7-7-7 Challenge

Many, many weeks ago I was nominated by Arran Bhansal for the 7-7-7 challenge. As regular readers will know, I tend not to take part in awards or challenges as I try to keep as much of my writing time freed up for useful advice – or dare I say it – writing books. However, this challenge intrigued me.

The challenge itself is simple: go to the seventh page of the manuscript you are working on, go down to line seven, then publish the next seven lines. What could be simpler? So here is my 7-7-7 challenge from Absent Souls, published Friday 28th November:

He stepped to one side as a group of semi-naked students ran
past, whooping and hollering, clearly enjoying the freedom of being
able to do whatever they wanted. Well, nearly anything. The
Scrambles wasn’t quite lawless. There was still his law, and nobody
with any sense broke that. O’Driscoll smiled inwardly. If only they’d
known who they had nearly ran into. They wouldn’t have been
screaming with pleasure.

The passage comes from the point of view of Mick O’Driscoll, also known as the King of the Scrambles. O’Driscoll is a crime lord whose family has controlled the Scrambles – a semi-legitimatised lawless district – for generations. The local authorities turn a blind eye to what happens there because it acts as a pressure valve for the rest of the city. They are happy for O’Driscoll to police the area how he wants, as long as things don’t go too far. Unfortunately for O’Driscoll, he’s about to learn his control of the Scrambles doesn’t extend as far as he thinks…

Mick O’Driscoll was a very minor character from Second Chance but one I fell in love with. The son of a notorious criminal, he was sent to an elite boarding school when young to make connections with the children of the rich and powerful. It gave him a plummy accent and a worldview very different from his father’s, but despite his best efforts, he remains an O’Driscoll.

As with any challenge you have to pass on the baton. There are so many wonderful authors who I’ve had the privilege to get to know over the past year or so of blogging and I would love to choose you all, but the two people I’m going to nominate are:

Julie Lawford, from A Writer’s Notepad blog who has just announced she will be publishing her first book, Singled Out, in January.

Tammy Salyer (tammysalyer.com) who wrote the Spectras Arise Trilogy I enjoyed so much earlier this year and is currently working on something related to Vikings, if her twitter feed is anything to go by.

Over to you…

 

 

• Absent Souls
• Dystopian
• Science Fiction
• Second Chance
• writing