A novel I had started working on a while ago as part of a Humber College workshop on opening pages; i.e., how to attract the eye of acquisition editors.

Really need to get back to this.

Sasha had never had her breasts go numb before.

Sure, she’d lost feeling in her fingers and had suffered frostbitten toes more than once, but this was something else altogether. But then, she’d also never spent six hours prone on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Sasha had fought off sleep for the last two hours, listening to the rhythm of the waves that charged the beach that sprawled below her. Now that the sun had started to peek above the horizon, she could focus her attention on the dark shapes floating just offshore, knowing that not all of them would be pieces of driftwood slowly making their way from the seaside forests of Newfoundland.

“Get used to this,” she thought to herself. “You’ll probably spend your next four or five Springs this way.”

It was definitely a far cry from the relative civility of her life in Toronto—although maybe sterility was a better way of describing it. The sounds and flavours of the ocean did, however, remind her of the summers she spent with her grandparents at the family home just outside of Halifax.

Funny, she thought, this was the first time she’d thought—allowed herself to think—about her grandparents. All those years spent trying to escape the East Coast and here she was, smack in the middle of it again.

Adjusting her position ever so slightly, Sasha grunted inwardly, trying to remain the silent sentinel while allowing her blood to circulate to her chilled extremities. But even as she settled back in, she knew that something was different. Something had changed in the surf. Some of the driftwood had started to move with purpose, making a beeline for the beach.

It was time to prepare her kit and call the others.

(Okay, I don’t have any photos of Atlantic Canada, so I’m substituting this one from Tofino.)