Putting Backstory into your Book

I missed the last few challenges for the #storycraft chat but this one I just had to do. Since the chat was about backstory I thought I'd give a sort excerpt from my latest book Pale Fire.

An hour into the flight and working on my second scotch, I opened the folder. Cath could be considered a mild indiscretion, a flirtation with folly. No one in my world would blame me if I walked away. But we had a deeper connection and I couldn’t let it go. Not yet, maybe not ever.

I began to read. Several pages into the report I discovered I had been part of this twisted experimental genetics project since I was four. Four fricking years old. What the hell did they need to terrorize a baby for? It appeared that we had been chosen at a very young age. The Project had been operating since 1947. We were second-generation guinea pigs. How special.

I turned the page and stopped short. It was a picture of Cath as a child. Even though it was an old picture, I knew it was her—no one else I’d ever seen had hair the color of hers. I closed my eyes for a moment. I had been set up. Used, abused, and set up for this.

The file contained dates and detailed references to what procedures were done when we were taken. Each time they injected us with something, every sample they took, all the little surgeries that were done—everything was there up until I was twenty and Cath was fifteen.

The reports became vague and I could tell something odd had happened. While at first we had occasionally been abducted together, suddenly that became the only way we were taken. I shuddered. It read almost as if they were breeding us. I put the file down and waved at the flight attendant. I needed another drink.

She came back with my scotch and I thanked her. I didn’t want to go back to reading the file, but it was like a bad car wreck; I couldn’t help myself, I had to look. I opened the file again.