Rainbow Snippets*-- Welcome, 2021

Well, I think I survived. I know everything will not magically become better, but I have hope, and I wasn't completely sure of that a few months ago. New Year's Eve at the House of Jones was like any other night — popcorn and a little T.V. time (we're rewatching Firefly). Now, the countdown to Spring begins. 

My snippet this weekend is from When Silverfish Dance. Morgan and Barry are staying at a high-rise hotel on the Loop in Chicago, New Year's Eve '73, and this scene is Barry looking out the window. I wrote this right after I'd spent a weekend in Chicago with my husband, and the hotel was much taller than I'd expected! Told from Barry's POV:

     Barry looked out over the city from their thirtieth-floor window as the sun said its last farewell and lights blinked and glowed around them. In the distance, car headlights traveled around the Loop in molten yellow-gold ribbons and he had a clear view of the lake, its earlier blue almost black now, becoming an emptiness in the night next to the life that spread out from its shore. So many people, he thought, scurrying here and there, hurrying home to their families or heading out to New Year’s Eve parties; this great mass of humanity on the move below them.
     The wind whipped and howled around the building, and he imagined he could feel it sway. Tall buildings made him uncomfortable, and yet here he was. He wasn’t fond of heights and he avoided looking straight down, but if he kept his line-of-sight straight out he could escape the unforgiving weight of vertigo.

*Rainbow Snippets is a (Facebook) group for LGBTQ+ authors, readers, and bloggers who gather once a week to share snippets from a work of fiction–-a WIP or a finished work or even a book recommendation. If you're interested in following a diverse group of authors, check it out here.