Does the following story snippet perk your curiosity, interest, or imagination?

Evening rays of sunlight cast long shadows of trees on the little house. It was not a small house, but it was fairly snug to the number of people that lived there. The Williamses owned it, and it had many long windows and four stories, including the attic and the basement (though the attic and basement were smaller than the first and second floors). The Williams children called the basement “the cellar” and were normally not allowed to go there because it was filled with plumbing pipes, wiring, a water heater, and other house necessities. Yet they were allowed to play on the stairs to the cellar and the short landing at the bottom that extended six and a half feet out (they had measured it once). The Williamses had eight children, totaling a house of ten people, and the children’s names from oldest to youngest were: Lilly, Ann, William, Johnathon, Timothy, Margaret, Susan, and Maria. Everyone called William “Will” so as not to confuse him with their last name. Lilly was fifteen years old, and Maria was four.

The house was in the country in Northern New York, and the Williamses had lived there for three years. They had formerly lived in England, but Mr. Williams had a job change (which had to do with matters relating to “higher demands” and “eighty-hour work weeks”), and so they wound up in America. Susan and Maria could not remember living anywhere else. Their old English habits were not diminished, and some thought their eating habits slightly strange, and sometimes elaborate.

No one was currently in the house. All its doors were locked up tight and its lights were out. There were no vehicles in the driveway. If one peeked into the dark windows, they would be able to catch glimpses of smooth wooden and polished stone walls (though mostly wood), thick carpets, and great rooms. As for the outside, it looked simple enough. The house stood on a slope, the back door lower than the front, and the outside was made of stone. It had one long chimney that poked out of the roof, and a couple of pillars that supported an overhang at the front door.

Thus begins the first chapter of my first published book, The Williams House.

The secret of my stories is that I actually apply the ten points of healthy reading that I gave in a previous post. What’s more, I hadn’t even come up with them when I wrote my book. Yet, I was influenced by such stories that carried these principles of imaginative, inspirational, and wholesome storytelling.

For free, you can find PDFs of whole chapters of my books on my Free Resources tab on my website. Please check them out. However, snippets of a good story are generally not enough. You can purchase my books on Amazon as well! Check them out below.

The Williams House
Treasure on the Southern Moor

Your fellow writer,
Joshua Reynolds