WIPpet Wednesday: Starting over

Well, our family has made it to June—and almost the end of the school year—relatively unscathed. We’ve had some bumps and bruises, but we’re hanging in there. Though with final exams around the corner, maybe I shouldn’t speak too soon. (Yep, that’s my two in the photo, messing around as usual.)

It’s been forever since I posted one of these, but I’m happily back in the game with a new WIP! It even has a title, courtesy of my friends (and kid-approved, even though it’s not a YA): Have a Little Faith.

While this story is not officially part of the Faithfully Yours series, and doesn’t center on the characters from those books, it is set in the same place. So expect a few familiar faces to pop up from time to time. I promise to share snippets when that happens.

This novel is about two very different people and the long-term friendship developing between them. It’s not a romance, although if I stick with my outline, both of the MCs will get their share of love. Today, I’m sharing from the very beginning, when our shy young doctor begins his new job in the tiny town of Concordia, NY.

Check out the two location photos. The first one is Geneva, NY, but I chose it for the look of the small town street of shops. (I tried to find stock images of Watkins Glen, but they were all of auto racing!) The second is Eagle Cliff Falls, which is not too far from where the story is set. The creek into which these falls empty is the main inlet for Seneca Lake.

WIPmath: none, as this is a brand-new novel. These are the first 4 paragraphs.

The family medicine center was adjacent to a strip mall consisting of a laundromat, an ice cream parlor, a tattoo artist, a bakery, and a used game trading store. It was one of those places designed in the 1970s to look like a modern home, only the maze-like interior contained doctors’ or dentists’ examination rooms.

Colin stared up at it, his bag in hand, as in awe now of its unattractiveness as he had been when he interviewed. It was a welcome distraction from his nerves. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been a real doctor before. The diploma and the two letters after his name assured him he was very much real. But this was his first solo flight, newly finished with his residency.

Here he was, in a small town on Seneca Lake. Picturesque, quaint, with both holdovers from eras gone by—like the house/office building—and some modern structures, like the school and his apartment complex. There was older lakefront property, perhaps original to the town, and neighborhoods so new they lacked mature trees. The stores in the strip mall looked like they could be decades old, while the shopping center on the south end must’ve been built in the previous five years.

Colin took a deep breath in and closed his eyes. The air smelled fresh, like damp earth and late summer flowers. Overhead, several different birds chirped their wake-up calls. A bumblebee lumbered past Colin’s thigh with a slow, lazy buzz. After living with the constant noise and traffic in New York, this was like ridding himself of a permanent tension headache.

Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Wrayburn for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!