To exorcise the first person present tense from my brain, I sat down and wrote a few paragraphs in it. Overall, it was a good exercise. It helped me make peace with the tense. And when I needed a short story for my short story class, it gave me a nice starting point. However, the ending is rather…open-ended. I happen to like the possibilities of it, but I thought I should warn you.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, part one of Terra Obscura is after the break. I hope you like it.

“Curiosity is a sin, and sinners burn in hell.” Elder Parson’s weak-voiced words are not a threat, or a promise, but a warning, wavering like notes from a reed flute on the winter wind.

I’ve been caught again, looking at the world beyond the wall. When I turn to face the old man, I press my back against the weathered, rough-hewn wood and use my body to hide the place where I scraped out the filling of frozen mud between the logs.

The peephole is no larger than the circumference of my smallest finger, but it opens another world to my eye. It is like something I saw, an ocean and some years ago, before the war and the plague and the resulting wave of religious fervor that swept my countrymen by the thousands to this foreign shore.

The king—the old one, the heretic whose name we have since blacked from our books—allowed a group of natural philosophers to build a windowless room at the university. The room was shut of all light, save for a pinhole on the southern wall. And where the light from that small hole shone against the opposite wall, an observer could behold an image the world outside—but it was pale and upside down, a phantom of the truth.

A camera obscura, they called it. The darkened room.

I remember the camera obscura as I hide my sorry little peephole behind the limp sweep of my faded skirts. It may seem a silly, petty thing to keep secret and thus risk the stocks, or worse, but the chink I’ve made in the wall reveals a wider world than the one in which I’ve spent my days and nights for nine long months.

For me, there has been only the settlement, muddy and cold, colored with weathered browns and blacks and grays. Beyond the settlement, the land is vast and wide, an endless stretch of uncharted wilderness, the mysteries of which most maps only dare imply with a dark wash of ink and the scrawled legend: Here be monsters.

Within our wall, we are small and weak and safe. Our faces are whitened by short days, and even shorter rations. Our cheeks and hands have been made rough and red by wind and work. We wear dingy white linens and faded black clothes. We have nothing healthy, crisp or pristine, save our immortal souls.

Or so the elders tell us, at each morning’s Meeting.

I do not know if I believe them now—or if I ever did. They say the world beyond the wall is wild, wicked and untamed. But their pronouncements seem as washed out and wrong-sided as an image wavering on a darkroom wall. Beyond our pale of weathered wood and dried mud stretch vast snow-covered fields, sparkling crystalline and perfect in the winter sun. At the fields’ end, the forest looms dark green on the horizon, with the red sunset blazing above. And beyond the forest lies the bright blue sea that stands between here and Home.

There is no freedom here, save the freedom to repent, to toil, and to die. At Home, our packed and teeming capital had long ago outgrown its walls. It stank of sin and sewage; of death and life. It sprawled across the land like an algae bloom in a stagnant pond, consuming the countryside with the insatiable appetite of progress.

There was money to be made and rent to be paid; there were so many bodies, few people worried for their souls. So long as a man professed his loyalty to both God and king, none would question the beliefs he held in his heart.

I know I am too young to wax wistful for the world that used to be, except that I have seen a king killed at the order of his people. I have seen plague, fire, and war. And I have been brought across an ocean for the dubious privilege of helping construct God’s kingdom on Earth.

“…God’s kingdom here on earth!” Elder Parsons is shouting. Little flecks of spittle hit my cheeks, they have turned cold from an instant’s travel through the chill, dry air.

“I pray one day you will find some measure of the penitence and peace your mother has found within these walls.

“You are but lately come to us.” Parson’s voice is fuller than the one he first used. He knows how little difference his lectures make to me, but he is speaking for the audience of black clad colonists who slow at their tasks to watch us from the corners of their eyes. “You do not know what hardships were suffered by those who built this wall to keep us safe within. You do not know what manner of beasts roam without.”

“Wolves,” I say, “I heard one howling a few nights past. It did not worry me. My father’s mother lives at the edge of the woods, back in the Old Country. She told me wolves are skittish and wary with people.”

