Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors, a weekly Sunday hop where writers share 8 sentences from a book or WIP. I’m now sharing from the book I’m releasing on May ninth, And Jakob Flew the Fiend Away, which is set from October 1940-May 1946 in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. I chose May ninth for the release date since it’s my protagonist’s birthday.
Fourteen-year-old Jakob and his mother Luisa have just gotten home from grocery shopping the day before Yom Kippur when they heard strange voices in their house and saw the back door open. He’s about to witness the unthinkable.
This has been slightly edited to fit eight lines.
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His father Rudolf sat on the floor sobbing as three Nazis stood above him. One had an oddly-shaped nose, another was chubby and had a face full of measles or chickenpox scars, and the third was a bit short for a man and had a scar on his forehead. So much for so-called Aryans being the master race, Jakob thought as he drew back.
Jakob grabbed Luisa’s arm and pulled her back. “Don’t go in there, Mama,” he whispered. Since his bar mitzvah last year, he’d stopped calling his parents Mama and Papa, but he sometimes still called Luisa Mama in emotional situations. “They can’t see us. It might make more trouble if we go in there, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”
Welcome to My Magick Theatre 
Very tight prose. Nice work!
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Your snippets wring my heart, Carrie-Anne. And the last line of the first paragraph is perfect in the moment.
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Love this snippet. The creative editing wasn’t even noticeable. Great job!
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Oh, this scene is heartbreaking…
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Wow–great emotional depth in so few words, Carrie-Anne! Just from this snippet, I know I have to read this book! Nicely done. 🙂
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He’s so wise for one so young. I hope his mother listens to him. This is the beginning of a tragic cascade of events, inevitably, and your prose just carries me right along – well done, as always! Great excerpt.
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Given the time and place, I hope his mother listens to him.
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May will be here before you know it! I bet you’re excited. 😀
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Master race, indeed. So much ugliness inside and out. I hope his mom listens, too–so many suffer because they couldn’t imagine how terrible people can sometimes be.
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