Lissa Dobbs's Blog: Shadow Walkers of Grevared, page 16

Serenity Corbin

[image error]I’ve had the idea for a while about a character named Serenity Corbin, a crash, tactless woman in her mid-forties. I’ve played around with her story some, but I’ve only gotten a few chapters in. I usually work on it for a few days after I complete one of the books of Grevared. Below is the beginning of the first chapter. Again, the things I post here are for fun, and most of them haven’t had more than a cursory glance through.

Best wishes!

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

 

Broken glass.

Drops of blood.

Water everywhere.

Not a stellar start to a day that began at butt-crack-thirty before even God rose from his holy slumber.

I cursed as I climbed from my battered PT Cruiser and stomped to the door of my neighborhood Mighty Mart, glass crunching under my feet, to see just what the hell had happened now. I wasn’t deluded enough to think something as minor as a break-in, a dead body, or a flooded store would be enough to convince the owner to let me close up shop and go back to bed. Hell, no. He’d just tell me to clean it up and keep the store open.

Sure, boss. I don’t mind doing double my workload, taking care of your responsibilities,

for absolutely nothing in return. God forbid you should have to cut your yearly vacations down from four to three and get me some effing help. Whatever would we do?

I opened the door and slogged through several puddles, soaking my tennis shoes in the process, and typed in the code to turn off the alarm. That done, I surveyed the damage. And breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t as bad as I’d first thought.

The puddles were our typical ‘after heavy rain’ flooding. A couple of hours with the wet vac, and they’d be cleaned up. The broken glass appeared to be the remains of several beer bottles, and I could sweep that up in a few minutes. But the blood was an issue. Well, that, and…how did all of this wind up inside the store? It was one thing to see it in the parking lot, I could rationalize that. But inside? In…side? The water was a no-brainer. The store always flooded after a hard rain. No big. But the glass? Night shift should’ve cleaned that up. And the blood? Ditto.

I moved behind the counter, the cigarettes to my back, and counted the money. I typed in the passwords to get the register up and running and checked all the numbers on the lottery tickets. I grabbed the form for counting the cigarettes and cursed under my breath as I stomped off into the back storeroom where we kept the cartons. I made a quick count of them and the extra lottery tickets then flipped on the coffee. After all, I had to have the store opened on time regardless of what else was going on.

Now, I could focus on the mess. So far, I hadn’t seen any notes, any indication that second shift had run into any trouble. At all. Would it have killed them to leave me a sticky note? Send me a text? Shoot me an email? Hell, even pick up the phone and call? It would’ve been nice to know about this disaster before I got here.

I fumed for a moment, then it dawned on me that they would’ve clued me in for something like this. And, yes, they would’ve cleaned it up. So…that meant all this had to have happened after the store closed.

“Ah, shit.”

I looked around the store. The only display was for Rock Stars, and they were all still piled up in the middle of the floor, the different flavors artfully color coordinated by the lovely folks at Pepsi. Granted, the boxes were soaking wet and would probably collapse at some point, but that wasn’t my problem. My problem was the broken glass, the glass that was both inside and out with no apparent source, and the blood, blood that was the crimson of a fresh cut and not the duller brownish color of blood that had dripped hours before.

I checked the bathrooms, the stock rooms, and the cooler. There was no one there. No one. Nada. Not. A. Soul.

So, who’d made the mess?

I still had a few minutes before the store opened, so I knelt to examine the glass. It was crystal clear with an opalescent sheen to it. And it was thin. Really thin. And delicate. Not like beer bottles at all.

What the –?

I picked up one of the shards, and my mouth fell open when it dissolved in a flash of light. I jumped to my feet and wiped my hands on jeans that had seen better days. My heart raced in my chest, and I gasped for breath. Glass didn’t just dissolve. Nope. It was solid, material, sharp and pointy, but it didn’t just disappear. Not in the real world.

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, profanity rolling from my tongue, and I was suddenly really glad we didn’t have audio on the billion cameras that watched the store. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Really? You’re gonna do this to me now? Haven’t I been through enough?

The outside lights clicked on, signaling time to open. I cussed – cursing in my world is a whole ‘nother kettle of worms – and unlocked the doors with less enthusiasm than I’d mustered for the colonoscopy I’d had several years before.

 

Thank You!!!!

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Thanks so much to the recent purchasers of The Chronicles of Ethan Grimley III, and to those who’ve downloaded “Yuletide Sparkle” on Smashwords. 

There’s a new free story on Smashwords entitled “Ol’ Jeb” that also gives a sneak peek at my upcoming release.

