Dead As Dreams - Excerpts

Though it's taken me far longer than I would have preferred... Dead As Dreams (Saga of Souls & Dreams) is finally out in the world! It only took over 18 years from when I penned the first word in the initial draft - lol.

So many feels right now, I don't know exactly what to say. OK, well this novel clocked in over 115k words, the paperback is about 400 pages long, and I seriously need a break from writing epic fantasy after this (plenty of urban fantasy projects begging for my attention, anyhow).

I'd also love to know that people are also reading this novel. So if you do read it, post a comment, send an email/message, leave a review - something, anything! This story is very close to my heart, and I want to share it with as many people as possible.

If you'd like to purchase an ebook copy of Dead As Dreams, you can do so via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google, and Smashwords. You can also use the Books2Read link for ease in choosing your preferred online retailer. The paperback version will be available later this week on Amazon.

Now that I've given you the links, here's not one, but two excerpts from the novel!

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First a snippet from Aysa, The Shepherd of Dreams:

Water dripped all around, the source of the droplets an enigma. A bulb of water appeared directly over an inky puddle, then fell, followed by another. Each drop hammered the Shepherd’s mind, almost as painful as the cries of the child.

The child that couldn’t be found. Not now, not ever.

She curled tightly into herself, large cold stones and gravel beneath her body, pressing hard against her side and cheek. Water soaked into her now tattered wraps, the feathers in her hair sticking to her face.

Again, the cries pierced the nightmare, echoing from every direction. An unvoiced sob caught in the Shepherd’s throat, and she covered her ears. No more. Please.

Her nightmare was always the same. Different settings, but always the child bawling, pain and loss infusing the cries. And the water that wasn’t water, the color of storm clouds and rust.

In the past, she’d searched for the babe. Only in the beginning, though.

Hard to believe there’d ever been a beginning. She strained to recall a time when the nightmare hadn’t existed.

Time. No sun or clock to keep track, she couldn’t tell how long she spent in dreams – time here was intangible, not following the rules of the waking world.

But there had been a beginning. She’d searched, filled with hope of finding the squalling child, only to ache more when she failed to discover the source of the cries. Always out of reach.

And oh, the misery, losing her child over and over again.

Unlike dreams, she had no power in nightmares. No ability to shift and adjust her surroundings or call the babe to her breast.

Even forcing herself to wake, to flee to reality, remained evasive. Though she never tried hard to do so, as that was a different kind of nightmare. And it would always come on its own before long, anyhow.

No longer wishing to fight against Muska’s will, she’d stopped searching after a while. Now, when thrown into a nightmare, she remained immobile and endured the wailing.

The Shepherd cringed at every cry, and the water numbed her skin. She pleaded to be released. Muska refused to acquiesce.

Her wrists and ankles throbbed, echoes of events long dead in her real life. Unless her present had changed. What was being done to her, where she was – she’d lost track.

She lived for the dreams and ran from the nightmares.

And so the babe cried, the water chilling the Shepherd to the bone, as expected. But this time, a new worry tugged at her mind.

The man haunted her. He shouldn’t have acknowledged her presence. She was a shadow in people’s dreams. No one noticed the outline on the floor.

Yet he had.

He couldn’t be like her, able to hop from dream to dream, manipulating the surroundings. He was an encroacher, not a Mahlani. Could it mean something was wrong in the dream world?

The decay she’d smelled in the Nexus – it had to be connected. A puzzle to piece together.

An emptiness hollowed out her insides, and she scrambled to find the first piece. The cries hammering her ears hindered her and derailed her thoughts.

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Now a section from the spirit seeker Lazarus:

Lazarus swiped his staff down, driving its tip into the dirt. A tremor shook the ground, shot up his staff, traveled along his arm, and then burrowed into his chest. He stumbled from the unexpected power. Too many spirits.

Not all souls lingered, but this town had its fair share sticking around. More than one night’s work. He hoped the chief would be generous. If not, perhaps he’d allow a spirit or two to linger.

