Excerpt from my recent novel

I participated in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) this past November. Here is an excerpt from the work that came from that month, as well as the months following (I didn't meet the 50,000 word quota during the month or even after my continued writing). The completed writing is a 43,570 word novel that needs a lot of editing. But at least the draft is finished.

Chapter 5
Hopes, California 1850

John Sinclair had an aching back, an unshaven face, and rough, dirty hands. All three aspects of his current life were new to him, having been raised in a clean cut, sanitary city on the east coast of the United States. But he couldn’t listen to the fatigue that was eating away at his thinning body from lack of nutritious foods. He had to find something more than those other men out there. Something that would make Kate happy. Because Kate was counting on him to deliver his end of the deal, or else she’d leave him for someone who actually knew what he was doing.

Panning for gold. John was still getting used to his own rashness. He had been raised to live for the concrete guarantee of business, the kind that you could watch grow as your customers arrived and your goods were sold. But this luck and chance game he was playing was exciting. He’d heard some of the guys in the camp calling this growing anticipation he could feel coursing through his American veins “gold fever.” And it truly was. He knew his chances were slim, and yet…the chances of every man who’d struck it rich had been the same! The possibilities of how much gold were endless. You just had to find the right place…

Every morning, John awoke in his cold, arid tent next to his newfound friend Walter and the two got up and cooked beans over the fire and ate with old silverware and got ready for the long day ahead of them. John had staked a claim along the river, right down the road from the town. Hopes was quite a bustling little place. Though it was far from Sonora, the closest supplier, there were a fair number of men (and not quite enough women) to keep the town running. The prices ran high and the fights were low, although those that broke out were loud and rowdy. Alcohol was prevalent among the miners, the heaviest drinker being Mr. Henry Boom, a boisterous man in his late thirties who never seemed to be entirely sober. The shacks and tents lining the main street were dilapidated, but John couldn’t imagine that the other gold towns were any better constructed. And to think, not two years before he had been living in Pennsylvania among real architecture, real homes, and real stores that sold the things a man needed to be prosperous. He had worked for his father, and their business had been books. Oh, how he missed his books. Though he’d managed to bring some along with him, he was usually quite exhausted by the time he was finished along the river, and the covers had gotten tattered from the numerous times the books had been pored over on the voyage over here.

John enjoyed his time in Hopes. Sure it was difficult work everyday and he was sure that rheumatism would catch up with him if he didn’t find a plot of land rather than a melted-snow river. But he had made friends, Walter and Kate. Walter Thompson was a married man. He’d left his wife back home and was chancing his luck at striking it rich to bring some fortune home. John didn’t think he would have been able to stand the separation. And Kate…well, John didn’t know if he’d still be in Hopes if it weren’t for Kate. She was the reason he continued to freeze his feet in the river, panning his days away looking for a mineral that had glittered for lucky men for centuries.

Walter Thompson awoke each morning with the glittering hope that today was the day he’d strike it rich in a vein of gold and be able to rush home to his wife. She was his only hope for happiness in the future. The gold was something he needed to find for her, he had to fulfill his “manifest destiny” before he settled down and raised a family. He saw other men with their wives here in Hopes, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake in leaving his wife at home. Surely it wasn’t smart to bring a woman into the dirty life of a miner. Those few women here were treated nicely enough in person, but didn’t they realize they were the only women these men had seen in months? Of course they were the talk of the taverns and in the dreams of all the miners. He was glad he hadn’t put dear Abigail in that situation. He’d hate for her to see men in this primitive state. He was glad for his friend John, although he wondered if Kate was really a trustworthy woman. Couldn’t she be setting him up for no good? Walter hoped he was wrong.

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The novel is, as you can see, about the California gold rush of the 1850s. But it's also about a group of modern-day teenagers who go camping in the woods of the Sierra Nevadas. The teens encounter some strange people and realize that the legend of a lost gold rush town is true and that the ghosts that haunt it seek revenge for something that happened many years ago...