Well, I’m still hard at work editing the first Sir Kaye book right now. It’s going well, but it’s a lot of work, so I thought that today I would share just a short excerpt from the first chapter…this excerpt involves the first meeting between Kaye and Reggie, the boy who becomes Kaye’s best friend and shares with him in all his adventures. Reggie’s in a spot of trouble, as you will see…but he can tell you about it in his own words…
“I was usually very careful when I explored the Knotted Woods. I’d heard hundreds of stories of young boys that entered the Woods, never to be heard from again, and even though I’m not sure all the stories were true, I sure didn’t want anything like that to happen to me. But this particular morning I found a young fox cub that seemed to have lost its mother. As I moved slowly towards the cub our eyes met for one sharp second. The fox’s eyes were dark and had a little spark in them. It didn’t seem afraid at all. It took a good long look at me like it was figuring me out, and then it started walking away. It looked back at me over its shoulder and then without even thinking about it, I started following after the fox cub. The little cub was fast and kept darting back and forth and under logs and around trees and I struggled to keep up. My heart was racing faster than it ever had before. I was so close to it! Then the fox dashed under a fallen tree and made a sudden sharp turnaround just as I was leaping over the log. I wasn’t able to change directions in midair, and I landed hard on both feet right in the middle of one of the Knotted Woods’ mostly deadly traps—quicksand! I was stuck fast.
At first, I was just surprised, but then I was suddenly more afraid than I had ever been in my life. I realized this was why my parents had forbidden me to go into these woods alone. I started trying to pull my feet out of it, but this only made me sink faster into the murky porridge. I was soon up to my knees. Then I remembered something I had been told about quicksand—that if you get stuck, don’t move! Moving will only make you sink more quickly. So I tried to calm down and be very, very still. It helped a little. I wasn’t sinking so quickly, but now what was I supposed to do? It was up past my knees. There was only one thing I could do, and that was to shout “HELP!” at the top of my lungs! But since I was exploring where I wasn’t supposed to be, how would anyone hear my calls for help? I could only hope some stray bandit might be nearby and that he felt like doing something good for a change. Anyway, I’d rather deal with bandits than quicksand. I could at least talk to bandits. Arguing with quicksand wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Although I might have eventually tried it if I hadn’t happened to turn my head and see the very interested-looking, green-eyed, short-nosed, ginger-haired face of a boy looking through the bushes at me. It startled me. My heart almost jumped out of my chest and landed in the quicksand next to me…”
That’s all for today. I hope you like it! Please don’t forget to come back and check out this blog next week for an exciting announcement…hint: there will be prizes!
