Six Sentence Sunday–Turu

Welcome to my next offering on “Six Sentence Sunday”. It’s from the first chapter of my almost-published paranormal YA novel, Monkey’s Wedding.

Elizabeth was surprised to see her friend Turu emerging from the servant’s quarters he shared with his father behind their garage. He was usually gone by dawn on Saturday mornings to help his grandmother with her witch doctoring. She was godobori, Turu had told her, more important than a regular old witch doctor. All Elizabeth knew about witch doctors was that they made special muti for people suffering anything from leprosy to a broken heart. They also cast spells and threw animal bones to see into the future. She’d once seen an old man with a couple of feathers stuck in his crinkly graying hair and a ragged cape, do this in a village when they lived up north.

Illustrating Monkey’s Wedding

I got the idea from YA author and illustrator Catherine Stine’s October 11th blog where she posted an illustration that she’s in the process of refining for the YA futuristic novel she’s written.  Seems the illustrated YA is coming of age, what with the popularity of graphic novels.  There are so many classic African scenes in Monkey’s Wedding that makes this an exciting proposition, from the old witch doctor’ Anashe’s hut, to the jackal dragging a dead body from a shallow grave to this scene: Three hundred yards to the left of Elizabeth and Tururu, five eland buck appeared out of nowhere and floated on a heat wave past the jagged outline of his people’s ruins. 

The process continues.