurricane lamps from the 1800s) to kinda old stuff (a marvelous 1950s Polaroid camera) to newer stuff (like Pfaltzgraff).

Since DH knows I love the hunt as much as the kill, we walked around poking, prodding, examining everything. Sigh… bliss. Anyhoo, I collect antique tea cups and we found a small one made out of stone with a brass handle for ten dollars. It’s kind of a butterscotch pattern - I think it’s probably marble. It made a nice addition to my tea cups.

You know I found something else right? Yep, I sure did and I wasn’t going to buy it, but DH insisted. It was a full eight place setting set of Mikasa china in mint condition that included a sugar and creamer, two serving dishes, and a round platter, with three extra tea cups. It’s 1960s china (we found it online) with beautiful edging done in Platinum. Since each place setting alone costs $50, the marked price for the china was sooooo tempting. $125 for everything. Really, seriously. I’ve never had china - always use Corelle dishes since they don’t break very easily. I don’t have a china cabinet or a lowboy to put them in. But ya know what? We bought it. It was too good to pass up, especially since my sister got my grandmother’s china, it wasn’t likely I’d be inheriting any.

Then of course I had to buy my DS new shorts since he’s grown six inches in the last year. You guessed it. On sale at Kohl’s and I had an extra 30% off coupon. *shiver* Six pairs of shorts and two t-shirts for under $70. Can you hear my heart beating fast?

I admit it. I’m a dork that loves a bargain. Any more of us out there?

Got edits and three weeks to deadline. Game. Face. On.

So here’s just a sweet treat for y’all.

Pop on over to the Writers Across Time blog! Read about how I select my TBR pile and what’s currently waiting…

Happy Friday!!!!!