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

Let Your Light Shine

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River of Blood – Chapter One

[image error]This is a WIP that I completely forgot I had; I found the file this morning. It hasn’t been edited, so please excuse typos and the like. I just thought I’d put it up for the fun of it.

Best wishes!

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

 

Newpost, Shizzuria Wasteland

 

Erastus raced through the streets of Newpost with a band of boys behind him. He hollered as they did, and the group barreled down the road. He turned a corner and slid on a patch of ice. His long legs tangled, and he landed on his butt to slide several feet before coming to a stop against a crate. Erastus winced and climbed to his feet. His trousers were damp from the ice, and he shivered.

“You okay, man?” One of the boys asked.

Erastus nodded. “Yeah. I only cut my finger. It’s no big deal.”

Erastus stared in fascination at the blood that oozed from the small cut. It formed a drop, round and shiny, then slid down the side of his finger. The droplet hung there, suspended, then it rose from his hand to hover before his eyes. Erastus’s mouth dropped open in shock as he simply gaped at this freak of nature.

“Hey, dude. What’s up with that?”

Erastus shook his head but didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He’d never seen anything like it before.

The other boys pulled away, fear written in every line of their bodies, and disappeared into the shadows without a word, while Erastus stood there. Another drop formed, bright red in the gloom of the day, to join its brother in front of the boy. Erastus moved his finger, and the blood drops followed. He shook his head to clear it of any hallucination, but the blood stayed where it was. He used his uninjured hand to wipe his crystal eyes, but that, too, proved futile. Erastus squeezed his injured finger and watched as the drops became a trickle. He watched with morbid enthrallment as the dribble of blood swirled upward instead of falling to the street.

Footsteps on the cobblestones penetrated the edge of Erastus’s hearing. He turned his head slightly, but never let his attention divert from the phenomenon before him. The swirls broke apart into separate drops then came back together into a ball. The ball elongated and twisted to form a small knife in the air before Erastus.

“What the hell are you doing? Cover that up.”

Erastus jumped at the sound of Dooby Hallowell’s voice. He turned to see his father coming toward him with hurried strides, his usually kind face red with fury.

“Did you hear me, boy? Cover it. Now.”

Erastus nodded once, but he couldn’t get his tongue to work. He wanted to ask his father what was happening, to get an explanation, but all he could do was stare wide-eyed at the man who’d raised him.

Dooby pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped Erastus’s finger. The swirling drops fell, staining the handkerchief with bright red.

“Put some pressure on it to stop the bleeding, and come on home.”

Erastus didn’t argue. Instead, he followed Dooby back through Newpost to their small cottage at the edge of town.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Dooby demanded again once they were inside.

Erastus still refused to answer. His mind swirled with confusion over what he had seen.

“Did you hear me?”

Erastus looked up at his father, his eyes wide and frightened. “What happened? What was that?”

Dooby’s face softened, and he motioned for the boy to follow him into the kitchen. It was a simple room with a coal stove, a Cold Box, and a sink. A scrubbed wood table sat in the center, and a small counter held fruits and vegetables.

“Sit down at the table, son, and let’s get that tended.”

“It’s only a little cut, Father,” Erastus replied. His voice was hollow, uninflected, while his mind remained trapped in its muddle.

Dooby brought a clean rag and a bandage and stood before Erastus. “For others, yes. For you, any wound could be a potential problem.” Dooby cleaned the cut and bandaged it, then he sat down in the chair opposite Erastus. “I suppose you have some questions.”

Erastus nodded.

Dooby took a deep breath and blew it out. He looked at his son, then he nodded once and rose to his feet. Erastus watched, as it always seemed to take his father forever to reach his height. Dooby Hallowell wasn’t a small man, not by any means. Wide shoulders and over six feet of height filled whatever space he occupied. But Erastus didn’t want to think about that. He wanted answers, something to quell the fear that threatened to choke him.

Dooby pulled a bottle from the top shelf over the sink and poured himself some of the amber liquid. He returned to the table without speaking and lowered himself back into the chair. He took a long sip and sat the glass down, then he turned to his son and took another deep breath.

“All right. This is gonna take some telling, so don’t interrupt me once I get started, or I may not be able to go on.”

“It has to do with Mother, doesn’t it?” Erastus whispered. In all Erastus’s thirteen winters, he’d seldom heard Dooby Hallowell mention his deceased wife. When he was little Erastus had asked questions, but Dooby had always fallen into a sullen silence instead of answering.

