A short extract from Small Forgotten Moments

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Hey there, Lovely Reader

Last week was an emotional one as we helped our eldest move to Bristol. We had a couple of days up there too, which was a great way of not having to say goodbye the moment we unpacked the last box. August, it turns out, wants to wring every last ounce of energy from me. I'm still attempting to walk 1.7 million steps for Diabetes UK too, which is becoming increasingly challenging!

Before I went to Bristol, I organised a few events:

an online book launch party on Tuesday 31 Aug at 7.30pm. It's on Zoom and will last 40 minutes (the max I can have with a free membership 😉). Click on the Facebook event to show your interest - I'd love to see you.
a book signing at my local bookshop, The Bookshelf in Saltash on Wednesday 8th September. So if you're local (or not so local, but really like travelling) pop in to see me 10am - 11.30 am, and maybe even stop for a spot of lunch.
an interview on BBC Radio Cornwall, also 8th September at 6.35pm

This week, I promised you an excerpt and here it is! This is quite early on in the novel, before Jo decides to travel back to her childhood home and figure out what the heck is going on. Dreams feature a lot in my novels and novellas, despite countless articles saying authors shouldn't use them. I'm not sure why - I live within my own dreams, so why shouldn't my characters?

Without further ado, here it is:

Excerpt from Small Forgotten Moments...

Tonight, I’m buried alive. I’m in my bed, but a steep, compacted mud wall surrounds me, rising to the ceiling. From a small gap at the top, my parents weep. Imagined versions of them, silhouettes, glimmers.
I struggle and scream, but they’re agitated in their grief and don’t notice my frantic efforts to climb out. They throw soil on top of me. Zenna’s beside them, gazing down with sorrow and pity. She throws the final handful which covers me completely.
Tangled in my bedding, I can’t breathe. The earth fills my lungs.
And then I’m okay. I’m in my bed, and I’m not being buried. I’m still alive. Zenna’s in her painting and my parents are far, far away.
Remember me.

It’s not quite five o’clock—still dark, with the early chill frosting the air. I relax into my pillow and study the ceiling warily, to ensure no one’s peering back. I go into the kitchen and make strong black coffee.
Rather than go back to bed, I take my mug and sketchbook into the main room, comforted by the notion everything is manageable once it’s on paper, under my control. I ponder how to recreate the steep sides of the grave, how to convey the claustrophobia and haunting anguish of my own demise.
I close my eyes, conjuring the faces from my dream, conjuring Zenna.
Zenna. Fascinating yet ominous. Like the opening scene of a horror film where everything is normal and harmless, but you anticipate something terrible from the start because you’ve paid to be terrified.
Zenna was real, in the dream—she wasn’t painted or sketched. Her flesh was warm, and blood pulsed through her.
My mother, in contrast, was the shadow, the fiction I couldn’t bring to life. Her features undefined and tenuous. A remnant of my past, she fades out when I get too close. My father is less than that. While Mum remains in my thoughts, Dad disintegrates.
Nathan once told me he always thinks of his mother as being in her late thirties—there was a specific dress she wore, one particular family holiday, where she was so flawlessly his. And it’s a shock, he said, whenever he sees her, because she’s almost seventy, and he forgets. He readjusts his perception of her each time. Yet he always reverts to his conviction of her enduring youth and vitality.
I can barely conceive my mother at all. I have a sense of her, but I can’t picture her smile when she tucked me into bed or the ferocity of her temper when I was naughty or her various hairstyles and fashion choices over the years. If she or my dad walked past me in the street, I wouldn’t recognize them. I’m not filled with warm sensations; I have no reference for such reactions.
I draw two oval placeholders, shaping their jaws and foreheads. Then I cross through one of them. The empty space fills me with unease.

Photo by Jake Noren on Unsplash

If you like what you've read above,

you can pre-order your copy today via Vine Leaves Press (all formats)

or add it to your Goodreads TBR list

or to your BookBub wishlist

What people are saying about Small Forgotten Moments!

“A spellbinding, intoxicating journey into the dark heart of obsession. Annalisa Crawford has penned another beautiful, heart-wrenching, epic masterpiece. I loved it.” - Tom Gillespie, author of The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce

"A deftly-told story of a young woman with amnesia investigating her own past. It’s beguiling, haunting, beautifully paced and it kept me hooked to the very end.” - Michael Walters, author of The Complex

Thanks for reading. See you next week when I'll be announcing not one, but two competitions!

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