Hey everyone!!!! It's me. Right now I figured that I would do something that I've kind of been putting off. I'm going to put on a little bit of some of my books on my blog. Here's how it works. I've taken three of my favorite books that I have written/wrote, and you have to tell me what you think. I don't care if you hate them, I want to know that too. It doesn't matter what you say as long as you say something. So yeah, here I go... 

This one is called Katherine Kelly and about a girl who wins a song writing contest. Now she has to deal with some minor fame and school and... well, just being a teenaged girl. This is the first part of the first chapter. 

1 Winner

   I had entered this contest many times, but I had never really expected to win. I had merely wanted to get the country familiar with my songs. I had never even dreamed of hearing “…and the winner of America’s Best Song Writer contest is…. Katherine Kelly!!!!” Yet here I was, about to crawl under my seat, being applauded for my okay writing skills. I was just a fifteen year old from Kansas, nothing special, who had made it this far in the songwriting contest.

       “Miss Kelly, are you here?” the announcer asked. I jumped into action. I smoothed by skirt and stood up. I grabbed my note cards in my clammy hands.

       Every girl’s worst nightmare, is falling on the way to the podium, well… better me than you, right? Yes. I tripped on the red carpet. I bit my lip and kept walking.

       “Um, well…” I started. “I guess I’ll start by saying how lucky I am to be standing here right now, and thanking my mother for bringing me here tonight. I have entered this contest three times, and I was very surprised when I heard my name being called…”

       The rest of the speech went by in a blur. I wasn’t sure how fast I was talking or if I was mumbling, or even if I repeated the last sentence five times. When I was done, it took people about three seconds to start clapping.

       I took the trophy the confused announcer had handed me and stumbled back to my seat. I looked at my lap. I counted. One onethousand. Two onethousand. Three onethousand.

       “Um, thank you, miss Kelly, but you were supposed to sing your song for us. Would you like to come back up?”

       I sat frozen in my seat. Not only had I made a fool of myself already, but I was about to humiliate myself to mortal peril level. I couldn’t sing! Sure I could write songs, but sing? Sure, I took choir, and I had sung that one line solo that one time, but sing?

Sorry, I think I skipped something. I. Can’t. Sing.

But, what else could I do? I stood up, my skirt stuck to my legs with sweat. I tugged on the thin fabric… and my hand slipped. I tried two more times and then gave up. I walked slowly back up the steps the stage.

The music started. I struggled to find the words that I had known for so long.

I sang

And sang

And sang

The song passed. There were no more words to sing. Once again, the audience paused. This time I knew why. I couldn’t sing. Told you.

I almost ran down to my seat in the front row. I sat down, willing this horror to be over.

“Thank you for that, Miss Kelly. And, as usual, we are going to add a little pizzazz to the prize,” the announcer said.

Every one on the TV show had always groaned, so that was what I did. And I was the only one. Lovely.

I bit my lip. Was I going to have to sing my song again? Was I going to have to share the prize? Drat. I don’t like either option.

“You, Katherine Kelly, are going to have your song recorded and published, and sang by Faith Yellow! Not only that, but you are going to get to go shopping, see a movie, and have dinner with Miss Yellow.”

My heart did a back flip. I felt sick. I grabbed my stomach with one hand, and my mouth with the other. Faith Yellow? There was no way. None. Zero. Nada. Goose eggs. I was just a normal teenager from a small town in Kansas. I didn’t have enough money to go shopping with a superstar! Wow.

This book is called Keiran. It is about a girl who sees a boy in school staring at her. This is the part of the third chapter where she finds out why Keiran is staring at her.

 

You’re being an idiot. I told myself as I walked into the lunch room. No you’re not. The other voice said. But I knew that, for once, this voice was wrong. I was obsessing over something that I wasn’t even sure was true. This wasn’t right. Yet here I was, paying the lunch lady, and silently scanning the room at the same time.

A hand shot up as I watched, and started to wave. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I realized that Keiran was waving, and he was waving at me.

I walked slowly over to him. I ended up standing behind the bench that stood opposite his.

“Can I… sit down?” I asked awkwardly.  I sound like an idiot. I told myself. No you don’t. The other voice told me. I didn’t believe it.

“Of course,” he said courteously. His voice sounded familiar. Safe. His voice sounded exactly like the one that had worried so much when I was hurt. I wanted to fling my arms around him and thank him for caring, do something nice for him, but instead I smiled and set down my things.

I looked down at my plate and started to pick at my food. I could feel Keiran staring at me the whole time. I didn’t get very far with my food before Keiran bit his lip, sighed, and started to talk.

“Listen, Macie… what I’m going to tell you won’t make sense, you won’t believe me, and you’re going to think I’m crazy. You have listen, it’s the truth, and you need to hear it.” He said slowly. I didn’t know how to respond, I said what I was thinking.

