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Limited Preview Edition of Blind the Eyes

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Chapter 1: Before

It was the dead man���s expression that drew me, the depth of feeling on it, bare and exposed and unashamed. It called to me.

That���s a lie.

It was his perfect stillness, the blue-grey cast of his skin shamefully exposed where his mask had slipped in the night.

That���s also a lie.

It was my own distorted shadow, wavering against the pearly sheen of his blown pupils, the unmistakeable mark of the Mara-taken.

That might be closest to the truth.

It might have been why I reached out that night, forgetting the danger. It might be what starts the tingling at the base of my skull even now whenever I think of the dead, the fluttering itch in my fingers that sets them tapping and twisting.

But it���s not the truth.

I don���t know what possessed me to slip out from under the covers and pad across the crumbling tiles of the Corrections dorm that night, ignoring just how many rules I was breaking.

I remember waking, peering across the sleeping rows of failures. There should only have been the faint radiance of blue light marking the locked doors. Instead, it was as though a spotlight illuminated the unnatural stillness of the corpse. He���d been Mara-taken in the night, punished for failing to conform, to obey.

Ignoring the indecency of his shameful nakedness, the line of his jaw and the ridge of his nose uncovered, I reached out to touch the dense roughness of his night-stubbled face. I traced the lines etched there, the deep brackets around his mouth, the ridge and hollow where his cheek stretched over bone. Brushed the faint softness of his lashes, flared wide as if to flee the blank orbs between them.

I spent the night surrendered to the sparkling, tingling fascination of it. They caught me like that the next morning, one hand pressed to the dead man���s twisted face as if, tracing my way through the echoes of his horror, I could know what he knew, feel what he felt.

This is the truth of it: I don���t know why I broke the rules so spectacularly. But the Mara haven���t come for me yet.

I���ve learned to suppress the wanting, hide my reactions, obedient. From the protective gold threaded through the walls and spun into the ward that haloes the hoods of good workers, to the careful drilling in how to turn over all desire and wanting to the Mara before they can kill us, Refuge ensures the survival of the obedient. But those sheltered, obedient workers only live on Floor 10 and above.

So I learned to face forward and ignore the draw of the dead, to focus on stilling the wilful twisting, reaching dance of my fingers by pinching them bloodless into submission. I made it all the way to Floor 18.

But I can���t ever mess up again. I���m only there on probation. One more failure, and the Mara will take me. I have to stop obsessing over the dead.

Which would be a lot easier if I wasn���t haunted.

Chapter 2: Now

Her name is Cadence.

Like me, she���s unsequenced. Singular. Defective. Refuge discontinued her production series after only one unit. Not broken enough to destroy, but not valuable enough to bother making more of.

It may be why I messed up, why I got sent to Corrections in the first place. It may be why she���s able to haunt me even now I���ve reached the shielded security of Floor 18.

Unlike me, Cadence refuses to learn her place. It���s probably how she got killed (she says she doesn���t remember). If I���m not careful, it���s going to get me killed, too.

���So I had this dream last night,��� she says. ���It was about trees. I miss trees. I miss climbing with������

���Stop it,��� I say quietly, so none of the other workers notice. I don���t have time for her lies.

She blows a rude noise in my ear and proceeds to singsong something that mostly consists of the word trees looped at different pitches.

I don���t know what trees are. Probably just another one of her made-up stories. And she can���t have dreamt. She���d be . . . well, dead.

My skin crawls in a not entirely unpleasant way.

���Dreeeams of treeeeees,��� She warbles.

���Shut up!���

I swat at her. My hood snags on one finger. The band securing it goes flying off. I scramble to yank the pale fabric back down over my hair. I clap the other hand over my face to keep my mask from sagging any lower down my nose. The last thing I want is the entire room staring at the uneven splotches on my naked face. Forty bland grey workers sit in bland uniforms behind bland consoles in the bland room. The floor is neutral carpet, the walls an unbroken expanse of neutral paint except for the supervisor���s mirrored observation window and the two doors. The lot of it���s bathed in artificial light. I���d stand out like a dark smear on the face of its perfection.

