Ten Year Anniversary
Ten years ago this week, Taken by Storm's scuba-diving hero, Michael, swam out of award-winning YA author, Angela Morrison's brain and onto her page. Join the anniversary celebration! Win your own copy of the brand new paperback! Snag Taken by Storm's Kindle ebook for only $ .99! Unbroken Connection (Book 2) and Cayman Summer (Book 3) are free on Kindle! Hurry. The promotion ends Friday, July 20th. Don't own a Kindle? Download free Kindle apps for your laptop, tablet, iTouch, or phone.
In Taken by Storm, Mormon girl Leesie has life figured out until devastated Michael lands in her small town high school. He needs her like no one has before. A rare journey into a faithful LDS teen’s intimate struggle.
from Taken by Storm . . .
I’m lost to his firm chest,
his slender fingertips, his long wavy hair,
his mouth sucking my bottom lip—
The world spins, the stars shift,
and I can’t see anything except his smoky
gray eyes gazing into mine.
You scare me, whispers
from my mouth across his.
Good, he breathes into me.
I need you to save me.
"[Morrison] handles the topics of religion and premarital sex gracefully without passing judgment. The message has less to do with religion than learning to respect and cherish others while staying true to one’s own beliefs.” – Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
Brand new paperback and reformatted ebook with fully scalable fonts. Includes bonus, never-before-published scene, "Airport Good-bye!"
Angela Morrison is the award-winning YA author of Taken by Storm (Books 1-3) and Sing me to Sleep. She grew up in Eastern Washington on the wheat farm where Taken by Storm is set. She's an advanced NAUI, Nitrox certified scuba diver. The hurricane that kills Michael's parents was inspired by a real-life diving accident. She wrote Cayman Summer, book three of Michael and Leesie's saga, with fan input, at http://caymansummer.blogspot.com.
from Taken by Storm . . .
I’m lost to his firm chest,
his slender fingertips, his long wavy hair,
his mouth sucking my bottom lip—
The world spins, the stars shift,
and I can’t see anything except his smoky
gray eyes gazing into mine.
You scare me, whispers
from my mouth across his.
Good, he breathes into me.
I need you to save me.
"[Morrison] handles the topics of religion and premarital sex gracefully without passing judgment. The message has less to do with religion than learning to respect and cherish others while staying true to one’s own beliefs.” – Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
Brand new paperback and reformatted ebook with fully scalable fonts. Includes bonus, never-before-published scene, "Airport Good-bye!"
Angela Morrison is the award-winning YA author of Taken by Storm (Books 1-3) and Sing me to Sleep. She grew up in Eastern Washington on the wheat farm where Taken by Storm is set. She's an advanced NAUI, Nitrox certified scuba diver. The hurricane that kills Michael's parents was inspired by a real-life diving accident. She wrote Cayman Summer, book three of Michael and Leesie's saga, with fan input, at http://caymansummer.blogspot.com.
Our Exclusive Guest Post:
I doubt the guys engineered it so the egg would fall first and your physics text would smash it at the perfect angle for spraying the contents all over. Luck. Locker stacking isn’t that scientific. Wipe off the books. They’re fine.
Shoot.
They got your story.
Pick it up. Soak the egg off the first page. Let me do it while you get control again? I know you’re leaving tomorrow morning, but you can retype it. A couple pages in the middle can be salvaged. The bell’s going to ring. Stand your ground. Keep working. They’re staring. So what? You’re not sobbing that loud. Here’s more tissue.
Sure you can type crying. (Some day your kids—yes, you have great kids—will tease you over typewriters.) Go hang out in the back of the typing room. The biz teacher is cool. He’ll let your use the Selectric. His son probably helped stack your locker, so he owes you. Your other teachers don’t expect you in class. News travels sonic.
I’m sorry you feel rejected. Get used to it, girl. If you’re going to be a writer, rejection never goes away. Don’t let it slaughter you. Use it. Grow from it. You can get to the end of this endless day, and then you’re out of here for a whole week. Tuck your freshly-typed story safe in your backpack, hop on the bus, go home and pack. Tomorrow your life is going to change.