“Um, okay.” I said shrugging.

“I’m… well, I come from a family… and we have a special job. My last name isn’t really ‘Hill’. It’s Savior. Kind of. I’ll explain that later. But our job is to protect the world from the Seekers, who are kind of like the bad-guys in a fairytale.

“Seekers are a huge family, but we’re not… well we’re not all related. Some of us don’t even know each other. But exactly half the population are Saviors. Each Savior is born at the time of his or her… I don’t know what to call it, but they are born at the same time as the people who they have to save.”

He was right, I didn’t believe him.

“So you’re telling me that every person in this room has a, uh, Savior?” I said, looking at the nerd table. If anyone needed a helper, it was them. I mean, if this was all true, then they wouldn’t walk out of the bathroom with their heads smelling like toilet water.

“Yes, but they’re not always needed. Some Saviors get to live their lives out without even knowing what they are. But others have to save their… their person. Like me.”

“Well, why are you telling me this? Who’s your person?” I asked. I felt like I should have known. But I didn’t. Keiran stared at me again, but now it was just incredulous.

“Oh…” I said, surprised. “But why do you have to save me? I’m not anything special, I don’t plan on helping to destroy the world or anything.”

“Destroy the world? Macie, that’s not what they want to do. They want to study it.”

“What?” I asked.

“They don’t want the world to be destroyed. The Seekers aren’t human, they come from an alternate universe. Thousands of years ago, a Seeker got lost in space and ended up here. He was intrigued in the weak things that they called Humans. They want to experiment on us, not destroy us.”

         “Oh… would I know of any one that was a Seeker?” I asked him. I didn’t believe him yet, but I was on the fence. He seemed to really believe what he was saying.

         “Think about it. When or who would have helped with the ‘experiments’?” His emphasis on the word experiments scared me. He made it sound like they weren’t really civil. Then it hit me.  

         “Hitler.” I said shortly. “Hitler and the Holocaust.”

         “Exactly.” He said softly. “In the 1940s it was Hitler. He helped the study by throwing a dart and choosing a people.” I gasped. “Figure of speech, Macie. He chose the Jews, and he put them all in concentration camps. Then they were easy to study.

“And then, even later in history, A. Mitchell Palmer helped to create the Red Scare. His dart landed on people in general. He just rounded up a bunch of folks and said ‘Okay you’re coming with me and we’re going to shove you all in jail and study your minds.’ And there’s no doubt that it will happen again. Soon, if you ask me.”  

         “But don’t people learn history to keep away from there past mistakes? Why do you have to protect me?” I asked. My head was bursting with questions, and I couldn’t answer them.

         “Like I told you, the Seekers aren’t human. They don’t learn history, they make it. As to why I have to protect you, Seekers go after the people that are most likely to go against them, make it harder. They go for the nice, innocent people. Like you.”

         “Oh. How do they know who is good and who is bad?” I asked.

         “They read minds.” He said shortly, like it made him bitter to think about it. “We’re so like them it makes me forget sometimes. Forget how hard it can be to choose the right thing to do.”

         “They read minds?” I asked incredulously, choosing to ignore the bitterness in his voice. I didn’t like it, but I was beginning to believe him. “And if you’re so like the Seekers, can you read minds too?” I asked. I probably should have wondered that if he was so much like them, if he was a good person, but he was so reassuring somehow, I didn’t even think to worry.

         “No. We… we read emotions.”

         “Oh.” Now I believed him fully. How else would he have been able to tell how I felt? All those times when he had looked at me like he could see right into my mind… in a sense, he could.

         “Do you believe me?”

         “I don’t know.”

         “You don’t have to.”

         “Is that why you were staring at me?” I blurted out. “So that you could make sure I was safe?”

         “Yes.”

         “Is that how you could look at me like you knew what I was thinking? Because you can read emotions?”

         “Yes,” he winced as he said it.

         “I have one more question.”

         He smiled at me. “I don’t think that’s true.” I scrunched my nose, knowing he was right.

         “When I first saw you… I didn’t recognize you. I know most everyone in my classes, but not you. But then when I asked about you, everyone looked at me like everyone knew who you were. I didn’t think about it at first, but… were you here before a week ago?”

         “No.”

         “Allright, one more, maybe two.” I said, giving in. He laughed. It was a nice sound, and it healed all the doubts that I had had before. I believed him now, just because his laugh made me want to laugh with him.

         “Why? Why is it that they all think that you’ve been here forever, but I didn’t even know your name?”

Keiran bit his lip. “Well, I have theories. I think it’s because you’re so individual.”

“Individual?” I asked him.