���Probationary Worker 18-Cole.��� The voice is nasal, cracking and uneven. ���I might���ve known.���

Division Supervisor Kistrfyv���s shoes nudge my shamefully distinctive black probationary hoodband on the floor. Embarrassment flushes my skin even further.

His damp, bulbous gaze is neatly framed between the loose mask drawn over his nose and mouth and the crisp, even spread of his hood under the dual bands of a supervisor. They���re proper wards, of course, gleaming with protective spun gold. He���s dressed perfectly to regulation: baggy, form-obscuring pale tunic and pants hiding light shoes, gloves under drooping sleeves, hood with its gold wards, and an opaque, veil-like mask covering every inch of admirably grey skin except the narrow opening around his eyes. His stance isn���t quite regulation, though; he leans forward, as though eager. If he weren���t the supervisor, he���d be at risk of a violation.

���I don���t like him,��� Cadence says. ���He���s a bully. And creepy. Why do you stick around this boring place, anyway? Let���s go already.���

I clench my fists to keep from swatting at her again. She knows perfectly well how important it is I pass probation and get promoted to full worker. I can���t afford any more mistakes. There���s no way I���d make it out of a second stint on Floor 6.

Some days, I wonder if we���re all grown with a Cadence, if she���s not a ghost at all but a sort of built-in temptation. But it���s not as if I can ask. The downside of strictly regulated isolation: no one to bounce ideas off of except your ghost, who���s probably a design defect in the first place.

Cadence is a forbidden distraction no matter how I look at it. We���ve been together so long I can���t really bring myself to blame her for all the trouble she causes. But if she makes me blow my chance to pass probation, I���ll never forgive her.

���Probationary worker,��� Supervisor Kistrfyv says again, leaning in too close to be strictly regulation. ���I don���t know how a worm like you managed to squirm its way up to this level, but I will not have you destabilizing my division. Submit. Now.���

I ease up out of my seat. The chair squeaks. I wince, and surreptitiously stuff hanks of overgrown hair out of sight. My mask droops from one side. I tuck my chin, partly to keep my hood on and my face shadowed, mostly because the supervisor twitches and glares whenever my head rises higher than his. Head bowed, I shuffle around the console and pick up the black band that marks my inferior status. It reminds every other worker of what could happen to them if things go wrong. Best case: survival as a pariah. Worst: death.

But I worked hard to make it this far. I snug the mark of my shame down over my hood, smooth the mask across my nose, and stand, appropriately slouched and modest once more. What I wouldn���t give just to be invisible���but no, I must not want. I must forget the shivery feeling I get when confronted with the thought cloudy eyes and chilled, stiff skin. I���ve worked so hard not to let Cadence distract me with her made-up stories, her childish fantasies of an imaginary world, her deceitful insistence on a place that is not Refuge.

���Probationary worker,��� she mimics in a whiny tone so like Kistrfyv���s it makes me cringe, ���I demand you extract my head from my butt. Probationary worker, I have nothing better to do with my time than stand here and blink like a fish. Probationary worker, I������

���Probationary worker.��� The real Kistrfyv speaks over her in warning tones. ���You���ve held us all up from our work long enough. Submit, and be quick about it.���

���He���s such a weenie,��� She huffs.

I twist my hands in the loose fabric at my sides to keep them still. Then I fix my gaze at the point where Kistrfyv���s mask drapes over his uniform and try to look contrite. I mumble through a comprehensive list of my violations: distracting behaviour, unnecessary interaction, immodest dress, lack of focus . . . It helps that he���s unusually short, and I���m enough taller that I have to tuck my chin, making me look submissive without really having to try. He still glares.

���Weenie, weenie, weeeniiie . . .��� Cadence chants in my ear, distracting me.

I finish with the rote submission to the Mara: ���I call upon the Mara to eat my dreams.���

It must be repeated three times. I string the words together under my breath, silently begging the Mara not to come at the same time. The only thing that could make this day worse is the Mara actually showing up and hollowing me out.

