SHIFTING DREAMS by JM KLINE
Excerpt
Thank you so much for having me on your blog this week, Karen! I am so excited to share with you my book, Shifting Dreams.
As my first full-length story, Shifting Dreams has taken me a while to write, but I feel it’s been well worth the wait. Tessa’s story came to me in a dream, and I knew I had to share it.
As adults, we sometimes forget what it was like to go through high school, worrying about what other people think about us, worrying about what’s going to happen after high school, or just plain worrying. I thought it might be interesting (okay, I have to admit I had fun with this) putting a teenager into yet another volatile situation: learning she isn’t actually human after all.
I had a lot of fun writing this book, and I hope everyone has a lot of fun reading it.
ON TO THE EXCERPT! Tessa has just been told that she is a shape shifter. After talking with her best friend about it, she is wrought with worry. Read on to find out how she deals with this worry….
I sighed and left. When I crawled into bed that night, my mind was racing. What was school going to be like? I’d imagined high school to be pretty similar to middle school, only a lot harder. Now I had to wonder if I would walk in to class and see an ostrich. I had no idea what to expect.
A lot of my classmates got really excited about the new werewolf movies and stuff, but I’d never been into that sort of thing. Now that seemed to be my life.
I pictured myself as a slobbering half-human monster and shuddered. Just because Mom and Dad looked like “normal” animals when they changed in front of me doesn’t mean that I was going to be as lucky. What if I changed into some human-animal monster? Good luck trying to find someone who wants to date that.
I flopped to my side and stared at my door. My whole future changed and I had no idea what I was in for. That probably explained what happened next.
I noticed the dark first. I looked around and realized I was in a cave. An eerie blue light emanated from the center, where a cluster of quartz jutted from the earth. The top was flat and almost smooth and came up to my knees.
As I walked toward the pedestal – I realized now that’s what it was – I saw more details. I could see the ceiling, the same smooth red limestone that made up the foothills around my home. I looked down and saw I wore a white linen dress and no shoes. The stone was cool on my feet. I heard a humming noise coming from all around me and looked up, searching beyond the reaches of the faint light.
Several sets of glowing eyes emerged from the dark. As my eyes adjusted, forms started to materialize. I saw my parents in their animal forms – a beaver and a golden eagle. Behind them were an owl and a deer. When I saw the bear, I thought I should be frightened, but the sight actually made me feel better, maybe even a little safer.
I stepped up onto the pedestal and knelt in the center. My knees pressed into the rough quartz and I was grateful for the linen dress I wore, even as thin as it was. I heard a shuffling, and my dad pressed his head against my hand. Feathers ruffled beside me and my mom leaned into my left side.
The humming got louder and the animals moved close to me, creating a circle. I noticed some smaller animals I hadn’t seen earlier – a snake, a fox, a ferret, and a German Shepherd.
Suddenly, I felt a searing pain that started in my toes and worked its way up through my body and exploded in my head. I cried out and the pain stopped as quickly as it started. I heard my dad’s voice. It’s over sweetheart. I slowly opened my eyes and looked around. The cave had gotten bigger. Or maybe… I looked down and saw my paws –
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
Karen’s Killer Fixin’s
