J. Taylor Publishing just released the authors in One More Day, to post our first 500 words.  I picked 178 words, just enough to get your mind wondering a bit about Stage Fright, my piece tucked in to all the action packed pages.  

     They warned me about the stage. It stretched out long, black and ice-hard with a curve around the edge, and Mean Girl, one of the cast members, stood at the perfect angle, a little behind me off to the left, but where I couldn’t escape her sneer. 
    “Do you remember the last time you danced on the lake, right before the blizzard in the spring?” my best friend Jess had asked the night before, in a long overdue FaceTime chat—the closest we’d come to seeing each other in months. “Feel the ice, and dance.”

     I sucked in a huge breath of air and pictured that day in my hometown, instead of the stage; the sky overhead had darkened, the rolling clouds pushed by a wind so strong, it whipped my long dark hair around my face. I remembered braiding my hair quickly and pulling my green stocking hat down over my ears and forehead. After grabbing my skates, I’d slung them over my shoulder and walked to the edge of the frozen lake.

The Theme of One More Day

What if today never ends?

What if everything about life—everything anyone hoped to be, to do, to experience—never happens?

Whether sitting in a chair, driving down the road, in surgery, jumping off a cliff or flying … that’s where you’d be … forever.

Unless …

In One More Day, Erika Beebe, Marissa Halvorson, Kimberly Kay, J. Keller Ford, Danielle E. Shipley and Anna Simpson join L.S. Murphy to give us their twists, surprising us with answers to two big questions, all from the perspective of characters under the age of eighteen.

How do we restart time?

How do we make everything go back to normal?

The answers, in whatever the world—human, alien, medieval, fantasy or fairytale—could,maybe, happen today.

Right now.

What would you do if this happened … to you?

… there is still one more round of edits, the final round, but I’d love to hear what you think. Oh! And stay tuned! Saturday, I have a guest post from an incredible author, all about steering the course, and refusing to quit. She’s done it. She’s still doing it. I’m amazed at this wonderful author’s talents and the fact that, yes, she is posting on my blog Saturday. Yeah!

~Erika