Look! Look! Look!

Thanks to Laurel Garver for tagging me to play "The Look Challenge." The gist: you search your ms for the word "look" and post the passage where you found it.

It didn't take long for me to find the word. The embarrassing truth: The word "look" occurs 10 times in my first chapter. TEN TIMES. Okay, so seven of those use the words as a command. The first scene takes place at a circus, and there's a whole lot of "Look! Look! Look!ing" going on. :)

Below is an excerpt with one of the other three:

I heard a rumbling from beneath me, where the doors opened onto the ring, and supposed that a procession of horses and riders was about to enter. The rumbling grew louder as it grew closer, amplifying into growls and shouts and curses.

Someone sang out, “Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!” I had heard the song in the streets, cringed at the refrain that proclaimed “it will be fine,” while the verses predicted the fall of the aristocrats as if that were the solution. Though I tried to lean over the edge to get a better look, Jeanne Marie pulled me back and held me, with Angeline, against the silk of her dress. We almost disappeared into the folds.

“Michel?” she whispered.

My father’s neck pulsed and he chewed at the inside of his cheek in the way he had when he was worried but trying not to show it. “I’m sure it’s nothing, my love,” he said, in far too cheerful a voice. “Why don’t you slip out and take the children home? It’s getting late for them.”

I knew Papa was only trying to keep us calm. “What if they hurt the horses?” I asked. I broke free of my stepmother’s grasp and dashed over to Papa’s side at the edge of the box. He held out his arm to bar my way, but I could see over it: about a dozen angry men in tattered long pants had pushed out of the penny boxes at ring level and surged forward. They hurled insults and trash up at the queen, who stood straight and still, her hands raised to defend her face from their volleys, while her bodyguards batted the trash back out toward the crowd. The queen’s eyes drooped in calm acceptance; there was no way to defend herself from the words.

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Now to tag some other writers. As always, feel free to brush off the tag if you don't want to play. And I apologize if some of you have already been tagged!

Amy Sonnichsen
Vijaya Bodach
Paula McLaughlin
Marcia Hoehne
You! (Just leave a note in the comments if you want to play.)