Lazarus knelt and laid his staff in front of him. He pressed his palms against the dirt and leaned down, until the charm around his neck brushed the earth.

The purple light flared, and when he closed his eyes, violet spots danced behind his lids. The brilliant color reminded him of the glossy feathers of the dream-woman.

He muttered under his breath, angry for allowing his thoughts to drift. Never before had he allowed such a distraction to intrude upon his concentration.

The small whisper shook the nearest gravestone – the dead were listening.

Focusing on the dangling orb, he directed the purple light with his mind. It plunged into the dirt and spread out, like the rays of the sun, or the roads springing from the city of Tyrrnah. The light touched several corpses that still had spirits tarrying in the waking world.

Then the first drop of rain struck the back of Lazarus’s neck.

So entangled in his thoughts, he hadn’t smelled the storm rolling in. The drizzle built to a steady rain, and he was drenched in seconds, his cloak clinging to him.

His power was more volatile during a storm.

At least the crowd outside the graveyard remained silent. If they ran for shelter, the ground would quake. Thankfully their fear contained them.

Lazarus recentered, stabilizing the threads of power weaving through the ground of Hambrea. The number of souls took his breath away. Even if a spirit seeker hadn’t visited here for years, it shouldn’t have reached anywhere near this amount.

The deeper he traveled into the Outskirts, the higher the spirit count. But this time... the quantity had leapt considerably compared to the last town, more than was logical.

So many. How?

Another burying ground. He hadn’t seen signs of a second one. Spirits lingered at the edge of his senses, though, out of reach.

He’d pry the location from the chief tomorrow. Nothing he could do from here, so no use worrying about those souls now.

Lazarus wrapped the tendrils of power and light around as many bodies as he could – not even a third of the lost ones in this graveyard. Then he called to them.

“Come. Seek your bodies where they rest. Come.” Though his voice remained a mere whisper, the ground trembled. “Come. Join the bones you left behind. Come.”

And they came, all faded shadows only he could see. One by one, the restless spirits sank back into the earth and curled up in their rotting bodies. When all the ones he’d called rested in their empty husks, he twined the threads of energy around their necks, anchoring them.

Some struggled, attempting to escape. Their wails reverberated in his head, and shook him to his core. His repulsion over the required violence churned his stomach. Always.

No matter the hope for a peaceful send-off, only pain persisted. Once, he’d tried to be gentle, before he knew better. If his mentor hadn’t been there to fix his mistake, loose, angry souls would have rampaged the town.

Lazarus tightened the threads around the spirits’ necks, choking off their ambition. Lightning flashed overhead, paired with thunder, and the tombstones rattled.

❦

Souls chained to the earth scream for release, and nightmares devour dreams.

Aysa, the Shepherd of Dreams, hides in the dream world from a past she yearns to forget. But when the scent of rotting flowers wafts through the Nexus, and multiplying nightmares nip at her heels, she realizes it’s her responsibility as the goddess Muska’s chosen to protect her realm. And then a dreamer notices her for the first time...

Lazarus hates the power the god Lokahn cursed him with – as a spirit seeker, he’s tasked to wander Bodhira, sending off lingering souls to the unknown. In one town, he stumbles across a mass grave and fails to free the spirits, as they’re bound to the earth by another spirit seeker’s magic. Determined to liberate the souls, he seeks help from an unlikely source. A woman from his dream, with blue eyes and feathers in her hair...

Aysa and Lazarus reluctantly make a pact to restore the balance between dreams and nightmares, as well as life and death.

NaNoWriMo 2022 - Aren't I Always A Rebel?

Hi, all! It's that NaNoWriMo time of year again!

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to create a NaNo Bites document for this year. I just got back from a New Orleans trip a week ago, and now I'm elbows deep in revisions and a beta read. So, we're going with the classic word count meter.

