Some of you will (hopefully) recognize The Old House, and it's every-girl protagonist Sara Kelly, so I figured we may as well start there and work in reverse chronological order.
I'll give you some stuff about the character, a brief description of the other world, and a paragraph or two about the character's experience there.
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The Old House
The Character: Sara Elissabeth Kelly, age 15
The Other World: A totally different steampunk world where some people have clocks for faces, and crime is rampant.
Interesting Fact: Sara is the only one of my "travelers" without a love interest. ALthough, throughout the whole story, she is helping to rescue Lydia's fiance.
My favorite excerpt:
She gestured at Sara’s beat up lime green high tops which her best friends had all signed at the end of year nine instead of her year book. Katy’s signature was the biggest. She had written it with a big black sharpie, covering half of Sara’s left shoe. She wished that she had tucked her phone into Katy’s clothes before they left, but it was still in the pockets of Sara’s carefully ripped jeans at Katy’s house.
It probably wouldn’t work anyway, she thought. She still had no freakin’ idea where she even was, beyond room 17 at Rennal’s Inn and Tavern. She was being dressed like a doll by criminals, in a strange inn filled with clock-people and murderers behind a magical door. That’s it! She thought angrily, I’m going home, grumpy old lady or not!
Searching For Solace
The Character: Solace Estragón, age 16
The Other World: Several different chemical induced "lucid dreams" created by the character herself in a sci-fi hospital.
Interesting Fact: Originally, I had imagined Solace as Indian (as you can kind of see on the cover I made), although as I was writing, she sort of became Hispanic, and a scene about her mom's Mexican hot chocolate is one of my favorites in this travesty of a NaNoWriMo. I guess sometimes characters write themselves.
My favorite excerpt:
“That’s the most elegant Architect Haze I’ve ever seen,” whispered Coles, full of awe. “She’s made herself God.”
And she was, swirling and turning, gliding along, making her own world. Every movement, mirrored by new life springing up behind her, in a dance of creation.
Suddenly, she stopped moving, she stood still with her arms reached over her head. Noah and Coles thought the screen had frozen. After a few seconds, a low buzzing noise started up, and a slow smile crept onto Solace’s face.
The buzzing grew louder, and they saw that it was coming from a fleet of approaching helicopters. Solace sat down, still smiling, and the helicopters opened fire.
The helicopters fired relentlessly, it looked like chaos, but Solace knew better.
They shot down the first tree Solace had made, until it was a flaming pile of timber, and then moved onto to the one directly next to it.
The bombs rained down, copying Solace’s dance exactly, horribly following every twist and turn she had made.
Her garden was a beautiful maze, of swirls and bends, and the helicopters set every blade of grass on fire in the exact order they had been created.
It wasn’t chaos. It was order at it’s finest.
The Boy With Violet Eyes
The Character: Adelie Rennal, age 14
The Other World: A mirror image of her own world, although the people who inhabit it are very different than in her world.
Interesting Fact: You may recognize Adelie from The Old House (although Sara's excerpt up there doesn't have her in it, she is a main character there as well. I created her for my first NaNo, in which she is a boring, meek, mary sue with pretty much no redeeming value except her faith. when I started The Old House, I "recycled" her, so she could have some redemption for the utter mouse she is here.
My favorite excerpt:
I sigh and look out the window to the place where I saw the boy two days ago, and at the setting sun, and he appears.
He doesn't walk to the spot, he literally materializes before my eyes.
I shakily add to my diary:
The Boy with the violet eyes stands in the alley. I watch him through my bedroom window, and he is eternal. He looks my age, but his amaranthine eyes tell another story all together. He looks a thousand times wiser than Aunt Luelle and her verses from the Book of Creation, and I, Adelie Rennal of Ceruli City, Ceruli will meet him tonight.
I shut my book and stuff it in the waistband of my bloomers under my nightgown. I run to the window. He’s still there.
I throw open the window and climb out onto the apple tree, and promptly fall out trying to climb down.
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