The wonderful Anne McAllister tagged me in a meme (I had to go look that up on Wikipedia. (I’d always thought “me me” was what babies said when they wanted something – little did I know!) and this one is all about lucky sevens.

The object of the game is to go to Page 77 of the latest book or work in progress or whatever, and go to line 7 and then quote the next 7 lines. Then I’m supposed to tag another 7 writers to do the same. (Won’t they be delighted to hear from me:-))

Anyway, it looked like more fun than actually tackling the manuscript so I thought I’d play – and I picked up The Storm Within, because it’s kind of topical right now and found myself on Page 77 of the UK version, in A Royal Wedding anthology (the US version appears below – but it’s the same novella).

And here goes my seven lines (have counted from line 6 as it’s the start of a new paragraph and I do want this to make some sense:-)) 

A flash of lightning rent the skies and shook the very foundations. A boom of thunder followed hot on its heels, along with a burst of rain splattering against the windows.

“Is it always stormy at night here?” she asked him, when the rolling boom had finally died away, breathless with the shock of the onslaught.

“Not always.” He was leaning back in his chair, his jaw set, his eyes as hard as the rock this castle was constructed with. He picked up his spoon. “Sometimes it’s stormy during the day too.”

*     *     *

And here are the “lucky” seven authors I’ve tagged!

Carol Marinelli

Annie West

Fiona McArthur

Barbara Hannay

Yvonne Lindsay

Michelle Conder

Lilian Darcy