Lipstick & Bolsheviks, The New Maria #VSsaga

"WHY IS IT TAKING YOU SO LONG!???" I hear this a lot. Either in all caps or in person with a teenage girl yanking angrily on my arm. Local readers can be a hazard. :) 
First, it was research. 
Then I was convinced it was the effect of the few scathing reviews I had read regarding Filter and Bluestocking Girl. But I haven't read any reviews since...oh, January. 
So what is taking me so long?
I am in mourning. I will never write one of my favorite characters again. 
Or will I?
But that is for another day.

To prove I am working, slowly, painfully, through my fictional grief, here is a snippet:

FROM LIPSTICK AND BOLSHEVIKS: THE VON STRASSENBERG SAGA, book 3

She turned her gaze upon him, the fury crackling in her eyes. “Take me with you,” she begged, kneeling beside him on the floor.

“Your parents would never forgive me,” he scooped up her hand. “Your father would hunt me down, as any father would. Ocean or not.” The stubble on his cheek scratched against her skin as he pressed her hand to his cheek, leaning into her touch, pressing her heat into his flesh.

“We would be gone before they ever knew,” she yanked her hand from his cheek, grasped his calloused fingers and held them to her heart. “And they would never know who I had gone with.”

“Or who had introduced you to the devil,” his lip quirked, but she knew he regretted their unorthodox relationship.

“None of it is your fault Sasha,” she tilted his chin, demanding his blue eyes rise to meet her own. “I was wicked well before we met. Ask my father.”

“I think I prefer to never have the opportunity.”

“Oh,” her hand shot out and pinched his side. “Are you a coward then?” Frightfully ticklish, he twisted away, laughing and pulling her with him. “Are you scared of my daddy? Big, strong Sasha?” ©2012GwennWright 

Books 1 & 2 are available for Kindle, Nook, and in paperback (which I prefer because it's all lovely with the fonts)You can also find me on Goodreads 

Now In PAPERBACK!!!

It took more than a year of work...ok, not really. Writing the book, scraping the first 100+ pages and starting over, writing the 390 pages of Filter, editing the 390 pages, editing them again and again and again....unpublishing Filter for months because I decided it must be junk because only a few people bought the eBook each month and then re-publishing it because while editing I fell in love with the story again, struggling to get it to look professional in paperback and marketing the eBook almost 24/7....that has taken a year. The initial writing took about five months. There was about a month or two of research before that. Some people complain about the price of paperbacks, but it is 390 pages long, ink and paper cost money. And I'm only making $0.82 per copy. Unless you buy the $0.99 cent eBook, then I'm making $0.61. Rakin' it in. O yea. And now, with all that done (except the marketing, that's constant) you may now read Filter in paperback. A local teen I gave one of the proofs to texted me to tell me it's BEAST. Ok. I'll take that!

A Snippet

From Filter: The Von Strassenberg Saga

My hand shoots up, palm flat and smacks Kevin’s flushed and sagging face square in the nose. Stunned, he releases me and reels back, profanities hurling from him with his blood and mucus. Not bothering to wipe the gore away, he spins on me, trying to catch me as I dart passed the immobile rhino and head for my room. My room with its flimsy door and busted window. For a jacked up drunk man Kevin is fast, too fast. He’s at my back grabbing my hair as I try to leap the last few feet into my room, slamming the door behind me. White lightening slices into my brain and a scream rips its way out of me as those wide-awake five senses tell me everything I already know. My hair is caught in the door. The other end is still in Kevin’s all too strong carpenter’s hands. Strong, unforgiving hands. He yanks and yanks again, expletives flying without pause for breath. With back pressed tightly to the door, out of necessity, he has me painfully pinned, I turn the lock. My tiny room is sparsely furnished. The twin bed will only fit against the wall with the busted window. And my desk, my beautiful, white knight desk, is here beside me, crammed into the small space between bedroom and closet doors. Two nights ago I had started working on that stupid project for history. A battle scene, complete with corn syrup blood and cardboard trees. And there beside the last fallen soldier, still waiting silently for his place on the battlefield, are my scissors. New and sharp.

Copyright Gwenn Wright 2010

Filter~Chapter 1

Nashville, Tennessee

2010

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn’t seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn’t seeing my mother’s daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn’t really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.

He has had no shortage of women over the years. He kept them from me at first, being careful of what I saw and, disturbingly, heard. But, as I grew older, and he saw that I was not growing into a refined young lady but that the poverty and desperation of our lives has made me something harder, coarser, he stopped caring. There were one-night stands and those who didn’t bother staying more than a few hours; those who got what they wanted, just as he had, who used him just as he used them, and left promptly after. Occasionally one might last a few weeks, but rarely. They didn’t want a man with responsibilities.

I.e. me.

A man with responsibilities and no car and an address that changed at least every fifth month depending on the compassion of our landlord at the time.

I was the only unchanging factor in his life and knew he blamed me for his lack of constants. If he hadn’t done the right thing, if he hadn’t been so good to me and true to the promise he had made to my mother then his life would be different.

But he had been true to my mother’s wish.

She had been obviously pregnant when he had taken her in. And when she had asked him to care for me, he had agreed.

They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of me.

It took less than six weeks for him to realize his mistake. Maybe even less than six hours, but he never abandoned me. He clung to me as though I was the last remnant of some great and powerful love.

And that gave me hope that maybe my mother was really something else and not just some girl who got knocked up by a guy whose name she didn’t even know. She was something special, someone worthy of a man’s loyalty and devotion.

(c)2010 Gwenn Wright

Library of Congress

Filter~Prologue

Prologue
Vienna, Austria
1866

“That monk is a doddering fool.”

He remained bent over the microscope, speaking more to his Petri dish than the imbecile who had come to question him.

“Yes Doctor, but what you’re working on…”

“Will ensure Austria’s power for eternity.”

The man scoffed. He had heard of the scientist’s maniacal zeal. His mother had warned him that being intelligent was admirable and, if utilized properly, profitable but there came a point when it was nothing but a detriment. Genius was often followed by madness, she had said. Looking at the frenzied younger man, Dr. Rochenstein fully appreciated the wise woman his mother had been.

“The University,” he continued. “Needs more assurance of the potential success of your work.”

A bitter laugh resonated within the form hunched over the microscope. “You mean they would like to know when my work will begin repaying their generosity.”

It was not a question.

Everyone knew of the lavish expenses of the professor, but no one was certain of what the money was being spent on. There was gossip and speculation that perhaps he was building some great invention, but this was circulated only among those who did not know his particular field was biology.

(c) 2010 Gwenn Wright

Library of Congress

A PG-15 Read

Some recent discussion I've participated in on Amazon have led me to rethink the marketing of my book. Calling it a teen read is too broad. While there aren't any scenes with sex, there are some darker matters the story eludes to. It's essential to the plot. There is also some sensuality, but it's Rocky's first kiss...not her first "time." It's an innocent enough read but because of the tragedy and the sexual tension I don't know if I would want my 13 year old reading it. 14 maybe. 15 and up would be best. Which is why I have started marketing Filter more as a YA novel. It's just the books that I've read recently...Evermore and A Great and Terrible Beauty had some content that was mild as black pepper for adults but I wouldn't want my 13 year old reading them. So, Filter is a YA suspense/romance/family saga and more of  mystery than you know! (And I sold another book on Amazon! Yea!)