Snippet Saturday: Secondary Characters

Snippet Saturday is the brainchild of author Lauren Dane, wherein a group of authors selects thematic excerpts from their work and shares them on Saturday mornings. This week the theme is secondary characters, and I hope you're in the mood to read a lot, because nearly all the Snippet Saturday authors have joined in to share excerpts today!

I'm sharing an excerpt from my recently released free short story called "The Worst Christmas", which is a prequel to "What She Deserves". The main character of the story is Winnie Sampson and all the others are secondary characters. In particular I enjoyed writing Winnie's little sister Tabby:

***

“How was the banquet?” Mom asked her. “Speech go okay?”

“Fine.” Her feet began to thaw. Finally. She was glad her parents hadn’t been there to see her get in trouble with Mrs. Beaker. The holiday banquet was members only.

“Fine fine or I don’t want to talk about it fine?” A towel draped over Mom’s shoulder, and the house smelled like dessert and kerosene.

“Fine fine.” Winnie added a detail so her mom would quit prying. “The food wasn’t that good.” Especially not the beans.

Her mom was an excellent cook. Winnie was spoiled when it came to food. She had a super high metabolism, not that being supermodel skinny got her any attention from boys. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. No titties, no dates. When Chase McKnight had stared at her chest, the only thing he’d seen was the stain.

No, this night officially couldn’t get any worse. Seriously. Winnie was sure of it.

“I took a pumpkin pie out of the oven before we lost power. Will that help?”

But it could get better.

“Definitely.” Winnie made her way carefully through the darkened house to the kitchen where she found her younger sister, Tabitha, shoveling down pie by the light of a flashlight. “Where’s the pie?”

“Last piece,” Tabby said through bulging cheeks.

“You’re such a pig.” Pumpkin pie would have been a nice bandage on the wound of her crappy night. Losing to Peter, embarrassing herself in front of the whole club, ruining her sweater, and then that thing with Chase possibly calling her ugly. Now the night really couldn’t get worse.

“Want a bite?” Tabby opened her mouth wide and stuck out a pie-covered tongue. “La la la.”

“Gross.” Winnie sniffed her way around the kitchen and located the pie pan. Sure enough, empty except for crust. “Mom, Tabby ate the last piece of pie!”

Mom entered the kitchen and set the lantern on the counter. Its brilliant white mantels made Winnie squint. “Tabitha, I told you one piece. One.”

“Big piece.” Tabby belched and laughed.

Tabby was eleven, hooked on basketball, and a pain in everybody’s behind. “I’m full anyway,” Winnie grumbled. “How long do you think the power will be out?”

“I don’t know.” Mom glanced out the kitchen window, into the darkness of the back yard. Sleet tapped the windowpanes, building up on the sills like crystals. “Surely they’ll fix it in a couple hours.”

“Is it just us?” Tallwood was a rural community, lots of farmers and not much industry. The population was spread out across the county, and Winnie’s family lived down a gravel driveway in a large private lot.

“Helen called and their power’s out too. I’m glad I finished the pie. I don’t know if we have enough kerosene for the camping stove.”

A couple times, they’d lost power for a day and cooked meals on a portable kerosene stove. Once in the summer they’d just camped out and roasted hotdogs, turning an annoying circumstance into a family vacation.

Winnie didn’t think they’d be camping out tonight. The temperatures were supposed to drop to the low twenties and stay there all week, although the forecasters always pretended there was going to be a white Christmas even if it was in the sixties and sunny. It was just a thing the local stations did.

This wasn’t Christmas. And ice wasn’t white.

“I’m going to go watch some TV.”

Tabby ticked her plate with her fork. “Can’t, there’s no electricity.”

“On my laptop,” Winnie said. “I downloaded an episode of the new Star Trek.”

“Can’t, the battery’s dead.”

“No, it’s not, I charged it this morning.”

Tabby laughed again and Winnie whirled to face Mom. “If she’s been on my laptop again, she’s grounded. You said so.”

“Dad said I could,” Tabby insisted. “I had to do my homework.”

“Homework? There’s no school for two weeks!”

To read the whole thing: http://authors.thesamhellion.com/?p=597

To read more secondary characters:

Vivian Arend
Moira Rogers
Ashley Ladd
Anya Bast
Jaci Burton
Kelly Maher
Lauren Dane
Leah Braemel
Mandy Roth
McKenna Jeffries
Sasha White
Taige Crenshaw
Shelli Stevens
Shelley Munro
Eliza Gayle
Victoria Janssen
Juliana Stone
TJ Michaels

Jody W.
www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com