Maggie – A novella

Steven Baird

Maggie-final

I got all these feelings bundled up in a snarl, all the should-have’s and supposed-to’s and unfair verdicts of past mistakes. There are all these bricks of grief and regret and wondering if I could have changed just one moment. Just one. And when I try to build something out of them bricks, they crack and shift into different shapes, and then they fall into a heap worse off than when I started. I know Gram was thinking about Daniel. We’d been stepping in and out of his shadow since I first showed up here, neither of us wanting to conjure him up for real. Thinking about Daniel made me tired and sad, cracked at the spine, broke in the heart.
***
Excerpt from Maggie, now available from Amazon. Many thanks to D. Wallace Peach for her remarkable editing skills. I was under a particularly tight deadline to complete this story, and Diana’s suggestions and thoroughness gave Maggie a little more shine. And I won’t mention all those damned commas. Thank you, my friend.

11 thoughts on “Maggie – A novella”

  4. Wow, beautiful excerpt, Steven. The last line is fantastic: ‘ Thinking about Daniel made me tired and sad, cracked at the spine, broke in the heart.’ Wonderful. Brilliant that Diana could with the polishing – was she a hard taskmaster? What’s, wrong, with, commas??!!😀

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you, Annika! Diana was very thorough and definitely not difficult. I rewrote the opening paragraph after the first draft, and she convinced me to use the original language, which was and is quite graphic. As for the commas, Maggie the character has a unique patois and speaks in run-on sentences. And I, misplaced, several commas. I was listening to her in my head and not seeing it on the page. A good editor is, invaluable. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment