Hope Gardens Chapter Twelve came out in the R.L.S. Hoff Newsletter this morning. The excerpt above comes from that section of the book. In case you have trouble reading in the image, it says:
Mom jerked her head up from her tablet. “What’s this about Eleanor Mackey?”
Sam glared at his sister. “Eleanor and I were working together yesterday in detention, but we weren’t messing around. We stopped a leak and probably saved this season’s wheat harvest.”
“Maybe so, but that girl is trouble, Sam.” Mom set the tablet down and turned to the cupboard to grab nuts and dried fruit for their lunches.
Sam rolled his eyes.
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Here’s a small taste of Hope Gardens–the serial that’s coming out in my newsletter and on Channillo.com. If you’d like to read the story so far (and sign up for my newsletter), you can do so here. If you’d like to read the first chapter only, that’s available here.
Twitter introduced me to six word stories (Specifically, @MQuigley1963 Wonderful author to follow. She’s so encouraging.) She usually starts them with a picture, and asks people to write a #sixwordstory or a a poem about it. She also writes her own (often quite good) stories and poems.
And, I thought, why not? I can write six words. Just for fun.
And I did. And then I did it again the next day. Because sometimes it’s nice (especially when your usual form is novels) to play around with a bit of writing that will be finished today. In a few minutes, in fact. Something fun that can be a complete departure from your usual writing style. That doesn’t have to follow a three-act (or any other) structure. Something that can be experimental–or sappy, brilliant or bad–and it doesn’t matter all that much in the scheme of things.
I sometimes write other things to experiment–short stories like “J Learns to Drive” or songs like “Your Will, Not Mine, Lord.” But none of those go quite as quickly as the six-word stories. So, often I don’t feel like I have time to play around with them. But playing is good, at least for me.
Need some fun language play in your life? Write a couple yourself. You could start by writing one about the picture above in the comments.
Uh, huh. And Stralton was renowned for his circumspection and restraint. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Show you, rather. Come this way.” He took my arm and pulled me gently but irresistibly through one of the arches into a courtyard even lusher with foliage than the circular room.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this—a giant silver-barked tree with silver-green leaves and fist-sized golden fruit on every bough. The fruit hummed. “What is—”
Stralton pressed a finger against my lips and breathed, “Hush.”
A low fruit in front of me vibrated, its hum higher pitched than the others. It began to quake, and then, with a ring like a clear small bell, it burst open, and from it flew a rainbow-winged, sparkly, bird-like creature.
It flew directly at me. I stepped back, startled, into Stralton, who steadied me gently, causing tingles to go up and down my arms. In my confusion, I lost sight of the bird creature, but another fruit was vibrating. Soon, it too released a rainbow-winged bird. A third fruit vibrated.
The birds zipped off into the sky, over my head. I turned, to watch them alight on the wall behind me. There they sat, gently waving their wings like butterflies. The effect was of light sifted through a hundred prisms onto some bejeweled surface.
I stood, stunned.
“Breathe, darling,” Stralton murmured after a while, and I did, letting my pent-up breath out slowly, so as not to frighten them. I didn’t know how long I stood there transfixed, listening to the ring and hum of the births and watching the celestial quilt pattern of the creatures’ wings on the wall.
At some point, Stralton took hold of my arm again. I was afraid he would take me back inside or begin to talk, but he turned me back toward the tree to watch the equally absorbing explosions of the golden fruit. He did not take his hand away after turning me.
He turned me twice more before the chime of birth grew less and less frequent. At last, there were no more rings, only a soft hum, which I thought came from the birds’ wings.
Motioning me to be quiet, Stralton stepped softly to the tree and plucked one of the now open fruit. He gave it to me.
It hung together at the stem, but otherwise split and twisted in beautiful curves like a flower. The outside was gold, but the inside pearly. It felt cool in my hand, though the day was now warm. “Come inside,” Stralton murmured in my ear. “They should rest.”
Songs of Healing comes out October 22, 2020. If you’d like an advanced review copy, contact R.L.S. Hoff directly at rlshoff@pencilprincessworkshop.com. Or order the book here:
“Sam turned his head, glad to finally make out more than shadows. Eleanor was pointing to a streak of greenish-black slime in her hair. A quick survey of himself told him that more of the same gunk stained his uniform and his skin. He wondered how hard it would be to get out and if his mom had any cash for an extra trip to the wash-and-wear this week.”
