WeWriWa - April 26, 2015 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Welcome back to this week's eight-sentence excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, MISSI WANDERIN' IN THE WOODS. Last week, Sara followed two MP's into the dark Mental Health wing of the Army Clinic where her husband, Charlie, had his first appointment. Our last scene closed with Charlie being escorted out by the MP's and a pregnant Sara wondering what in the world was going on. 
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Charlie, however, didn’t lower his voice as heat flooded my face. “I was honest, just like you told me to be.”

Once outside, the MPs clarified the situation without going into detail, also without lowering their voices. “Sergeant, do you understand that you are not to enter this facility unless for a valid medical reason and you are forbidden to make any appointments with Mental Health until a new provider arrives?”

Charlie puffed out his chest and squared his shoulders. “Yes Private, I do.”

Most of those peeping eyes from the clinic had followed us outside, anxious to catch a glimpse of the dirty laundry that my husband had no intention of hiding. Covering my face with my hands, I wanted to melt into a puddle.
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Thank you for stopping by and sharing in these experiences with me! Though MISSI WANDERIN' IN THE WOODS is nonfiction, please feel free to visit my other two blogs dedicated to my distinctly different fiction works: 

Sara's Amish Dreams
An Everlasting Heart

Weekend Writing Warriors are a group of diverse, talented,and passionate authors who share pieces of their hearts and souls in eight sentence snippets each week in this bloghop. Check out their work, fall in love with their books, and be sure to leave them a comment on their blogs :-) Reach out to them here!

WeWriWa - April 19, 2015 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Welcome back to this week's eight sentence snippet from my forthcoming memoir, Missi Wanderin' in the Woods. Without further ado, let's jump right back into the mix and see what is going on in the Army clinic that drew the MPs on the run . . . and see why in the world I followed them inside. 

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The MPs stepped to the side, like something out of a movie, revealing my husband standing between them.

“Is this your wife?” one of the burly officers barked.

Charlie nodded and stepped beside me, but the Military Police officers just stared at us - unmoving. “Are we leaving?” I asked, feeling as though I’d walked into a group where the punchline of a joke had just been delivered.

Charlie just put one hand on the small of my back and began guiding me toward the door with the MPs following us closely.

I kept my voice at a whisper, acutely aware that all eyes in the clinic were fixed on us. “Charlie, what is going on?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To get back to the other amazing WeWriWa participants, click here! 

To see my other blogs for this week, click here for my snippet from A Heart on Hold, my debut novel, and click here for a snippet from my forthcoming Amish novel, Old Amarillo. 

WeWriWa - March 22 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Welcome back! Thanks for stopping by for this week's snippet from my newest work:

Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Last week, our heroine's husband made a big, drunken deal out of his leaving his 

family . . . again. 

Let's see what happens next.

The  first time my husband freaked out and called us quits was at our duty station in Italy when I was five months pregnant with our first child together. Drunk, he'd torn apart our luggage in an attempt to find the passports, belonging to my two young children and myself, so he could put us on "the first plane back to the States". Luckily, I'd hidden them well. Angered at his inability to find them, he swore through slurred words to pay child support for “that one,” as he called our unborn son, thrusting a finger at my slightly swollen belly. 

 He had been back from his 15-month tour in Afghanistan for a whopping six months before he "broke", an amazing feat considering most of his fellow airborne infantrymen he'd served with had broken long before; like the ever-smiling family man who attempted to strangle his pregnant wife in her sleep or the quiet soldier who had eaten Thanksgiving dinner with us before returning to the Army post and slashing his arms bloody and climbing into a tub filled with steaming water. 

When the liquor wore off, he begged forgiveness and swore to get help from Mental Health, in the off chance he did have the so-called PTSD affliction, as long as I would accompany him . . . and give him another chance. Not having it in my genes to be the Army wife who walked out on her sick husband, I agreed and sat proudly by his side as we waited for the psychiatrist to come in. 

The door creaked open revealing not the white-haired Viet Nam vet with all the answers like in the movies, but instead a short, unsmiling Middle Eastern woman sporting glasses . . . and a Muslim hijab.

Thank you for stopping by this week! Be sure to stop by next Sunday morning for another snippet from 

Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Missi Wanderin' in the Woods is my forthcoming memoir and perhaps the hardest story I've written to date. This is the story of one woman's reliance on her eclectic wilderness background to face epic struggles, from war-ravaged marriages to life-threatening baby deliveries to a teaching career to cancer, that just may shatter her life -- if she lets them.