Rote submission is different than being Mara-taken. It���s meant as appeasement, a sort of pre-emptive measure. Void your disobedient impulses, turn over your hopes and desires to the Mara fast enough, regularly enough, and they���ll take the offering and leave you intact. I���ve performed submission hundreds, maybe thousands of times since they woke me from the Growers��� tables. Sometimes there���s a rush of emptiness left in their wake. Other times, they must not hear me. I know it���s for my own good, but I still don���t want them to come and eat my dreams. Better not to have any in the first place.

Kistrfyv makes me repeat the summons again. Louder. Clearer. Again. I scrunch my eyes shut and tighten my fists. This show of terror seems to please Kistrfyv, or maybe he just gets bored, because he finally lets me stop.

���Weee-neee . . . Weee-neeeee . . .���

Cadence starts breathing the words in a sort of singsong, gasping air in and puffing it out, drowning out Kistrfyv, who has started in on a lecture on the importance of submission without giving me leave to sit. My thighs tremble.

I twitch, suppressing the futile but tempting urge to swat her away. Instead, I lower my chin another inch, concentrating. Visible contrition might trim the length and severity of the lecture, and I need Kistrfyv to be pleased with me. Pleased enough to arrange a probationary trial soon. Pleased enough to grant me a promotion to full worker and hand over the gold ward to replace my black band. Pleased enough to erase my failure once and for all.

Kistrfyv strokes the dual wards around his forehead as if to emphasize his elevated position.

���Betcha he���s bald under that hood.��� Cadence improvises an ode to his presumed follicular deficiency and warbles it directly into my ear.

I burn to give her a good kick. My legs are starting to ache from standing with my knees locked, but I don���t quite dare to shift my weight under the force of the supervisor���s damp gaze. To make things worse, the pants on this latest uniform are too loose. They���re edging past my hipbones, one anxiety-spurring fraction of an inch at a time. I pinch the end of my tongue between my teeth. The sharp-edged, familiar sweetness of blood and pain helps me focus.

Meanwhile, Cadence is losing interest in her little song. She now seems to be occupied with sucking the words in and out again in a breathy sigh. It���s annoying. And distracting. And kind of amazing. What it would be like to just do whatever I feel like, the way she does? I clamp down on that thought.

���Aren���t you sick of it all?��� she says, as if she knows what I���m thinking.

I flinch. I prefer it when she���s picking on other people.

���Why do you put up with it?���

As if we haven���t been over it. As if she doesn���t know just as well as I do. Better, even.

���Fight back! Defend yourself. Look at him. He���s a shrimp. He���s scared of you. You can���t be satisfied with this. How can you be so passive? Do something���anything! Do you have a pulse? Hellooo . . .���

I can���t respond. I���ve got to hold it in. She���ll get bored with me���or Kistrfyv will, if I can just hold out long enough. I can be smart. I can obey. I can wait them both out.

I can survive.

���Don���t you want more? You���re really going to let that weenie bully you for the rest of your life?��� she demands.

It���s clear she would do things differently, if she could. The tragedy of her life is that she can���t. The tragedy of my life is she���ll never let me forget it.

I struggle to hold back another eye roll, but Kistrfyv seems to see past my mask to the dissatisfied twist beneath. His eyes crinkle at the edges, and trails of indecent moisture seep out as his cheeks threaten to engulf them in a sneer so wide it escapes the upper edge of his mask. The effect is unpleasant, but not nearly as much as his punishment will be: extra cycles of rec and more Noosh���the dense, flavourless goop that meets all nutritional requirements while ensuring uniformity among the populace. Or it���s supposed to, anyway. I���m too dark, too tall and too bony���which adds to the misery of the rec cycles. On the bright side, every time they increase my allotment, it seems to dull Cadence���s voice and make it easier to stay on task.

I can see my probationary trial receding further with every blink of his bulbous, judging eyes. He has no intention of letting me live down my failure, letting me blend in with the crowd. He just likes watching me squirm.

