In case you guys haven't been with me from the start I read Elle's Clockwise and loved it!!
I loved the cover it had as well but she has come out with another eye catching cover!! It is so brilliant and pretty. Elle has let me post it on my blog YAY!!! Along with the new cover you
can also read a chapter sample and trust me you will be hooked!!
So without further delay the new cover:
Isn't it cute?! So seeing we aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover why don't
you read the first chapter and then rush off to buy it?!
CHAPTER ONE
EVERYONE HAS TO LIVE with something.
For instance, my hair is the unmanageable kind of
curly, the color of burnt toast. Imagine waking up every morning looking like
the Lion King, or having to spend a disproportionate amount of your allowance on
hair products that don’t deliver. Like the ones under my bathroom sink. Row
after row of half-empty containers of mousse, gel, and hair tamer standing
dejectedly like the third string of a basketball team that rarely gets to play.
The thing is, I would be fine with rag mop hair,
truly, if only I didn’t have this other issue: uncontrolled time travel to the
nineteenth century. I’ve never met anyone else with the same problem, either, so
that also classifies me as some kind of freak.
On the upside—like a blind girl who ultra develops her
other senses to compensate for what she can't control—I’ve picked up a few extra
skills along the way. One survival reflex I’ve nurtured is how to be quick on
my feet. I have good impulses, you could say.
Well, normally, this is an upside.
Until a second ago.
I was sitting with my best friend, Lucinda, on the
sidelines of the football field. As usual, we were watching the yummy football
players, rather than the scrimmage going on because really, who cared about the
actual game? Despite the glare of the setting sun, I saw the brown speck
hurtling towards me.
Impulsively, I jumped up and thump, Nate Mackenzie’s
football, signed by the famed Tom Brady himself, was in my arms. I couldn’t
believe it. I’d caught Nate Mackenzie’s ball!
Gingerly, I raised my head. Sauntering across the
field, with all his hunky hotness, was the cutest boy in the school, the most
valuable senior varsity football player of Cambridge High, and the love of my
life. He stopped right in front of me.
“Good catch.” His rugged and manly voice lassoed me.
He'd said, good catch. I couldn’t
move or take my eyes off his face. The way the sun glistened off his sweat,
emphasizing his strong jaw and the brightness of his blue eyes, brighter still
because of the contrast of his dark, shaggy hair…
“So, can I have my ball back?”
My hands gripped his football with sticky sweat. The
ticker tape in my brain searched for the right response before flashing ERROR in
red neon twelve-point font.
“Casey?” Lucinda nudged my back. With a slight swivel
of my head I saw her expression. Mortification. Give the dumb ball back! Did I just have
an aneurysm? I felt woozy, like throwing up. I imagined myself vomiting all over
Nate’s feet.
Unbelievably, there are some things worse than puking
in front of the football team. A wave of dizziness threatened to wash me away
into black nothingness. But I couldn’t be so lucky to just faint. It was
happening. Oh no. Not here. Please, not
in front of Nate Mackenzie.
In an instant, my world brightened like a nuclear
blast as I spiraled through a long white tunnel. When I opened my eyes, he was
gone. Nate was gone and so were Lucinda and all of Nate’s football team.
I stood alone, in the middle of a lush forest painted
every shade of green. My lungs filled with the sweet scent of undamaged air, my
skin tingled with warm humidity. The furry and feathered inhabitants squealed
and chirped with enthusiasm. I heard an unwelcome whistling noise and a pop.
Nate’s ball, still in my hands, had an arrow sticking out of it.
So much for quick thinking and quick feet. I jumped
behind a tree and hid as a couple of kids, maybe ten and twelve, cantered by on
horseback.
“You missed it!” teased the older boy. The fortunate
squirrel scurried up the tree, its little feet loosening bits of bark that
rained down on my head. I could have been killed or at least drastically
injured, but all I could think about was Nate’s football. The air seeped out as
I tugged on the hand-whittled arrow. I slid down the side of the tree and
groaned.
Tom Brady’s signature had a puncture hole right in
the middle of it. I gripped the flattened ball as I stomped through the brush,
pushing scratchy branches away from my face. Why did this have to happen in front of Nate
Mackenzie? Why?
