I’m finally taking the plunge and am unpublishing the first two books in my Eternal Curse Series. I’ve been struggling to finish book three in the series because of the major differences in skill-level and style that the latest book is clearly displaying over the two previous installments. So now, I’m going back and doing a major rewrite of the first two books with the intentions to release all three for the 10th-anniversary release of the first book (we’ll see what happens with that).
The Golden Box Books Publishing online magazine is one of my favorites digital subscriptions, and not just because I’ve been featured a bunch. It has really cool content. This month contest winners are announced and there are some cool character interviews.
Since I’m new to this group and challenge I hope it’s okay to break the rules just a bit. For the first part of this challenge, I’m sharing a bit more than a paragraph and at the end I’ll offer my explanation. A scene with a spectacular setting that takes my breath away from, Shadow of Night: All Souls Trilogy Book 2 by Deborah Harkness.
“My attempts to reach the Old Lodge’s future from its past were unsuccessful. I focused on the look and smell of the place and saw the threads that bound Matthew and me to the house- brown and green and gold. But they slipped out of my fingers repeatedly.”
Obviously there is a sense of magic here- time travel and colored threads connected to locations future and past. There is also a sense of searching or discovery.
“I tried for Set-Tours instead. The threads that linked us there were tinged with Matthew’s idiosyncratic blend of red and black shot through with silver. I imagined the house full of familiar faces-Sarah and Em, Ysabeau and Marthe, Marcus and Miriam, Sophie and Nathaniel. But I couldn’t reach that safe port either.”
I see the speaker, a woman, and her companion Matthew, in a blur of colored threads passing by familiar places that never quite come into focus. There is a dark element, but it’s not menacing.
“…My fingers kept returning to the same strand in the warp and weft of time that was not silky and smooth but hard and rough. I inched along its twisting length and discovered that it was not a thread but a root connected to some unseen tree. With that realization I tripped, as over an invisible threshold, and fell into the keeping room of the Bishop House.”
In the midst of green and gold, red and black silky threads, the speaker finds a brown, rough, and twisted one that turns out to be a root; anchoring her to a place she knows, the Bishop house, which already has an old and rustic comfort to it, even though it’s not described.
There are so many elements at play in this passage, but the setting is key. They way she describes her effort to return to another time sets the tone of the action and events, which in turn sets the mood and atmosphere of her final destination. We don’t know exactly what the Bishop House is just from reading this passage, but we get a sense that it is a place more important and special to these characters than the others already mentioned.
~
For the second part of this challenge, I will share an excerpt from one of my published works which will be re-released soon. I chose this scene for two reasons. I think the setting is crucial to the action of the story and I feel it sets the tone for the overall story/book. A scene with a hopefully spectacular setting that may take your breath away from, Eternal Curse: Battleground by Toi Thomas.
I was almost in tears thinking about the first time I held his hand with the full understanding of the differences between boys and girls. I was innocent, but not naïve and very curious. I had just turned fifteen, he was about to turn nineteen, and his grandfather had just died. It seems that tragedy was our matchmaker. After Grandpa Leo’s funeral, he’d wandered off from the reception and everyone was looking for him. I remember finding him in the Secret Cave, an underground catacomb he, Sheldon, and I had found when I was much younger and smaller.
I remembered that Michael and Sheldon had gone off to explore, as boys like to do, and that I tagged along. At that time, Sheldon and Michael were close in age, at least physically, and I was the ten-year-old tag-along little sister. I stumbled into a crevice in the ground, but Michael caught me before I fell in. Even though I was small, Michael wasn’t much bigger than I was, so we both began to slip down into the hole. Sheldon leaped over Michael and pulled him back, bringing me up along the way. Then he jumped down into the hole and shouted back that we’d discovered a hidden cave.
Later we made a rope ladder and tied it down to some nearby trees, to be used as a safe entrance to our new secret hiding place. We would go there to play for hours at a time, and sometimes we’d go so we could hide from the adults whenever we needed to. It was Sheldon who suggested that’s where he’d probably be after Leo’s funeral, but he wasn’t interested in going to look for him. I decided to go into the wilderness on my own to find Michael. For some reason, I knew he needed me, but I didn’t know why. Looking back on it now, I think maybe Sheldon thought the same and that’s why he didn’t want to go.
Here is approximately 100 – 150 words from a randomly selected original piece for your enjoyment. These samples can include excerpts from my all my WIPs and my Eternal Curse Series, but only as works in progress (not the final products). These samples of published and unpublished works are protected under the U.S. Copyright agreement.
Eternal Curse: Battleground 10.2 (wip)
I slowly descended back on to my cot, but made a point not to sit too close to her. Then I told her about, how it seems, I came to be. I explained to her that though I had a mother, I never really had a chance to meet her, and that there was no way to know who exactly my father could be, even though Fred had a few guesses. I explained that I was not the offspring of the usual process of courting, or conception, or birth. I was something completely different.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords
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