Colette Davis's Blog

#excerpts

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“An angel. She’s an angel.” The women in the group were paying attention to this reading listening intently their eyes were round, locked on this woman, nodding intently with each sound she made. 

“I’m hardly an angel. How did you come to read palms?” I began to pull my hand back. But she held it for a minute. Her grip tight. 

“I learned from my mother, and hers taught her, and so on and so on.” 

 She folded my fingers and handed me back my own hand, “I have the sight too you see. But I hear people, ghosts and spirits.” She tilted her head. “But you’re no spirit.” 

“ No, I’m not. I travel with the army. I am a nurse. ” Chuckling slightly I began to leave her when she suddenly ran up beside me. “I will talk soon, more to come ya? You have unusual patterns, you skip and dance

[Excerpt from Love in an Era Book 1 Copyright Colette Davis]

Suddenly he spoke, to me.“Ma’am, how did you come to the Hurtgen forest?” He was looking straight at me, blue eyes staring unflinchingly, waiting for my story. I could have been a spy, that would be the most plausible reason a woman would have been wandering the battlegrounds in an unforgiving rocky forest.

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So I drummed up a tale. I knew from research that most American women travelling with the US Army were nurses so that is where I went with my complete lie.“I am a nurse, sent to the front lines. Somehow I was taken from my detachment. The last thing I remember was running in the woods, and then getting shot.” I smiled, would he believe that? Also, what the hell was I supposed to do when he found out that my nursing skills were less than capable?  This was World War II, one of the bloodiest events in history, and here I was stuck, unprepared and scared. I had to get out of here. I heard my heartbeat in my ears. 

He smiled, and looked earnestly at me for a moment. “Well, madam, that is a strange story. I don’t think I have ever heard of a nurse, who is supposed to be stationed in a town suddenly end up on the front lines.” He didn’t say another word, but I was being baited. My heart beat so loudly in my ears that I could barely understand my own response.

While working on my first book Love in an Era, I drew a lot of inspiration from all the awesome time travel series that have been out there. Time travel historical fiction is the absolute best! I’m a historian and the best part of writing is that I can absolutely time travel with fiction.

I wanted to share a little of the first paragraph of my story. A story of a writer who is transported back in time to the 1940s. But she goes back even further, but I’ll save that tantalizing bit for later. Enjoy!

I was running into the woods, pine needles scraped my cheeks and branches tore at my winter coat. The forest was quiet, and dense. I moved faster, pushing my gloved hands through the bare branches, and bramble. For a moment I stopped to listen, but I couldn’t hear him. All I heard was the sound of the wind and the creaking of the trees as they bent and moaned. My heart thumped out of my chest, beating harder and faster-my mind racing. Where did he go? Was he hurt?  I couldn’t find my son. 

Breathing heavily, I moved stumbling over the sticks and debris that littered the forest floor. I began to panic. I yelled into the silence until I was sure that I had screamed my son’s name a thousand times. The high lilt of my panic echoed back to me, and trailed behind me. The trees, and hills the only living witnesses to the sound. 

There came a small clearing where the trees bordered a semicircle around the meadow. The remains of an old German bunker constructed of gray concrete, and made to show only a glimpse of the fortress. Underneath the mossy grass covered mound lay a web of interconnected rooms that served as sleeping quarters, an armory, and a strategy room. All that was visible to me was the cone shaped structure with a slit now darkened and empty. The entire area was covered in trees and vines.