Sharing Saturday #1

Image by xalamay via FlickrI've decided to start a "thing." It's going to be a regular occurrence on the blog, most likely on Saturdays. I think I'll call it Sharing Saturday. This "thing" will be me sharing an excerpt from something I'm working on. This first post is from a W.I.P. that I call Hard Knocked, and it's from the perspective of one of the main characters and he's describing the character that the book is all about. Enjoy!

I could see Jena Winter tense like a jungle cat about to pounce after she had been talking to the person on the other line. The change in her posture was strange to witness. When I’d first come in to the bar, I was afraid I’d been wrong about her.

The stories I’d heard, gleaned from my sources in the smoky bars and badly lit motel meeting places, all seemed to indicate that Jena was someone you didn’t mess with if you wanted to stay alive. Or even have your body found to be buried.

But after having her threaten me and then seeing the transformation, I knew I was on to something. How to get to the truth was another something that I was afraid to find out. She scared the shit out of me, and she knew it.

With her back turned to me as she whispered into the phone, I had a better chance to look at her without getting caught in her wintry blue eyes. All the stories said she had demon eyes, eyes that could freeze a man in place so she could do what she wanted with him.

Her eyes were like shards of sky-blue ice, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with hair as blonde as hers. If I didn’t know any better, I would say Jena Winter was some forgotten fairy of old made of the stuff of ice and winter, and designed to inspire songs and stories about her frozen heart.

But I’m a historian, not a novelist or a poet. I write what’s true, and I think that Jena lived up to her surname quite well, but that some of it was an act. I’d seen the way she’d looked at the slipping foamy head and it was like the fond look of a mother to her child. Miss Winter had a heart, and it wasn’t completely frozen.