Pack your bags, self-pity. I was cursed with time
traveling. I was a slave to it with no control over when or in front of who it happens, and as far
as I knew there was no cure. Not that I had anyone to ask about it. I just had
to survive, which fortunately, I'd gotten pretty good at.
I soon came to a wide dirt road scarred with uneven
grooves ground in by irregular carriage travel and dotted with hazardous looking
empty potholes. I imagined they filled up unattractively with muddy water when
it rained. A waist-high rectangular stone marker, leaning slightly like a
wounded soldier, had the miles to Cambridge MA etched in it. Good. I knew where
I was.
Time travel, as expected, is fraught with
complications. The immediate one is what to wear. Or more like what not to wear.
As in blue jeans and sneakers I needed to ditch ASAP. I slipped back into the
dense covering of the forest and kept hiking. The second immediate problem has
to do with food and drink. Let’s just say that to solve these problems, you have
to get creative.
I recognized a thick grove of lilac bushes and pushed
my way through to the center, where a patch of wild grass opened up like a bald
spot on the top of an old man’s thick crown of hair. When I travel—and this
started when I was nine years old—I always end up in the same locale. The actual
spot on the planet Earth stays the same; just what is on it is different. In the
future, this is the location of my neighborhood.
I lifted off a thatch of twigs to expose a deep hole;
one I had proudly dug myself having borrowed a shovel from a neighboring
farm. Inside was a hatchet, spotty with rust, a piece of flint, a rugged
slingshot and two musky smelling burlap bags, which I pulled out, one at a time.
The first had food—dried beef, raisins and a jar of well water. I opened the
jar, took a drink and grimaced. Stale. The second bag had clothing: a long ivory
cotton dress with tiny bluebells hand stitched in a scattered pattern, ladies
boots that looked like figure skates with the blades off, a pair of trousers, a
pair of men’s boots, (yes, my feet were big enough to wear men’s) and a boy’s
cap. I’d borrowed these during
various trips, and hoarded them away for the “future.”
A stumpy, fallen log, green with moss and partially
hollowed out by ants, served as a bench. I rested against it, laying Nate’s ball
on the ground. I stared at it hypnotically, until I was lulled into a deep
daydream, back to the football field at Cambridge High. This time I did
everything right.
Nate says, Good catch, his eyes admiring me and my
obvious, though previously hidden, athletic ability. I say, Thanks, and smile back with confidence,
my hair perfectly tamed and my jeans fitting me exceptionally well. And most
importantly, I give the ball back, offering it like a prize, our fingers lightly
brushing in the pass. Nate throws it far and long, glancing back to see if I am
still watching him.
I screamed. A garter snake had slithered over my
hand. I jumped to my feet and did a little impromptu rain dance. I wasn’t even
afraid of garter snakes, it just startled me. My heart settled back to normal
speed and I shook my head, trying to clear it. Focus, Casey. Sometimes it was difficult
separating my two crazy worlds. I so didn’t feel like being here in my alternate
universe, the year 1860.
I put on the trousers. Fortunately, the fashion for
boys in the nineteenth century was loose and baggy, so no need to lie flat on my
back to wrestle with a zipper (which wasn’t invented yet, anyway). Picking up
Nate’s ball, I tucked it securely under my shirt. I had to make sure the ball
came home with me when I went. It served a second useful purpose, adding the
illusion of boyish thickness to my waistline. A bit of twine made for a
functioning belt.
Shoot. The pant legs ended at my ankles. Okay, I
forgot to add to my list of imperfections, (chronic bad hair days, the time
travel thing, paralyzing crush on a way unobtainable hottie) that I’m also
overly tall. Not graceful catwalk model tall or academy award winner beauty
tall. More like ostrich tall. Without the feathers. Long limbs with knobby knees
and elbows.
I pushed my hair behind my ears and into the cap. I
hadn’t picked up the habit of wearing make-up because a) a bare face aided me in
my attempts to blend in and b) it was a liability to me when I traveled and
wanted to pass myself off as a boy. I practiced at lowering my voice: Hello, my
name is Casey.
I cleaned up my stash and worked to wipe out the
evidence of a human visitation. I decided to head for the Watson farm, to see if
Willie Watson would hire me again. It was grunt work, cows and chickens and the
like, but it gave me a way to make a bit of money and get food. There were also
a ton of kids and I could easily get lost in the mix.
