Excerpt: Between Thoughts of You

Happy Holidays!!!

Here’s an excerpt from my latest novel, Between Thoughts of You. Although I am finished writing it and am in my 4th round of edits now, two days ago I felt compelled to get up early. I wrote something fresh, this excerpt, that I decided to keep. Lulu is my protagonist who finds herself in Tuscany taking care of a dying man. She left Hawaii, all reminders, and everyone she has ever known—not to start over, just not to die. See she wanted to die, to collapse into a black hole of darkness after her baby girl mysteriously died and her husband left her. History was repeating itself. Her mother commited suicide after her father left when Lulu was just a baby. She decided she needed the distraction of constant, demanding work and foreign lands to keep going, to not make the choices her mother made. But she didn’t anticipate hearing such dramatic secrets from the old man, riddled with guilt over leaving the ‘love of his life’ during the War—that no one in his family knew existed. His passionate stories trigger Lulu’s own grief and memories—especially in the early morning hours when she wrestles with the Universe for answers. The answers finally start to come. Enjoy! Chime in if you have thoughts…Excited to send the manuscript to an agent first week of January. Keep striving, keep believing. Love & Light ~ Laura xo

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From Chapter 6: 

ko’u Pu’uwai : My Heart

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Somehow she was starting to understand that none of ‘it’ was about her anyway, which was a relief. All this thinking about herself and what she deserved or didn’t deserve, or whether she was lovable or not, or had bad karma or not, was exhausting. Lulu had not deserved ‘it,’ or caused ‘it’. Any of it. No one left her or hurt her because they loved her too much, or not enough. It wasn’t even about her. These thoughts crept in, like tumble weeds twirling and bouncing aimlessly along a stretch of deserted highway she was now traveling on without a clear destination. She was a grain of sand. A speck in the Universe. Clearly, she hadn’t deserved what Kon did. Just like Kiyomi hadn’t deserved what Pops had done to her—or Sachi what Peter did. It wasn’t about Kiyomi or Lulu or Sachi. The answers were coming in that morning like navigating stars desert nomads prayed to see. All she knew was that what Akoni and the old man did, maybe Peter too, had something to do with fear—and nothing to do with love. To choose love is to banish fear. It is to choose yourself. It demands that you not listen to what others think, or what others want, or what you think others would want for you. It is quiet and it is pure and it is within you all along. And it can’t be taken away. Ever.