“Wolves,” Parson proclaims, drawing the word out, letting his tongue linger over the “l” and pressing his teeth deep into his lower lip to pronounce the “v”. “They will hunt you in the night and pounce upon you when you tire of running. They will use their heavy paws to force you from your feet. They’ve sharp claws to rend your garments and bare your flesh for their hungry mouths.”

His beady eyes shine with a zealot’s relish. He spares no detail in his description of the indignities I will suffer as I am eaten alive. He’d the same happy look at Meeting yesterday when he described the agonies of witches on the pyre, and a week before that when he told us tales of sinners burning naked in the pits of hell.

Parson says his soul is bound for heaven, but I think he loves his tales of hell too much to leave them behind. In this heaven, Parson once told me, man shall know no suffering, nor appetites of any sort. He shall be cleansed of every imperfection; he shall shed every memory of his life on Earth.

I do not think Parson will enjoy his heaven when he gets there. It will seem cold, indeed, without his tales of Hell to keep him warm.

After some minutes he concludes his ecstatic diatribe. “You may now ask me for the Lord’s forgiveness, child.”

I recite the words I’m meant to say. I denounce myself for a sinner. I am prideful and iniquitous, headstrong and hell-bound. Oh, yes. I implore the Elder to devise some act of contrition that will punish my body and purify my soul.

“You must take up the dying,” he tells me. “Four weeks of work, from sunrise to sunset, pausing only for Meetings and meals. Begin immediately.”

*************************************

Continued in part 2.

Anyway, here it is. I still have a bit of work to do. I reserve the right to redo the title graphic at some point. I also need to redo the menu on my website home page…the list goes on.

If you’re looking for a way to procrastinate, may I recommend Joanna Bourne’s The Spymaster’s Lady? It’s one hell of an awesome book. I read it in one sitting, and ended up ordering in dinner because I read instead of cooking. Oh, well. Good books make up for mediocre food any day. At some point I will write a post to enumerate all of the things I loved about this book.

One nice bit of news, over there on the left. Like a Thief in the Night hit number 7 on the My Bookstore and More list. Thanks to everyone who has purchased and/or reviewed Like a Thief in the Night.

Also, last week, Jane at Dear Author wondered whether the ePublishing’s reputation for erotic fare was driving away potential readers. She used Like a Thief in the Night as an example, since neither the interest Ember might have garnered from The Serial, nor Sherry Thomas ’s public french-kiss–er, enthusiastic review of Ember and Like a Thief last week generated enough purchases at MBAM to put Like a Thief on their top ten bestseller list.

An interesting discussion of the perception of ePublishing resulted. Mrs Giggles blogged her thoughts. Nice Mommy/Evil Editor Angie started a weekly series at her blog highlighting Samhain’s non-erotic romances.

Another interesting result? It’s over there on the left.

What do I think of the whole thing? Aside from being thrilled to see Like a Thief in such great company (Hi Shiloh! Hi Bonnie!) I commented briefly on Dear Author, and in more detail at Mrs. Giggles’s blog. In an overlarge and overlong nutshell, my thoughts are these:

The thing I like about ePublishers is that they seem a little more willing to take risks and break genre rules. Like a Thief has plenty of sex and even more violence, but those aren’t the tough selling points. Like a Thief features a heroine who is, by her own admission, heartless, and the story crosses several genre lines–I call it an a sci-fi paranormal action-adventure erotic romance. Bit of a mouthful, eh? And its only 28,000 words long–roughly a third the length of the average single-title romance.

Writers writing for New York know what New York wants. Just as writers writing for ePubs know what sells. I knew going in that M/M and menage were hot categories. I knew Like a Thief’s violence and the heroine might be a turn-off for some readers. But I wrote the story I wanted to write, and Samhain published it, and I’ll always be happy about that.

I didn’t expect to see Like a Thief on that list. It’s my first novella. Ever. And the first thing I ever submitted anywhere. I expected a polite rejection from Samhain. Everything since then has been an awesome surprise. I did rather expect to see The Valentine Effect and Erotics Anonymous on the list on day 1. Both Bonnie Dee and Veronica Wilde have written some excellent and very well-reviewed stories. They have fans (I’m one).

