How ’bout an excerpt

Hey folks,

It’s been a while since I posted an excerpt from one of my books, and seeing that I’m in the process of editing one, I figured I’d post a paragraph or two. I just read over these lines that I must have written about six months ago. It caught my eye because I’m teaching anaphora this week to my high school students, and I used one in the first paragraph. I also liked the use of sentence fragments. Check it out and let me know what you think:

Gene drove home. He looked out to the right. The scarred, rocky face of the mountain stood straight up. It had been cut almost two-hundred years ago. It had been cut for the railroad. It had been cut by a man with vision. It had been cut with purpose. It had not been cut so that a single train could get from A to B. No, it was never that simple. The veins of industry. That’s what one man saw. The veins of all industry.

There had been rain earlier that day. Water seeped through the gaps and spaces in the mountain and flowed through the cracks in the rock. Gene felt poetic. “She’s crying,” he muttered looking up at the rock standing straight up beside him. “She’s crying.”

That’s silly though. Rocks don’t feel. When the railroader came and cut through the rock for the sake of progress, it didn’t feel. It’s lifeless, without purpose. And so is Gene.

That’s it. Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment, hitting that like button, or sending me an e-mail! And if you get a chance, check out these other books I’ve written:

BOOKS