I have a friend, also a writer, who has the ability to switch
off all outside stimuli and can concentrate on what she is writing no matter
what is happening around her.
I’ve seen her writing great prose with ear buds in her ears
and music playing. She listens to Evanescence and similar bands, it’s not heavy
stuff, but it’s still a distraction. I can’t do that, I wish I could. Any noise
around me when I’m working seems to interrupt my thought processes.
At the moment the house is virtually silent, I’m alone in
the office but even as I write this I’m very conscious of the sound of the
dishwasher two rooms away. It’s a muted sound, just water running and the faint
hum of machinery but I’m very aware of it and it’s hard to concentrate. I guess we are all different and that’s just
the way I’m made, with a low distraction threshold but despite that I do manage
to produce the occasional piece of work and this week I’ve published “Liberty ” an
adventure/romance set against the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
It’s available from Amazon, all good book stores, on Kindle or
you can get a signed copy direct from me at a reduced price. Below you’ll find
the first few paragraphs and, if you’d like to read more, just let me know.
CHAPTER ONE - THE GATHERING STORM
The rain finally stopped. It had fallen in torrents for the
past week but now the Massachusetts
sky was clearing rapidly to a bright blue. Elizabeth , sick of being cooped up in the
house, took the opportunity to go out. The air was chilly but it smelled fresh
and clean as she turned away from the village green to walk through the pasture
beside the tavern. She had a lot on her mind. She needed to be away from people
to think clearly and she felt resentment when the stranger came into view for
the first time.
He was riding a big bay horse and
appeared where the road from Concord
emerged from the trees. The thick, black cloak he wore was wrapped close around
him against the early April wind and his face was not visible. A floppy-brimmed
hat was pulled well down over his eyes, but from the way he slumped in the
saddle, he was weary and appeared to have ridden far that day.
Normally strangers would excite
little interest in the village
of Lexington Boston
post road and travelers were frequent. These were trying times, though. Everyone
was on the lookout for strangers as John Hancock and Sam Adams, the leaders of
the patriots, were hiding nearby.
Unrest had been simmering in the
colonies for years. It had begun with the protests against taxation and was
fuelled by the shooting of civilians in the so-called Boston massacre and events like the famous
tea party of two years before.
Things had become worse lately. The
militia drilled openly on the village greens while arms and military supplies
were collected and hidden. Hancock and Adams were the leading lights of the
colony’s Committee of Safety, which controlled the militia and took up the
colonist’s cause against the government. As such, General Gage, the military
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wanted to arrest them in order to
transport them to England
to face charges of conspiracy and treason.
The suspicion of strangers was well
warranted. Only two weeks before, three British soldiers rode through the back
roads to the village
of Concord
The man coming up the road looked too tired to
be a spy however. His slumped posture told of his fatigue as he reined in his
mud-spattered mount and regarded Elizabeth
over the fence. His eyes were a penetrating pale blue and, to her surprise, she
realized his face was that of a young man, probably somewhere in his mid
twenties. At first sight she had thought him older and now as she looked at him
she saw those blue eyes were twinkling with amusement as they held her in their
stare. Suddenly for no apparent reason she felt a flush rising to her cheeks.
Momentarily confused she dropped
her gaze, knowing in an instant he had noticed her discomfiture because there
was a dry chuckle in his voice as he spoke.
