The story so far

I love writing fiction. Like many I'm an aspiring and as yet unpublished novelist but I haven't written anything for ages. I'm not sure why really. I avidly read blogs about other writers and devour advice on how to write but just cannot apply bum to seat (as Chris of Home Thoughts Weekly - author of Turning the Tide and Move Over Darling - would say).

Anyway Chris has passed on a Lucky 7 Challenge in her blog this week (she threw the baton for anyone to catch - I caught!). The challenge is this:

• Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
• Go to line 7
• Post on your blog the next 7 lines, or sentances, as they are - no cheating
• Tag 7 other authors to do the same

Okay. I have four manuscripts to choose from - no, five! I have a trio of novels - all 50,000 words or just over - written during the three times I completed NaNoWriMo (after which my family begged me not to do it again, so I took a break). I also have a chick lit novel, the first draft of which is 54,480 words and a children's story, written about a character my children invented for stories at bedtime. That one's at 8,261 words so far.

Which one to choose? I have different feelings about all of them. The pain of writing the NaNo novels - 50,000 words in one month - is unforgettable. Do I despise them? Almost. Line 7 of Chick Lit is awful - notes rather than prose - and line 77 is too rude.

Instead you can have a bit of Eskima in the Land of the Giants, my story for H10 and R8. Eskima is a litle blue magical dream guardian for two little girls, Henrietta and Romy, their Mum Sweetie and Dad Darling. He lives in Attic Land (a magical land in the roof space of the house) where he deals with the characters and situations the children dream up every night. The book opens with him using his magic on an army of huffing and puffing wolves and some angry giants called Bozzarks.

By page 7 Eskima and the wolves are coping with a huge quantity of party food dreamed up by Romy, the younger of the two sisters. So far they've been snowed on by marshmallows, hailed on by humbugs and rained on by hot chocolate before becoming lost in thick, pink, candy floss fog.

By line 7 of that page they are wound up in the candy floss fog, all rather sticky and stuck.

Some days, Eskima reflected as he stood there swathed in candy floss, could be a little tiresome in Attic Land. He summoned up his magical powers and concentrated on the tips of his little blue fingers (which he could not see because they were hidden in a layer of pink spun sugar). There was a fizz, a stuttering yellow flash and then a small plume of grey smoke which wound and twisted its way up to his nostrils carrying with it the unmistakeable caramel smell of burned sugar. Eskima remained stuck to the spot like a big pink fluffy scarecrow. He resigned himself to a long boring wait while he either figured out the answer or it figured itself out for him.

Either way would be fine as long as it did figure itself out eventually and preferably before Henri and Romy filled Attic Land with any other weird and wonderful dream beasts or – worse – more Bozzarks. Talking of which, the ground was rumbling and shaking.

The Bozzarks are Eskima's main problem in Attic Land but later on he has to risk everything - being discovered by the adults - to help Romy when she gets into danger in the real world.

So that's mine. Like Chris I can't think of 7 authors to throw this open to, so I'm handing the challenge on to anyone who reads this and would like to have a go. Come on, don't be shy!