Beware of gifts from the dowager princess …

Slowly getting back into the blogosphere, me. With family matters no longer as pressing, and the head cold winding down, I can get more done that needs to get done. Yesterday I didn’t make any progress on the big stuff on the to-do list, but I did manage to get 1200 words written. That’s a good writing day for me!

After that mini-update, on to WIPpet Wednesday! As a result of craziness of the Christmas holidays, and then that stupid cold, I haven’t played for several weeks. In honor of 2015, I’m giving you 15 sentences today. I’m still posting from Facets of Glass, although I don’t know how long I will still be able to do so without spoiling too much. Anyway, this excerpt follows right after the last one I gave you before Christmas between the Dowager Princess and her guard, Gaetano:

“Gaetano, there is something I would like you to do for me,” she said from her chair on the dais several steps above him.
“Certainly, Your Grace.”
“Please, come forward.”
He already stood at the bottom of the dais, so tentatively, he took the first step. Now he was nearly eye to eye with the princess.
She laughed and motioned him forward. “Come, Gaetano, I will not bite!”
Slowly he took the rest of the stairs up to the elaborately upholstered chair on which she sat, so that he towered above her, rather than she towering above him, as it should be.
She took something small, round and red from a table at her side and held it out to him. “I want you to take this small gift to the sister-in-law of Prince Vittore, Minerva of Murano, as a token of our appreciation.”
Gaetano had seen the sister of the new princess many times since Prince Vittore’s marriage. She was a flighty and vivacious thing, a young woman who laughed often and didn’t have a care in the world.
He examined the object he held. “An apple?” he couldn’t help but blurting out.
“A glass apple,” Princess Zilia corrected him. “From the hand of a master glassmaker, and thus more precious than gold.”

WIPpet Wednesday is the brain child of K. L. Schwengel. If you’d like to participate, post an excerpt from your WIP on your blog, something that relates to the date in some way. Then add your link here — where you can also read the other excerpts.

By the way, my short story collection If Tears Were Wishes will be free from tomorrow, Jan. 8 to Jan. 12. If you don’t have it yet, grab yourself a copy!