Welcome Wednesday – Comedy Tonight
Welcome to this week’s edition of Welcome Wednesdays!
Today we’re talking about comedy. It’s simple – authors, share with us your funniest scene or dialogue exchange or one-liner from one of your books.
Be sure to tell us a little bit about the book, and leave a link so we can learn more about it!
I’ll begin:
This is from the third book of the Dream Series, DREAM CHILD. To set up the scene, our heroine, Sara, and her best friend, Beth, are talking to Sara’s 4-year-old daughter Lizzie. Lizzie has just asked why, even though both she and Beth are named Elizabeth, Lizzie is nicknamed Lizzie, and Beth is called Beth:
“I’ve always been Beth. It’s all because of Kate,” she says, and then, before Lizzie can ask who that is, “my oldest sister. She started calling me that as soon as I was home from the hospital. My mother told me about it. She said that Kate had just finished reading ‘Little Women’ and that she loved it so much she decided I had to be Beth.”
That’s cute, except for one thing, but I catch myself before I can blurt it out. Poor Lizzie is totally lost, and Beth has to help her out. “When you’re a little older, Mommy can read ‘Little Women’ to you, or – heck, you’ll be reading yourself before too long.”
“I can read now! I can read books and everything!” She can, too.
“I know you can, honey. But ‘Little Women’ is for when you’re older, like Auntie Beth says. But I can tell you what it’s about. There are four sisters and their mother all living together while their father is away, and it’s about all the things that happen to them. And one of the girls is named Beth.”
“I wanna read it now!” I expected that.
“It’s just a little bit – uh, you’ll like it better if you wait a little while. Really,” Beth says.
“I didn’t read it until I was ten years old,” I add. “And there are some parts that are pretty sad.” Lizzie gives that some thought.
“I’ll read it when I’m five. I’ll be more grown-up then.” Lizzie says it with all the ceremony of a judge handing down a verdict. Beth and I both somehow manage to keep from completely losing it, but it’s very close.
A little later, while Lizzie is in the bathroom and out of earshot, I whisper to Beth, “Beth dies at the end!”
She sighs and whispers back, “Yeah. I’ve always tried not to read too much into that,” and we both laugh.
Now it’s your turn!
by
7 Replies to “Welcome Wednesday – Comedy Tonight”
Thanks for the opportunity, James! This is a scene from my award winning romantic suspense, HEARTS UNLOCHED:
“You’ve been through a lot today. I don’t want to add any more stress than you’ve already experienced. I’m not sure I could keep my hands off you. I’ll drive partway back to the city, then pull over when I get tired.” Marco kissed her again, then pressed soft kisses all along her jawline to her ear.
Then he pinched her ass.
“Ouch, you bastard,” Kate shrieked, stumbling away from him. But then, a giggle formed like seltzer in her chest and bubbled to the surface.
He laid a hand on her cheek. She twisted her fingers into his lapels.
“Are you sure you won’t stay? I’ll worry about you—”
“Bah. No need. I’ll turn up Andrea Bocelli and sing along. If that won’t keep me awake, nothing will.”
Book Trailer
Hearts Unloched
This is from double award-winner The Sparrow Conundrum, a spy/crime spoof. It’s a scene where Machin (codename Sparrow), on his first outing, is due to meet an agent for instructions. All agents have bird names, carry particular books and have to be greeted with specific coded expressions.
Amongst the shoppers outside Marks and Spencer at 3.28 the pressure was beginning to tell on Machin. He’d already seen four men with copies of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, but only one of them carried a single volume. Machin had bumped into him and knocked the book onto the pavement but it wasn’t the edition he was looking for.
As he picked it up, he presumed either that the man was a legitimate scholar specialising in Roman history or that Marks and Spencer’s main entrance was a sort of cross-roads for clandestine activities. He handed the book back. The man stared hard at him and said, “Swallows rarely fly at sunrise.”
“Really?” said Machin.
“Shit,” said the man, before snatching the book back, tucking it carefully under his left arm and resuming his wanderings around the pavement.
Another man who’d been standing at the entrance when Machin arrived was looking at his watch more and more frequently and, at 3.32, began to shout, “Fulmars are migrating early.” The shoppers changed course to steer well away from him, but he continued looking round at their faces and shouting his enigmatic information until a nondescript little woman carrying a bible approached him and said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, friend. Come with me.”
The man gave one more desperate look around, recognised there was no other salvation available, threw the copy of Stone Circles of the British Isles he was carrying onto the pavement, shouted “Bugger Kestrel”, and went off with his new-found friend.
Machin was so fascinated by the incident that he almost missed the tall individual with the receding gingery hair who hurried by the entrance carrying the Book Club Associates edition of the volume he was looking for. Hawk, for it was he, had approached the store just as the distracted man was shouting about fulmars. Hearing an unscheduled contact phrase being screamed to a crowd of Aberdonian shoppers, he’d panicked and increased his pace, caring little whether Sparrow had identified him or not.
