TUESDAY INTROS/TEASERS: REEL LIFE — MAY 15

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Just grab your book and share the opening lines; then find another excerpt that “teases” the reader.

Today I’m excerpting from Reel Life, by Jackie Townsend:  a story about sisters….

Blurb:  Sisters are meant to always be there for each other, or are they? In the glare of reality, clashing views and acts of betrayal can form unbridgeable gaps, and the fabric of sisterly love must be rewoven from whole cloth. Reel Life, the debut novel by Jackie Townsend, charts the story of two sisters who must call upon the past to forge a new and meaningful connection. With iconic moments of cinema as its driving narrative thread, this finely-wrought, absorbing work will cut straight to the heart, and reveal the intricate emotions that come together to form a family. Exploring themes of motherhood, body image, ambition, and love, Reel Life offers a poignant close-up of the most intimate of relationships that move, confuse, haunt, and heal. Surging with drama interlaced with subtle irony, Reel Life will shock, surprise and move anyone who understands that sometimes, escaping reality offers the clearest path to emotional truth.

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INTRO:  (July, 2003) (Chapter One:  The Wizard of Oz)

The movie had started.  The psychic was reading Dorothy’s future in a crystal ball, and Betty felt a strong inward pull in her womb, a sense of life giving her another chance, a way forward.  She looked around her.  Her oldest, Sam, was stretched out on the floor so close to the TV screen that the images illuminated his face; her youngest, Nick, was curled against her, sucking his thumb and blue blankie at the same time; the missing rebel, her middle child, Clay, was in the basement battling it out on Play Station’s Lord of the Rings.  These moments with her children were what made sense, Betty thought, resting her eyes shut.

Then the banging started up again.  “Mom!”  Sam screamed, and she opened her eyes.  “Tell Dad to stop hammering.  I can’t hear!”

“You don’t need to yell,” she responded calmly.

Dave, her husband, was upstairs repairing the A/C.  It had almost been a relief returning home from California to find him immersed in a busted condenser, the upstairs flooded.  To be so consumed moving furniture and airing out the carpet with fans that she had no time to dwell on the fact that her little escape to California was over, that Monday Betty would go back to work, and Dave would begin his job search.  That their lives would continue on the same.

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Teaser:  She swallowed.  Her arms were bruising under his force.  “Look, Joel, we’re both drunk.  Let’s talk tomorrow when we’re sober.  OK?”  She kept her voice even and calm, not wanting him to sense her fear, and it seemed to work at first, as he loosened his grip, but as she turned to go, he grabbed her again and knocked her against the wall so hard that the back of her head whacked against the stucco.  “Do you love me, Betty?” p. 101

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Wow!  That one makes me want to read more….The opener aroused my curiosity, but the teaser gripped me.  What did you discover in your book today?  I hope you’ll stop by and share…..