“Yes. Everyone else believes what the Saviors want them to believe because they’re afraid to think otherwise. They think that if they show that they’re different, they’ll be laughed at, ridiculed. You weren’t afraid of that, and so you could see clearly.”

It made sense to me… sort of. “All right. Last one. When I think something negative about myself, or something along those lines, a… voice… would tell me to stop. It would tell me to be nicer, or tell me what I knew was true.” I sounded so stupid. No you don’t.

         I gasped. The voice inside me head didn’t change, but I knew who it was now. My head snapped up from the table that I had been staring at, to look at Keiran. He pressed his lips together.

         “How do you do that?” I asked.

         “Once a person that is being taken care of by a Savior sees their Savior by the first time, the Savior can help them make the right decisions. It’s not that they can here what you’re thinking,” he said quickly. “It’s just that they can feel the negative energy coming from you. And they try to stop it. The more negative you are, the easier the time the Seekers will have recruiting you. Basically, we’re connected.”

         Hmm, I liked how he said ‘we’. Is that way to cliché? “How will I know when they come to recruit me? You said that they were humanoid.” I asked.

         “You won’t need to. I’ll right with you from now on. Now that I’ve met you, I’ll be able to read how you’re feeling from anywhere. But I’ll most likely be around most of the time.”

         That gave me kind of a flutter inside. I hadn’t said anything yet, but he was so good-looking. His dark hair went with is dark clothes and muscular body. His eyes were a dark blue, almost black. But he hadn’t answered my question.

         “But how will I know?” I asked. “I want to, even if I don’t have to.”

         He winced. “Well, to Seekers, they look like withered old bodies, empty of everything but hatred. To humans, it varies. It depends on how they feel. If they’re angry, bitter, or sad, the Seekers will look like the prettiest person that they’ve ever seen. Or else they look very close to someone that they love. If they are kind, loving, happy people,” he gestured to me. “Then they look like horrible old people who have no life or love.”

         They way he described them made me get the goose bumps. This was the weirdest thing I had ever heard. But yet I believed him. What I didn’t believe was that he was pegging me on the nice side. But I wasn’t nice. I mean, I wasn’t rude, or bad, but I was mediocre, like most people.   

         But, thinking back to what he had said earlier, the fact that he would be hanging around with me a lot more shouldn’t have pleased me as much as it did.

 

And last but not least, Mally. This (reaaaaaalllly far out) one is about a teenaged girl who finds a box sitting on her doorstep. What's in it? Read on to find out. (Wow that was cheesy...) 

“Mom!” I yelled. “We got a package! Can I open it?” and in truth, the package was addressed to the whole Terriss family, so I could open it if I wanted, but I had to ask first.

       “Sure!” Mom yelled back from upstairs. “Who’s it from?” she asked. I looked, I hadn’t noticed earlier. Hmm. That’s odd, it didn’t say.

       “I don’t know Mom. It doesn’t say on the package.”

       “Yes it does, it always does. Let me have a look.” She came downstairs and looked at the package. “Hmm…” she said slowly. “You were right when you said there was no return address. Go ahead and open it. I’m curious now.”

       I was too, so I ripped the tape off as gently as possible, remembering the ‘Fragile’ sign on the top. At first, I thought the package was pure blanket. I dug through them to try and find what was underneath them. All of a sudden I struck something hard. No, soft, but harder than the rest of the blankets.

       I lifted it out of the box, and it started to whimper. I looked at it more closely, realizing what it was. No, who it was. 

       I was holding a gorgeous, blue eyed blond little girl, almost one year old. She couldn’t be old enough to take away from her mother yet. Not really. I didn’t know what to do.

       Mom didn’t speak. She just stood there staring at the girl. I did to, but I cuddled her, and she cuddled right back. She seemed to like it, but not as much as I did. She was so sweet and innocent, and every time I looked at her I wanted to shield her from the world, so that nothing could ever hurt her.

       Every now and then she would grab my finger, and I thought I would never be able to let her go. Finally my mother spoke.

       “I’m going to unwrap the rest of the blankets, and see what else is there. Will you go get a washcloth and a phone? Wet the washcloth with warm-ish water and bathe her down. Then bring me the phone and we’ll call the police.”

       “The police?” I asked, shocked. Mom wanted to hand over this perfect and beautiful child to the police? How could she? She should just adopt the pretty little girl. She didn’t seem like she could be any trouble at all.

       I did as I was asked though, and brought the little girl up to the bathroom. I started thinking of a name for the girl. Thinking… thinking, thinking… I decided that I liked the names Rosie, Lilly, Nessa, Molly, and Sienna. But none of them fit. They weren’t pretty enough for this gorgeous, sweet, innocent, perfect, blue eyed blonde.

 

that's it for now... (seeing as I think this is the longest post I've ever put up). Comment Comment Comment, and I'll see you later.