It's July and that means I have once again signed up to participate in the craziness that is NaNoWriMo. For July's Camp NaNoWriMo, I have started writing a new project, whose very much working title is The Vizier's Apprentice, with the goal of writing 50,000 words of it by the end of the month. I'm only about 13,000 words into the story (yes, I know I'm behind where I should be, ssshhh). To celebrate at least getting this far into the story, I thought I'd participate in Snazzy Snippets to give you a sneak peak of The Vizier's Apprentice. It's a YA Fantasy story about a shapeshifter who must hide her shifting abilities in order to become the next Vizier's Apprentice.

A snippet where characters consider their backstory
or

A snippet featuring a child (i.e. a freebie for you YA and MG writers)
or

A  snippet from something you wrote more than 2 years ago

A snippet where characters consider their backstory (It was a bit difficult to find much backstory when I've only written three chapters, so Hayat always following the rules is the best I could do).

Hayat hesitated and Samara knew the reason why. Since she’d been a young child, Hayat had always been a rule follower. She not only respected her parents, and any person of authority, but she enjoyed the structure and order her life had when she obeyed orders. Hayat didn’t lie to her parents. She did her schoolwork without prompting, and she did it to the absolute best of her ability. 

“My parents know I want to be a soldier. I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll tell them that I want to go to the palace to train as a soldier. They’ve always told me they’d support me no matter what path I take in life. I’m going to trust that they truly mean that.”

“Wow,” Tahani said, nodding her head. “You are seriously making me feel like the worst daughter ever. I totally lie to my parents all the time. Half the time, I don’t even think about it. I just do it. I wonder what that says about my relationship with my parents? Either they trust me too much, they’re unbelievably unobservant, or they just don’t care enough to call me out on my lies.”

A snippet featuring a child (well, most of the characters are young adults, so I'm counting them as children)

Scooping up a new bowl, the worker turned his attention to Oma. He smiled at her and gestured with his chisel to the various flavors. “What will it be, pretty little lady?” he asked.

Samara winced. She hoped Oma would ignore the “little” comment. It didn’t matter that the man was easily two times as large as Oma and nearly two feet taller with thick biceps from chiseling ice all day long. Oma hated it when anyone pointed out how small she was.  

Oma gave the man a sickenly sweet smile that Samara knew meant her cousin was gearing up for a fight. “The lime,” she said.

Unaware he was treading on thin ground, the man beamed back at Oma and began chipping green ice into a bowl. Sticking a spoon into the bowl, the man held the bowl of lime flavored ice out to Oma. Samara tensed. This was it. This was the moment it was all going to fall apart.

A  snippet from something you wrote more than 2 years ago (Because I only just started writing The Vizier's Apprentice on July 1st, I'm going to use a different work in progress that I started two years ago but never finished. The WIP (work in progress) is called The Water Dragon Scrolls.

The moment she passed through the gate and caught her first glimpse of the house, Mackenzie fell in love.  Unlike the other houses on the street, 1139 wasn't trying to impress anyone with its owner's wealth.  This was a house that had been built to please its owner and no one else.  The sweeping, gabled roof had a quiet gracefulness about it that inspired a sense of tranquility and safety.  In the small courtyard before the house, a low fountain chortled, the water gleaming silver in the dark night as it leapt into the air before arcing back down into the pool.  Mackenzie's fingers twitched with the urge to go to the fountain and trail her fingers through the water, but she clenched her fist.  She had a job to do.