Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s Hook, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up in the kitchen with Amber and Nicci where Sunday’s Sneak Peek left off and concluding with the Weekend Writer Warrior snippet on Saturday. You read that right: concluding. There would have been another fifty pages or so of Amber’s scenes after that, but I thought it might be nice for the reader to meet Meoraq, so beginning with next Sunday’s Sneak Peek, we will skip ahead to his first chapter. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

“I do know that, actually, because I was there and I talked to them. I also know that the next three ships are already booked, so it’s this or nothing. Well,” she amended ruthlessly, “it’s this or go on the state or start whoring. I guess we do have options.”

Nicci sniffled and rubbed at her face.

Amber picked up the brochure on the ship and made herself read it. It took a lot of time and when she was done, she could not remember a thing she’d just read. She’d hoped it would settle her twisting stomach some, but if anything, the wait and the silence and the sound of Nicci sniffling made her feel even sicker. She folded up the brochure and put it down, talking like she’d never stopped, like she didn’t care, like she was sure. “The best part is, the five years I spend on the planet counts as improved education when I get back. Not as much as a degree would, but some. My salary cap will be raised and I’ll even be eligible for college credit, just like if I’d been in the army.”

She waited. Nicci kept sniffing and wiping.

“Fine,” said Amber, sweeping the papers together in a single stack. “You stay here and have fun with the whoring. I’ll miss you.”

Nicci didn’t call her back as Amber walked down the narrow hall to the room that the sisters had shared since Mary brought baby Nichole home from the insurance company’s birth clinic. Amber put the papers in the drawer with her shirts and socks, then changed out of her funeral clothes and into her work uniform. She went into the bathroom and threw up in the sink. She tried to be as quiet about that as possible and she didn’t feel a lot better when it was done. In the other room, she could hear her baby sister crying again. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and saw a big (fat) unsmiling (mean-eyed) stranger (bitch) who’d bullied her only living relative on the day of their mother’s funeral.