Greyhound bus ride across the state, Spokane to Seattle, with a sweet, brainiac boy and a larger-than-life-suede-leather-wrapped-hippy-throw-back chick who’ll make a great character in your debut novel. Ferry from Seattle to Port Townsend. Out to Fort Warden in a funky black London cab imported from England to a mystical place called CENTRUM. Your first writing workshop. Heaven on earth.
You meet Deb, a soul-mate through the rest of high school even if she does live in Tacoma, real live authors who tell you to keep writing, sixty other kids who feel just like you, and a way cute blonde guy who gives you a rough-hewn Pacific Northwest beach shell he found and kisses you good-bye at the end of the week.
Excuse me? Are you listening? I said he kisses you! Can you still hear me? Maybe it’s better if you can’t. Go experience the wonder of your first steps into writerness free from any prescient prejudice. Those kids will be part of your soul forever.
This is your moment. Take up the call. Be a writer. Fall in love with Puget Sound, waves, lighthouses, and a way cute blonde guy. Forget egg baby slime all over your world. Take lots of notes, though. For me. I’ll need them.
All my love,
Angela
P.S. Get Frank Herbert to sign your copy of DUNE. What were you thinking?
Pictures:
Hello Brandi and followers,
Thanks so for helping me celebrate the ten year anniversary of the day Michael swam out of my brain and onto my page. I love visiting your blog. This letter to my teen self is based on an incident that I made Leesie endure in my first draft of Taken by Storm. Ron Koertge, brilliant YA guru and my first VCFA advisor, made me cut the scene. It overwhelmed the whole story. And turned Leesie into a big crybaby. Not good. She needed to be tough. He let me leave the groping scene in there. I changed it up--gave Leesie Michael to defend her.
I've developed a new novel that takes it's inspiration from this event from my bleakest day in high school. It's called Egg Baby Wars. I've got the plot all figured out and plan to start writing it this fall. I based Beth and Derek's whirlwind romance at the Choral Olympics in Sing me to Sleep on my whirlwind romances at writing workshops.
Dear Teen Angela…Annie,
You were still Annie back then, huh? At least to friends. Family. Angela to the teachers. Never Angie.
I knew I’d find you here today, locked in the teacher’s private bathroom trying to scrub bright yellow egg-slime off your cream pants, bawling your eyes out. The whole school, all one hundred students, is in shock. You never cry—not here, where people can see.
You save tears for your bedroom behind a locked door. You cried plenty when you got voted out as cheerleader. Tears didn’t dare slip out of your eyeballs when your guy fell hard for the new girl. No broken heart here, people. Move along. They’re perfect together and you’re not. Right? You didn’t let yourself feel anything at all when that creep groped you on the bus. A stupid dare. Everybody knew—and no one shouted a warning or said anything—not even you. But you’re sobbing now. Waterworks galore. Good. Get it all out. You need it bad.
Here, I brought some super soft tissues with lotion in them. Blow your nose. Wipe your face. Give up on the pants, hon. You’re just making it worse. You need to go out in the hall now and wipe the slime off your books and locker. Take these damp paper towels. I’ll bring dry ones.
Deep breath. Steady. Unlock the door. I’m here. There’s your locker right across the hall. Nope. This isn’t the time to discuss the pros and cons of the school’s no-lock policy. Small town trust. Nobody steals stuff here, but that doesn’t stop guys from stacking your locker and mixing your kidnapped egg baby family living assignment into the cascading chaos.
You were still Annie back then, huh? At least to friends. Family. Angela to the teachers. Never Angie.
I knew I’d find you here today, locked in the teacher’s private bathroom trying to scrub bright yellow egg-slime off your cream pants, bawling your eyes out. The whole school, all one hundred students, is in shock. You never cry—not here, where people can see.
You save tears for your bedroom behind a locked door. You cried plenty when you got voted out as cheerleader. Tears didn’t dare slip out of your eyeballs when your guy fell hard for the new girl. No broken heart here, people. Move along. They’re perfect together and you’re not. Right? You didn’t let yourself feel anything at all when that creep groped you on the bus. A stupid dare. Everybody knew—and no one shouted a warning or said anything—not even you. But you’re sobbing now. Waterworks galore. Good. Get it all out. You need it bad.