Dooby nodded and drained his glass. He rose and refilled it before returning to the table and rubbing his face with his hands. “All right, son. You’ve asked about your mother your whole life, and I’ve never been able to talk about her.” Dooby paused to drink then looked over at his son with eyes swimming in tears. “You know she died just after you were born.”

Erastus nodded.

“We had to get a wet nurse to feed you. She wasn’t even able to do that.”

Erastus hung his head. For years he’d lived with a secret guilt, one that told him again and again that his mother had died because of his birth. He’d never shared that with his father. Or anyone else. But it gnawed at him in the quiet hours of the night, kept him awake when he was at the pinnacle of exhaustion. “I’m sorry.”

Dooby looked up, comprehension dawning. He reached over and patted Erastus’s hand, a hesitant gesture. “No, son. It wasn’t your fault. Your mother was injured by another.”

Erastus’s head shot up, and anger flashed in his gut. “What?”

Dooby took another sip from his glass. “It wasn’t your birth what killed her. It was something else.” He looked at his son with admiration. “I’m just glad she was able to birth you before she died, or I would’ve lost you both.”

Erastus stared at his father. Confusion was a shadowy veil that blocked all thought. All these years. All those nights. And it hadn’t been his fault? “What happened?” he asked, his voice more demanding than he’d ever dared be with Dooby.

Dooby sighed and rubbed his face. His eyes teared, and the color drained from his ruddy skin. “All right, son.” He looked up at Erastus as if judging his age and maturity, his ability to handle what he was about to say. “It was like this….

 

Cover Reveal – Title and Cover for Gwennyth Grimsbane

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Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

How the Florinsekt Came to Be

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This is one of the tales collected by Malkin and Millicent Boffleblossom during their time in E’ma Thalas. Millicent loved the tale, but Malkin had some doubts as to its authenticity. He claimed that the elf who told the story made it up on the spot, but Millicent swears she heard the tale from others in the community as well.

 

In the land of Tir Na Nog, where the light never ceased to shine, there lived a tiny pixie by the name of Frost Sparkle. Now Frost Sparkle was a frost fairy that gloried in touching the autumn leaves and lacing them with delicate veils of ice. Each year she looked forward to the time when the Winter Queen would tell her it was time to go to work, but each year it seemed to take longer and longer for the winter season to come.

Well, Frost Sparkle wasn’t the most patient of pixies, and she took to asking the Winter Queen every day if it was time to go to frost the leaves. And each day the Winter Queen said, “Not yet, Frost Sparkle, but very soon.”

Each time she heard this, Frost Sparkle would stomp her foot and ask, “Why can’t we go today?”

But the Winter Queen simply shook her head and smiled and sent Frost Sparkle on her way.

After days and days of this, as the weather gradually cooled and the autumn pixies took to painting the leaves in the reds, yellows, and browns of fall, Frost Sparkle’s patience ran out. She watched the autumn pixies flit among the leaves with their paints and magics, and she ached to go behind them and add her own sparkle to their work. She hopped from one foot to the other and beat her wings as fast as she could.

Finally, she could wait no longer, and she reached out a tiny finger and touched the edge of a leaf. Immediately, it was covered with a delicate lace of frost, and the autumn pixies cried out in anger. Their cries attracted the attention of the Autumn Queen, and she hurried to see what had happened. When the autumn pixies told her what Frost Sparkle had done, the Autumn Queen turned to the pixie.

“That was wrong of you, Frost Sparkle. I will have to speak with the Winter Queen about this.” Her face turned red, and fire appeared in her eyes. It was against the laws of the land of fairy for pixies to work in the wrong season.

Frost Sparkle’s little heart beat hard in her chest, for she knew the Winter Queen would punish her most harshly. With a cry of despair, Frost Sparkle jumped into the air and flew as fast as she could to a deserted part of the forest.

Frost Sparkle plopped onto a spot of moss and pulled her knees up to her chin. Her wings beat her agitation, and she squeezed her legs as tightly as she could. She wanted to work. She wanted to create. She couldn’t stand this waiting! She screamed as loud as her little voice would go, and she beat her fists on the moss bed and stomped her tiny feet. And when she was all spent, she lay down and cried.

Her cries did not go unnoticed. A beetle, wisest among the insects, heard her shrieks and came to see what all the fuss was about.

Frost Sparkle sat up and wiped the tears from her eyes. She told the beetle what she’d done and that the Winter Queen would punish her. The beetle took pity on the poor pixie, for he knew the wrath of the Winter Queen.

“I can help you,” he said.

Frost Sparkle climbed to her feet and bowed to him. “Please, Sir Beetle.”

