Paloma's List of #Thursday13 ThankFulness

Happy Thanksgiving! This is one of my favorite days of the year, a day of reflection and gratitude. It's the gateway to the holidays but its still slow and lazy and all about being with my family. Tomorrow... now that's when the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season begins. I don't let it enter our home until then. No Christmas music, no holiday decorations, and definitely no outdoor lights until the day after Thanksgiving.

So, while I have this moment of quiet reflection, today's Thursday Thirteen is a list of the things for which I am most thankful this year...

1. My Husband - there's just one, my one and only and forever.
2. My 2 Sisters - or more like my two mothers... how did I get so lucky?
3. My 3 Sons - my reasons for everything.
4. My 4 Pets - a house isn't a home without paw prints.
5. My 5 Fingers on each hand that type out words every day so I can write my stories.
6. The 6 Beta Readers who've each brought something to the books they've proofed.
7. The 7 Sin Sisters who gave me my start in the publishing world.
8. The 8 Authors who have acted as mentors, advisers and cheerleaders for me.
9. The 9 Books I've published so far.
10. The next 10 years that I feel so much hope for.
11. The past 11 months when I've been inspired by ideas coming quicker than I can write them down.
12. The last 12 days when I found my rhythm and knocked out my NaNoWriMo goal.
13. These 13 sentences which started my NaNo 2013 project...

Ivy hesitantly steps off the ferry and gazes around, careful to keep her eyes averted from those around her. She might be looking for someone but she might also be hiding from someone. To her relief, nobody approaches her and she recognizes no one. An older man passes her by. A girl about her age runs to meet the handsome man who shared her view of the ocean on the ferry trip across the water.

To the common observer, Ivy appears untouched by the happy people around her but that’s not true. She’s touched. Inside. It’s there, where she’s nearly hollowed out at the same time growing more full with life. A new life that meant giving up an old life she adored. An exchange-one loss for another loss-that will be made even in the end when Ivy will find herself alone.

She snatches up her bag that the crew tossed off the boat into the pile of suitcases accompanying the passengers to the island and begins a pace inward towards town. She carries just one bag, large enough only for an overnight trip. It’s not nearly enough but it was all she could manage. Ivy just needed to escape.

(c) Paloma Beck, Ivy Intertwined, 2013

Hope you enjoyed the excerpt! PLEASE COMMENT and tell me what you think... writing is a solitary profession and its nice to hear from readers.

My NaNo 2013 project is my first try at a New Adult Romance, Ivy Intertwined. It's raw and completely unedited but here's the working blurb... Ivy is poison. At least, that's how she feels when everything right in her perfect world goes wrong. She runs to the safety of her grandparents' home where she won't spread her poison to the boy she loves. Her only thought is not to destroy him. What Ivy hadn't considered was that by leaving him behind, she accomplished the one thing she tried so desperately to prevent.