Show Me the Voice Blogfest

Today begins the Show Me the Voice! Blogfest hosted by the fabulous Brenda Drake.

Here is how it works:

• Join by filling out the linky on Brenda’s site here.
• Post the first 250 words of a finished manuscript
• Hop from blog to blog offering feedback and critiques to fellow participants.
• On March 22nd, Brenda B-day, email your revised 250 words to Brenda.

The top twenty entries will be posted on Brenda’s blog on March 24th. Natalie Fischer, agent extraordinaire, will judge the final 20. Winners will be announced sometime around March 28th.

Here are the first 250 words from my first YA manuscript, Outcast.

Emergency lights throbbed on top of the ambulance, yet there was no sound. I told myself none of this was happening, that it was a dream played out in my imagination or an episode on a television show. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t convince myself it was anything but real. There wasn’t a big production of police lights, yellow crime tape, or even a flurry of activity. It lacked all the dramatic visual effects of the movies. But it was real. A single ambulance sat in the driveway, and that was all.

I looked around at the listless desert baking in the arid sun. Purple prickly pear, saguaro, and Palo Verde basked in the Sonoran heat. The scorching wind sent tumbleweeds summer-saulting halfheartedly across the road.

It seemed like the perfect time for rain—a rain to wash everything clean. I didn’t want to go back to the way it was, but to what could have been; what should have been. I wanted it to bluster, but only a few clouds curled in the powder-blue sky. I stood outside the house where no one could see me, but I saw everything. I supposed, in a sense, the storm had already arrived.

The front door opened and two paramedics pulled a gurney outside. Everyone was a silhouette. As the ambulance doors closed, the vehicle backed up and rolled out of the driveway. I should have walked over, but it was safer to remain in shadow. Alone. Feeling nothing.