Here, I brought some super soft tissues with lotion in them. Blow your nose. Wipe your face. Give up on the pants, hon. You’re just making it worse. You need to go out in the hall now and wipe the slime off your books and locker. Take these damp paper towels. I’ll bring dry ones.
Deep breath. Steady. Unlock the door. I’m here. There’s your locker right across the hall. Nope. This isn’t the time to discuss the pros and cons of the school’s no-lock policy. Small town trust. Nobody steals stuff here, but that doesn’t stop guys from stacking your locker and mixing your kidnapped egg baby family living assignment into the cascading chaos.
I doubt the guys engineered it so the egg would fall first and your physics text would smash it at the perfect angle for spraying the contents all over. Luck. Locker stacking isn’t that scientific. Wipe off the books. They’re fine.
Shoot.
They got your story.
Pick it up. Soak the egg off the first page. Let me do it while you get control again? I know you’re leaving tomorrow morning, but you can retype it. A couple pages in the middle can be salvaged. The bell’s going to ring. Stand your ground. Keep working. They’re staring. So what? You’re not sobbing that loud. Here’s more tissue.
Sure you can type crying. (Some day your kids—yes, you have great kids—will tease you over typewriters.) Go hang out in the back of the typing room. The biz teacher is cool. He’ll let your use the Selectric. His son probably helped stack your locker, so he owes you. Your other teachers don’t expect you in class. News travels sonic.
I’m sorry you feel rejected. Get used to it, girl. If you’re going to be a writer, rejection never goes away. Don’t let it slaughter you. Use it. Grow from it. You can get to the end of this endless day, and then you’re out of here for a whole week. Tuck your freshly-typed story safe in your backpack, hop on the bus, go home and pack. Tomorrow your life is going to change.
Greyhound bus ride across the state, Spokane to Seattle, with a sweet, brainiac boy and a larger-than-life-suede-leather-wrapped-hippy-throw-back chick who’ll make a great character in your debut novel. Ferry from Seattle to Port Townsend. Out to Fort Warden in a funky black London cab imported from England to a mystical place called CENTRUM. Your first writing workshop. Heaven on earth.
You meet Deb, a soul-mate through the rest of high school even if she does live in Tacoma, real live authors who tell you to keep writing, sixty other kids who feel just like you, and a way cute blonde guy who gives you a rough-hewn Pacific Northwest beach shell he found and kisses you good-bye at the end of the week.
Excuse me? Are you listening? I said he kisses you! Can you still hear me? Maybe it’s better if you can’t. Go experience the wonder of your first steps into writerness free from any prescient prejudice. Those kids will be part of your soul forever.
This is your moment. Take up the call. Be a writer. Fall in love with Puget Sound, waves, lighthouses, and a way cute blonde guy. Forget egg baby slime all over your world. Take lots of notes, though. For me. I’ll need them.
All my love,
Angela
P.S. Get Frank Herbert to sign your copy of DUNE. What were you thinking?
Pictures:
My senior picture. I loved disco--and sewed that outfit myself.
The second cute blonde guy I met at a writing workshop. He lived close enough to take me to his high school prom.
Tekoa High school where Taken by Storm is set, and I got slimed with egg baby guts.
The beach where the way cute blonde guy and I watched waves crash to the shore.
My collection of rejection letters!
Author photo
Angela Morrison, MFA
TAKEN BY STORM (Penguin/Razorbill, March 2009)
SING ME TO SLEEP (Penguin/Razorbill, March 2010)
www.angela-morrison.com
TAKEN BY STORM (Penguin/Razorbill, March 2009)
SING ME TO SLEEP (Penguin/Razorbill, March 2010)
www.angela-morrison.com
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JP2FDK
Website: http://www.angela-morrison.com
Blogs: Cayman Summer (all things Michael and Leesie): http://caymansummer.blogspot.com ; Angela Morrison's liv2writ (my writing life and tips for writers and teachers): http://angelamorrison.blogspot.com ; What's the Opposite of Chewbacca? (opposite poems for younger readers) : http://chewbacca.blogspot.com
Excerpt - Prologue and Chapter One
Meet Leesie:
from Leesie's Most Private Chapbook, Prologue, Taken by Storm, "What does it Matter?"
