By Patricia Zick @PCZick

One of my fellow bloggers at eternal Domination  gave me this idea for a first “look” at my current work. His post Kool Challenge: Look Back at Look gave credit to the blog Read Tom Lucas for this idea.

I decided to follow and do the same thing, and I hope other writers will accept the challenge as well.

1. Find the first use of the word “look” in your manuscript and post the surrounding couple of paragraphs as a first “look” into your work. I decided to go to my second chapter since I’d already posted the first “look” in Trails in the Sand when I posted the prologue. This first look is in the first chapter of the book so I’m going to say it qualifies.
2. Answer the question: What makes you excited for this story?

I’ll start with answering the question first. I love the characters, even the not-so-nice variety because even they have their reasons. I love the theme of redemption and recovery I’ve woven throughout the book. And I love using a “real” event – Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the sea turtle nest relocation project – with fictional characters. I am passionate about saving the wildlife and about saving the family I created within the pages of the book. As I go through yet another round of revision (third), I find myself deepening into the characters even more. That’s a good thing.

So here’s my second “look” in the first chapter of Trails in the Sand.

 Trails in the Sand by P. C. Zick, excerpt

The next morning the whir of the coffee grinder woke me as Simon churned beans into grounds for our daily ritual downstairs in the kitchen. I savored that first sip of coffee every morning. Simon used only the darkest roast with an oily sheen. Every morning he brought me a steaming mug of the brew along with the morning papers. If my eyes weren’t open when he came into the room, he bent down and gently kissed me on the forehead.

“Good morning, baby,” he’d say, and I’d look up into his smiling face, his blue eyes twinkling a greeting. His eyes mirrored my own blue eyes. At one time, we both had blonde hair, but now with age, Simon’s had turned white while mine remained the same color of our youth, thanks to L’Oreal.

As I sipped the aromatic brew, I glanced at the morning’s headlines before the television and George Stephanopoulos diverted my attention.

It was only a blip on the charts of the day’s news stories. I would have missed mention of it if I’d gone to the bathroom when George said an oil rig had caught on fire in the Gulf of Mexico the night before. On the morning of April 21, 2010, other news took precedence over this minor incident occurring miles off the coast of Louisiana.

How about you, fellow authors? What’s your first (or second) “look?”