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A few months ago, I reviewed Mari Mancusi’s Scorched, a book about a girl and her dragon (and featuring a pair of hot twins). I also had the opportunity to chat with Mari about her love of marshmallow Peeps and her expertise in Arthurian legends when she stopped by our lockers.
As a special holiday present to us, Mari has given us the chance to peek at the first two chapters from an early version of Scorched!
From Mari:
Discovering your story’s true beginning …
Sometimes the most difficult part about writing a book is figuring out where to begin. And sometimes authors like myself end up with several false starts before finally discovering the true first page of their book. In the original version of Scorched, I started the story with Connor and Caleb at age ten, on the day their father was killed and their destinies changed forever.
But while it’s certainly a dramatic, important scene with tons of dragon action, it doesn’t drop the reader right into the real crux of the current conflict—the dragon egg arriving at the museum and the soldiers trying to steal it. Ultimately, I ended up using a shorter version of this as a flashback later on in the final book. But I do still have some affection for this extended peek into the boys’ family life, before it was torn apart by dragons.
The second deleted chapter shows exactly how much a story’s backdrop can change over the course of editing. In the original version, Trinity goes to an Upper East Side boarding school in New York City, not Texas. And she has a history of hearing voices in her head, rather than hearing the first voice in the museum just before the break-in. And lastly, Connor is already there—watching her, readying to make his move, instead of arriving four months late. In this version you get to meet Trinity’s best friend Caitlin, who is mentioned a lot in the final version of Scorched, but never made a real appearance on the page.
It’s fun to look back at the story as it might have been. And I hope you enjoy the sneak peek into a writer’s head. Oh and by the way? At this stage the working title of the book was “Scales of Time.” (Which no one seemed to like but me! Sigh.)
Check out the chapters here!