What does it matter if
another jock pinches me
as I walk down the hall to Physics
and high fives Troy, celebrating
like he just scored
the season’s first touchdown?
As I stalk past Troy,
architect of my torture,
I’m frozen, a block of ice—
not a single drop melts.
All hail the Mormon Ice Queen.
What does it matter?
I know the commandment,
but I don’t even consider
turning the other cheek.
And, yes, it hurts, but
life without pain
isn’t much of a test.
This feeling can’t be lonely—
I’m not alone.
I walk with His hand on my shoulder,
His voice whispering in my soul,
His love soaring in my heart,
His suffering
my
salvation.
What else could possibly matter?
another jock pinches me
as I walk down the hall to Physics
and high fives Troy, celebrating
like he just scored
the season’s first touchdown?
As I stalk past Troy,
architect of my torture,
I’m frozen, a block of ice—
not a single drop melts.
All hail the Mormon Ice Queen.
What does it matter?
I know the commandment,
but I don’t even consider
turning the other cheek.
And, yes, it hurts, but
life without pain
isn’t much of a test.
This feeling can’t be lonely—
I’m not alone.
I walk with His hand on my shoulder,
His voice whispering in my soul,
His love soaring in my heart,
His suffering
my
salvation.
What else could possibly matter?
Meet Michael:
from Michael's Dive Log, Chapter 1, Taken by Storm, "Before"
The dive starts perfect. Perfect water. Perfect sky. Perfect wall. The ocean, warm, flat, perfect. I leave my wetsuit drying on the Festiva’s dive deck. Saltwater slips silky over my skin like Carolina’s caress.
Jeez, I miss her. Caroleena. She insisted on Spanish pronunciation. I thought this trip would help, but I can’t forget lying in the sun, curled together, my face lost in her thick black hair, holding on. Three months. Every day. More when she felt like it. I always felt like it, but I didn’t want to use her.
She dumped me on my butt when I took off to dive all summer at the condo. I wanted to bring her to Florida. Keep her close. Keep her safe. But she had to stay in Phoenix and work. Her family’s got nothing. And Mom flipped when I mentioned it was a shame the sofa bed in the living room would be empty. Dad was cool with it. He’s cool with everything. It should have been Carolina and me all summer, diving.
The creep b-ball jock she’s with now is after one thing, as much as he can get. Possessive, too. Freaked when I called her from the Keys. And when we were all back at school, she wouldn’t even look at me. Dad knew something was up, let me cut a week for the club’s annual “hot deal” hurricane season trip. So, I’m scuba diving my brains out, free diving whenever I can get a spotter, trying not to think about that jock pawing my Carolina.
Love. Makes me crazy. All of it. You get so close, like she’s part of you. And then she’s gone. You ogle the smiling waitress on the boat, who has your girl’s hair and wears a loaded bikini top and a sarong slung dangerously low. You appreciate the view while she serves you a virgin pina colada, but you still ache inside because now you’ve got a hole in your ribcage that won’t fill, a gash that heals way too slow.
Salt water’s my therapy of choice. [cut excerpt here for shorter post . . .but feel free to use the entire dive log]
I swim my makeshift free-dive raft, Dad’s old scuba vest packed with everything we’ll need, out to the wall. Mom’s late.
Lame. I know. Diving with Mommy. But she’s missing her scuba dive with Dad this a.m. to lie face down on the water all morning watching a breath-holding fanatic sink head first into the ocean. I got to give her props for that.
Spread out, Dad’s BC, the scuba vest, makes a decent place to hang between dives. I blow air into it until it bounces on top of the water and wonder if I’ll get that dive kayak I want for Christmas. I tie my diver-down flag to the BC raft and hook it all up to the buoy marking the edge of the reef. The ocean floor drops off hundreds of feet here forming a sheer coral wall. Still no scary pink slashed shark bait wetsuit jumping off the Festiva and finning toward me. It’s okay. We’ve got all morning.
Good old Mandy in Florida used to spot me. That was in no way lame. I faked shallow-water blackout all the time so she’d have to swim down, wrap her sexy body behind mine, pull me to the surface, and resuscitate me. Mandy. Another hole in my guts.
