Waterdancer Blog Tour: Book Excerpt & Giveaway

Welcome to the first stop on the Waterdancer Blog Tour! I have an awesome book excerpt & a giveaway for you!

My mom dropped me at the edge of the high school driveway.

“Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”

I glanced out the window of my mom’s car. Already we were

attracting more attention than I wanted. Why did my mom have to

park right in front of the school, not at the edge of the parking lot

like I’d begged her to? Wasn’t it bad enough that she had married

Warren in the first place and plunked me down in the middle of this

alien nation like Valentine Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land? It

was true that my mom, the former Sharona Wasserman, couldn’t wait

to become Mrs. Warren Meyers. But I’d failed to consider the consequences

of her marriage at the time. If I had, I would have realized at

some point that a man that made as much money as Warren would

never want to live in our simple three-bedroom house in Otay Mesa,

three miles from the border and a hundred miles from the world he

was used to living in. No, the first chance he got, he whisked us away

to Del Mar, the most beautiful city I’d ever seen.

I’d learned to love it. It was perfect all summer long, and I went

to the beach every day and sometimes didn’t come back to the gorgeous

rented condo full of brand new furniture till well past nightfall.

Then we all went to restaurants or had take-out ’cuz Mom hardly

cooked anymore, but I had never seen her so happy. I had to admit,

my brother seemed pretty happy, too. I could fake my own happiness

where appropriate. It didn’t really matter that Warren didn’t

seem to like me so much. He loved my mom, and that was all that

mattered, wasn’t it?

“Bailey? Are you listening to me?” Mom tapped the steering wheel

impatiently.

“Sorry, Mom. What did you say?”

“I said how long did you think registration would take? Warren

and I were planning to go car shopping again. I really need to stop

borrowing the company car, as much as I love it.”

My mom smoothed her hand over the butter-colored leather

upholstery in the Volvo she had been driving. It belonged to Warren’s

employer, but she had been driving it since we had moved to Del Mar.

I thought she looked pretty in it, but man, I missed the white AMC

Pacer we’d left behind. It had been our family car for so many years

it had become like a landmark on our old street. It reminded me of

a spaceship, and I loved it. Warren had hated it. Took him only two

months to talk my mom into selling it.

“I really don’t know, Mom. Just, can you come back in, like, two

hours?”

“I’ll try, Bay. If we get tied up in finance, I’ll just leave Warren

there and come and get you. But, you know how he hates it when

he has to wait. Come right here when you finish. Don’t forget you

still have to unpack.”

I climbed out of the car and watched my mom drive off. “Good

luck, sweetie!” she called out. I stood there, not sure what to do. Kids

streamed toward the gym. Reluctantly, I followed. As I got closer, the

noise from inside the building grew louder.

I got to the doors and peeked inside. The gymnasium was packed.

It was crawling with kids dressed in skirts and board shorts, carrying

purses and backpacks and skateboards. It was my first impression of

a surf-side school, and I learned more about the student body in that

first five minutes than any brochure could ever tell me.

The students were good-looking. No, more than that — they

were beautiful. Long hair, tan skin, perfect teeth, and you just knew

this little girl from the opposite side of the gene pool whose mom

had recently married into money would have a hard time fitting in.

Impossibly long-legged creatures swept past me with Dolce and

Gabbana glasses perched prettily in their sun-bleached hair, digging

into their Dooney and Bourke bags for Clinique lip gloss. They

laughed at jokes told by deeply tanned surfer boys in knee-length

shorts and No Fear t-shirts, with shoulder-grazing, sun-kissed hair,

and sand still visible on the tops of their feet, some barefoot and

most in flojos, those well-worn flip-flops. I stared down at my own

outfit, a tank top with a fading appliqué of the American flag, cutoff

shorts, and white sandals with pink flowers, and began backing out

the door. It was all so cringe-worthy.

BLURB:

As if high school isn’t hard enough, try being Bailey Wasserman. Try being the new girl in town, navigating a touchy relationship with your flighty mom’s rich new husband in a brand new town he’s just moved you to. Add to that finding out that your father, a semi-pro surfer who’s just mysteriously re-entered your life after nearly fifteen years of silence, is half sea-creature and you’re about to inherit that particular gene on your sixteenth birthday which is only a few days away, all after you just met the cutest surfer boy you’ve ever seen in your life.

Bailey feels she and her mom have always met life’s challenges as a team of two, more like best friends than mother and daughter. But her mom’s recent marriage has changed all that. Having her little brother Landry is all Bailey can find good about that union. The move to wealthy Del Mar from their humble beginnings has turned Bailey sour, until a chance meeting of surf hottie Jack West changes all that. Then, when her father reenters her life, with his annoying Zen-surfer lingo and a talking turtle he claims is her spirit guardian, no less, he threatens the only relationship Bailey thinks is working in her world. She soon finds out that’s not all his arrival will do. His presence and their shared family trait could ultimately force Bailey to make a decision that will alter the course of her own life and those she loves…..forever.

Samantha Combs, Author

Check out all 6 of my books!

Teeth & Talons Anthology

Coming in September from Musa Publishing: WATERDANCER, a new YA paranormal

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Email: samanthacombswrites@gmail.com

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