But Machin had recognised the cover of the book and, with relief and gratitude, he ran after Hawk, pulled at his sleeve and said, “Excuse me, is that a Book Club Associates edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall?”
Grossly embarrassed, Hawk muttered, “Yes it is,” and strode on, while Machin, with something like a smile on his face, fell in step about a yard behind him.
It was a long time since Hawk had had any street work to do, and he couldn’t believe things had changed so much since his day. The clinical observation which Eagle had required of him was difficult to achieve with Sparrow walking immediately behind him, literally shadowing him and whistling nervously and very loudly.
For Machin, the whistle was intended to indicate relaxed abandon, a signal to the other passers-by that he was just out for a gentle little stroll. His hyper-activated nerves prevented him noticing that in fact it had the reverse effect, so that almost everyone they passed looked at him and had all their suspicions about care in the community confirmed.
Hawk was sweating profusely and, wishing to terminate the exercise as quickly as possible, he shifted the book very theatrically from his left hand to his right, improvising as he did so, just loud enough for Machin to hear, a little musical phrase. He sang, “I’m moving the book from my left hand to my right.”
Machin heard him and stopped whistling to sing very loudly, “So I notice”, whereupon Hawk dived into a shop for relief.
When he came out again, he found Machin looking into the window and whistling at a volume that had attracted a small crowd around him wondering whether they should report him to someone. Hawk continued up the street, almost at a run, and Machin followed.
The increased pace had the advantage of rendering Machin too breathless to whistle, but the stares of those they passed or overtook were now focused on two men walking at Olympic pace, with one barely two yards behind the other. Hawk looked at the numbers of the shops as they flashed by. He was breathing heavily and needed another rest. He stopped at the next shop, gave Machin a furious stare as the latter cannoned into him, and strode inside.
(from The Female Descendant by Sheryl Fawcett, in a scene where passengers are filing onto an airplane as Suzanne, already seated near the front, has bent down to pick up something she dropped)
The passenger coming down the narrow aisle carried an overstuffed duffel bag in front of her, thrusting its weight forward with the thigh of her left leg. A massive shoulder purse hung over her right shoulder, bouncing against her hip with each step. Her right hand clasped a super-sized Starbucks coffee and the pinched top of a pastry sack. The duffel bag thumped Suzanne’s head bringing the woman to a quick halt. Her purse strap slid down her arm and smacked the cardboard coffee container. Hot coffee squirted out the drink opening onto the back of the woman’s wrist and she let loose with a string of expletives. She dropped the duffel and hiked the purse strap back up onto her shoulder, all the time glaring at Suzanne without a word of apology. She picked up her duffel, gave Suzanne one last nasty look and blurted out a single word, “Bitch!” before proceeding towards the back of the plane.
This is fun 🙂
This is from Bad Hunting, Book 2 of my fantasy-western series Daughter of the Wildings. Silas and Lainie Vendine, a married pair of bounty-hunting wizards, have teamed up with a drifter named Orl Fazar while on the hunt through the desert for a killer. Here, Silas loses his temper after Fazar “accidentally” dunks himself and Silas in a flooded creek:
—
Then, from the brush along the bank ahead of her, just before the place where the two washes met, Lainie heard a loud thrashing noise accompanied by a string of curses in Silas’s voice. She looked up, overjoyed relief suddenly replacing her sorrow, to see a thoroughly drenched Silas climb up out of the wash. He was holding his hat in one hand and dragging Fazar by the collar of his shirt with the other.
He threw Fazar face-down into the dirt. “Gods-damned sheepknocking sonofabitch, what in all the blasted gods-damned hells did you think you were doing?”
Fazar coughed up a bunch of water. “Sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry? What’s sorry is your gods-damned blasted mangy sheepknocking hide. The only reason I let you live this long is because you’re going to help us find that killer. But now I’m thinking your help is more trouble than it’s worth.” He drew his gun and aimed it at Fazar. Water dribbled from the muzzle.
Silas exploded into more oaths. He shoved his revolver back into the holster, jammed his hat onto his head, and stalked over to Lainie, leaving a wet trail in the dirt behind him. “C’mon, darlin’. He can crawl after us like the worm he is.”
…
Fazar came hobbling back as Silas was pulling on his socks. He was drenched and muddy, but neither Silas nor Lainie made any move to help him. He could catch his death of chills, as far as Lainie was concerned. Silas left his boots to dry and sat down to clean his revolver. Lainie got out some food for her and Silas, and they ate a little.
“I’m hungry, too,” Fazar whined.
“Shut up,” Silas said.
“C’mon, Vendine, be a pal. It was an accident.”
