Excerpts from my first novel:
The Crystal Dream
Excerpt #1
Excerpt taken from Chapter #4.
Mystico sat back on the couch and waved his magic wand. “Well, friendships can endure
a lot of grief, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Annabel. You’ve just got to find a way
of opening them up to magic, that’s all. Use your imagination.”
She sighed for a moment and then continued. “I’ve always had a good imagination,
Mystico. It's easy to see myself in any book I read. I would always wonder what it would be
like if I were the hero.” Anna closed her eyes for a long moment and sighed to herself while
remembering countless times that she’d picked up a new book and completely lost herself in
the story.
Mystico laughed as he waved his wand over the two of them. He then blurted out, “You
mean like this, Annabel?” Suddenly, Anna found herself standing on a raft made of large tree
trunks, looking into the eyes of a large black man, who stood near a small white boy steering
the raft. The shock of this new situation gave Anna quite a start, and she spent the next few
moments looking all about her, at the raft flowing along the wide Mississippi, through the lazy
currents, beneath all of the lovely trees. Anna could even sense all of the things about her as if
she were really there.
“Lawdy, Massa Huck, we done collect us a spook,” the black man shouted to the boy as
he jumped backward. The boy’s eyes looked as though they were about to pop out of their
sockets.
“Howdy, Ma’am,” the boy said after a moment. “The name’s Huck Finn, an’ this here’s
Jim. He’s my frien’. Are you really a spook, Ma’am?”
Anna tried hard not to laugh. “Yes,” she said in a low voice. “I have come from afar to
visit you.” She looked down and smiled at the beauty of the old-fashioned dress she was
wearing, as well as the feeling of the breeze blowing through her hair. The fresh scent on the
breeze seemed just as real to her as well.
“Well, I reckon I knowed who you is, then,” the boy said with self-assurance. “I bet youse
the li’l girl, Mistress Emmeline, whose room I done spen’ a spell o’ time in. I’ll bets you done
heard me readin’ your po’try, way up there in heaven, din’cha?” He didn’t appear to Anna to
be the least bit afraid of her, and his air of honesty seemed so real and refreshing, she found it
hard not to shout out with laughter.
“Yes,” she said in her most serious tone of voice. It took a lot of effort to contain her
laughter, but she held her own. “What did you think of it, Mr. Finn?” She tried to put on a
kind of southern accent that she’d picked up while living in Texas when she was very young.
“Oh, it was kinda moody, but mighty purty, Miss,” the boy responded. “You ain’t fixin’ to
put a hex on us, now is ya? My frien’ Jim an’ I ... well, we gots us a spell to travel yet, an’ ain’
t in need of no hexin’. Ain’t that right, Jim?”
Anna raised both hands in the air and began to wiggle her fingers. She watched the black
man drop to his knees. “No, Ma’am. Please, Missy. Don’t go a hexin’ us. We men’ no dis’
aspect, see.”
Anna’s eyes opened wide until Jim snapped his fingers and became Mystico again, who
was sitting on the couch with a cheshire-like grin on his face. “Oh, that was wonderful,” Anna
blurted out. The sudden change to darkness affected her vision for a moment, but soon she
was able to see the whole stage area again.