The beetle nodded once and led Frost Sparkle deep into the forest. She shivered as she made her way through dense brush and across thick vines. It was dark here, much darker than she’d ever seen, and Frost Sparkle was frightened.

At last the beetle stopped beside a small flower, one with bright red petals and a silver center. Frost Sparkle looked at the flower then back to the beetle.

“You will become one with the flower,” he said. “That way the Winter Queen cannot punish you.”

Frost Sparkle tilted her head to the side and examined the flower. It seemed to droop in the darkness, as if it were sad. She looked back at the beetle, who fluttered his wings. “Why does the flower need me?”

“The flower cannot grow here,” the beetle said. “It is too dark. If you join with the flower, you will be able to take it into the light.”

This made sense to Frost Sparkle, so she agreed. The beetle flapped his wings and lifted into the air. A golden nimbus of magic surrounded him, and Frost Sparkle stared in awe at his beauty. He lifted his front leg and sent the magic into Frost Sparkle. It surrounded her and pulled at her, and she cried out from the pain. Her wings stretched along the petals of the flower, and her head shrunk until it just fit the center. Her arms became one with the calyx, and her legs joined the stem.

When next she knew, Frost Sparkle was one with the red-petaled flower. She stretched her wings, now petals, and pulled with her feet, now the stem, to lift the flower from its roots. She spun and spun until she was high above the trees. The flower took over from there and stretched its leaves to catch the light of Tir Na Nog. Frost Sparkle gloried in its joy and directed the flower throughout the land to see the sights and feel the light.

And from that day on, the flying flower, part pixie/part flower was known as the florinsekt, which meant flower bug, and it was one of the few small creatures of Tir Na Nog that survived the Catastrophe.

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

Writing and Reading

I’m reading an awesome little book by William Sloane called The Craft of Writing. I find this one particularly interesting because he talks a lot about the relationship between the author and the reader.

There’s a good bit of writing advice available now, and a great deal of it suggests reading your work out loud to make sure it sounds right. This, to me, has a little merit, but it’s always sort of confused me because we don’t generally read out loud. When I read Mr. Sloane’s line “Writing is meant to be read, not read aloud” I felt a little vindicated. He’s right, of course, nothing that I’m reading, whether it’s my own work or one of Stephen King’s best sellers, sounds right if I’m reading it out loud. I felt the same way about the Harry Potter books when I was reading them to my children years ago. It simply isn’t meant to be read that way.

I think, sometimes, we forget this. We forget the relationship between the author and the reader is a personal one, it’s one that others can’t really share, and when we ignore that relationship, we lose some of the power of the writing.

Now, I’m well aware that others won’t agree with this, and that’s fine. As readers, we each have our own way of interacting with the written word, and, as authors, we have our own way of determining the best way to approach our writing. These are simply my thoughts on the idea of reading work aloud, for it’s never helped me in the slightest.

Best wishes!

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

Free Book

I’d just like to remind everyone that Echo Volume 1 is still FREE for 3 more days! 2 &3 are $0.99 for 5 more days! Come get a piece of cyborgs gone wild!!! (Well he really only goes wild in 2 and 3, a bit in 1 though) Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here: Vol. 1 […]

via Echo Vol.1 still FREE for 3 more days! 2&3 $0.99 for 5 more days!!! — Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

I Really Don’t Like Her

[image error]I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t like Gwennyth Grimsbane. Yes, I know that I created her, and her story is important to the world of Grevared as a whole. *sigh* But she’s whiny, and she doesn’t want to step up, and I’m tired listening to her complain. On the other hand, I know what’s coming for her next, and I know she’ll have a chance to redeem herself a bit. I hope she’s up to it.

What do you do with an MC that you just don’t like?

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com

Eleanor Hestenfield

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She was an odd character to write and one that had a secret that I didn’t know about until she revealed it herself. 

Eleanor Hestenfield is a woman in her early twenties who carries the Stone of Giramphiel, a stone that allows her some protection against magic. She’s a Shadow Walker, but even she doesn’t understand her past. She’s desperately in love with Timothy Hawkins and is prepared to spend the rest of her life with him. But that isn’t all there is to her. 

Her father was killed by wolves when she was a child, and Eleanor grew up in a household of closed doors and blocked windows. She had to fight for her freedom when she came of age. 

As a Shadow Walker, Eleanor is strong and capable, but she’s always holding back just a bit, lacking confidence. It is only when she is with Timothy that she feels she can accomplish anything, but all this changes after the trip to Black Crystal. 

Lissa Dobbs

http://www.lissadobbs.com