Click here for more awesome Weekend Writing Warriors.

Book One of my
Everlasting Heart series,
written when
my husband was on his final
deployment to Afghanistan.
This saga continues through
a four-book series!

Rebekah's Quilt is
my debut Amish fiction
work.
Just .99 cents
this month!
Look for more from these
characters coming soon
in a new series!

Head on over to my website to check out more of  my titles featuring strong female heroines, like my debut novel and book one of the Everlasting Heart series A Heart on Hold, where Charlotte Adamsland must journey north through the war-ravaged United States in search of her husband Confederate Captain Sanderson Redding . . . or his remains, or my first ever Amish novella, Rebekah's Quilt, where timid Rebekah must face a heartbreaking truth that no other Amish girl in Gasthof Village could ever understand and one that just may cost her a future with her handsome beau, Joseph Graber. 

(Rebekah's Quilt is just .99 cents this month!)

Visit Sara Barnard Books today!

WeWriWa - March 15 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

Welcome Weekend Writing Warriors and Guests! 

Enjoy this eight-sentence excerpt from my newest work: 

Missi Wanderin' in the Woods. 

***

I slid my white gold wedding ring, the one we’d picked out together after only two weeks of dating, off my finger and sucked in a breath, trying not to let the hurricane of familiar emotions drown me yet again. 

Across the house, my husband of five years threw everything that was outright his into various bags and suitcases, taking care to fling the pictures of us and our life together onto the ground. Like trash.

“There’s no going back,” he bellowed as he stormed into the kitchen where we'd sought refuge, his words slurred by the drink, “this is for real. We're finished!”

Up until then, I had been futilely attempting to shield his leaving from our two youngest children, sugar sweet and ever-grinning boys aged two and four, but as he carried on, the baby began picking up random toys and shoes. “Don’t yell at Mama,” he shouted, his own little words garbled by the speech impediment that afflicts three quarters of my children, before hurling what he could grab at his daddy, who up until then had been the center of his protected little universe. 

My oldest babies, ten and eight, retreated to the dark corners of the kitchen to watch this all-too-familiar scene, always brought on by combat anniversaries and alcohol, play out yet again.

***

Thank you for stopping by and checking out these eight sentences from my forthcoming memoir, Missi Wanderin' in the Woods, the story of one woman's reliance on her eclectic wilderness background to face front-country struggles ranging from a war-ravaged marriage to cancer.

Need a cheap read? Rebekah's Quilt is on sale for just 99 cents this month!

Sara Barnard's Author Website

Check out more excerpts from other amazing 

Weekend Writing Warriors 

here!

See you next Sunday for more from 

Missi Wanderin' in the Woods!

Spring Break, Cancer Stuff, and A Book Sale

Thanks for stopping by at this, the tail end of Spring Break (or beginning of Spring Break, depending on where you are). Around here, we kept it interesting as a family of six (and sometimes seven) usually do.

I started off the break a few days early, getting a sub for my 6th grade classroom the Wednesday prior so I could have a couple of procedures done in the O.R. Pretty heavy stuff, but now I'll be the better for it and there was no indication that any cancer had crept anywhere else in my bod. Yay! However, I did have an issue waking up from anesthesia . . . suppose I just needed a bit of extra sleep :-) 

The Saturday after surgery, the family packed me into the car and we sojourned across the Lone Star State to my every-three-month checkup in Houston at MD Anderson. We tried to make it a mini-vacation, with stops in San Antonio and Galveston (despite the rain and fog) to dip our toes in the ocean. We found lots of dead jellyfish and some awesome seashells to bring home. 

At the appointment, it was determined all is well and I'm not due back for another three months -- double yay! No more surgery slated in my future (thankfully) and my oncologist maintains that everything cancerous was most likely removed in the first surgery (way back a year ago!) and the spots he was concerned with are posing no immediate threat. Works for me! 

On a lighter note, I just learned that my Amish romance novel, Rebekah's Quilt, is on sale this month for just .99 cents! I hope you'll pick up your copy today!

Come back Sunday and check out a sneak peak from my newest work, Missi Wanderin' in the Woods!