Wait, you want details? Lol. I guess. ;)

I need to make tracks on the Dead As Dreams revisions, so I'll be continuing to focus on that instead of fresh words. Heck, I'm pretty much re-writing the novel anyhow, especially once I get through Chapter 24. I am scared to see what kind of mess I'm dealing with for the second half.

Yeah, that makes me a NaNo Rebel again. I'm also a NaNo Rebel because I'm not aiming for 50k. My stretch goal for the month is 25k instead. With a couple beta read jobs to deal with, and the impending doom of NaNo Crud, I'm guessing 25k will be quite a challenge in and of itself.

As you can see by the meter below, I've already made some progress! I'll try to update it throughout the month, but if I don't have time, I'll be sure to at least do so at the end of the month with my final word count.

If I can hit that elusive 25k, I'll be 65k into the Dead As Dreams revision.

That's all I got for now. I'm hoping I can find the time to post some New Orleans pictures to the blog before the end of the year. We'll see. Always crazy at the end of the year!

Happy reading and writing!

5351 / 25000 words. 21% done!

Do Not Go Gentle - Excerpt

It's release day for Do Not Go Gentle! A dark fantasy with spirits and necromancy, perfect for this time of year.

This short story is a prequel to my upcoming novel, Dead As Dreams, which is slated to release in 2023. Lazarus, our main character in this story, is one of the two main characters in the novel. And the series title at present is Saga of Souls & Dreams.

Currently, you can buy a copy of Do Not Go Gentle from Amazon only. It's available with a Kindle Unlimited subscription, though, too!

I hope you enjoy the excerpt below, and may it tickle your curiosity for my forthcoming novel, Dead As Dreams. Happy reading!

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Lazarus hated the cold creeping in, taking over his body, his life. He hated the endless graveyards, each tombstone etched with the symbol of the god Lokahn, bull’s horns attached to a human skull and a flame underneath. And he hated the curse he’d been born with — the power of a spirit seeker.

But most of all, he hated watching his mentor, Borko, send off the lingering spirits, choking their wills before flinging them into an unknown plane. So painful and cruel.

All of it reminded him of his appalling mishap. Over a year ago, he’d accidentally resurrected his dead sister, Sara.

Lazarus’s mother had cast him out after what he’d done to his sister, and he’d been traveling with Borko ever since. Her rejection still ached beyond words, but he understood, especially after observing Borko’s magic at work on a near nightly basis.

Spirit seekers were monsters, hunting down the souls of the dead who still clung to Bodhira, then banishing them to... Well, no one knew where exactly. According to Borko, it didn’t matter where they ended up, as long as they lost the ability to torment the living.

And even though Lazarus hadn’t sent off any spirits on his own yet, he was the worst of the monsters. Poor, Sara. Borko had never committed such an atrocity as raising the dead.

Lazarus had questioned his mentor about the incident once, and the man had growled and poked him in the chest. “Never. Never try that again.”

Not that anyone needed to admonish him. Sara’s shambling form still haunted his dreams, and he feared it always would.

“Come. Join the bones you left behind. Come.” Borko’s intonation beckoned to the spirits as he knelt in the middle of the burying ground, the brilliant purple orb around his neck brushing the earth. The chief of this town, the silent onlookers, and Lazarus all waited outside the gate.

His mentor’s words conjured the memory of his worst nightmare, one that had preyed upon him on his thirteenth birthday. Their thirteenth birthday, as he and Sara had been twins.

In his dream, his sister had clawed her way out of the grave, true to reality, but instead of heading toward their house as she had a year ago, she turned on him. Curses spewed from her unhinged jaw, and she staggered toward him, head tilted at a sharp angle due to her broken neck.

Lazarus had stood rooted, heart thudding in his breast as she approached. A sliver of fear wormed its way to the surface, but guilt quickly gobbled it up. He’d done this to her, and he deserved all the harsh words she flung at him. Along with whatever punishment she deemed fit.

The nightmare had ended with Sara descending on him, pulling him to the ground, then dragging him back into her grave where she slowly devoured him, stretching out the pain and agony. Her prolonged torture mangled his soul.

