Are you ready for the second installment of the seven weeks of Peacemas? In case you missed last week’s opening post, we’re spreading the Peacemas love to promote my humorous holiday novel, I’ll Be Home for Peacemas. If you’re wondering why I keep misspelling Christmas or when the Peace Corps started its own holiday, you should probably read the Peacemas Doctrine to get in the loop before you go any further.
Peacemas Excerpt of the Week:
When you think of Antarctica one of the first adjectives that comes to mind (for me, at least) is solitude. Is there a place on the Earth where you could have more solitude than Antarctica? Bailey knows a thing or two about craving some alone time, check out this excerpt from I’ll Be Home for Peacemas:
For the first eighteen years of my life, I bounced back and forth between two households that were constantly packed to the rafters with other people’s lives. I shared beds, rooms, bathrooms, and most of my personal space in general with a rolodex of people who may or may not have been family members.
In college, I spent my first two years living in a series of tiny dorm rooms with at least one other person, then two more years in a medley of cramped apartments with a wide assortment of roommates. You can therefore imagine how excited I was to find my own place after graduation. I put a deposit down on the very first piece of square footage I could afford on my own and for the first time in my life, discovered this thing other people call privacy.
While I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed getting to lay claim to a space that’s mine and mine alone, it hasn’t exactly been the peaceful, rewarding experience I thought it would be.
For one thing, my entire apartment is roughly the size of your average walk-in closet, but with half the charm. It is home to all six pieces of my used (and abused) furniture, a tiny kitchenette (slightly smaller than the Little Tykes kitchen playset I had as a kid), and the world’s loudest (and most unreliable) radiator. But it has two saving graces that made me fall in love with it in the first place–even if they are the traitors who also allowed the sun to invade my space so early in the morning.
In April, when I first looked at the place, the pair of six-foot, east-facing casement windows took my breath away. On that clear, spring morning I could just make out the broad expanse of the Charles River in the gaps between a few neighboring buildings. When the landlord told me I could open my windows in the summer and hear the announcer at Fenway, I started digging through my purse for my checkbook.
That’s a wrap!
Week 2 of our Peacemas celebration has come to a close! Make sure you take a closer look at I’ll Be Home for Peacemas by reading the first five chapters (free!) or purchasing the eBook or paperback.
Later days,
– Shannon
