fairy skeletons.: Weekend Wordfest [18]: 777 + Introducing Snazzy Snippets

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Hey all! For this week's wordfest, I'm bringing you all some of my own writing again, in the form of two different excuses to share snippets of my WIP On the Midnight Streets.

First up, the lovely and ever-so-supportive Rachana tagged me for the 777 Challenge! Check out her challenge post here. The rules for this challenge are as follows:

Share 7 lines from the 7th page of one of your manuscripts. Then, tag 7 bloggers.

The following bit is the first seven lines of OtMS's third chapter, told from my heroine Chantilly's point of view. She and her family are being escorted to the Upper City (the wealthy neighborhood of their city, Peralton) from their home in the Middle City, as they've just come into an absurdly large inheritance and have to leave behind all they've ever known. 

The carriage has stopped at the wall.

I’ve heard tell that Peralton’s walls were built over the bones of Clarabel and Rosalind’s fallen supporters, and I can believe it now, seeing it tower over us like the entrance to a grave.

Again I have to fight the urge to shrink down into my seat, ashamed of how disheveled I must look, when a thin, balding man, presumably a wall guard, leans over to speak through the carriage window. We’ve all put on our best clothes for the move to the Upper City, but we’re wearing years of work on our hands and the thinness of not-quite-enough on our faces, too.

I hope that bit was interesting to you all! For this challenge, I'd like to tag:

Samantha | AnQi | Alex | E.R. | Sky | Lydia | Morning

Up next: Snazzy Snippets, a delightful new linkup brought to the Internet by the devious and brilliant minds of Alyssa @ The Devil Orders Takeout and Emily @ Loony Literate. It's basically the best excuse ever to pour my writing onto you all.

The snippet I'm sharing this first round fulfills two of the linkup's 'themes': A snippet that's mostly dialogue and a snippet that shows your MC's personality.

This is from the seventh chapter of OtMS, in which Chantilly has a confrontation with a policeman (just the first of many to be had in the future, I'm sure). (Wow, I just realized there are going to be way too many policemen in this book.) The following snippet showcases a part of Chantilly's personality that she herself doesn't know too much about yet—Social Justice Chantilly. Also, Eloquent Rage Chantilly.

Italicized bits are underlined.

“Begging your pardon, my lord [Charles], but it is standard procedure.”

“But is it legal?” I’m stunned momentarily by the venom in my own words. Charles turns towards me sharply, probably just as taken aback as I am, but my tamped-down outrage is starting to rear its head and I’m powerless to stop it. “Is it just, as you insist, to abuse a civilian without a trial?”

The policeman raises a placating hand. “Your ladyship, I entreat you to calm yourself—”

“Don’t you dare,” I lash out, and I struggle to find the right words to go on. “I will not calm myself like the lady all you men want me to be. I refuse to on the authority over my own self that my humanity grants me, and I marvel at the audacity with which you disparage my mother’s household by so disrespecting one of her employees. This is, as I stated earlier, an internal affair, and if justice must be brought into it, our estate will take that responsibility as fairly as possible.”

So what do you think? Is my novel a train wreck? Did you link up with Snazzy Snippets (if not, DO IT)? 

By the way, if you'd like to read OtMS, you can do that on Figment or Wattpad.