I’m neck-deep in The Book of the New Moon Door and enjoying the one day I can keep the windows open before the heat hits again. When my cats can’t watch the birds and insects flying around, preferably from right up against the screen, they get antsy. Winter is a hard season for them.
While I work on rewrites, you’ll have a new chapter of New Moon Door on Patreon tomorrow, and last week’s Patreon chapter will be up here to read for free on Wednesday. Also, August is almost over (how??), so the newsletter will go out next week. Here’s a signup link if you haven’t done so already.
As always, thanks for being here. Stop by again soon!
The grass beneath Isabel’s feet is metal wire, brittle and sharp. As she enters the silent village, the crowd of ghosts at her heels, she checks her hands and the hems of her sleeves for any sign that she’s undergoing the same transformation. Her fingers remain flesh; her coat is still wool. Whatever happened here is over now. All that remains is a village made of iron.
What had Emryn Marner said? Something about the red star, and a town half a day away—and the story a traveler had told about it, passed from alehouse to inn until it reached the University District. Isabel had dismissed it then. She’d had more pressing concerns.
A scraping, rattling sound that makes Isabel’s teeth hurt sweeps through the village as the wind rustles the grass underfoot and the thatching on the roofs. Flat surfaces—walls, fence posts, and the sides of the unfortunate cattle—shine dully in the midmorning light. She avoids looking in any more windows, but that doesn’t spare her the sight of a stablehand, no older than ten, cowering by the fence with iron arms covering his head. His hair is fine wire, coiled tightly, and the ends crumble as the wind passes through it. Iron dust falls to the iron earth.
He has a warm coat and enough bread to last him the day, which is about how long he can be sure he’ll live, so he’s content. If he sees tomorrow, he’ll worry about providing for it then.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Berend struggles to traverse the shattered landscape and get his sword back. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
I have very little to report today: I’m working on rewrites of The Book of the New Moon Door, and there will be a new chapter on Patreon tomorrow, followed by the latest chapter here on the blog on Wednesday.
As always, thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.
Isabel figures she must be a sight, wearing too-large borrowed clothes and an even larger coat, but she’s warm and her belly is full, so she decides not to worry about it. She’s not much more strange in appearance than anyone else on the road from the Temple District to the university, bypassing the barricaded route through the city’s center. Most of her fellow travelers are ghosts, dressed in the echoes of whatever they were wearing in life, bearing the wounds of their encounter with the reanimated dead—the wrath of their ghostly predecessors.
So many spirits had followed Isabel to the wall, and yet there are more. When she looks over her shoulder, they’re following her, four or five abreast and a dozen deep. Most wear watchmen’s uniforms, the patches on their vests indistinct. One just behind Isabel is a nun, her green habit turned gray, a broken piece of wood clutched in one hand as a weapon.
“Why are you following me?” she asks aloud. Even if she had her magic, if Ondir wasn’t beyond her reach, she doesn’t know a single one of these ghosts’ names. Can they tell she is—she was—a Sentinel, despite the lack of all inward and outward markers?
They don’t give her an answer. The darkened hollows of their eyes gaze straight ahead, unseeing, as they trudge after her.
I can’t help them. If ever there was need of a Sentinel, it would be now, but she can do nothing.
Her fingers remain flesh; her coat is still wool. Whatever happened here is over now. All that remains is a village made of iron.
The Book of the New Moon Door
In case you missed yesterday’s update, Journey to the Water is on a brief hiatus, and I’ll be posting new chapters of The Book of the New Moon Door every week for the next month or so. You can enjoy the latest chapter on Patreon.
I am hard at work on rewrites for The Book of the New Moon Door. I was originally trying to keep up with Journey to the Water as well, but I think at this point I need to concede and put Journey on hiatus until New Moon Door is done. Since I have plenty of chapters of New Moon Door, I can post one a week (first on Patreon and then here) for the next month or so.
This is for a number of reasons:
First, rewrites are going to take a lot of my time. The original draft of The Book of the New Moon Door is over 170,000 words long. In order to achieve an October release date, I’ll need to finish the new draft ideally by the end of August.
Second, I’m not going to lie to you: Baldur’s Gate III came out. I’m a fairly disciplined writer, but I’m not that disciplined.
Third is below the cut for medical stuff and complaining about the US healthcare system:
Two others stood up with Fenin: young men, one in the tattered remnants of an attendant’s white robe, and the other carrying a pitted, splintery staff that might have been enchanted to look like a spear. Had I met either of them before the illusion broke? I could not imagine a connection between their gaunt cheeks, thin hair, and missing teeth and the bright, bronze faces I had seen yesterday. Except for Fenin, everyone here was a stranger.
The elders remained where they were, kneeling on the dusty ground. They bowed their heads, turning their faces away from me. They would not look at me, or their three defecting subjects, again. In a rasping, wavering voice, they sang a hymn to their dead god, and we left the barren garden in search of enough provisions to survive in the desert.
We would not take everything. Though part of me wished to punish them for their treatment of me, and reasoned that if they were going to do nothing, they deserved whatever fate the sun and wind had in store for them, I could not leave them to starve. I found a little dried meat, caked with dust, some handfuls of grain, and another few days’ worth of water, murky and tasting of mud. The rest I left where it was, hoping that the people of Svilsara would recover it before the rats did. I could hear movement in the walls and the scratching of many tiny claws.
As she approaches the forest, the pines whisper back to the ghosts. It sounds like she’s caught in a storm. It sounds like a warning.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Isabel crosses the apocalyptic landscape and finds something unexpected in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, now available on Patreon.
The Black Keys, “Have Love, Will Travel” (Richard Berry cover)
Good morning!
The newsletter is going out at noon my time (US Central Daylight), so if you haven’t signed up yet and want event news and additional cat pictures, be sure to sign up here before then. (It’s supposed to be an embedded form, but WordPress and MailerLite aren’t getting along.)
August is going to be the month of rewriting The Book of the New Moon Door, so I’ll be getting ready for that today and starting this week. In the meantime, there will be a new chapter on Patreon for your reading enjoyment tomorrow, and the latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be up here on Wednesday. New Moon Door may take all of my waking hours this month, but I’m planning to stay on top of the alternating posting schedule. I’ll let you know if that changes.
Also, please wish Brooke safe travels today, as she’s heading back from Witch City Tarot in Salem!
Space Whales Press 