One of the great things about finishing Widow Woman is that now I can start working on other projects. I have two new novels in progress, and, thanks to no small amount of nagging–I mean, encouragement–from my children, who are in the target audience age group, I have chosen to focus on my YA novel. The working title is The Water Bearers, which my kids (a.k.a. my beta readers and toughest critics) really love. I’ve got a few others in mind, but I’m content to leave well enough alone at this point and see if any of them are better fits as the novel takes shape.

I just finished Chapter 10 today, and it was wonderful. I didn’t intend to finish it–there are, after all, other projects unrelated to writing that sit waiting for my attention. But, as always happens, I walked through my portal and I was gone. When I looked up again, two hours had evaporated.

I’m really excited about this new book, and I want you to be excited, too, so I’m going to start sharing short excerpts with you from time to time. I want you to get to know the characters a little bit, as they come to life in my head and on my laptop.

So here it is: the first excerpt. Consider it an introduction to some of the main characters. You may find a couple of them suspiciously familiar, but I assure you: this is an original work of fiction (though there may be just a teensy weensy “inspiration” from real life…I’ll leave you to figure out where. And yes, they’ve read it already).

Splat.

The sound of Lex’s waffle landing on the kitchen floor snapped Richard out of his semi-comatose state over the coffee pot. An immediate machine-gun barrage of insults erupted.

“Dad! Look what Nibble did!”

“I did not! I was just minding my own business—”

“You liar! You knocked it on the floor on purpose! How do you like it, you jerk?”

Splat. Nibble’s waffle joined Lex’s on the floor.

“Boys!” Richard crossed the kitchen in two long strides and grabbed an ear in each hand. “Knock it off! Clean that up! Now!”

“If you’re interested, Dad, Lex is actually telling the truth for a change,” Bibi said mildly, peering over Richard’s copy of Red Dragon. “Nibble was being a jerk.”

“I was not!” the jerk in question hollered.

“Bibi, mind your own business. All of you go brush your teeth; the bus will be here in a couple minutes.” Richard began shoving files into his briefcase, noticing, belatedly, the maple syrup drizzled across the front of them. He muttered a curse under his breath and swiped at the sticky mess with a napkin.

“I heard that, Dad,” Bibi murmured.

As Bibi slid off her kitchen chair, Richard reached out and plucked his book from her hand.

“Ouch!” Bibi cried. “You gave me a paper cut.”

“Sorry. I thought we talked about this last night,” Richard sighed.

“You only said I shouldn’t be reading it, not that I couldn’t,” Bibi pointed out on her way up the stairs.

“Well, I’m saying it now,” he called after her.

Splat. Richard looked at the tip of his shoe, where there now rested a large, syrupy chunk of waffle. He looked from Nibble to Lex, trying to determine which one had dropped it on his shoe. In a typical show of brotherly loyalty, they each pointed at the other. “He did it.”

Richard shoved them both in the direction of the stairs. “Go comb your hair and get your jackets on.”

He was on his way to the sink when Bibi yelled from upstairs. “Dad, there’s no water pressure again.”

“Ours either, Dad,” Lex, or maybe it was Nibble, bellowed.

Richard turned on the kitchen faucet. It sputtered briefly then hosed the front of his suit. He sighed heavily. They’d been having problems with their water system ever since they’d moved in. Faucets either dribbled grudgingly or sprayed with the ferocity of a firehose; their new sprinkler system either failed to turn on completely or flooded the yard; toilets mysteriously clogged or wouldn’t flush at all. Richard did suspect that the latter phenomenon could be the work of Lex or Nibble; on several occasions, he’d found tiny pebbles lodged inside one faucet or the other.

Richard had stockpiled a large supply of bottled water against such problems; he grabbed a bottle now and lobbed it to Bibi, who was waiting at the top of the stairs. “You know the drill.”

All the while, the watcher observed the family’s morning chaos in silence from the spot where he remained hidden. He would have laughed, if he had known how, had even tried a couple of times, unsuccessfully, if only to see what it felt like.

Just then the bus honked at the end of the Barnes’ gravel drive, throwing everyone into a frenzy of last-minute backpack-stuffing, jamming of arms into jacket sleeves, and high-speed, nose-bumping kisses. When all three children had safely boarded, the driver tipped his hat to Richard as he did every morning and drove away. Richard hung his head in relief, only then noticing the chunk of waffle still sticking to the toe of his shoe. He shook it from his shoe into the grass.

Splat.