Elation and an Excerpt!

Hey there, people! I’m feeling pretty great today. It’s a gorgeous day here in Canada (we had snow last week, ick), I’m seeing the new Avengers this weekend (!!!), and best of all… I’ll finally be finished my work-in-progress TODAY!

So last time I posted was in February and I was right in the thick of it, determined to get ‘er done. (You can see that post, the excerpt, and my not-so-hidden panic about the whole thing here.) Now today, finally, just over two months later, I’m going to finish it!!! I thought I’d finish yesterday, but turns out the ending took a sneaky turn in the name of another Love Interest POV chapter. SO. That’s what I’ll be writing today, and then… THE END!

Except, it’s not really the end. I’ll set it aside for a bit and then go back and edit. Then send to some critique partners, then edit some more. Then more critique partners, beta readers, and this one’s gonna need a sensitivity reader, then edit some more. Then to a professional editor… Sounds like a lot, but all that doesn’t daunt me as much as getting the first draft done. (Which is weird, because first drafts are usually the easy part for me.)

ANYWAY, I was a bit of a tease last post and didn’t tell you what classic novel this WIP is based on. Well, if you didn’t see me reveal it on my Facebook page, I’ll tell you now…

This one is a modern retelling of Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I wanted to go a little lesser known and do something that hasn’t really been done. (If it has, let me know because I’d love to read it.) The story translated so easily into a modern setting, the hard part was the story itself. If you don’t know it, Tenant deals with some difficult subject matter (abuse and alcoholism to name a couple). So while that kinda sounds like a downer, I did try to make this into a hopeful love story, and I promise there’s a HEA in the end.

Here’s a short teaser:

I put Elle to bed, then sat by Apollo on my couch.

“I’m surprised she goes to sleep so easily,” he said, pulling my legs over top of his.

“Why? She’s seven.”

“Because of your singing. That would keep me up all night.”

I shoved him but he caught my hand and brought it to his lips. The warmth of his breath on my palm filled my whole body.

“Tonight…this.” He nuzzled his cheek in my hand. “It felt…real.”

I paused. “In a bad way?”

His eyes met mine. “In the best way. Like a family.”

My breath caught as he took one of my fingers in his mouth. The heat and the wet and my whole body simultaneously going numb and lighting up, it was all I could focus on. I moved closer.

“I never thought I wanted that,” Apollo said, his lips making a trail up my arm, to my neck, my jaw, my lips. He sucked my tongue like he’d sucked my finger and I moaned against his mouth.

He pulled away. “I do.”

“Do what?” I asked, blinking the haze from my eyes.

“Want that. A family. This.” His gaze was direct while his words were hesitant. Almost scared. “With you.”

I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I wasn’t sure about my own name at that point.

“I love you, baby,” he said, and then he wrapped his arms around me and consumed me whole, the way only Apollo could do, until there was nothing left of me and everything was him him him.

Looking back, that’s what I remember best: his words.

“I love you, baby.”

If you do know the story, you might be able to guess that the MC in this scene, Lexi, is based off of Helen, and Apollo is based off of Arthur Huntingdon. If you don’t know the story, check out the miniseries pictured to the right. It’s pretty good, although I really wish they’d make a new one!

So, I’m off to write the last chapter! Meanwhile, tell me in the comments: have you read/seen The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? How did you like it?