I make no further apology, though Kistrfyv eyes me expectantly. He���d probably appreciate a little bow or a few tears. Maybe I should make more of a show of contrition. Maybe it would motivate him to promote me sooner.

Or maybe it���s hopeless. He tops off his lecture with a group chorus of benevolent regulation, watching me the whole time. After, I���m allowed to sit.

I move too fast, desperate to rest my quivering muscles, and bump my thigh. The skin burns, and I know it will bruise bright, invisible patterns under my uniform. Great.

I shift, all sharp angles at odds with the smooth, ergonomic curves of my seat, another reminder that I���m never right, even for something as simple as a chair. A wheel squeaks, high and thin, and I freeze.

���You���re both weenies,��� Cadence says.

I���d like to tell her to shut up. I���d like to tell her I have no choice and she knows it. I���d like to tell her I���d rather be a weenie with a world to live in than like her, forever complaining and never able to do a thing about it.

I���d like to, but I won���t. She���s all I have. And she���ll back off soon, because I���m all she has. All she���ll ever have.

Chapter 3: Strangers

I don���t hate my job. Hate is dangerous. Hate is not stable. Hate is a wish for change. A wish is a dream that can draw down the Mara.

So I don���t hate my job. I merely appreciate when I no longer have to be at it. The pressure to focus, to keep from drifting off, to keep from being distracted by Cadence���s extravagantly expressed boredom . . . It���s exhausting.

Which is the point of work, after all. It���s the point of everything. Keep us just occupied and numb enough to stay out of trouble. Even water breaks are subject to regulation, carefully scheduled to avoid interaction between workers. But I excel at maintaining a modest perimeter, and my posture is flawless. Stooped shoulders, chin tucked, elbows in, small steps to maintain balance and avoid disruption. It���s not easy. I���m still growing, and I have an unfortunate tendency to trip over my own oversized feet. I clamp my gloved hands together in front as I walk to keep the fingers still.

���I miss colour,��� Cadence says out of nowhere. Like she does. ���When was the last time you saw a proper, rich blue? Or orange? I miss orange. And fruit. And eating.���

My mouth goes dry as a tingle buzzes the base of my skull.

���Shh.��� I glance to either side and roll my neck to make the buzzing stop.

���Oh, come on, it���s not as if they can hear me,��� she says.

Not good. She has to stop doing this to me, reminding me she���s a ghost. It makes me think of what comes before. And then I can���t stop thinking about it . . .

���I can hear you,��� I say, though my mind whipped past ���ghost��� and went straight to ���death���.

���You oughta thank me for breaking the boredom. How you can stare at that screen all day, I���ll never know.���

No, she never will.

I hurry back to my desk and squint at the screen. Maybe if I pretend she���s not there, she���ll back off. I start scanning from the submerged lower levels, deserted except for the occasional sub-aquatic Refuge Force patrol and work my way up floor by deserted floor to the ebb and flow of the Corrections division on Floor 6 and on to the tangle of codes on the higher divisions. Floor 14 is reliably busy, the cleaners coming and going all day long. Floor 18 looks empty, though of course it isn���t really. The system doesn���t track surveillance workers. There���d be no point in sitting here monitoring myself sitting here monitoring . . . yeah, no point at all. The snarl of codes is heaviest between floors 15 and 30, tapering off on the higher levels. As far as I can tell only a few enforcers and a handful of division leaders ever go that high. Apparently the Mayor lives up there, but if she has a code in the system, I haven���t figured it out. Cadence interrupts.

���Oops. You missed one. Hey, if I help you find five more errors, can we leave early? I���m so done with this scene.���

I scan back across the display. A surveillance feed on Floor 10 is patchy, the handful of codes flickering in and out too quickly to represent the actual movements of workers. I flag the anomaly to the field team for investigation and go back to scanning the display.

���Hey, don���t ignore me. Say thank you. Manners. Honestly, were you raised in a barn?���

I don���t understand. Barn? But she���s teasing, playful, which is better than nagging. She did save me from an error, after all. She was also the source of my distraction. I���ve got to do better.