At the main road I turned east towards Boston. Mid
autumn leaves shook in the cool breeze causing goose bumps to pop up on my arms
in defense of the chill. I rubbed them vigorously with my long fingers. Behind
me I heard the growing rhythmic clip clop of a single horse and cart. A young
man with a mass of red curly hair came to a stop at my side, stirring up a minor
cloud of dust. I recognized him despite that fact he had filled out since the
last time I’d seen him and unfamiliar stubble now shadowed his face. It was
Willie Watson.
“Can I offer you a lift?” he said.
It was show time. I lowered my voice. “Willie?”
“Casey?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He cupped his hands over his eyes to block the sun.
“I hardly recognized you. You’ve gotten so tall.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Where you off to?”
I shifted my weight, in a manly (I hoped) way. “Well
actually, I was wondering if I could work for you again.”
Willie nodded. “We can always use an extra hand. Get
in.”
I shared the back of the cart with a bale of hay and
a little goat with a gray beard. Willie snapped the reins, the initial thrust
tossing me to the back end of the cart where I settled in for the ride. I was
happy to get out of the long walk to the Watson’s farm, not too happy about
hitching a ride with a goat. It sensed my discomfort and immediately reached
over to nibble on my shirt. I swatted the air between us. “Back off!”
Willie called over his shoulder. “What happened to
you? You just took off last time without saying anything.”
I had my cover story ready. “I had to get back to
Springfield. Family stuff. But my ma just had number thirteen so Pa sent me out
to work again.”
“Aye, I understand. My own mother is kept to her room
with number ten.”
I’d first met Willie when we were both twelve. He’d
caught me stealing eggs from their chicken coop. Not my finest moment, I admit,
but I plead desperation, driven to petty theft due to the fact that I had
crossed off day eight in the past. Up until then, my trips had usually only
lasted a couple days, but that summer things changed. Hungry and panicked, I’d
thought I was stuck in the past forever, never to return home, never to see my
parents or my younger brother, Timothy, ever again. I'd crept like a fox at dawn
to the nearest farm.
Thankfully, that was the Watson farm, and the Watsons
had turned out to be the nicest and kindest people I’d ever met. Anyway, Willie
had caught me with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. “You gonna eat those
raw?” he'd said. I hadn’t thought about that. I'd shrugged, too stunned and
frightened to say anything of intelligence. “We have hotcakes in the kitchen,
you can come for breakfast.” The thought of eating with all those Watsons was
just too scary. My face must've reflected that, since Willie went on to say,
“That’s okay, I’ll bring you some. Wait for me on the dock.” I'd nodded and
watched in silence as Willie gathered the eggs before leaving.
I'd made my way to the small lake situated in the
middle of the Watson farm, thinking that I was either going to get a yummy
breakfast or Willie was going to return with a gun and take me to the jail
house. He'd showed up with breakfast. “Thanks,” I'd said. Willie’s voice
hadn’t yet changed so he didn’t think twice about my high pitched squeakiness. I
ate the warm and sticky pancakes with my dirty bare hands. I'd tried to imagine
what I looked like to Willie. I hadn’t showered in ten days, my hair was grimy
and in hysterics. Just like those kids in Lord of the Flies after a few weeks
without parents to boss them around. He never snitched on me about my chicken
house raid and got me a job pitching hay. I’d stayed in the past for a full
three weeks, and from that point on the ‘rules’ of time travel had altered. Now,
I never knew how long I’d be gone.
We rode the rest of the way to the farm in silence.
Well, except for the goat, ba-aa-ing and nipping at my pant legs.
I rubbed my butt when we arrived, though the bumpy
ride was appreciated by both me and the goat.
“I could use help milking the cows and keeping the
barn clean,” Willie said, pointing to the prominent red out building behind the
stately family home. “You can sleep in the loft, like last time,” he added. I
strutted away, concentrating on my gait, mimicking my brother’s boyish walk.
Swiveling hips would get me into big trouble. Times like this made me thankful
for my poached egg sized breasts. Just call me Mr. Casey.
Someone watched me walk across the yard. Of course,
there were plenty of people around, other workers, Watson kids playing tag, but
I felt his eyes on me. Cobbs. He was shorter than me now, but beefy like a
boxer with a round beer belly popping out. His face was pink and shiny and his
dark beady eyes scanned my body.