If you’d like more than a Hope Gardens excerpt, sign up for R.L.S. Hoff’s newsletter to get installments of this story about twice a month. (You’ll also be able to get a digital copy of the story to date, so it won’t feel like you’re starting in the middle.)
Another place to find Hope Gardens (coming out weekly instead of twice a month) is on https://channillo.com/ (a subscription service for a variety of serial content, fiction and non-fiction). If you find you like serialized content, this is a good option, because you can get not only R.L.S. Hoff stories, but a variety of other stories (and poetry and even recipes).
However, if you’re only interested in Hope Gardens, or if you’d like to get it free of charge, you’ll probably want to sign up for R.L.S. Hoff’s newsletter–either above, or here.
Eleanor asked him once or twice if he was all right, and he snapped out something about not breaking his concentration. He felt a bit bad about that, but he was, after all, swaying near the top of a low-grade wooden ladder, trying to figure out a computer that had probably been designed before his great-grandfather was born. He didn’t have the brain capacity for politeness at the moment.
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My middle child has a beautiful one that came with his collection of Lloyd Alexander books (His favorite books, btw). It folds out into a gorgeous poster-sized thing that looks like it ought to be framed (if you could somehow get the creases out).
My maps don’t look like that. They tend to be scribbles in the margins of notebook pages that barely give me a sense for rivers and mountain ranges–but they are incredibly useful.
Here’s the one I used for Anya’s simulation (see Leaving Hope):
Before Sam could protest, she ducked into a path perpendicular to the one they’d used to get there. Within a few steps, she completely disappeared into the wheat.
Eleanor was gone long enough that Sam began to wonder if he could find his way back to the greenhouse’s main entrance if she didn’t return. His conclusions on that score did not reassure him.
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Sam Greeley never intended to fall in love with the greenhouses. He knew they were a dead-end work detail, never meant for kids like him who had high enough mod scores, even in ninth form, to qualify for university scholarships.
In fact, when he’d first been assigned the detention that sent him up to the food-growing zones, he’d meant to protest it. He hadn’t been part of the singing, dancing group of students who had blocked the corridor, making everyone late to class. He’d tried to scoot past, and that was when the teachers zoomed in, assigning detentions to everyone in the immediate vicinity.
Sam was going after Mr. Lewis to explain when Eleanor Mackey grabbed his left arm and turned it, so she could view the armband screen on his forearm. “Sam, you have detention, too? Thank goodness. Last time they sent us to the greenhouses, I was stuck doing some horrible, dirty, mindless task without even any intelligent conversation to break up the monotony.”
Wilson Cartier strolled up and draped his arm over Eleanor’s shoulders. “I thought you were with me repairing superwheat supports the last time you wound up in a greenhouse detention.”
Eleanor shrugged out from underneath his arm and winked at Sam. “See what I mean?” Then she picked her school tablet up off the corridor floor and sauntered toward her next class, her blond hair swinging in loose waves long enough to violate ship code. But who would report the captain’s daughter for something like that?
“What a tease, huh?” Wilson said, bumping Sam’s arm. “But, hey, I know you weren’t part of this mess. If you want me to vouch for you to Mr. Lewis or Ms. O’Day, we can probably get you out of detention.”
Sam stared at Wilson’s nearly new uniform and tried to figure out what the GenM heir was up to. Wilson and his cronies never talked to Sam. They certainly didn’t do him favors. “That’s OK. I was in the hallway when I should have been in class, and the greenhouses always need more hands, right? It won’t hurt me any.”
Wilson shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. The greenhouses can be plenty dangerous. Especially for guys who can’t keep their eyes off other guys’ girls.”
“Other guys’ girls?”
“What, you think I don’t see the way you look at Eleanor?”
Who did the idiot think he was fooling? “Eleanor doesn’t have a boyfriend. She’s certainly not yours.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. Eleanor may not realize it yet, but she’s definitely mine.” Wilson slapped Sam on the back in a way that probably looked friendly to the cameras but that felt anything but. Then Wilson ambled down the hallway toward the gym.
Sam scowled after him.
Cretin.
But the guy often understood people better than Sam did. If Wilson thought Sam was a threat, did that mean Eleanor liked him? An unfamiliar swooping sensation swept through his gut, and the corner of his mouth quirked upward.
Eleanor Mackey might like him.
He hummed the song his classmates had been performing as he made his way to Calculus.
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