Excerpt Number Three!

Alright - here's the third excerpt. This one is actually really long - but I wanted to get everyone's opinion on it. So far I've just been "getting inside of" Kady's head...and that's how it will stay. But I was thinking that it would be a great "on the side" storyline to follow her brother Mark, too. The following excerpt is the first time the reader gets to hear Mark's thoughts. I'd love to know what you all think about this - should I "be in his head" from the beginning, or is it good to just drop in at this point?

Mark was standing a little apart from the group as his papa walked up. “Mark, look at me,” his papa said softly.

Mark fought the desire to yell at papa and tell him that he was fully able to go to war. Struggling between this desire and the desire to obey papa, especially as he might never see him again, Mark felt torn. Part of him wanted to inflict pain on his papa; to make him suffer just because Mark was suffering. The other part of him was screaming, “No, Mark! Hug your papa and obey him! If you don’t it will only pain him and make his going away worse!”

The confusion in Mark’s eyes was evident as he finally looked up at his papa.

“Son,” said papa, “don’t be bitter. I know that you are struggling right now, and I want you to be man enough to make the hard decision to obey. ‘To obey is better than sacrifice,’ and is hard to do…but you know it is right.” Forcing Mark to look back at him, Papa continued. “I’m praying that the Lord will save you, son,” he said softly. “You are very dear to my heart, and if I never see you again here on earth, I want to know that we will be together once more in Heaven. You know very well that salvation is the most important thing in life. Please, son, go to Christ. He will take your burden of sin and cast it as far as the east is from the west. No one can or ever will love you like He does.”

Mark willed himself to not look down. Now he was angry. The nerve of Papa! To say such a thing in front of the entire family! Besides, Mark had heard Papa say that whole speech a hundred times before. Why did he have to repeat it when Mark knew exactly what he was going to say?

Mark stiffly submitted to the embrace as Papa pulled him in to his arms. As he saw the tears in Papa’s eyes, he took almost a delight in tormenting him; yet at the same time he felt horrible remorse at treating his papa so terribly.

“I will be praying for you, Mark, my dear son,” his papa whispered, finally releasing him.

I definitely want my characters to live in godly christian homes (actually very common then...at some point I'll do a post on why in the world I'm siding with the south. ;)  ) but I really don't want it to be cheesy or dumb. I want it to be real, and I want to make it so that an unbeliever would be able to read my book and not think, "Oh, here she goes, presenting her own belief instead of just giving me true history." I really don't want it to sound like that. Even though that is my belief, I don't want to come off in the wrong way. (Did that make sense?? =)    )

So give me your thoughts! =) Like I said before, friendly criticism is extremely welcome, and I'd truly love to hear what you all think!



All writing is copyrighted by Hannah B. and MAY NOT be used without permission.