Rainy Day Blogfest

Today is the Rainy Day Blogfest (click on those words to see the other participants) hosted by Christine at The Writer's Hole. She loves rain and wanted to see everybody's scenes where rain is involved. I wrote this scene specifically for this blogfest, but it goes in my novel Her Daughter. We're supposed to post under 500 words (I have 505, lol) sorry! Here ya go:

Liza sat at her desk watching the rain slide down the glass, obscuring her view of the front yard and the cars that drove by on the street. She couldn’t hear the TV downstairs because of the downpour; she knew her father was watching it, and her mother was in the kitchen making dinner. After sitting for another five minutes she made her decision. Putting her hands firmly on the desk, she stood and turned to her bedroom door. She swept through into the hallway and stopped just over the jamb. Listening for her parents, she tip-toed to the trapdoor into the attic, pulled it down, and slipped up the stairs like a ghost.
In the dusty attic she pulled the cord for the bare light bulb and closed the trapdoor behind her. The rain was even louder, rat-tatting on the roof with little insulation between her and the pouring wet. She pushed boxes aside looking for the one marked for her baby clothes. She found it under a smaller box. Settling onto the splintered-wood floor, she brushed the smaller box aside. It tipped over and dumped journals. She ignored those and pulled at the old cardboard box with her baby clothes inside. When she tugged the top open, dust flew into her face and made her sneeze. She stopped to listen for any sign that her parents were coming, but all she could hear was the relentless rain.
Out of the musty box she pulled a bonnet and long dress: her christening gown. Then she found a blanket with teddy bears on it and a yellow summer dress with frills along the edges. She wiped at the tears that made tracks through the dust on her face.
She set the dress in her lap, smoothing the wrinkles out of it and plucking a piece
of fluff from the collar; she turned to the journals. Randomly selecting a pink one with yellow stars, she smelled it first. It made her sneeze twice. But it smelled of plastic and paper with just a hint of a flowery perfume. She opened the pages and let them fall open to somewhere in the middle.

Mother walked in. She saw me. With Josh. Naked. In bed. My first time. We were right in the middle of it all and the door burst open. I’m mortified. She saw him, on top of me, under the blankets. She slammed the door shut again. When I went downstairs (he climbed out the window) she called me a whore. I’m so ashamed.

Liza slammed the journal shut in sync with the next beat of thunder. Was that why all the hostility? She tucked the other journals back in the box, hid the pink one under the yellow dress in her baby box and put everything back the way it had been.
Sneaking back to the trapdoor, she made her way to her bedroom and sat at her desk again to watch the rain slip and glide down the glass of her window.

Guess That Character Blogfest - The Reveal

Today is day two of the Guess That Character Blogfest hosted by Jen of Unedited. Yesterday you guessed what my character looked like according to her voice. Now I'll give you a photo and a short description of Liza to see if you were right. The photo is from Paloma in Flight on flickr.

Liza from Her Daughter:

Long brown hair, deep brown eyes, slender and short (I kind of gave that one away). The dress in this photo almost matches the wedding dress. I imagined Elizabeth's dress from the Pride and Prejudice ball at Netherfield (the movie with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth).

She is timid, especially when it comes to her mother, but she has her reasons. And she is very much in love with her college sweetheart, John.


Talli Roland was right on.
Nicole Murray had her personality down.
Steph Sinkhorn pinpointed her style and the fact that she smiles because she's in love.

Now my question is: what do we take from this? Is my voice not strong enough, or are people reading the character the way they want to read? Obviously you can't get a complete picture of who she is without the rest of the book. So what do I do with this information? Anybody have any ideas?

Guess That Character Blogfest!

It is time for Guess That Character Blogfest! I will put a snippet from my novel about Liza here, you guess in the comments what she looks like, and tomorrow I'll post a photo. Go check out the other participants and the lovely Jen from Unedited by clicking on the photo for the blogfest.

Snippet from Her Daughter:

They arrived at the mall and went into some of the fancier dress shops. Liza didn’t like anything in there so they went into a privately owned shop down the road from the mall. There wasn’t a lot of selection, but after digging through the racks, Sarah came upon a very simple, white dress. It was spaghetti strap with bunched fabric over the chest and a slimming, straight drop to Liza’s calves. There was a tiny bit of sheer tulle sticking out of the top and another tiny layer of it running along the bottom hem. Liza put it on in the dressing room and didn’t want to take it off again.
“Girl! I want to see it. Get out here,” Sarah called.
Liza finally walked out with a big smile. “I love it,” she said.
“Oh wow, me too. It’s amazing. It even works on your shortness.” Sarah walked over and peered down at Liza.
“Not funny. But it is beautiful.” Liza looked up at her six foot friend. “This is the dress. God I wish I could wear this on my real wedding day.”
Before Liza could slap her hand over her mouth, Sarah grabbed her wrists and looked her straight in the eye. “What did you just say?” she said and laughed. “Are we having a secret wedding? That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Tell me, tell me now.”
“Yes. John finally saw how my mother is at the wedding planner’s office yesterday. She picked pink, yuck, for the aisle runners. John said it wasn’t a good idea because he knows I hate pink. She told the planner we would go with it because it was perfect.”
“What a witch.”
“No, Sarah. She’s still my mother. I don’t care how she treats me, she’s still my mother.”
“You are too sweet for your own good.”
Liza twirled around in the dress.