Welcome back! It’s another Sunday and another blog hop hosted by the Weekend Writing Warriors. Writers post 8-10 sentences of their works in progress or promoted projects. If you’re interested in participating or reading more works from these talented people, visit this week’s participants.
We are continuing with A Thief’s Wager. Eager to investigate Primrose Avenue, Chris sets off from the Painted Horse to the upper-class neighborhood. After spending the day talking to his contacts he finds out the name of Flann’s special guest and potential silent partner. A shopkeeper gives him the name and address of Mister Bayliss, a new upstart aristocrat with ambitions of for nobility.
Snippet:
Jamming his hands in his pockets, he sets his shoulders against the cool evening breeze, walking through the richer part of the kingdom. The lavish homes were prettier than the slums, the flower beds in the small window baskets seemed to promote the lie of happiness and beauty. It was the kind of society that bred mistrust; the evidence was seen in the number of iron gates surrounding the most fearful rich members of society. The bigger the fence the less trust they had for neighbors or the authority which protected them. Chris turns a corner as the night set in, hoping to get out of the gaze of the soldier before he moved on to his mark.
His feet stop in front of a small manor surrounded by a high stone wall with an iron gate. Ivy climbs the wall giving the property an aged ‘old money’ feel. Clearly, Mister Bayliss paid a handsome price for the appearance of being among Lollardum’s rich. According to a barmaid, he held weekly events which included dances and intellectual parlor gatherings for snotty rich men. Which indicated to Chris, Bayliss likes to surround himself with a bunch of old men who claim to be scholars while drinking whisky and smoking cigars trying not to talk about beautiful women.
That’s it for now, I’m excited about the next few posts because once Chris discovers a secret in Bayliss’s basement the stakes get higher. I’m happy to report the successful weeding of the sneaky word ‘that’ from my manuscript. Actually, I managed to remove 442 of them. I’m happy with it, considering the remaining words are used in speech and it’s part of a character’s speech pattern. So overall a successful round of edits.
*Previously titled as ‘A Flip of a Coin’
Read Chapter One here.
The Scribbling Scribe 
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Lovely descriptions. Waiting to see what happens next.
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The more you have, the more you fear losing it. Makes sense! Love the way he thinks about the wealthy, it’s informative without being dry.
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Thank you, I appreciate it
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I think it’s true about the bigger the fence the less trust they had…
I am looking forward to the discovery in the basement!
Great editing. “That” was a lot of thats!
I’m making my rounds late this week, and just realized that you link led to your first wewriwa post. I changed it on the linky list to this one. I hope it wasn’t the cause of participants not being able to find your post! Sorry I didn’t catch it earlier. 🙂
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Thank you, I some weird issue with wordpress where my post saved as draft by mistake making my schedule post setting invalid. Or at least that’s what I think. Technology hates me most days.
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