Novel excerpts: Growing up 44 Articles

by Rhonda Erickson

This is the first chapter of a new book I am writing. I hope to post a continuing chapter each week. It is one of the two novels I am currently working on. These are my first efforts at novel writing, so be kind, but pleas...read more

by A.D Bell

Breaking Soul ties Growing up in a family of seventeen, you are bound to face challenges that are bigger than you. At some point the bonds are broken and your life boils down to the choices that you make. It was the l...read more

by Leslie Comstock

Her hair was long for a woman her age. She wore it down with combs holding it away from her face. The color was soft beige- not daring enough to be called blonde and not strong enough to be considered brunette. Her eyes we...read more

by Joe Roissier

Take Me Home with You, Inez Garcia It was a case of mistaken identity. I was driving a stolen car in downtown Dallas, Texas. I was on a local city street after an evening out with a new girlfriend. We were celebrating o...read more

by Gary Maclean

Tonight there was no dinner so we went upstairs. None of us complained, it seemed we never did. It was almost as though we knew our circumstance and knew there was nothing any of us could do about it. We just counted on th...read more

by the little dreamer

We explored the city together, heading to the opera, the theater, hidden, downtown cafes only he knew about. I got my first tattoo under his careful watch. It was a heart, with an arrow inside of it. Only later did I stop ...read more

by Sophie Cottrill

Standing in front of the mirror staring at the strange person facing her, wearing the pajamas her father had given her for her birthday, Mckayla stared, something wasn't right. Granted it wasn't going to be a normal day an...read more

by Betty Tesh

(Abigale Beckenskill is being sent to her great aunts' house to spend Christmas while her mother is in the hospital.) The policeman walked me and my suitcase up to the double doors. He twisted a handle in the middle of ...read more

by Ella Mad

It was late June of 1984 and I wasn't quite ten years old. Summer was early and the heat kept most folks inside their closed up houses during the day and out on their porches and stoops once the sun went down and the eve...read more

by Erik Reid

Dr. Katanga wondered if Mitri's weirdness had anything to do with allergies. At that time, in the 1950s allergies were just beginning to be understood so of course they were often used as a scapegoat for anything. And Ta...read more

by Frank Butry

Across Walnut Avenue Chapter One The sun was rising over St.Stans school, and it meant that spring was here, chasing old man winter away, making sure he took his arctic air and snow with him. It meant all the evils of ...read more

by Melissa Taylor

Novel Exerpt 1, The Dramatist The mouth speaks what the heart wants, but the heart never knows what it truly wants so the mouth blabbers a bunch of gibberish not even its owner can understand. But Ben's heart, spoke...read more

by Julie Hartnett

I grew up in the Southern California town of Riverside. It's rumored there was a raging torrent just at the base of Mount Rubidoux, but alas it's now a trickle that leads down to the coast. When I escaped to the beach side...read more

by Rocket

I was thirteen years old and we had moved from California to this small town back East. Every September the school and most of the town's businesses closed for the County Fair, and that was because everyone worked there. M...read more

by Nicole Clevenger

If I had the money, I think I'd rebuild the Titanic in our backyard. Or maybe in the big park down on Mason Street, on account of how we live in this apartment and there's already that old green pool down there. The T...read more

by Joel Stottlemire

Kansas Sunrise Chapter 1 There is a silence that is massive, profound and introspective to rolling down a gravel road in the heat of late spring. With the windows down, the wind whistles in your face as if over the win...read more

by Kiki Mcdonald

Sweet Tea was pulling in the Faded Youth apartment complex where he lived with his mom, Gladys. Gladys was very fragile and prone to bouts of deep depression, often not speaking or leaving her room for days at a time. She ...read more

by Kristol Jones

I am the youngest of four children, born within a total of five years time. I grew up in El Centro, California, Ag Town USA, or, as we jokingly referred to it, the Crotch of California as Bakersfield has the title of Armp...read more

by Michelle N. Broughton

"Can I stay, Mama?" My eight-year-old body was quivering with anticipation. Mama and Daddy just about had the car packed to head back home after a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner with Granny K. I walked up to them as Gr...read more

by Angel1

I couldn't keep away from him. I was four but he was such a hunk! Mmmmm. Those blue eyes and guess what a big house there was with those tennis courts right at the bottom of that huge garden. But then there was his b...read more