Sunday, July 14, 2013

#8Sunday #SnipSun: The Lilac Hour


I've been busy writing and getting ready to launch new projects into the world. The Lilac Hour is the last, but not least, of four releases I've had this summer. It's a trilogy of linked short stories about three generations of women in a family. The first story, The Lilac Hour, is about Sara, a women in her eighties.
Here are the opening eight lines of "The Lilac Hour"

We called it the lilac hour. The name came from my Aunt Delilah, who had a jungle of  lilacs in her backyard near the harbor. Every spring, they would open their fragrant buds of deep purple and gentle pink. And so it was that I pointed out those same colors to Zeke as the sun  finished dipping deep into the bay and Zeke said, “Yes, the lilac hour.”
We were young then, Zeke and I, new to marriage and still a little reckless, and I thought the term highly romantic.
That spring, Zeke gathered lilacs, bushels of them, from Delilah’s garden and put the petals on our bed. Still dreaming, I awoke to the stubble of his beard grazing my neck and the delicious sweetness rising from those buds. I’ve never been able to pass a lilac bush without thinking of him, and the tenderness of early love.


The Lilac Hour will be released later this month. For more on the trilogy, click HERE

For more terrific writing snippets, please visit Weekend Writing Warriors and Sunday Snippets

12 comments:

  1. Very sweet, very romantic - I love lilacs too. Excellent excerpt!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a lovely, romantic excerpt! I love the scent of lilacs. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love lilacs, but it looks like both of my bushes have something wrong with them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is a very sweet and romantic thing to do--a lovely nostalgic memory.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, so romantic! Although these being the opening eight lines gives it a vaguely ominious vibe...like she's remembering how happy she used to be before it all got taken away. This is an older woman relating a story; anything could happen.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Heart melting over here. That is soooo sweet, and romantic, and has the flavor of long-ago. Just lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lilacs carry the aroma of heaven, I think... and now she's got this great memory to last her a lifetime... very romantic! Nice snippet :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks to all of you lovelies for stopping by and commenting. I was away this weekend and it was wonderful coming home and seeing these.

    ReplyDelete
  9. A lovely beginning.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I don't know why, but when I read this, I did it with a Southern accent. Such beautiful prose, loved it. (And I'm not really all that fond of mushy stuff either, so that's saying a lot!)

    ReplyDelete