The Strangers in the Night stories came out on the same day as the three stories from Samhain’s Court Appointed M/M anthology. All three stories from the M/M anthology are on the list, along with two menage stories. At the time of this writing, the top 5 books are M/M or menage.

What does that mean for new authors? Or for authors that don’t write erotic, much less M/M or menage? It means we are being subsidized by the more popular categories. The success of those subgenres is what allows ePubs to take chances on the next hot-selling subgenre.

So, while I think it’s a shame some readers are put off by the more exotic and/or sex-centered offerings, I’m won’t complain if my books’ sales numbers get trumped by shapeshifting threesomes or hawt gay lawyers. Popular erotic subgenres fund the risk-taking I admire in ePubs.

I’d like it if more people appreciated the diverse offerings available from ePublishers.
And, like Jane, I’m going to do my best to remind people who think ePubbed books are all erotic romance and/or pr0n that ePublishing offers a diverse array of genres and content.

I can’t help it. She’s like that older friend you had in high school–you know, the one who seemed so sophisticated because she’d been to Paris, and dated college guys and smoked and drank and done it. It took a lot to impress her, so you were always kinda flattered that she found you interesting enough to hang around with, even if she did keep borrowing money for sodas without ever paying you back–not that I’m saying Mrs. G is a welcher. I’m talking about that high school friend. That completely hypothetical, for-purposes-of-example-only cooler than cool, jaded friend whom you haven’t seen since graduation except once in the background of a photo of a party in Rolling Stone Magazine…but I digress.

So anyway, I’ve been kinda nervous about how she’d review Like a Thief… And how I’d take it. She posted the review today, giving it an 85. She used the phrases “It kicks ass – big ass.” and, “these characters are really cool.” which makes me feel both happy and a bit like I’ve dodged a bullet. Not that I’m gonna relax because, hey, there’s always next time.

And though there were things I disagreed with (like why she didn’t give it a score of 112–and yes, I know the scale only goes up to 100, but my baby is perfect–perfect, I tell you ;o) I have to admit, I giggled at her description of the setting:

…Set about 200 years in the future when everyone acts and dresses like they have watched The Matrix one time too many…

See, I thought it was kinda Kill Bill when I read it through after I finished writing, but I can see where all that black clothing might cloud the issue. And as to the aspects of the story Mrs. G didn’t like–the novella-length and characterization? Hey, there’s always next time.

1. Update: December 26, 2007 through January 1, 2008: Free Harlequin eBooks! You can download one book a day.
2. Paperback Writer’s 2006 Free eBook Challenge
   This here is a big, mama-jama list o’ free fiction. Lynn Viehl (she of the Stardoc & Darkyn novels) challenged her blog readers to write original free stories for their readers. Also, check out the sidebar for links to Viehl’s outstanding freebies.
3. be delicious by Annie Dean (Ann Aguirre)
   Friends to lovers. Short. Sweet. Hot. There are actually four free stories on this page. I haven’t read them all yet–but only because I’m pacing myself. ;o)
4. Meeting in Darkness by Imogen Howson
   Clicking around on the Drollerie Press site, I came across the cover of Ms. Howson’s forthcoming YA novel, Frayed Tapestry. It is a thing of beauty. And the hook is cracktastically hookalicious. That book’s on my list. Meeting in Darkness was Howson’s contribution to the Romance Divas Free eBook Challenge. It’s short, sweet, and I adore her writing style. Also, her freebie, Helen is available at Drollerie Press.
5. One Night Stand by Dionne Galace
   What happens when they stay for breakfast? (Good gory fun. This story is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.)
6. The Serial
   No, this isn’t shameless self-promotion. Okay. It’s not just shameless self promotion. It’s a Watch This Space announcement. Tumperkin’s two-part short story, the Ring, is on it, and, come January, there will be something new.

All right. That’s it, y’all. It is time for me to go forth and shop. (Yes, I know it’s Christmas Eve). Here’s hoping your Christmas is full of peace, love, and many, many good reads.

P.S. This list is by no means complete. Mostly, it’s what I could think of off the top of my head. If you have recommendations for good free reads, please post them in the comments.