Casimir Greenfield - A Taste of Bloodstones

I'm leaving Bloodstones alone for a little while. I've made quite a few adjustments over the past week or so and now it has landed on the Harper Collins Authonomy Editor's Desk, I will not edit again for the moment.

I joined an interesting forum thread on site. The premise is that an author submits the first six hundred words of their work as if presenting it to a prospective agent. The faux agent then evaluates at which point he or she would stop reading and toss it onto the slush pile.

It's a tough forum, but ultimately it should help to hone and enhance a work so that it is ready to face the cruel world.

I have included the six hundred words I ended up with, approved by a number of the faux agents. I will NOT be posting the original draft!

We are asked to add a short and a long pitch;

Short Pitch:

Death, lust and infidelity on a summer’s day. Lives will change forever in the idyllic Cotswold countryside deep in the heart of the Bloodstones.

Long Pitch:

Summer has arrived in a Cotswold village at the edge of the Severn Plain. Olivia Lowell is an unassuming person in her early fifties preparing for an exhibition of her watercolours in the local church during the village fete. Her newest work is a departure in style, an exorcism of her creative past. Her acute sense of detail coupled with her changing physical state alters her perception of her ordered life and the lives of those around her.

Her husband, Gerald, is involved with a young girl. Olivia suspects nothing at first, but is uneasy about the changes within her and in the changes she notices in Gerald. During the fete, a body is discovered in the woods above the village. With a murder investigation in progress, the village is in turmoil. Gerald is missing, and Olivia's world is turned upside down.

In the days following the murder, Olivia re-evaluates her safe and secure existence and discovers a person within herself of whom she had lost sight. 

And then: Bloodstones - the first 600 words! Just thought you might like to read, comment and read more if you'd like...

Chapter One.

              Olivia woke early to catch the first light. She dressed quietly in the dark bedroom, and crept downstairs for muesli at the kitchen table. Before leaving, she poured coffee into Gerald's mug, crept back upstairs and left it near his clock radio without waking him. She paused, and gazed down at him. His sleep was fathoms deep. She wallowed in the heat rising from their bed, his musky sweat her perfume for the day. She resisted the overwhelming urge to smother him with her pillow, leaning down instead to kiss his forehead. He moaned gently from the depths.

             As she closed the front door behind her, a sensuous melange of loam and honeysuckle caught her breath, clearing her head, keening her purpose.

             A vague mist hung over The Stanleys as she threaded her way through the crusted cow-pats along the ramblers' rutted path. The sun had not yet risen over the hills, the landscape diffused and pale in the scant moments before dawn.

            This was her favourite time. The moments of quiet before the rest of the world awoke. As she moved past the curtained windows of silent rooms, the delicate lingerings of a brushwood bonfire drifted lightly around her. She hurried down from the brow into the dip, crossing the plank bridge over the brook that edged the playing fields. She passed the familiar limestone wall. Through the railings and across the yard she could just make out the words carved above the doors; 'JUNIORS' and 'INFANTS'. The school was a school no more. Now it housed a play group and the polling booths. It was easy though, at this early hour, to fly back to the crowded classrooms, where the smell of chalk mingled with Devon Violets, giggles and farts.

            Olivia thought of Gerald, still cocooned in the heat of their bed. She wished that she had made more of the sleepy moans he had offered her, but these were the hours she was loath to miss. The whole day would have been full of regret and spite. The days were becoming too few to toy with.

            Somewhere a window slammed shut. Someone was awake. She touched her cheek and it felt cold and bloodless.

            Olivia walked on briskly, the soft pad of her brogues sandwiched between the cooing of the wood pigeons and the thrum of a distant generator. She could pinpoint the sounds. Colour began to seep back wherever she looked.

            She moved onward and upward through avenues of beeches, her thoughts now an unwanted carpet of seedlings. The last few yards left her breathless and she felt her scented armpits moisten, darkening the fabric of her blouse.

            She found the stile that broke the dry stone wall, dividing the Wood from the Common. The grass was damp with dew, but she sank down, suddenly exhausted. Even though the sun was barely grazing the calcium outcrops, and she would normally wait until noon, she unscrewed the cap of the flask of coffee she now so desperately needed.. She lay back against the cold stones and closed her eyes, feeling tired and old. She thought she could hear his deep breathing, his low moans. Thought she could smell again the harsh odour of his sweat, crushed between them like aromatic petals.

  

Gerald’s coffee was still warm when Dawn arrived.

    "Quick...come away from the window..."

    "It's all right...you don't 'ave to worry. I seen her go past my place ages ago. Her'll be up thur all day with they stupid paints of hers..."

    "Don't talk like that. She does lovely work. She sells them..."

    "They be pretty enough...goes nice with they curtains...the pinks and that..."

    "Come away from the window..."

The girl turned and drew hard on the lipstick stained cigarette between her lips. She blew smoke into the room.

    "Come yer...I wants you. Her ent gonna see us from up thur..."

    "Listen...I don't want her to get hurt, that's all..."

    "Aw...little Gerry don't want to hurt her! What'd her say if her seen us now..?"

    "Shut up..!"

    "Here, watchit, you randy old bugger. You better be nice to me..."

    "I don't like it when you're cruel about her, that's all..."

    "Her'd be right upset, though, wouldn't her..?"

Gerald walked over to the window and took the cigarette from between her lips. She ran her vermilion nails over his back, raking his skin, almost drawing blood.

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