EXCERPT: "Through a Rain of Fire": Prologue

English countryside
September, 1934

The echoes of the train whistle faded into the distance as the engine reached a steady pace and the train snaked out of London.  Behind, the silver and mahogany-sable of the magnificent King's Cross station glinted in the bright morning sunlight.

Birds winged in speckled flocks from hedgerows as the train wound into the countryside.  Sheep lifted placid heads, interested in little but the green abundance of grass thick around them.

Inside the fourth car from the engine, two girls pushed their palms against the panes of the train window.  “It's beautiful,” said the younger.  “I loved London, but I miss the country.”

The older smiled at the mention of London.  “I suppose.  It is beautiful, but so was London.  In a different way.  All those wonderful buildings, Westminster Palace, the Houses of Commons!”

Shaking her two auburn pigtails over her shoulder, the younger girl settled back against her seat.  “I know.  We had so much fun, didn't we?”

The older girl sat back as well, her movements a odd mix of grace and awkward adolescence.  Her thin figure hinted at beauty on the way, but not arrived quite yet.  She lifted a self-conscious hand to her modishly bobbed red hair.  “I still can't believe Mum let me get my hair done.”

The younger girl snorted.  “She thought anything would be better than the poodle mop you had before.”

“You could have had your's done too, Julie!”

The girl called Julie shrugged, flipped her pigtails over her shoulders again.  “I like long hair.”  Then her face softened.  “But your cut does look nice, Liz.”

Her sister smiled at her.  “Thanks.”  She glanced out the window, then over at the aisle seats where their parents leaned against each other, mouths slightly open, heads drooped with sleep.

With mischievous cautiousness, she leaned forward.  “London was very educational, don't you think?  St. Paul's was especially interesting.”

The younger girl burst into stifled giggles.  “Do you think they guessed?”

“I hope to goodness not!  If they find I sneaked out of the hotel and then got both of us lost at night in London, I'll be grounded for years.”

“I sneaked out too,” her sister said complacently. “But it was a good thing you thought of meeting at St. Paul's beforehand.”

“You're telling me.”  The older girl clutched her short curls melodramatically.  Her sister snickered.

“Say, you know, we can use that for a...” she cast a cautious glance at their parents and lowered her voice, “a sort of code.”

“Code?”  The older girl cocked her head on the side.  “Oh, I know!  If we need to meet somewhere, just the two of us, we can say we're meeting at St. Paul's and no one will know what we mean!”

“Exactly!”  The younger girl clapped her hands.

Their father gave a started snoring gasp and her eyes widened.  The older girl's cheeks bulged with the held-in laughter.  She winked at her sister.

“I think...”

The bellow of the whistle cut off the words.  The engine slowed abruptly, sending the cars jolting together.  Suitcases, hatboxes, parcels flew across compartments, spraying their contents like innards.

Hysterical shrieks punctured the air, but in the fourth compartment, neither girl made a sound, just looked at each other, breath coming quickly.

The younger girl reached for her sister's hand.  “What was that—”

And then the world exploded around them as the engine derailed.  Torrents of steel and iron writhed like a tortured snake.  Terrified screams of agony pierced between explosions and the sizzle of molten coal as the train avalanched down the steep hill.

At the bottom of the embankment the train collapsed, cars toppled grotesquely across the smooth green banks.  Bodies lay flung around and inside.  Through the smoke and the flames the few survivors fought to escape.

And from the wreckage near car four, a tall thin girl stumbled out, blood streaking her red curls as she dug through the rubble, screaming over and over and over for her sister.

Welcome to Wings of Fire!

I'm starting this blog as a way to not only gain more readership as to the series that a friend and I are writing, but also as a way to better get ideas and theories out there for the series. We're in the writing process, and have not yet been able to get an agent for the first book. BY FOLLOWING AND COMMENTING ON THIS BLOG YOU ARE HELPING US GET IT PUBLISHED BY SHOWING THAT WE HAVE AN AUDIENCE! I am hoping to get a hundred people following this blog. Please help me out on this one by having other people you know read it! If they like it...tell them to follow it! Thanks much!

I'm Ruth Rockafield and my co-author is Nina Hansen. All credit goes to her for starting the series and I can't thank her enough for letting me write with her. I try hard to hold up my end of the bargain.

I want to make this blog as much fun as it can possibly be while still remaining on topic. ;) I might be able to get my younger sister to write up an interview and interview Nina and I and then I could post the interviews here... Also, Nina is making book trailers for the books that I'll be able to put on here. She has the cover for the first book, which I really want her to send me.

WHAT IS “WINGS OF FIRE”?

“Wings of Fire” is going to be a three-book period series set in World War II Europe. The theme of the series is courage. Courage to face today, tomorrow, and yesterday.

Book One is “Through a Rain of Fire”, and centers around a nurse (Liz Knight) in London during the London Blitz of 1940-1941.

Book Two is “A Fire is Woken” and is about a young RAF pilot (Peter Standish) who was seriously burned in the first book and his battle to get back to flying. Also, a young woman (Julie Knight, Liz's sister) who joins the SOE (British secret intelligence), trying to do her part for the War. The book climaxes at D-Day. (And yes...between said pilot and said girl there is a romantic story line). The book is set 1941-1945.

Book Three is still in the drafting process, and is called “The Fire Dwindles”. It is about trying to find the captured SOE agents in Germany as the Iron Curtain falls. 1945-1946 or so. It's still just very rough ideas, not even outlined yet.

Right now, we've finished “Through a Rain of Fire” and are almost done with editing. We just went back and did a major re-write of the entire beginning, which was far from satisfactory. I like it now and feel that it better represents the novel. We've been querying agents for almost a year, but have had nothing but rejections. This is actually our second major editing of the novel. We thought it was all done, but went back and looked it over and decided it would never do. So we're doing a complete revamp again!

We're writing the second book, and it is coming out in bits and pieces—not all of them in chronological order! We're only four chapters in, but we have large parts of the end completed. I personally think that it is way, way better than the first book. But the first book has Peter as a secondary character, and in the second book he's one of the two main characters... Peter is my character, and I love him. ;)

I also love Julie. They're both fun characters and it's been very enjoyable to write the book so far. We'll see how it turns out once we're further in. Sometimes the charm of writing gets lost the more time you spend on it. But we've been at it almost six months and the newness and excitements of the story is still definitely there. We didn't write all summer due to working and crazy schedules, and are just now starting to really get back into writing.

I'm going to try and keep you guys updated by not only what we're doing but I'll also post excerpts here. I can't post the whole thing...otherwise we'll loose first rights in publishing. Which would really not be good at all. Otherwise I would probably post the whole thing. But I'll try and post the best parts. Or the new parts. Or just the parts that I like. Like I said, I'll talk to my sister about the interview. That would be fun. I might also be able to have some friends who have read the book write up reviews on it and those could go here too. There are all sorts of pretty awesome stuff I can do. And remember...the more YOU contribute the more I can do!

I'll probably post the first excerpt in a few days. I'll post the prologue for the first book. So we can all be looking forward to that.

So until next time... TTFN!