Here’s the original teaser text written for Fearless, and the very first words I ever wrote for it:
It was the sudden harsh smell that blew out from the yawning hospital entrance doors that made him nearly turn on his heel and run back to Neville’s car, still sitting not twenty meters away, its lights flaring in the easing rain. That unnatural, too-clean, disinfectant smell of false promises and shattered hopes.
He hated it. Hated everything it was.
But somehow, despite the warnings from his nose and from his gut, his feet kept moving, and before he quite knew what he was doing, he was leaning over the admittance desk and asking the way to the emergency department. And then he was walking – quickly, the soles of his shoes squeaking and almost-slipping over the well-mopped floor – down one corridor and another, following the path of yellow lines he’d been told to follow.
The swinging double doors with the big block letters for Accident & Emergency were just ahead, but he barely registered them, instead just thrusting out both arms against the flat metal. Cold, the doors creaked a little when they swung open, like something broken.
Broken like a girl’s lithe and delicate body, twisted on the mossy ground with her golden hair and red dress splayed around her like swirls of reflected light in a tidal pool.
Then he thought, Her dress wasn’t red.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, pushing that ugly thought down deep as he stepped through the doorway. But then his stride faltered, as Sam – her eyes rimmed by dark streaks of black where her makeup had run; she’d been crying, oh, God, why had she been crying? – turned to look at him. And with a low and rumbling fury in her voice, she parted her trembling lips and spat:
“What in Hell are you doing here? Haven’t you done enough?”
And then, in the same second that his feet came to a stop, Ross felt his heart stop, too.
I always wanted to see text that I’ve written on a back jacket cover of a hardbound book. This may not be what makes the final cut, but I still enjoy it.
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