“An accident, my granny’s hairy backside.”
“Come on, now, why would I try to drown you? And drown myself at the same time?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
This is a scene from my new adult romance, Rooter. Sophie and Rooter have left Bear to watch over Sophie’s best friend, Miranda, while Sophie goes to work. Miranda was petrified of Bear before they left, but a few hours and several beers later, things have changed.
__
“Oh my God, Sophie, you have to see this!” Miranda slurs and sloppily motions for me to come over to her. “I found out why he never smiles.”
“I think it’s time for me to go,” Bear says, clearly embarrassed and tries to stand up, but Miranda lurches forward and clutches his arm. I expect him to become irritated with her, but he smirks instead.
“Show her,” Miranda whines at him. “It’s so cute.”
Cute? Since when does Miranda think Bear is cute? Rooter laughs behind me.
“See?” Rooter’s voice is barely louder than a whisper. “I told you she’d be okay with him.”
“Show her,” Miranda demands with her hands on her hips. Bear shoots her a stern look, and she changes tactics and bats her pretty, long eyelashes at him and flashes a smile. “Please?”
“Okay,” he relents and shakes his head. In only ten hours, Miranda has wrapped this big bad biker around her pinky finger. There really is no man on the planet immune to her charm. “But you have to make the face,” he tells her.
Miranda makes her funny face where she squishes her cheeks together, crosses one eye and sticks out her tongue. Bear’s mouth spreads into a huge, genuine smile with the straightest, brightest white teeth I’ve ever seen.
Damn! The guy could be in a dental commercial with those puppies. He must whiten them every day. I burst out laughing, Rooter joins me.
“I care about dental hygiene, okay?” Bear grumps which makes the three of us laugh harder.
“Is that seriously why you never smile?” I ask him.
“Yes,” Rooter answers for him and cackles. “The guys all call him Pearl.”
Bear flips him the bird. “I think it’s time to go.”
__
Rooter – Book 1 in the Double H Romance series
This is from The Catch-no it’s not about a fish.
Tom and Joanne have left the beach and they have arrived at her apartment.
“The kiss intensified with the wonder of tasting each other for the first time. He pulled away. “Are you trying me on for size? If so, I hope I fit.”
A book with lawyers, a bad guy, guns,a damaged woman and oh, so much love.
ISBN-10 0615792545
Thank you for the opportunity!
This is an excerpt from The Secretary’s Bodyguard, the first book in the series with Jazmin & Ethan.
It’s introducing the married couple in their kitchen at home —
“I said you don’t have to do the dishes.” Jazmin looked up from the floor, the shards of a dinner plate in her hands. “I could’ve done that pretty well alone.”
“Your mom is sitting in the living room and made very clear she expects me to do the dishes because I was the one who ruined the dishwasher.”
“Yes, my great warrior, not all things can be repaired by a kick.”
“It was more a soft hit.”
She looked at him, and nothing more was necessary.
He sighed. “Yes, I kicked that damned machine.”
“You’ll have to make up for it.”
“For the machine, or your valuable plate from whatever important manufacturer?”
“It’s Meissen. And I’m very proud that we have something so beautiful.” She got up and thrust the remnants in the garbage can. “And you have to make up for both. I haven’t been to that nice, nifty café down the street close to the Potomac, well, you know where.” She came back to him, swinging her hips and smiling invitingly. He lifted his hands out of the water and she put them back in and embraced him from behind.
He cleaned another plate and put it on the rack.
“Come on, we haven’t been there for ages!”
“Your ages covers fourteen days? That’s short. What about a millennium?”
Jazmin smoothed her cheek against his spine. He was so much taller that she could hide behind his back. “I don’t care. You’ll be departing on Monday, and I want to spend some time with you before you leave.”
He turned in her embrace and kissed her forehead. “What would you say if I asked you to accompany me?”
Jazmin smiled tentatively. “You haven’t taken me with you on your assignments so far. Why now?”
He reached for a towel to dry his hands. “When I’m on duty I won’t have much time for you. And I’ll be tired in the evening. Or I’ll be away for the night because of my shift. It’ll be like that in Colombia, too, but, hey, it’s your home country. And if you want to accompany me, I’ll see what I can do.”
She stood on tiptoe and he stooped to kiss her. “I won’t fly in the luggage compartment.”
“That can be arranged.”
“And,” she added after another kiss, “only if you promise me a first class flight, I’ll check if I can delay five of my very important appointments.”
“Only five? I thought you to be a busy wife.”
“I am.” She gave him an arrogant look. “And I’m not promising anything.”
He lifted her easily so she sat on his hips. “Say that you’ll come with me. And put on something snazzy. You’ll meet the Secretary of State.”
“I dress up for no one but my captain.”
http://www.extasybooks.com/ann-raina/the-secretarys-bodyguard/?page=2