Charlie Lovett’s FIRST IMPRESSIONS is now out in paperback! To celebrate the event, here's a great excerpt to read and the chance to win a copy! (See the rafflecopter form below this post)
Read an excerpt
Steventon,
Hampshire, 1796
FOND AS
SHE WAS of solitary walks,
Jane had
been wandering rather longer
than she had intended, her
mind occupied not so much with the story
she had lately been reading as with one
she hoped soon to be writing. She was
shaken from this reverie by the sight of
an unfa miliar figure, sitting on a stile, hunched over a book. Her first
impres sion was that he was the picture
of gloom - dressed in shabby clerical garb, a dark look on his
crinkled face, doubtless a volume of dusty ser mons clutched in his ancient hand.
Even the weather seemed to agree with this assessment, for while the sun shone all around him, he sat in the shadow of the single
cloud that hung in the Hampshire sky.
Realiz ing how far she had come from
home, Jane thought it best to
retrace her steps without interrupting
the cleric's thoughts as he had unknow
ingly interrupted hers. During the long
walk home, across fields shimmering with
the haze of
summer heat, she
amused herself by sketching
out a character of this old
man, storing him
away, like so many others, for
possible inclusion in some novel yet to
be conceived. He was, she decided, a natural history enthusiast, but his
passion lay not with anything beautiful
like butterflies or wildflowers. No, his particu lar expertise was in the way of garden slugs, of which he
could identify twenty-six varieties.
