“Hmm?” Lola blinked, awakened from her reverie. She remembered where she stood, and snapped to attention. “Oh! Yes! I do!” she announced. She witnessed those happy-lines around his eyes grow more defined, and her heart gave the familiar jolt of that addicting thrilling flutter.

          “By the powers vested in me, I now proclaim you as husband and wife. You may kiss the bride,” Lazare said, his voice carrying over the open courtyard.

          Lola closed her eyes, tilting her head back as she waited for Raphael to meet her. The soft pressure against her puckered lips as they shared a kiss made her wonder if this was the part of him she truly loved the most.

          “That’s how you’re going to kiss her?” Jack asked, peering away from his camcorder. “Snooze-fest. Come on, where’s the razzle-dazzle? The alakazam? The pizazz? Try it again, but this time, with a little more chutzpa,” he directed, ducking back to his viewfinder while waving the couple into place.

          “Jack, leave them alone,” Modesta chastised with a roll of her eyes. She bumped her hip into his, playfully knocking him off balance. “Let them kiss how they want to kiss. It’s their wedding.”

          “It’s giving cold, like I’m watching a cod fish scrounging for food with its lips pressed against the seafood enclosure at the grocery store,” Jack said, mimicking the fish he so expertly described before angling his camcorder for a more dramatic perspective of the soon-to-be wedding couple. 

          “I’ll have you know my kisses are very warm and very lively,” Raphael defended with an indignant puff of his chest.

          “Prove it,” Jack demanded in a lighthearted jeer. “Show me how you kiss your wife, not your mom.”

          “Well… they say practice makes perfect,” Lola said, shrugging, and turned from Jack to give a coquettish smile at Raphael, looking up at him from under her batting eyelashes.

          “Surely you’re not agreeing with him,” Raphael spoke, taken aback at the notion of needing practice to kiss his beloved. “I was under the impression we had mastered the art of lip-locked affection.”

          “That kiss was a little lackluster,” Lazare shared, voicing his opinion not so subtly from under his breath.

          “Thank you,” Jack agreed.

          Raphael gave a sigh, annoyed that his kiss was being so heavily critiqued, but any animosity, mild or otherwise, melted away as he observed Lola’s slight movements of dancing in place with excitement before him. Her green eyes twinkled, her cheeks glowed pink from an internal flush that mixed with the chill in the air that colored her complexion in a rosy hue. Her sight kept darting to his lips. She wanted him to kiss her, and that realization caused him to chuckle.

          “Eager for kisses, my silliest of gooses?” Raphael asked, stepping closer into her space. She giggled uncontrollably when he took up both of her hands and softly brushed his lips on the fingers of her left and right.

          “You asked for it. Don’t blame me for what happens next,” he added, whispering that last part so only she could hear.

          A heated shiver rippled through Lola from a pit in her belly, creating an explosion of butterflies that tickled her insides. He gave no other warning to his scheme and spun her in a twirl that had her yelping out a startled gasp of surprise, followed by a giddy squeal as he guided her into an elegant ballroom dip. His lips were on hers before she could fully recover her breath. The talented passion of his mouth made her legs weak and wobbly, the rest of her body descending closer toward the ground as she melted from the kiss.

          She wrapped her arms around Raphael’s neck, keeping herself balanced as he tipped her lower and lower. She trusted he wouldn’t let her fall, not when he had her cradled in his strong hold around her back and waist. She could have stayed in that position forever, lingering in a suspension of weightlessness, her body’s senses teetering between falling or flying. She responded to his greedy need for her mouth, but before instincts could take full control, she was placed upright, standing once more before him.

          Breathless and bleary, Lola swayed on her feet, blinking through the veil of the amorous shroud covering her eyes. A warm chuckle dazedly brought her eyes to meet a pair of sparkling azure.

          “How’s that for cod fish?” Raphael asked, brushing a wayward lock of hair behind her ear.

          “Wow,” she exhaled on a trembling breath, unable to conjure any other words to express the rush of endorphins flooding her system.

