Sunset Street Excerpt

Yesterday was another release day! Time to take a different turn compared to those wacko fairies from last month. Sunset Street is a YA urban fantasy, and it definitely has a more somber tone.

Per usual, you can now get Sunset Street from Amazon!

I have also slowly been pulling some of my titles out of Select and going wide with them. I'll have a post in a week or two with more information and links.

Until then, here's an excerpt from Sunset Street.

❦

Rain showered down on the scene, an occasional flash of lightning and rolling thunder in the background. Kind of desolate. I wasn't sure if such a game would help me forget the ache in my chest or if it would only exacerbate it.

I squinted, catching a flash of green behind the rain. A street sign, labeled Sunset. Of course.

The bleakness made me reconsider my afternoon plans. To clear my head, I went to the window. It squeaked, as reluctant to open as I was to put forth any effort, but finally gave. The sweet smell of rain drifted toward me, causing my mind to wander and dream of less lonely times -- those few boyfriends who had ended our relationship before I felt it had even gotten started. My need to be with someone was a show of weakness, and once they realized that, it was all over.

I returned to my computer, determined to do something to distract myself. If the game still seemed too dismal after a few minutes, I'd stop.

But I studied the little scene a bit longer. Maybe the houses hid amazing adventures, the bleakness a facade. What would it be like to stand in the middle of that street? To think I was the only person left in the world?

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, so I could get the full effect of the scent of the rain drifting through the room. The smell grew stronger and stronger. Ah, sweet rain. I imagined my upturned face feeling the drops shower down on me.

When I opened my eyes to play the game, I was no longer sitting in front of my computer. The scent of rain was overpowering -- I had given my imagination too much credit because the rain actually fell on my face.

I stood in the middle of the deserted street.

❦

Be careful what you wish for.

Stuck in her dorm room alone on a Friday night, Leah can’t imagine her loneliness getting any deeper until she pops a new game into her computer... and gets sucked into it. Trapped in a world of darkness and rain, she fears she’ll never see another living soul again. Until she meets Zach. He may be the balm for her heart she’s been searching for, but fulfilling her wish comes with a price. Is she willing to pay it?

Sense of Wonder in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz there are spoilers in this essay.


* * * * *


The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a story that is still popular over a century after it was written. This children's fantasy tale has been adapted for the stage as well as the screen, and many writers have explored the novel by creating new retellings (myself included a couple years back). There is a sense of wonder throughout the story that makes me smile every time I read it.

Portal fantasy is a type of fantasy that takes you into another world. And L. Frank Baum does just that in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by using a cyclone to drop Dorothy into the land of Oz. "L. Frank Baum Americanized the other-world fantasy" (Mendlesohn and James 26). Baum's main goal with this portal fantasy was entertainment, to create a piece of popular fiction that children would love without the addition of teaching lessons like most older myths and fairy tales. In the introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum writes: "It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out" (2-3).

And in his pursuit to entertain, Baum created a world and story that pulls the reader along with a sense of wonder. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is bursting with description, and the type of description that causes the reader to pay attention, so he or she becomes wrapped up in the world. Color, the contrast of light and dark, and the use of gemstones are especially prevalent. There is hardly a page without some type of description to evoke a sense of wonder.

The biggest device used is color. Dorothy lands in the realm of the Munchkins, where their favorite color is blue. The Winkies favor yellow, the Quadlings red. And near the Emerald City, everyone prefers green. These colors surround Dorothy at every turn, and she even puts on a pair of silver shoes that once belonged to the Wicked Witch of the East. The road she travels on to the Emerald City is yellow. One of the best sections that highlights the array of colors in this novel can be found right before Dorothy and her companions wade into the field of poppies. "They walked along listening to the singing of the brightly colored birds and looking at the lovely flowers which now became so thick that the ground was carpeted with them. There were big yellow and white and blue and purple blossoms, besides great clusters of scarlet poppies, which were so brilliant in color they almost dazzled Dorothy's eyes" (Baum 514).

The use of light and darkness is more subtle. When Dorothy first arrives in Oz, the sun is shining and she walks past many open fields. But she eventually reaches the darkness of the forest, where unknown monsters lurk. "It was almost dark under the trees, for the branches shut out the daylight; but the travelers did not stop, and went on into the forest" (Baum 250). There is a back and forth between the light and the dark throughout the novel.

And there are of course the gems that glitter in the Emerald City. But that isn't the only place we see such wonder. The Good Witch of the North wears a beautiful white dress. "Over it were sprinkled little stars that glistened in the sun like diamonds" (Baum 63). Even the cap Dorothy uses to call the Winged Monkeys is studded with jewels.

This sense of wonder saturates The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and because of it, Baum succeeds in pulling readers into this other-world, young and old alike. It's a story that is sure to live on for many more centuries ahead and to impact future generations.


Works Cited

Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. George M. Hill Company: Chicago, 1900. Public Domain Books, 2009. Kindle Edition.

Mendlesohn, Farah and Edward James. A Short History of Fantasy. Middlesex University Press: London, 2009.


NEXT UP: A reading list of classic fantasy from 1900 through 1949!