Lucky Seven Meme and Previews

I just learned that a writer friend, Ardyth DeBruyn, mentioned me in a blog post called "Lucky Seven Meme." Ardyth writes adventure and fantasy with strong female characters and a wicked sense of humor.

The rules of Lucky Seven are this:  I'm supposed to go to my current Work in Progress, find the
7th chapter,
7th page,
7th line,
and copy down the following seven lines or sentences.

Now, this might work for Ardyth, a prolific writer who likes to work on several books at once.  For all I know, she could go to her seventh work in progress to start this off.  Alas, I have only one Work in Progress at the moment, and I'm only on chapter 4.  However, I have two books currently in press.

I turned to The Ice Castle, due out in August from Scarletta Press, only to find that the seventh chapter is the shortest chapter in the book.  It has only eight lines (four sentences) on the last page.  Still, I guess I'll give you the four sentences.

Varoq's huge feet raised clouds of snow that billowed around them as they whooshed across the plain.

 A long time later, Ezengi spoke, and the sled creaked to a halt at the edge of a snowy field bounded by a low stone wall.  Just ahead, the roofs of a town rose through the mist.  Stomping toward them through the snow came a husky young man with a scanty mustache and a dark green bandana looped around his throat.

Hmm.  Does this give you a sense of the book?  I don't know.

 Let me try The Desperate Case of the Diamond Chip, which is coming out from Tumblehome Learning at the end of this month.  Here goes.

"Do you know Fairchild now has more people than the town I grew up in?  I'd love to start small and brand new again."  He fell silent, staring out the windown down at the valley, which was dotted with orchards, fields, and clusters of building.

 "Why can't we go in the fab?" asked Clinton.

"The fab has to stay unbelievably clean. Even a hair or a flake of skin falling in the wrong place can ruin a batch of chips."  He turned to Selectra.

The "he" in this passage is my father, Robert Noyce.  Two time-traveling kids from our current day are visiting him, trying to learn enough about integrated circuits to solve a mystery in their present about a missing diamond semiconductor.  Yes, science, mystery, time travel, and history, all in one slim volume! My father is gazing out the window of his small plane (he liked to fly) and wondering whether he should leave Fairchild to start the new company that became Intel.

The last step in the Lucky Seven game is to tag seven other authors.  Here they are:

Marva Dasef , whose third Witches of Galdorheim book comes out this month,

Anne Ipsen, who primarily writes historical fiction,

Ardyth DeBruyn (cheating, obviously, since she tagged me),

Randy Susan Meyers, author of a harrowing novel of sorrow and survival called The Murderer's Daughters,

Denise Jaden, a Canadian author of contemporary YA fiction,

Mark Peter Hughes, author of Lemonade Mouth and other contemporary middle grade and science fiction that appeals to boys, and

Elle Strauss, writing YA and middle grade fiction.  Give them a look!