���Thanks,��� I mutter into my mask. ���Now will you let me concentrate?���

She makes a rude sound in my ear. It���s only a few minutes before she starts up again, complaining about things I don���t understand, distracting, harassing, and occasionally helping, just to change things up.

I won���t admit it helps me get through the day. A good worker doesn���t need release from the boredom. A good drone lives for the boredom���or rather, the boredom is what lets us live. So I don���t let on that I���m struggling to focus, counting the minutes through the day. Not even to Cadence.

I can���t dream of a different life, a better one. That���s not allowed. But can I help it if I���m forced to listen to Cadence imagine wild and beautiful alien worlds? She doesn���t always nag and tease and pester. Sometimes she tells stories, wild fantasies of people and places from the Outside. Colours, not just shades of bland off-white, forms that aren���t purposelessly shapeless and food that���s something other than flavourless and slurped through a straw twice a day. More often than not, her stories end with her trailing off in confusion, usually when she tries to talk about herself instead of just making things up. Because, you know���ghost.

None of her stories are real. She doesn���t remember her past. She doesn���t know any more about the world than I do. So instead of dreaming with her, I do the smart thing. I focus on my screen. Flag the anomalies. Repeat. Build a record of obedience.

I���ve only just sat down after my second water break of the day when I see it. I have to look twice to be sure. Surveillance is down across a full half of Floor 20.

���Is that . . . ?��� Cadence sounds awed. ���Full crash? How would that even happen?���

It���s a major anomaly. If there were warning signs, whoever missed that is going to be in a lot of trouble.

It wasn���t me, right? Please don���t let it have been me.

I flag it for field service in a flurry of clicks that highlight the breadth and severity of the situation. Whoever gets assigned to investigation on this one is going to be busy for a while.

An alert takes over my screen: ���Surveillance Technician 18-Cole-: Assigned to task.���

That can���t be right.

���No way,��� Cadence says. ���You get to do a field investigation? Awesome.���

That definitely can���t be right. Only senior surveillance technicians are assigned to field duties. I glance at the supervisor���s office door and swallow a rising tide of panic. I should report something���s gone wrong and get the task reassigned.

Unless he did this.

The buzzing in my head settles into a deep, pulsing ache. I push back at it, rumpling my hood. He wouldn���t, would he? Purposely assign a major field investigation to me, just to see me fail? Or���

I take a closer look at the notation buried in the attached files. Two words jump out at me: ���Probationary Trial���.

It���s finally here: my chance to leave failure in the dust and blend in with everyone else. I can���t believe it. I���d thought after this morning���s incident, I���d be waiting months, years even. I wring my hands. It���s here it���s here it���s here it���s���

Impossible. It���s a trap. Kistrfyv is setting me up to fail. I hardly know anything about field missions.

But there���s no way to refuse the task, not without admitting failure and giving up my shot at normality. So, fine. I���ll show him. I���ll show them all. I can do it. It���s the smart thing to do, just stand up and head out. Show no weakness, no distraction. In fact, I should get going. The sooner I complete the task, the sooner I can crush that weenie���s hopes of being rid of me.

���Really?��� Cadence says as I push back my chair. I almost collide with a passing worker. ���You���re actually going? This is so cool. What do you think Floor 20 is like?���

She keeps up a steady one-sided commentary. I try to breathe and walk at the same time. My fingers tap and twine. I clench them into stillness.

I don���t notice the figures at the elevators at first. When I do, my fists jump to my throat, tangling in the loose lower edge of my mask in undisciplined panic.

Refuge Force. It was all a trap. Kistrfyv set me up, and now they���ve come for me and they���ll drag me back down to Floor 6 to die and all of this trying will have been for nothing and���

Wait.

There are several pale-uniformed figures standing there in front of the elevator. Which is weird. They���re too close together���even weirder. Most of them cringe, eyes shadowed under their hoods as if they���re just as afraid of being caught out in an error as I am. And those uniforms . . . Don���t enforcers wear dark, close-fitting uniforms?