❦

To send souls off requires a spirit seeker to choke the ambition out of them...

Lazarus curses the power he was born with. The power of a spirit seeker. And he curses the memories that haunt him – his sister rising from her grave due to his magic.

Now, his mentor tasks him with sending off souls on his own for the first time. But his memories cause him to question why the spirits linger... And why his mentor deals with them so violently.

There has to be a better way, and Lazarus intends to find it.

Well of Solitude (Fortunes of Fate, 7) - Excerpt

Finally, a new release! It feels great to be on schedule (actually, I'm a bit ahead for the year). Well of Solitude (Fortunes of Fate, 7) is now available as an ebook at all major online retailers!

Please remember, as with most of my Fortunes of Fate series, you can jump into whichever story you'd like to first - no need to have read the previous titles. Well of Solitude ended up in the novella range, so at around 70 pages you may want to consider diving into this one since it's over twice as long as my second longest Fate title (that would be Edge of Sorrow).

If you'd like to grab a copy after reading the excerpt below, here are a few links for you: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Books2Read (this last one will give you the option of your preferred online retailer).

As always, if you read Well, please consider leaving a review at one of the retailers or on Goodreads. Thank you, and happy reading!

Note: In the excerpt below you'll see Solis referring to Resz as Rez - this is intentional, not a misspelling!

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She brushed her fingers along the door. It creaked open, stale air gusting out.

Only the touch of the dead opened this door.

An ache throbbed inside her – the desire to be whole, normal, not suspended between two worlds. She felt it every time she entered the Well.

Solis glanced up the stairs one last time. Rez peered down, but didn’t move to follow.

Right. Into the depths. After she slipped in, the door sealed behind her with a thud.

A tomb, indeed. One with endless labyrinthine passages and an underlying musty odor of death. Home of the souls of Fate, tasked to wander their unlives away in the darkness. Knowledge that saddened her.

She hoped those who believed some spirits chose to be reborn were correct, though she only bore witness to the ones rambling this maze. If there was another way out aside from the door behind her, or a portal to a different world like the cat had claimed, she’d never found it. Hard to search every passage when they were truly endless and she feared getting lost.

Though Solis had ventured further in on many occasions, attempting to memorize and map out routes in her mind, today she refused to. The necromancer had her on edge. She’d lied to him – she was mostly safe, but not completely. Down here, the madness of the spirits knew no bounds. She was less of a target because of her state, and many had accepted her presence as ordinary. Yet there was still an inherent risk, the chance an insane enough shade would attack her, even attack another of its kind.

The Well was a place for spirits to rest... and lose their incorporeal minds.

Except Neggie. He’d remained sane for the seemingly endless years Solis had known him, and he’d implied he’d been a resident of the Well for much longer before that. Tracking time proved difficult in the garden, though, so no telling how long she’d been here – it all felt eternal. And her unique makeup ceased her aging, a type of immortality, so she couldn’t track the years that way.

Solis sighed, not wanting to dwell on her enduring predicament. At least she was able to offer a touch of light to the darkness, for her and the spirits.

She tossed the lily into the air, and it exploded, sundering itself. Five of the glowing petals zipped into the maze, quickly disappearing into the depths to wander through the winding passages. The remaining orb of light bobbed above her, then landed on her shoulder.

It amazed her how deliberate and sentient the petals acted once they disconnected. As if they transformed from flowers to fairies.

Solis lightly patted the petal. It flitted off her shoulder and hovered high above.

“I sense the living in the garden.” Neggie’s voice broke the deathly silence, and he swirled into existence, a hulking brute of a spirit. She’d always been tempted to ask who he’d been in life, but he likely didn’t remember. Memories melted away the longer one was dead. Currently, his form shaped itself into one resembling a human, his typical appearance when he addressed her, though he’d mastered the ability to shift into whatever he wished, like a cloud of smoke with a will.

“Ah, Neggie, I was just about to call for you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s a necromancer.”