Ew, what a perv. I’m a boy, weirdo! Or could he tell I
wasn’t? Did he remember me from before? Either way he was a creeper. I let my
gaze fall to the ground and kept walking, away from the barn. When I was sure
Cobbs was out of sight I circled back and slipped into the barn, climbing the
ladder to the loft. I hid in the pokey straw and even though it was only dusk, I
immediately fell asleep.
***
The tiny irritating saw of a mosquito buzzed near my
face, and I flapped my hands dramatically. A rooster crowed and I sighed,
disappointed I was still in the past. Not that I would travel in the night. I
never traveled while sleeping. Ever. Didn’t know why. Some kind of time travel
law.
And I was hungry. Better go milk me some cows and earn
my breakfast. A dozen Jersey cows lined up in a row. Grabbing a tin pail and
wooden stool, I settled in under Betsy One. I called them all Betsy: Betsy One
through Thirteen.
Willie joined me. “Mornin’, Casey.” He grabbed a
short three legged stool like the one I sat on, and plopped a pail under Betsy
Three. It had been a while since I'd had to milk a cow, and honestly, I never
did get the hang of it. First of all, cow teats are like short slippery ropes.
Kind of gross to touch. And you have to pull on them just so, sort of a
milk-releasing-rhythm. The cows get fully irritated when you don’t get it
right.
Thwap, thwap, thwap. The sound of milk shooting into
a metal pail. Unfortunately, not my pail. Willie was showing me up.
I peeked around the back end of Betsy One, spying on
Willie’s Olympic cow milking performance. Betsy One didn’t like my peering
around her rear end, and wacked me hard with her tail. Kind of like getting
smacked with a bull whip, but one covered in fir.
“Ouch!”
“You okay, Casey?” Willie called. “Uh, yeah, fine.” I
mimicked Willie’s timing, one, two, three, four, and thankfully the milk started
to shoot out.
By the time I finished my fifth cow, (meaning Willie
whipped my butt by milking eight), my forearms burned and throbbed like mad. We
carried the pails to the kitchen where the Watson kids poured the milk into jars
so the older boys could make deliveries in the neighborhood.
The eldest Watson kid, Sara, oversaw the whole
operation. Her red hair was parted down the center and two braids close to her
face looped up like crimson handles. Though fashionable for this century, not a
very becoming look as far as I was concerned. It seemed like she had a large
lampshade under her skirt, the way it spread out at the bottom, and since women
didn’t normally wear hoops while working at home, I assumed that she must be
about to go out. When she saw me, she propped her hands upon her waist.
“Willie,” she called. “Who do we have here?” She
didn’t remember me because Willie, and his father when he was around, took
responsibility for farm staff. She, when her mother was ill or with child,
controlled the kitchen and house staff.
“Ah, you remember Casey Donovan? He’s worked here
before.”
“Really? I don’t recall.” Sara pinched her eyebrows
together. Then she called out,
“Duncan, Josephine, Charlotte, Abigail, Jonathon!” A
collection of kids with either curly red or brunette hair entered the room.
With the guidance of a stout and bright faced woman
named Missy, they went to work bottling the milk, careful not to get knocked to
the ground by Sara’s hoop skirt.
Willie left and I turned to follow, but she cleared her
throat, stopping me. I waited to be dismissed, but she held my gaze. She got
right to the point. “How old are you?”
“Uh, almost sixteen.”
“Do you shave, Casey?”
“Uh,” My hand jumped to my chin. “Sometimes. I’m a
late bloomer. It runs in my family.”
“I dare say. Did you spend the night in the
loft?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“I think so. I fell asleep shortly after my arrival
yesterday. I don’t remember seeing anyone else.”
“That’s a relief,” she said.
“Why is that?”
She removed her apron and smoothed out her skirt.
Then she looked me straight in the eye. “Because Casey Donovan, I believe that
you are a girl as surely as I am one.”
You can purchase Clockwise on
Amazon and you can get it in both Ebook and Paperback format!!
Also if you have a minute please check out my review
here or leave a little comment love here for this new cover!!
Maya and her friends--all of whom
have supernatural powers--have been kidnapped after fleeing from a forest fire
they suspect was deliberately set, and after a terrifying helicopter crash they
find themselves pursued by evildoers in the Vancouver Island wilderness.