���You just gonna stand there or what?��� Cadence sounds annoyed. ���Let���s get going already.���

It���s as if she doesn���t even see them, doesn���t realize how impossibly creepy this is. It���s a bunch of workers. Together. In the same place, at the same time. Nearly touching, even.

Other than their astonishing misconduct, they seem pretty normal���except for the one in the middle. He���s tall, his shoulders pulled back to show the clear line of his body beneath a carelessly disarranged uniform that obscures his ID code. Where the others keep their heads modestly bowed, he stares right at me.

I blink. His hood is shoved back, exposing dramatic blue-black strands against glowing, golden skin. But even properly covered, he would stand out with those eyes. Bold, fearless, and direct, he stares back with molten gold irises. It���s not the shape that stands out ��� like most of the workers, his eyes are long and flared, though a fraction wider and more upturned than my own. But such vibrancy and movement, the way they seem lit from within . . . I didn���t know it was possible for a worker to have eyes like that.

Is he an only, too? There can���t possibly be another like him, not in all of Refuge.

I step forward to get a better look.

���About time,��� he says.

End, Limited Preview Edition (Oct. 20, 2017)

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Goodreads Exclusive Post! Help me choose back cover copy!

Hi Goodreads! ARCs for YA dark fantasy BLIND THE EYES are aaaaaalmost ready (finally!) - but I need to get the final back cover blurb to my designer. Want to help me pick one?

Which version would you rather read?

1.

In a world where hope kills and dreams are deadly, obedience is the only way to survive.

Cole would do anything to shake her reputation as a failure. Isolated, haunted by a pestering amnesiac ghost and desperate to earn enough status in Refuge to avoid being abandoned to the nightmarish Mara, the last thing she needs is a charismatic stranger undermining her best efforts at obedience.
 
But when she indulges her forbidden fascination with the dead, Cole discovers Refuge's absolute control and guarantee of safety are both illusions, and risks her hard-won status, her home and her life to expose its lies.

A not-quite alive girl and her not-quite dead ghost discover trusted authorities lie, allies have their own agendas and even the monsters wear masks.

*OR*

2.

When hope kills and dreams are deadly, your only chance for survival is to shut it all down.

Cole would do anything to shake her reputation as a failure. In Refuge, the only way to survive the nightmarish Mara is absolute obedience, and she’s down to her last chance. So when a stranger shows up offering a fresh start in a place where nothing is forbidden, she knows better than to give into temptation.

But when she learns hers isn’t the only life at stake, Cole goes on the run to escape execution by nightmare and expose the threat. Too bad her only allies are a charismatic rebel, a childish ghost, a secretive stylist and an imaginary friend with a penchant for monster-hunting.

With enforcers in pursuit and the dead haunting her dreams, Cole must figure out who to trust and stop the dying before the nightmares eat her alive.


Thanks for reading & sound off in the comments! :)

Blind the Eyes

Almost there

I should get the next newsletter out in a couple weeks, but since I���m past due for an update, thought I���d pop in and share the progress!

BLIND THE EYES is out for query with a number of literary agents. For the uninitiated, to get a book published in the traditional manner, you send a sort of formal application letter to literary agents, who ask for more information on your book (or decline). If they love the story and think they can sell it to a publisher, they offer to represent you. Then they contact editors and try to sell the manuscript. Then a publishing house responds with an offer (and if you���re really lucky, you get a few of these to choose from). Then you get assigned an editor and work with that publisher and editor to adapt the book, which can mean more editing, rewrites, proofreading, cover designs etc. Then the book comes out in stores, 1-3 years later. And at every step of the process, it���s super competitive and subject to both market demand and the relevant professionals falling in love with your work.

I���ve had some really encouraging responses from agents, but nothing to tempt me away from indie publishing so far. That said, the publishing world moves super slowly, so I���ve only heard back from a quarter of the queries I���ve sent out so far.

