An Ambidextrous Author

Dear story snacker,

I recently learned to be ambidextrous.

Kind of.

As you may or may not know, I am left-handed. So, when I write on paper, my left hand smears the ink if I’m not extremely careful. ‘Tis the plight of a left-handed writer in a right-handed world.

Don’t even get me started on how painful using scissors is.

So, I decided to learn to write with my right hand as well. My right-handed scribble started off looking like the scrawl of a 3-year-old being attacked by seagulls during an earthquake, but now it has improved enough that there doesn’t appear to be an earthquake anymore.

I may not be fully ambidextrous, but I’m certainly far less ambisinister.

JOURNEY JOURNAL

It has been almost three months since I began applying to agencies to represent my novel Hailey’s Horizon, and lately, replies from literary agencies to my query letters are flying in. I am up to THIRTY-FIVE rejection letters, nearly half of the seventy-eight agencies I have queried thus far.

They appear to be playing hard-to-get, the little minxes.

In the meantime, I have been designing a website for an online gift-writing business I recently started called Protagonist. You may receive something about that soon, so stay tuned.

Speaking of staying tuned, please enjoy the next segment of one of my short stories.

STORY SNACK

Will and the Wisp

Part 2 of 3

For Part 1, click here.

Will had no time to scream before he dropped to the bottom of a circular pit hidden in the center of the clearing. His knees buckled as he landed hard on a layer of stinking leaves.

Hot needles seared through his ankles as he struggled to his feet, looking up out of the trap at the star-pricked sky visible through the hole in the forest canopy. Ignoring the pain in his legs, Will jumped at the side of the pit, scrabbling desperately with hands and feet to climb out. But the hole was eight feet deep, and its sides were hard, smooth earth.

“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” Will screamed as he sought fruitlessly to reach the lip of the pit, fingers burning as he slid back down again and again.

The next time he jumped, he yelped as his knuckled cracked off something harder than the packed dirt. Staring up, he saw the grass covered halves of a wooden trap door hanging down either side of the pit.

His next scream died in his throat.