Sleep, what? What?

My schedule is hitting "critical mass". I'm shifting gears slowly, moving from Farro's marketing phase into writing Sulfur. Yesterday I had a book dream. The kind where you "dream out" the scene you're currently working on. Sulfur is a book of climaxes, so my dreams invariably end up with me running somewhere, screaming at someone, or trying to punch someone. My husband, who must endure me mumbling and kicking in my sleep, is understandably frightened. Little does he know how bad it'll get. Soon the boundaries between fiction and reality will blend together and I'll start talking to my characters. ("What kind of hot sauce should I use, Bomani?", "Hmm... how much garlic did we have at home, Khensa?", etc, etc.) While writing Farro, I had one such fictional conversation that has become something of an embarrassing story.

Setting: at the grocery store, in the aisle with the soda bottles.

In my voice, "What do you think I should get, Bomani? Pepsi or Pepsi cherry?"

In a low, gravelly voice meant to sound like Bomani's, "Pepsi."

This would have been all well and good, nothing out of the ordinary, if a woman and her son hadn't been standing right next to me. I wanted to crawl under a rock never to emerge again. I can only imagine the picture I painted -- top ramen in my basket, hair disheveled, baggy sweat pants, holding up soda bottles and talking to myself in manish voices. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I didn't look to see their reaction; I put both soda bottles back on the shelf and bolted for the register.

The worst part? Bomani never got his Pepsi.

And now, for reading, I present to you a teaser from Sulfur (not published/polished and therefore subject to change):

The ice breaks with the sound of a branch snapping. I drop like a stone. I hit the torrential water.

It burns!

It squeezes my lungs, pulls me down. The current slams into me, sweeping me downstream. I can’t think, can’t breathe. So cold. I can think only of the water and the ice and how I shall die down here and freeze. My skin like white porcelain, my arms shriveled and as fragile as glass, I’ll sink to the bottom where the tiny fish and the snails will chip away at my corpse for the many years to come.

It’s as dark as night. I can see nothing but the shimmer of my limbs flailing in the water, as heavy as lead. I lift them up, searching for air and escape, but my fingers find only ice. The hole through which I fell is gone, the river carries me away. My fingernails carve deep scratches into the icy roof as I fight against the current.

I shall die down here. I am numb to the pain, numb to everything. It’s just like Chike’s ice baths. First I was cold. Then I was numb. Then I was warm.

Where is the warmth, where is that release?

My lungs are empty but I cannot feel the pain. They burn but I cannot feel it.

A shadow above, movement, Bomani. I dig my fingers into the ice, but still the current drags me downstream, my body stretched parallel to the river bottom. My clothes are heavy, my hair, my legs, all so heavy, all working against me.

Above me the world shakes. The noise reverberates in my ears, the sound of a gong, the sound of a hammer striking bronze.

Again. It’s Bomani.