          “Dude, save something for the honeymoon,” Jack quipped, smiling broadly at the glare Raphael shot his way.

          “You sure know how to make me go weak in the knees,” Lola laughed, leaning against the edge of the old stone well to help support her limp body as she regained her composure. “Kiss me like that on our wedding day and I might swoon right over into the wishing well.”

          Lola straightened from her slump and turned over her shoulder to look down into the inky depths of the limestone wishing well from where she and Raphael stood. She leaned forward with a wistful smile, trying to find glints of coins from people’s wishes filled with hopeful wonder as they were tossed into the magical void. Instead, she was met with a cone of shadows which funneled into a never-ending hole of a drafty shaft that bore the scars of time and history.

          “It’d be a long way down,” Raphael commented, moving his arm to hold her around the hip as a safety precaution in case she tumbled forward. “But if you did fall in, I’ll be right there to pull you out.”

          “My knight in shining armor,” Lola praised, beaming up at him, and they shared another, albeit much simpler, kiss.

          “I still can’t get over how fast the time has flown,” Modesta said, joining everyone around the wishing well. “It seems like only yesterday you guys got engaged, and now you’re getting married in ten days.”

          “Ten days,” Lola repeated, bursting with joy. “Are you ready?” she asked toward Raphael.

          “I was ready ten months ago,” he answered.

          “And talk about a killer venue,” Lazare chimed in, gesturing about the courtyard. “I’ve never been to Castle Springs before. This place is beautiful.”

          “You’ve never been here before?” Lola asked, shock dropping open her jaw. “Well, you are in for a treat. This is one of our favorite National Parks to hike, mainly because all of the trails are---.”

          “---haunted,” everyone said together at the same time, and then laughed.

          “Of course it’s haunted,” Lazare said with a shake of his head, acknowledging Lola’s proclivity toward locations teeming with ghosts.

          “Are you two doing the Love Lock tradition?” Jack asked.

          “Yes!” Lola declared. “We had a special key commissioned and everything for that part of the ceremony.”

          “‘Love Lock’?” Lazare asked, confused.

          “Do you see the slit in that stone?” Lola asked, pointing to where Lazare rested his hand on the ledge of the wishing well.

          Lazare looked down, moving his hand away from where Lola pointed, and revealed a crack in one of the stone blocks that formed the top of the circular structure. The naturally formed gap in the middle of the stone, roughly two-inches long, resembled a keyhole, the intriguing divot drawing focus to the characteristic charm of the old well.

          “That’s the Love Lock,” Lola explained. “It’s a tradition for couples who get married here. After saying their vows, they take a key and ‘lock it in.’”

          “It visually symbolizes the forever-after,” Raphael added. “It’s similar to other wedding traditions like handfasting or pouring different colored sand into a jar. Plus, being a wishing well, it secures our desires of happy wishes for the future.”

          “The Love Lock is special specifically to Castle Springs,” Lola continued. “It honors the late Count Bastian and his wife.”

          “Let me guess, they’re the ones who haunt the trails?” Lazare asked.

          “That’s right,” Lola said with a laugh. “Count Friedrich Bastian built this castle for his wife, Wilhelmina, as a wedding present.”

          Lola opened her arms out to their surroundings in a grand gesture that encompassed the vast property of the sprawling estate. In the middle of the grassy courtyard where they stood was the famed romantic wishing well. Beyond the iconic simple focal piece of limestone and wood, were the remains of a once imposing stone castle. Where most of the existing structure crumbled within itself, a majority of the grand walls stood tall and proud, defiant of time, the elements, and Mother Nature’s attempts to claim the building with tangled weeds and brambles.

          Built in this portion of the expansive Dead Forest, deep in the northern region of Newberry’s mountain range, ancient overgrown trees hugged the remains of the castle built for love and for healing. While majestic in its scale and placement, a somber mist coated the blocks of sandstone and granite. Most accepted the moisture glistening off the rubble as a byproduct of the spring waters cutting below the cliffs on the castle grounds. But in the perfect light, in the timing of the wind or the shifting of one’s attention to the periphery, that gentle glisten shimmered with a liminal elusiveness.

