In the spirit of celebrating growth experiences, I’m pleased to say that Forever Changed is coming along very nicely. I’m always surprised by what shows up on the page! Indeed, writing the Stelladaur series has forever changed me. I’ve tweaked plots. Improved technical structure. Dared to meet and listen to new characters. Polished sentences. Explored fantastic subtleties and nuances. Welcomed the grueling yet freeing euphoria of deleting unnecessary words, sentences, pages, and chapters. These are some of the great rewards of living a writer’s life—getting rid of what doesn’t serve the story, or my life, well.
For now, enjoy this snippet from page one of Forever Changed:
Reilly stared at the strange weapon in his hand, numb with the fact that Travis Jackson had murdered his dad, and with an object so seemingly insignificant. Yet when the relic mysteriously appeared—at the Bleak—Reilly knew then nothing was trivial about the tartan pin.
After escaping from the horrific Deceptors in that dark hell, he had returned through the portal onto his dad’s sailboat. It was there that he saw the pin again, poking up from a deck plank at the very spot where his dad had fallen overboard. At that precise moment, he knew Travis had used the device to jimmy-rig the boom, intending to make his heinous crime look like an accident. Stunned, Reilly had picked up the deadly instrument only briefly but then thrown it down, as if it had been cursed. Now a bitter thirst for revenge surged through him, quenched only by his obsession to find Norah again.
Reilly tucked the infernal object into his pocket, along with the treasured Fireglass and two precious scrolls, suddenly aware that the golden thread of gratitude which Falvio Xanthipee had given to him in Zora, was now tied to his wrist once again. Gratitude, however, found no place in his heart.
Regardless of what time in history he currently existed, and no matter the number of years he’d been tutored by Dante, Darwin and Moses when he was Spliced, or how much he’d learned from Afismat, Olektor and Radmund in the Rotunda far beneath the ruins of Stonehenge, Reilly’s life continued to be a series of unanswered questions.
He had hoped that whenever he finally returned to his home on Eagle Harbor Drive, some things would be different.
He didn’t want more clues.
He didn’t want the responsibilities that came with being a Stelladaur Ambassador.
He wanted Norah back!
Subconsciously, Reilly reached for the Fireglass and gripped it as he ran down the marina dock. Although it held the secrets of Stonehenge and the truth of Stelladaurs, he wished he could simply throw the magical gadget into the sea and drown all memories of his life after his dad had died. Drown Travis himself!
He ran faster, desperate to abandon all childish memories of wishes and magic now lost in the far distant past. For a split second he reminded himself that his unusually vivid imagination and transcendental abilities had helped him to overcome horrific circumstances and accomplish remarkable things, but that all seemed obsolete. Reality was illusive.
Read more about the series at Stelladur.com
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