My Successful First Page

Here it is! My successful first page for my upcoming debut novel, The Charge. To be fair, right now it has marks all over it from my editor, so this probably won't be the final version you see in print. :)

Warren’s mother had taped his old Star Wars comforter over the patio door of their apartment.  He didn’t pause too long to wonder why.  His mother suffered from what his brother called, “severe eccentricity,” and blacking out the windows with old sheets for no obvious reason wasn’t out of character.  All in all, she had done better than he had expected in her first year with both of her sons out of the house.  Just in case that didn’t last, Warren always came back home when she asked him to.  But if she had called him because she had forgotten how to use the dishwasher again, he was heading right back to campus to enjoy the day after finals the way it was intended to be enjoyed - drunk and poolside.

He wiped his feet like he had been taught even though their revolting brown carpeting didn’t show much.  He kind of missed the crappiness of their apartment, although he didn’t know why because his new apartment in Eugene was equally as crappy.  Still, there was something about the smell of the pine trees in the courtyard and apartment pool chlorine that let Warren know that he was home.

His mother stood in their kitchen next to their yellow 1980s stove, peeling fake wood countertops, and a refrigerator that always looked too small next to Warren and his other super-tall family members. She held a box of uncooked spaghetti and didn’t respond to his presence right away.  It looked like she’d been holding and squeezing the box for a while and most of the pasta inside was broken.  Something was…off.  It was like she had gotten old overnight.  The wrinkle between her eyes was deeper and a few more strands of gray had found their way into her waist length black hair.  Warren took the box of spaghetti out of her hands.

“I was going to make you lunch,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

It was true.  The two Red Bulls in Warren’s hung over and now worried stomach were not sitting well. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.