I’m tired of waiting. I sling my weight belt around my hips and cinch it tight. A few more pounds of muscle mass to my core and I won’t need the weights. I’ve got my body taught and toned. I can hold my breath forever. My heartbeat even goes slow-mo when I free dive. Total control.
I pop a quick sixty-footer down to the reef, bop with the juvie fish—yellow and black, blue, purple. Wish I could shrink down to their size and dart in and out of a coral mound happy, careless, flitting, free. Easy to be a fish. I wouldn’t make a freak of myself like yesterday when I finally talked to that waitress. She looks eighteen, twenty tops.
I pop a quick sixty-footer down to the reef, bop with the juvie fish—yellow and black, blue, purple. Wish I could shrink down to their size and dart in and out of a coral mound happy, careless, flitting, free. Easy to be a fish. I wouldn’t make a freak of myself like yesterday when I finally talked to that waitress. She looks eighteen, twenty tops.
I took my drink to the bar for a refill. “You want to hang out with me on your break?”
Chicks usually say, “Yes.” Babes hit on me way more than I hit on them. Even the older ones. I think it’s the hair. Boring brown, but it went wavy post-manhood. I keep it long. Girls can’t resist. I don’t take up their offers as much as I could. Mom’s got this thing about respect.
But my waitress didn’t say, “Yes.” She pushed her own thick, black, sexy hair that whispered, “Carolina,” out of her eyes and smiled to let me down easy. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. There’s nobody up on the bow. You could work on your tan.”
“Tan?” She’s Hispanic, gorgeous golden all over.
“Pretend.” I ran my finger down her arm. We both felt it. That charge when it’s right.
She didn’t get uptight and jerk away from me. I was getting to her. “And what will you do?” She blinked slow. Her mouth opened slightly as she exhaled.
I traced her fingers. “I’m pretty good with lotion.”
She laughed again, throaty, teasing. “Sorry.” She pulled away then. “Next break the Captain lets me call my kids.”
No lie. She handed me a picture. Three brown faces tumbling over each other. They stay with her mom up in Belize City. She misses them pretty bad. I felt sorry for her. Wanted to do something. I mean here’s this young, beautiful girl stuck serving drinks to creeps like me until her looks go. I wish I could get Dad to hire her, but I don’t think she types. I laughed it off, hung out with her while my drink melted. The whole thing made me feel useless.
So much easier to be a fish.
I leave the juvies playing hide-and-seek in the coral’s tiniest caves and swim over to the wall for a look. Nice. Steepest one we’ve been on. Blue, deepening to bluer, deepening to a thousand feet of blue. Perfect. I know I can break a hundred.
Today.
Every time I tried at the condo last summer, either the waves were too high or the currents too strong. That’s the Keys. None of that here. I turn away from the promising depths and swim toward sunshine.
When I break the surface, Mom’s all over me. “Dammit, Michael, you supposed—”
“Just warming up. Not a real dive.” I suck up. “Never without a buddy.” I duck under the BC raft, grab the weight belt I brought for her from the vest’s pocket, and surface.
“It looked like a real dive to me.” Mom fastens the belt, kicking slow to stay afloat.
I grin and give her a saltwater kiss on the cheek before I move out along the line stretched between the buoy and raft, positioned so I can dive straight down the wall. I float on my stomach, blow through my nose to clear my mask, shoot a spout of water out of my snorkel, and inhale—fill my gut, hold it a few beats, then blow it out nice and slow, expelling CO2, the waitress, Carolina, Mandy, even Mom, through that handy tube stuck in my mouth.
“Take it easy, this morning.” Mom treads water instead of taking up her spotting position. “Don’t go too deep.”
I keep venting, soaking up the blue world under me, eager to immerse myself in it again.
“No blackout today, right?” She says that every dive. I was ten that one time. Get over it.
A pair of painted angels drift over the top of the wall, their fins waving in time to my slowing heartbeat. I blow up my chest and gut, nine more mesmerizing cycles.
Mom maneuvers into position, face down on the other side of the line.
I advance to super-vents, stretch my head back so I can drive air into every chamber of my skull and torso, filling my throat and nasal passages, again and again until my fingers tingle perfect breathe-down. O2 maxed, totally zoned.
I inhale one last time, packing every crevice, and then pack more air, and more. Mom bumps my leg. Doesn’t matter. I’m Mr. Zen of the Deep. Nothing can penetrate this lean mean free-diving machine.