          The air thrummed with an invisible resonance, cloying with an underlying eerie trepidation as if donning a blindfold made of cobwebs. Power skittered through the network of roots beneath the soil, and Castle Springs stood as the beacon of otherworldly magnificence, belonging to the land, but not of the land.

          “This place is going to be completely transformed on the day of our wedding come the eleventh,” Lola said, stepping away from the wishing well. “We’ll go over more details during the actual wedding rehearsal next week, but for now, picture some chairs that will be placed here, facing the well and forming the aisle where we’ll walk,” she shared, gesturing around the courtyard to indicate the logistics and seating arrangement.

“The well is going to be decorated in a way that complements the aesthetic of the castle, so there will be strings of fairy lights, some candles in antique jars, and these beautiful clusters of roses to make it positively enchanting. And, if you follow that path,” Lola said, pointing toward a set of stone steps leading down a hill, “that’s where the reception will be.”

          Following Lola’s guiding hand, the friends observed what looked from this distance to be the remains of a narthex that once connected to the Castle itself. One wall was erected where three others should have been to help enclose the floor of paver stones. A hearth and chimney stack anchored the crumbled structure with barred windows of stain glass stretching out on either side.

The arched roof remained intact, standing the test of time. It curved over the floor, held up by exposed loadbearing pillars with gnarled fingers of vines covering the bases, clawing their way up from the ground in grasping tendrils. The lonely scene radiated a haunting beauty. The small building could have originally been a chapel, at first glance, but any plans for the construction of Castle Springs had since been lost, the mysterious identities of walls and rooms left to the imagination of the explorers who tread the grounds in wonder.

          “From the pictures you’ve shown me off their website, I think that big fireplace is functional,” Modesta said. “It’s really quite enchanting, Lola, like you said, and suits the two of you perfectly.”

          “It’s sure to be a magical evening,” Jack agreed.

          “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” Raphael confirmed, hugging Lola into his side.

          “You guys are going to make me cry,” Lazare declared, laughing as he moved his glasses to wipe away a tear from his eye.

          “We don’t want that,” Lola said. “Come on. As much as I love showing off our venue, let’s get started on our hike before our lunch spoils.”

          Ready to get their adventure underway, the group of friends busied themselves in assembling their hiking supplies. Raphael and Jack pulled on backpacks filled with a homemade lunch and picnic items, while Lola threw the strap of a tattered purple satchel with patchwork quilts tucked inside across her body. Lazare adjusted his binoculars hanging from his neck, and Modesta picked up her walking staff embedded with crystals of tiger’s eye and obsidian. She also situated a satchel to lay comfortably against her hip, the soft leather pouch filled with extra snacks and a first aid kit.

          “Before we go, there’s still one more thing we have to do at the well,” Modesta said, and she took out a quarter from her jeans pocket. “I’ve got extra coins if anyone needs one.”

          The five stood around the old wishing well once more, shaded by the wooden pitched roof supported by two stone pillars. They held their coins over the maw of the well, a chilled breeze caressing the backs of their hands in a gossamer whisper drifting upward from the depths of endless shadows.

          “Passage for the Ferry Man,” Modesta recited, and flipped her coin into the wishing well.

          In a twinkling glimmer, five silver coins flashed in the cool November sunlight, and then disappeared down the narrowed tunnel of darkness.

*~*~*~*~*~*~

I'm back, back, back again, friends! I am over the moon excited to share this next installment of Newberry for you all! I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have been!

Let me know how you like the chapter! Can't wait to start posting more!

They're getting married!!! Eeeee!

Love you all!

