Blood sprays across the grass. The blade cuts to his bones. The kid gasps with horror.
I read this one summer day when I was ten. It was a juvenile lit book about a boy mowing his parent’s hilly lawn. One second life was fine. Next second the mower topples over on the boy.
Awful, right? Can you believe juvenile lit could be so graphic?
What ever happened to the poor kid? I honestly don’t know. The scene was so scary (was I a wussy kid?) I never read beyond it. Yet I kept the book open on my nightstand for months. I often reread the pagesleading up to the accident. But as soon as I saw the words “blood” or “blade” I stopped. It was too much.
But at age 10, the mower scene planted the seed. I saw the power of words.
Stephen King says writing is telepathy. I’m not much of a Stephen King fan (I mean, yeah The Shining is great), but I agree with him. Words paint pictures. Pictures evoke feelings. Feelings can change lives.
If a mower scene can evoke pain, then a different scene could evoke joy…or humor or lust or awe—anything under the sun, really. That’s why words are magic. Words create new worlds.
It’s been 21 years since I read the mower scene. But to this day, I write to bring readers on a journey to a new world. Sometimes painful, other times joyful. But always a journey.
What’s My Novel About?
Moment of Life follows 19-year-old Aubrey on a journey of evasion and self-discovery. After a chaotic drunken accident sends his best friend into a coma, Aubrey flees town to avoid indictment and seek refuge with his lost long biological mother. But Aubrey’s one chance for redemption is put at risk when his mother discloses a troubling secret that the two of them must reconcile—or else forever shoulder each other’s unbearable guilt.
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