I slip the snorkel out of my mouth, bend at the waist, kick my massive free-dive fins skyward and shoot down through the water. One kick, two. My buoyancy slides negative at fifteen feet. I streamline it, conserving my hoard of O2. Don’t need to kick now. Pinch my nose and clear my ears—easy. I zoom past the top of the wall, equalize my mask, glance at the dive computer strapped to my wrist, seventy feet, clear again, eighty. The deeper I go, the faster I fall. I blow past ninety. Hit a hundred before I know it. The water’s so kicking clear.
I pull up hard, flip so my head points skyward, and work my fins to stop sinking. I want to celebrate. Kind of a deadly idea. A massive crab, all blued out, sits in a crevice sliced into the wall. He waves his claws in my direction. It took less than a minute to get down there. I have plenty of oxygen packed in my body, but I need it all for the ascent. No time for underwater fans.
I begin kicking for real, powering my giant fins back and forth. Don’t go anywhere. Freak. Ditch my weights? No way. Dive won’t count. My depth gauge reads 99 feet. Good. I’m moving—just doesn’t seem like it. I paste my eyes to the blaring pink triangle that is Mom and kick harder. Ninety feet, eighty.
I make the top of the wall with upward momentum. Acid scalds my leg muscles. My lungs weep for air. Still, I don’t chuck the weights. I keep eye contact with Mom so she won’t think she has to save me and wreck this dive. My chest vibrates with the effort of holding onto the last dredge of O2.
My legs get stiff. I force them to keep wafting my heavy fins back and forth.
The drowsy warmth of blackout creeps over me at fifteen feet, but I don’t give it any room. I blow my CO2. Positive buoyancy propels me to the surface. I blast through, plastering Mom. She squeals.
My starving lungs kick back mounds of fresh salt air.
“Your lips are blue, baby.” Her eyebrows draw together.
I suck O2 to my brain and stick my computer-strapped wrist in her face.
107 feet. Perfect.
“Whoa.” She doesn’t yell it and give me skin like Dad would have. “From now on you’re going to need a lot better spotter than me.” Mom starts untying the diver-down flag from the buoy. “Let’s head back.”
“We’ve still got tons of time.” I fin over to her. “I’m going again in a few minutes.”
“No way.” She struggles with my knots.
“Yes. Way.” My mask fogs up. I rip it off my head. A few strands of wavy brown chick-bait hair come with it.
Mom gets the rope loose. “You need to work on your knots.”
“I just got started.” I hock a ball of slime into my mask and rub it around with my finger. “What am I going to do back on the boat?”
“You’ve got yesterday’s dives to log.”
“I’m staying.” I swish my mask around in the water.
“Not without a spotter.” She winds up the rope and hands it to me.
I hook the scuba vest raft with an elbow. “Then spot me.” I put my mask back on, mess around clearing it of my wild hair, remembering how
Carolina tore at it the last time we were together.
Mom turns her back on me. “You’re diving way out of my league.” She unlatches her weight belt, lifts it out of the water by one end, and sets it on the BC raft. “You know I’m lucky if I free dive to thirty.”
“This is stupid. You always spot me.”
“Not anymore.”
“One more dive. Just to the reef. A baby could make that dive.”
“Can I trust you?”
How can I answer? We both know I’ll be down that wall again—freaking should be down that wall again.
“I’m not going to lie there and watch you drown. End of story.” She pulls her still pretty face into a crease. “You’re not free diving unless you’ve got a qualified spotter at the surface and a scuba spotter at depth.”
“Give me a break.” Nobody does that for a hundred feet. “It’s not like I’m riding a sled to 450.”
“Don’t give me nightmares.”
Right on cue, like Mom foresaw all and paid off the captain to get her way, the horn on the Festiva blares, over and over.
Mom frowns back at the boat. “Let’s go.” She starts swimming.
I hang back.
“Get a move on,” she yells. “They don’t blow that thing for nothing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
I would love to hear from you! (I always try to visit your blog back) I love links, so feel free to link to your blog or a post you like.
Sorry, but I am award and tag free zone, I do not have the time to return. Comments are reward enough :)