He bent over, his translucent face inches from hers. “Truly?”

“The spirits drew him, and he broke through the enchantments around the island. A determined and stubborn man.” Rude, too, but she figured he wouldn’t care about that.

Neggie billowed upright, his form growing taller. He towered over her – even without a solid form, he was intimidating. “What does he want?”

“To enter the Well.” Odd, he never asked silly questions. Everyone seemed to be doing so today.

“And?” The shadows of eyebrows rose, shimmery in the petal fairy’s glow.

Solis hesitated. Normally, Neggie was more forthcoming, chattier than the other spirits, sometimes more than she cared for. “I thought it best to speak to you.” Her voice cracked, throat suddenly dry.

“Without discovering his intentions? Foolish girl.” His usual patience and kindness had evaporated.

Never. He’d never called her such things before. Girl. She’d left that designation behind years upon years ago.

The kind, yet imposing soul, had transformed into the commanding leader of the spirits he claimed to be. And Solis didn’t like it, not one bit. “He’s a necromancer. You know, someone who can control the dead.” She waved her arms around. “Including me.”

Neggie hummed. “I know what a necromancer is.” He drew closer again, though she wished he hadn’t. She didn’t think it possible for a spirit’s gaze to appear so menacing, so unhinged. “Keep him from entering the Well at any cost. Including your own life.”

Solis stepped back and gasped. “Or?”

“I’ll banish you from the garden forever.” His bulky form swirled into a cyclone and zipped down the nearest passageway, the darkness swallowing him. Booming laughter trailed behind him, and several other spirits cackled in response.

Perhaps Neggie had finally gone mad.

And Solis was left alone to turn Rez away from the island. A necromancer who could manipulate her own soul.

That or risk losing the comfort of her garden – the only place she belonged.

All of a sudden the glowing petal dashed away, and the spirits hushed, returning the maze to stark silence. The Well suddenly felt darker and more threatening than it ever had before.

❦

Solitude. Ward or woe? The answer lies buried in the minds of the mad shades.

Solis embraces her task as Gardener of the Well. Who better to tend to the flora edged in perpetual sunlight – surrounding the tomb of spirits – than someone who is half-dead herself? But when a necromancer arrives on the island, demanding entrance to the Well, her solitude shatters.

Spirits are the only good company, in Resz’s opinion. So when he senses the glut of souls in the Well, compulsion drives him to find them. Unfortunately, a strange woman denies him access. And worse, he’s inexplicably drawn to her, as he’s never been to another living being.

Solis risks control of her own soul to keep Resz out of the Well. Can she convince the necromancer to abandon his quest, or will he pull her strings like a puppet master?

What Am I Writing? 8/7/14 Snippet - Dead As Dreams

Below is a snippet of something I am currently working on. Be warned, it will usually be rough draft material. Please let me know if you like what you read! It'll encourage me to keep going. <3

Lazarus yanked the burning charm out from under his shirt. It flamed a brilliant purple, complementing the colors of the setting sun.

And then he felt the souls, in every crevice of his being, through his skin, muscles, and embedded in his bones. He looked out across the field, tall grasses shifting in the breeze. There was no sign of a single grave, but he saw the bodies just beneath the dirt, decaying and crumbling, buried unceremoniously, without care or love.

A mass grave.

The land was permeated with death, seeped in lost souls. Not a single body beneath had released their spirits. So many souls for Lokahn to devour.

And the souls were hungry. Killed and left alone, they yearned for the warmth of a live body and the touch of a spirit seeker.

From Dead As Dreams, Chapter 7 (novel currently in the revision process)

About Dead As Dreams:

Dreams are in danger and souls are chained to the earth. Aysa, the Shepherd of Dreams, and Lazarus, a spirit seeker, join forces to restore the balance between dreams and nightmares and life and death. They face a rogue spirit seeker and a manipulator of nightmares--both intent on unhinging the world, but there is yet another pulling the strings.

NEXT UP: Finally back to The Sims 3, Lavender Legacy!