Space Opera Challenge

I’ve got a friend who writes. Actually, I have a lot of friends who write, which is great because there’s always someone to understand my latest word block or to share a cup of coffee with when the words just won’t stop coming. But this friend of mine needed a little companionship in his writing this week. While writing is something one must do alone, it is also easier to do when you know someone, somewhere is writing too. So to better procrastinate my own writing, I volunteered to share a word-for-word challenge with him. He picked the genre and the word count target and we both wrote.

It was a good dare for me. Space Opera isn’t really my setting — I tend to avoid topics that require any understanding of physics beyond the most basic — but I was able to shrink the stage of the scene down to my usual comfort zone. And I was able to invent a character that I’m sure I’ll transplant into something else.

I’m sharing the result here with you so that this quick piece doesn’t linger in my word trunk unread. It isn’t in anyway related to QUEEN OF HUNGER. But it was fun. Enjoy.

QUEEN OF HUNGER Available Now!

QUEEN OF HUNGER, Tales of the Assembled: Book 1 is available right now on Amazon.com at this handy link:

QUEEN OF HUNGER

I am excited beyond words that I finally have a chance to bring my book to a wider audience. I invite you all to read and enjoy. And if you do enjoy it, please share that with others. Here are some ways to do that:

• Through your favorite social media would be awesome. I’m even using my own hashtag: #queenofhunger. Spread it around!
• By following my blog here for future updates, sources of inspiration, unpublished sideline short stories about the characters in the books, and places where you can meet me and hear me read (Events coming soon!).
• By finding my author pages on Amazon or Goodreads and reading what I’m reading.
• By reviewing the book in your own way: on your blog, on Amazon, to your fellow public transit rider when they ask you what you’re reading. You know, anyone!
• By sending me a comment here or an email to cesarcrossed at gmail dot com telling me how much you liked the book. Every comment keeps me writing, perhaps to spite you, but still, writing.

Thank you again for reading. I leave you with one more snippet from the book.

““You see those points of light, all across the sky?”

“Yeah, the stars?”

“Yeah. There are an uncountable number of them,” she said, “have you ever seen so many?”

That wasn’t exactly true, Wyatt knew. There was an estimated number of stars. He just didn’t know what it was. But he had to admit he’d never seen as many with his unaided eye as he saw right then. Teach talked, her voice low and reassuring.

“They are uncountable because each star is an ancestor, one of the people who lived and died and brought you to this place, right here, right now. That is where the ancestors live after they die,” she told him, “in the distance. And that’s where our souls will go in the end when we die.”

She paused. Wyatt knew it was all crap from her religion, but he desperately didn’t want her to stop.

“So the story goes,” he said, expressing disbelief, “that people used to see pictures in the stars, of their gods and such. Just connecting the dots the way they wanted too.” Teach shrugged.

“That’s where the map of your life leads to in the end, to the stars. Each star, and each story, each connected made-up picture, is a signpost on your own personal road. The stars map destiny, Wyatt,” she said, “your future is out there, written in them. Look out there and decide what you want your life to look like…”

I decided what I wanted my life to look like. It included the word “Author”. And now, I am.

Skipping to the Good Part — Queen of Hunger Snippet

I’ve been wrestling with new blog posts for the last two weeks. That’s why there haven’t been any updates.  I’m just so excited about QUEEN OF HUNGER coming out that I can’t seem to think of anything else to say but “WHEEE I’M EXCITED!!” which doesn’t make for very good blog posts or Twitter tweets or any of the rest of it. Everything I’ve written sounds preachy, or marketing-focused, or just plain empty because really, I just want to give you the book and send you out to sit in the sun and enjoy it. What’s there to say beyond this:

I love these characters. I love this world. I want you to enjoy them as much as I do.

Well, there is one thing — I can give you a taste of the characters and world so you can start to fall in love too. So I’m going to do that. All the blog blah blah be damned.

Meet Mona.