First Page Blog Fest

I’ve been a very bad blogger lately. I try to get at least one post up per week, am happy if I can get two and it’s been two weeks since my last one! Blogger fail. But I have been holed up, finalizing edits for my first book. Important announcements will be made this week!

For now, just a couple things. First, as you can see, I've made some changes. Instead of managing a website and a blog, I've combined them into one. So you can now get here through www.KristieCook.com and you can also see other information about me and my books. Soon, I'll have links to the web site for the first book. Very soon. ;-)

Second, my friend Eisley Jacobs, a fabulous writer, is preparing to go to Ethiopia on a mission trip. Her story will give you goose bumps. Please visit her blog and if you can, help her out. Even just a little bit, as you’ll see in the story, will help her reach her goal.

Third…OMG, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins!!! If you haven’t read these yet, I don’t care your age, you MUST. Great characters and a suspenseful story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I could not put these down. I’ve read them both twice in 8 days (I went through them so quickly the first time, I was afraid I missed important details). I know I’ll read them at least one more time before the third and final book comes out in August. Some people may not like Katniss, the main character, in the first couple pages but you can’t help but feel for her by the end of the second chapter. If you have a heart, anyway. So go read them! You won’t be sorry! And I hope the rumors are true that they’re making these into movies. I can’t wait!


Finally, I signed up for a First Page Blog Fest for April 2nd. With the holiday weekend, I completely forgot about it. Oops. For more First Pages, start here for all the links.

Here is my delayed entry, my first page of my first book releasing this summer. These first 25 lines have been so hard for me. In fact, they used to be completely different. I still don’t know if I like this as the opening. So your feedback would be wonderful.

Does it grab your attention? Enough to keep reading? If you read these lines in a bookstore, would you buy the book? Or at least read another page or so before making a decision?

Here it is…

9 Years Ago

The sensation of being watched clung to me like a spider web, invisible threads bristling the back of my neck and down my spine. I brushed my fingers across my shoulders, like I could drag the feeling off and flick it away.

It was ridiculous, of course. Not just ridiculous to think I could pull it off so easily, as if it really were strands of a web, but it was even more absurd to feel it in the first place. Sometimes people stared with curiosity when they picked me up on their “weird radars,” but usually they just ignored me. No one watched so intensely.

Yet the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end at the feeling of eyes boring into me as I visited my favorite Washington, D.C., monument for likely the last time. I sat on the stone steps with the stately Thomas Jefferson behind me and gazed over the Potomac River tidal basin, enjoying the peace just before sunset. Well, trying to enjoy it anyway.

I blamed the feeling on my unruly imagination, with it being twilight and the sky looking so ominous. It was the perfect setting for one of my stories. The sun hung low—an eerie, orange ball glowing behind a shroud of clouds, a column of steel-blue rising around it, threatening to snuff it out. I envisioned something not-quite-human watching it from the shadows, waiting for the cover of darkness to begin its hunt.

That’s all it is, just my fascination with mythical creatures, I told myself. Uh-huh. Right.

Surrendering hope for a peaceful moment, I hurried to the closest Metro station. The feeling of being followed stuck with me on the train ride home, but at my stop in Arlington, I forgot the spooky sensation. Some kids from school stood near the top of the escalator as I stepped off.

“Hey, there’s the weird girl who heals,” one of them said loudly to the others. “It’s s’posed to be really freaky to watch.”

“Hey, freak, got any tricks to show us?” another called.