Teaser Tuesday: Grand Plans

This morning I sat contemplating the rest of this year. Do you realize that we are almost half way through 2016? I had such grandiose plans…9 books this year. Score is zero for nine at this point. But to be fair I have one finished and with betas and two more 75% complete. 

Thing is…

And it certainly has with me this year. One that started off impossibly rough…well, spring and summer are full of glorious sunshine…in the best possible ways.

But for me, writing is never far from my mind. Whether the days are dark and gloomy or full of sunny promise. So I am revising those plans. Downsizing and upgrading them. I promise you…I will finish Ægir’s.  But today’s teaser is from one of my nearly finished manuscripts.

Nothing Done in Love is one dear to my heart. And this scene…the memorial service for the heroine’s mother is one of my favorites. I like to think I am a tiny bit like Joy Danvers…perhaps not as famous or influential but maybe one day. I certainly believe these sentiments…

Katie had thought that perhaps one or two people would have the courage to step forward, but it seemed that everyone wanted to have their say. She smiled and cried as she listened to their stories from the Hollywood executive who credited her mother with saving his ‘fourth’ marriage to the older lady down the street that her mother always took cookies to, even the homeless man whom Joy bought breakfast for had managed to take a shower and find passably decent clothes for the day, so much so that Katie had not even recognized him at first.

So what she had thought would take five or ten minutes stretched to more than half an hour that left her exhausted and elated at the same time. Then it had been the video compilation of photographs, speeches and the sprinkling of her mother’s ashes at sea. She cried and leaned against the solid steel walls that had suddenly appeared on either side of her at some point. The final shot was her mother’s last television appearance months before. She had been asked to speak after a landmark Supreme Court case on sexual freedoms.

Katie remembered that day well. They had gotten up extra early in order to make the horrendous commute into Studio City for the program. Her mother had alternated between puking into a bowl that they had brought for just such a purpose and napping between bouts of nausea. Looking at her mother’s image on the wall, she could see the pallor and fine lines that were more pronounced. But even then, her mother’s inner beauty shone through like the proverbial beacon.

She made a stark contrast to the stern, suited preacher that was her antagonist. Though his part of the interview had been edited out, Katie remembered his words about the sanctity of marriage and the family. It was her mother though who had the final word. She smiled as she nodded her head at the famous tele-evangelist, “On this we agree, sex is one of the most powerful forms of worship. Through it we commune with one another, ourselves and our gods…and goddesses,” her smile then had almost challenged the man to interfere.

“But on this we differ. I believe,” her mother paused for a moment and stared directly into the camera before continuing, “No, I know…Nothing done in love can ever be a sin. Can ever be wrong. Love is the divine power within us all. However we choose to share that is no one’s business but ours and our partners.” Katie shivered as she heard those words once more.

It was if her mother had spoken directly to her in that moment. As if the gates of heaven or whatever was out there opened and she stood beside her daughter once more. She could almost feel her mother’s gentle arms about her. She turned and looked for her then, but it was them that she saw. And somehow she knew that was right too.

As the lights came back up, Katie felt a power she never before had known. It welled inside her and when she spoke there was a new authority and power that spoke through her. “That was my mother, but in some ways she never belonged completely to me. She was love and a light in this dark world. A light that touched each of you. A flame that burns in each of you, each of us, even now.”

“My mother is not dead. Because love never dies. It perpetuates itself, it spreads faster and farther than any virus ever could. That was Joy Danvers,” she chuckled. “Sometimes I wonder if my grandparents did not have some premonition of her greatness when they choose that name for her. What name could have been more appropriate?”

She sighed as another tear began to trail down her cheek, “Know this…that Joy shall continue on in this world, lighting the way through the darkness that threatens to consume us all in greed, hubris and fanaticism.”