Ignore stories about other people’s querying journeys. You’ll hear about people who get signed by the first agent they query with the first book they ever wrote. Good for them. A friend of mine won a competition and agents came to her begging to represent her. Amazing for her, but those examples are also highly unrealistic for the majority. I’m on my sixth attempt (4 YAs – three of which were not good enough to be submitted in retrospect, and 1 adult thriller I’m still kinda bummed about but oh well!) and though I’m feeling really, REALLY good right now, I also don’t expect to get anywhere. I’m gonna shout from the hilltops if I do, buuuuut I also don’t expect to land an agent (as explained above). And if I don’t, well, onto attempt number 7!

Start writing something new as soon as you can. Ideally original fiction because agents will ask you what else you’re working on – and sometimes even ask you to outline this in the query letter (although I don’t think I’ve submitted to anyone like that in *years*). That friend of mine from above says agents also expect you to be in the same genre with the next project, so don’t query an adult thriller and tell them you’re now working on a picture book for toddlers.

If you can't write something new yet, find other distractions. Anything to take your mind off waiting for responses.

Have a rejection coping strategy in place. I find the first few don’t really bother me because of the whole ‘expect rejection’ mindset I try to have, but after a while they really, really, REALLY start to bring me down. Mine is usually eating cake and/or other little treats. Something that just reminds me I exist beyond my writing.

Accept the loss of control. Oh man, I hate this. I haaaaaaaaaaate this. Once that query package is sent out, that’s it. You’re out of control of the whole situation and you’re waiting either for a rejection, a full request, or just eternal silence. Thankfully most agencies are better now at specifying that silence = rejection. Patience is essential. I’ll let you know if I ever get any better at it.

You will get silences on full requests. You shouldn’t, but you will. I’ve had several. It is incredibly rude and exceedingly frustrating, but that’s querying for you. Even after chasing some agents just will not respond.

You may also get really rude rejections. Back in the 2010s I had one post about my story ON HER TWITTER PAGE after she rejected me. Like literally, I got the rejection and then I saw her tweet. Arsehole. And no, I can’t remember her name because I would publicly shame her. I’ve had rejections that were a sentence, I’ve had rejections that made no sense, I’ve had multiple rejections from the same agent on the one book I sent, I’ve had agents reject me by the wrong name, I’ve had agents reject me using the wrong pronouns (my name is traditionally masculine so my pronouns are in my submission). If you get something like that, blacklist them from any future projects. You deserve better.

I prefer form rejections to silence unless the agency specifies a timescale for ‘silence = rejection’. I personally prefer the certainty of a rejection. I know, weird.

Always chase agents who say it’s okay to chase them. You never know!

Personalised rejections are nice to receive. Oh, they still suck, but it’s a sign you’re on the right lines. And if an agent says ‘please submit your next project to me’ take them up on it.

If an agent forwards your work onto another agent who ‘may be more suited’ get excited but stay realistic. Many years ago, I had a project move between three agents (one of whom I’ll be submitting to again with this project). None of them signed me, but oooh it was so thrilling for a while! It was my second project – a YA sci-fi that actually got the most amount of requests of anything I’ve ever sent out. It will never see the light of day.

Don’t be disheartened if you submit to a contest and don’t get chosen – still query traditionally. Same if you submit to a course and don’t get selected. Agents don’t tend to read the submissions – readers do – so the agent won’t have seen your work yet.

You’re absolutely allowed to feel like shit and to cry about being rejected, but you gotta get back up and keep querying and keep writing.

You’ve got to be in the right headspace for querying. The last time I did it, I had to stop because I’d just started a new job with a huge new learning curve, and I couldn’t manage queries and new job at the same time. I resumed querying a long time later once I felt more settled.

Do not lie to agents. Now, this may be more specific to the UK, but agenting is a really small world and they all talk. So if you try to nudge an agent by going “Oh, another agent has a full request” or “another agent has offered representation” and that’s not true? You’re fucked.

Celebrate a full request – but stay realistic.

Agents will reject the same book for totally different reasons. I had one agent reject a horror novel because it wasn’t scary enough, and another because it was too scary. It’s all very subjective.

Agents are not rejecting you as a human being, they are saying no to what is essentially a business proposal. It’s a really strange way to look at it, but you are more than your writing!!!!!