Yee Gads!

Busy making up a story:

Thunder and lightening galore.  Hubby says it's God taking photos. It's a real photo shoot! Snap, snap, snap.  Now that reminds me of the opening of my new novel... here it its.... & read more about my next soon-to-be novel...  www.juneahern.com   

CHAPTER ONE

Chowchilla State Women’s Facility

Chowchilla, California

1984

Snap, snap, snap. The rapid sharp sounds of the inmate’s bubblegum ricocheted around the waiting room.

“Brenda Rose!” growled Officer Sue DeLosa between clenched teeth, followed by a threatening glare. Brenda Rose Browne, or BR as she was known at Chowchilla’s Women’s Correctional Facility, scowled defiantly at the stout officer and continued rotating her jaw like a cow chewing cud. DeLosa widened her stance and casually placed a hand next to her billy club. The prisoner rolled her watery blue eyes at her fellow inmate, Liz Mackay, sitting opposite on a matching plastic chair.

Liz ignored both women and fixed her eyes straight ahead on the blank wall. The gum chomping and snapping didn’t irritate her as it did the guard. She’d learned to live with many irritants and restrictions over the years she’d been incarcerated.

What did annoy Liz was the escalating stale odor emanating from the women’s bodies in the cramped windowless room. The space was more of a wide corridor with three doors. At one end a door led to the cellblocks and eight feet away opposite it, another led to offices and the outside. Behind the third door in the middle, the board conducted hearings to determine prisoners’ lives. The three women had been waiting for almost an hour while the parole board settled in and reviewed their cases.