I have always felt writing, and sharing what you write, is one of the more intimate, challenging, self-esteem threatening things you can do. By publishing stories, even in such a limited market as this, I am opening myself up to critique, to a sense of “not-good-enough.”
This weekend at Writer’s Carnival, they are hosting a Post-a-Palooza for their one year anniversary. The site will be swarming with writers, all of with different levels of ability, different backgrounds, and different expectations of what they want to accomplish with their writing.
So I’ve decided to take a risk and put excerpts from my first novel, CONTINUITY, on the site. You have to be a member to read it (sorry), but joining is free. Below is the synopsis I wrote of it for one of their contests.
Gabriel is an ancient assassin, able to travel through the many layers of reality, known as continuities, bridging the polar opposites of Law and Chaos. Bound to a code, once bought he cannot be called off. He makes his living as a killer, taking his payment in the strange stuff calledweird, a mystical, addictive substance. A loner by nature, he has established a home for himself in an otherwise unoccupied continuity, with only the occasional poker game to break up the monotony.
On one contract, he encounters a young female brigand named Evangelyne who, despite her young age, is a master of the bow. Despite his best efforts, she escapes to his home, where she convinces him to take her on as his apprentice. After being bound to Gabriel through a mystic tattoo inked with their combined blood and weird, they take on contracts, visit the strange interstitial neutral zone known as Trade Zone, meet a dragon, and fall in love.
Unfortunately, happiness is all too fleeting for the assassin and his apprentice, and after so many years spent killing, Gabriel’s made more than his fair share of enemies. A former lover of Gabriel’s, Jacyia, hires one of Gabriel’s rivals to assassinate him, a task that he proves all too capable of while Gabriel and Evangelyne are attending a party.
Grief-stricken, Evangelyne does the unthinkable. She directly injects weird into her body, and proceeds on a roaring rampage of revenge against Gabriel’s killers, both the assassin who wielded the blade that ended his life, and the woman who ordered the execution. As an unexpected side effect, she finds Gabriel’s memories merging with hers.
With the blood of both on her hands, she proceeds to bury Gabriel, only to be told she is pregnant with Gabriel’s child.
Dark Perceptions 