Just wanted to get some input! With Javi's Cafe ending in December (and already written) and The Christian Musician published, I'm trying to decide what to do next. I'd like to keep doing eBooks, but am not sure what to do next: compilation of short stories? Javi? Love Victorious? Should I first focus on trying to find a bigger audience for TCM?
Either way, any self-marketing ideas for TCM? I tried a giveaway hoping to get people to review or share about it, but it hasn't really worked. It ends tomorrow if you're interested.

[Needed to put a note again in here real quick! Another title of this novelette is "The Syntax of Kissing" from a line in one of e. e. cumming's poems, but that alternative title will give you an indication of some of the content, particular in this section, and so I wanted to repeat that this story is better suited for the older readers on apricotpie. There is a conversation in here about kissing and dating, and I couldn't really get around it or overly water it down because it is important to the emotional progression of the story.

What inspired Samuel Clemens to pen The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? First, Clemens was interested in the idea of focusing a story on a mischievous and disobedient boy. Other authors were writing books with rowdy main characters. Clemens’ friend wrote a book titled The Story of a Bad Boy, which intrigued him. Clemens had written sketches of such stories, but never a book. Tom Sawyer would concentrate on the adventures of an unruly and wild boy. Second, Clemens wanted to share about his childhood growing up in slave-state Missouri before the Civil War.

1. Been Too Long, So It's Too Late

I feel like I’m licking the spoon till I’m getting wooden
Splinters in my tongue.
I feel like no matter how hard I rub that moisturizer in,
The cuts will still crack open.
I feel like everything inside—
Every thought, every feeling, every little bit of me—
Was about to spill open and be free and wonderful and beautiful,
But instead it bottled up till it could no more,
Then seeped out, slowly,
So very slowly

And I could make no use of it.

2. Not Enough

I.

It's here
It just popped round the corner
In truth, I wasn't prepared for it
But then,
I'm never much prepared for anything.

Because so many times
In the past madness of my life
It has felt like lifetimes since
I was just myself
Since I had time to be myself
Since I was at a peace of mind and not
Struggling with a million things buzzing
On my poor mind

[Note: This is the full version of the extract I posted 'What Color on the Moon,' and even though I would put the entire novelette at the level of the older readers on apricotpie, it's less so this section, and more so the second half (and I have a note explaining why on that one). Blessings! :) Sarah]

******************

"If anyone found me here they'd think I was from a Sunday school primer."

He crushed the lead of his pencil into the paper.

I went for a long walk the next morning. I felt like I had to talk to God, and that outside, even in the cold, was the best place to do it. My mind was free outside, and I wasn’t distracted by anything, although I did have a stack of flyers I put up here and there. My thoughts were jumbled yet again, but they kept coming back to prayers for Emily. It was almost always the same prayer, though – “give her wisdom to know what to do, and then the courage to do it.”

Because I can't keep waiting anymore
So I'll write every defining characteristic and fashion it into
Some sort of searching yearning looking for notice
A help-wanted don't you get it there's so much more to be
Found and hidden and hide and seek with our feelings
I'm tired so I hung sponges from the ceiling
Let them sink up all my misery
I'll tattoo the north star in the skin you ruined
And I'll claim the sores are poetry in visible format and
If anyone asks why I'll counter them with

July 4th, 2009
Dear Journal,
Today was a good day. The Grays invited Mom and I to go to a fireworks display with them. I sat with Josh and Kelly. When the fireworks started Josh tried to hold my hand so I slapped his hand. He said he was just being friendly so I told him that I didn't like that kind of "friendly" and that if he wasn't careful I would have to stop being around him. So he went back to his old way of being friendly, which I like much better. Kelly just glared at him and told him to leave me alone. She's pretty mad at him for the way he treated Courtney.