I was tagged in a Twitter-based writers’ exercise called Lucky Seven (or, rather, because it’s Twitter, #luckyseven):

• Go to page 7 or 77 in your current work-in-progress (WIP) manuscript
• Go to line 7
• Post on your blog the next 7 lines or sentences – as they are!!
• Tag 7 other people to do the same (apparently people do this on Twitter itself)

The day I was tagged (by Sara Thorn) I had just finished Book 3 of my Harwell Heirs series and was in the process of compiling the manuscript in Scrivener and moving it to Word to format it according to my publisher’s requirements.

Which meant I would know what was on pages 7 and 77. In Scrivener my stories are broken down by chapters and scenes not pages. I “compile” all of that into a Word document, copy and paste that into my publisher’s template, then commence with formatting.

Well, page 77 would give too much away. Page 7 was just before the action gets going, so I chose page 7.

If you’ve read Book 1 of the series, The Pleasure Device, then you’ll know all the characters in Book 3 which begins two months after The Pleasure Device ends. This is Lavinia’s story, and Lavinia has some complicated relationships with men, lots of men, most of whom show up in some way or another in The Pleasure Device. (Book 2, Disobedience By Design, is a prequel and is the story of Joseph and Sophia. It’s currently in editing. Book 3 does not have an official title yet; the working title is Miss Danby’s Condition.)

So, here are the 7 lines after line 7 on page 7 of The Harwell Heirs, Book 3*

… overlooking the grand lobby and surveyed the guests at the masquerade. Most of the other women had the forethought to wear something in fur or velvet. The men, of course, were generally fully dressed, their attire perhaps a bit more form-fitting than usual. A few hid their overdeveloped girths with capes. Her costume, or lack thereof, was already drawing flirtatious attention from both men and women, the latter she barely acknowledged as Sapphic affairs had not tempted her for decades. Besides, she was there to forget men, two in particular, and only another man could make her forget.

*Per publisher’s request I have to state that this text is a draft and may or may not end up in the final product.

[UPDATE: Book 3 of The Harwell Heirs is Where Destiny Plays and has been re-released by my imprint Viridium Press.]