Filling in the Blanks (formerly Remember)

“He was tall, solidly built in the way of somebody who stays active but doesn’t work out at the gym.  Auburn hair fell casually over his forehead and almost, but not quite, into his eyes – intense blue eyes that locked onto the camera.

Ignoring a slight trembling of her hands, Yates went for the close up, watching the eyes widen in recognition as she clicked the shutter.

A gratuitous picture.  This face was already burned into her memory.  It walked the streets with her by day, and intruded on her dreams at night.  She had scoured Northeast Washington looking for this man, and now here he was, apparently a friend of Glo’s.”

This 88,000 word mystery/suspense novel has been sent out to find its way in the world.

The Gatekeeper

Books. Everywhere books, old books that smelled of heroic deeds and magic. Books lining the walls and spilling out onto the floor, books covering the surface of her father’s desk, books on chairs and window shelves and the dusty coffee table. Silence ruled absolute, the only sound the whisper of paper as a page was turned, or the scratch of her father’s pen on paper. The chair, her anchor to reality, her refuge from the outside world, was squat and fat and covered in a nubby green fabric that also smelled of books. There was a ragged, quarter sized hole in the upholstery on the right arm, through which she inserted small treasures for safe keeping – pebbles and bits of shell and a collection of random pennies.”

When MC is given a key that leads to a mysterious room in the cellar of her spooky old house, she unwittingly unleashes a handful of fictional characters into the modern day world, jeopardizing the lives of those she loves.

This one is far from complete, and doesn’t really know where it’s going yet.   Magic realism, and a bit of satire poked at several different genres make it fun.  For me, anyway.

Swimming North

“Against all odds, Vivian hopes for normal.

An unrealistic wish, and she knows it. The floor beneath her presses hard and unrelenting against forehead and nose. Her right leg twists beneath the weight of her body in a way that strains both hip and knee, and her shoulder joint aches from the awkward angle of her arm. Still, she refrains from moving. These discomforts are mere flyspecks on the windshield of time compared to what she knows  is lurking, ready to break through the feeble boundaries of her control. So long as she is perfectly still, if there is no breath moving in and out of her body, she is inert matter – no longer alive, no longer responsible.

She holds it off as long as she can, but she can’t possibly win, and when the reality breaks through to crush her it is no gradual process; there are no creeping tendrils of misty cold, no exploring wavelets, only a massive Tsunami of awareness that drives through her with unstoppable force.

Reluctant, she opens her eyes.

A dim snow light filters through the blinds, creating just enough visibility to let her see the way the room curves around her.  No flat planes, no corners:  the principles of physics, those assumptions made on a regular basis about the nature of reality, all blatantly broken.  To her right, a shelf of books curves and spirals up toward the ceiling, which arches above her into a dome. The chairs are tilted off center, and rounded at the edges; if she tries to sit on one she is certain she will roll off and spiral around like a pinball because the floor is curved as well.

Directly in front of her, not having any difficulty with his environment at all, a small penguin stands at attention, so preternaturally still that for a moment she mistakes it as stuffed.”

This surreal adult fantasy is my mind bending focus of attention just now.

The Sword of Losaria

“Hadrian strode upward, the child slung warm and sleeping against his broad back.  Above, the sky blazed with stars, but their light did not reach him.  He could see neither the path at his feet, nor his hand before his face, but the knew the way by heart and scrambled up its rocky steepness without a single misstep.

This was not the first message he had carried to The Seven at Zelindreh.  This time, though, they would be surprised by what he brought.  He paused to catch his breath and adjust the carrier on his back to a more comfortable position.  A sound, or the ghost of a sound, froze him into stillness.  Breath held, he stood long in the darkness, listening:  the keening of the wind, the pounding of his own warm blood in his ears, that was all.  Still, the hair on the back of his neck prickled.  If he were being followed…”

This YA fantasy novel was completed about five years ago, and has been gathering dust ever since.  When I sat down to start the synopsis and create a list of potential publishers, I panicked, labeled the entire story as swill, and resolutely locked it away.  Recently I dusted it off, had another look, and decided maybe it’s not so bad, after all.  I’m revising it one last time, and then I plan to send it out there and let it start collecting its own set of rejections.