So here���s the plan: there���s only a couple steps left to produce BLIND THE EYES as an independent publisher. It still needs a final proofread, final back cover copy and interior layout/design. I���m getting in touch with a proofreader this week to line that up for late October - it���s a minor cost and worth risking to set up. My cover artist can do interior design, but I still need to talk to her about a schedule. If she���s available, I think everything could be done for as early as the middle of November. So��� no promises guys, but I���m thinking a holiday release could be a great idea!

Keep an eye out for preorders, and I���ve already had some enquiries from book bloggers and ARC reviewers, so feel free to get in touch at any time if you���d like to be added to that list. We���re nearly there!

In other news, I���m looking at local jobs, overseas jobs and more long-term remote/freelance work, so another round of travel may or may not be in my future. More news on that soon!

Preview ch1 Updated

Chapter 1

It was the dead man���s expression that drew me, the depth of feeling on it, bare and exposed and unashamed. Horror. Terror. Longing. Anguish. It called to me.

That���s a lie.

It was his stillness, the blue-grey cast of his skin, shamefully exposed where his mask had slipped in the night.

That���s also a lie.

It was the distorted blur of my own face, an impossible smudge of light reflected in the haze of his blown pupils.

That might be closest to the truth.

It might have been why I reached out with gloved fingers, forgetting the danger. It might be what draws me back, over and over again. It might be what starts the tingling at the base of my skull that spreads and prickles across my scalp whenever I think of the dead, the fluttering itch in my fingers that sets them tapping and twisting.

But it���s not the truth.

I don���t know what possessed me to slip out from under the covers and pad across the crumbling tiles that night, ignoring just how many rules I was breaking. I remember waking, peering across the rows of swaddled failures. It should have been dark, but in my memory, a spotlight lights the inert form of the dead man, a silvery-white glow cast by an invisible lamp. I remember the terrible thrill, the certainty one of us had been taken by the Mara, just like we���d been warned, punished for failing to conform, to obey.

What I don���t remember is fear. Until the dead man, I���d felt fear at the thought of death. Fear when I was dragged away from the other trainees and abandoned to Corrections. But when I saw my first corpse, it wasn���t fear I felt. Not for him, or for me.

I ignored the indecency of getting so close to his shameful nakedness, the line of his jaw and the ridge of his nose uncovered. I further violated benevolent regulation by reaching out to touch the dense roughness of his night-stubbled face. Surrendered to the sparkling, tingling fascination, I must have stood like that for hours before I got caught, one hand pressed to the dead man���s twisted face as if, touching him, I could know what he knew, feel what he felt.

This is the truth of it: I don���t know why I broke the rules so spectacularly.

But the Mara haven���t come for me yet. I learned to hide my reactions. Instead of reaching out to the dead, I���d clamp my hands together in my lap or under my arms, rocking to keep the energy in. It took much longer to train myself not to look.

But I learned. I suppressed the wanting, denied it, obedient. After all, Refuge only exists to keep us safe, from the protective gold threaded through the walls and spun into the ward that haloes the hoods of good Refuge workers, to the careful drilling in how to turn over all desire and wanting to the Mara before the temptation to dream gets us killed. But on Floor 6, Corrections, there���s no gold in the walls and no wards to remind the Mara we���re not food. They only keep the proven failures there. The resisters, the ones who can���t focus, won���t obey. And then they take away everything that protects us and see who survives. Most don���t make it, but I was determined. I learned to face forward and ignore the draw of the dead, to focus on stilling the wilful twisting, reaching dance of my fingers by pinching them bloodless into submission.

They weren���t all like that first corpse, the dead of Floor 6. They weren���t all warped and twisted in torment. The peaceful faces drew me just as much as the anguished ones. It was the depth of feeling, the calm, accepting stillness, just as dramatic in its own way as faces distorted by agony. Just as foreign to me. I wondered what they saw, what they felt in those final moments before the Mara took them.

So few trainees get sent to Corrections. They said I made it out because I was still young enough to learn and change. Maybe they���re right. Maybe I was able to push my failures so far inside because I didn���t have as far to push.

But here���s what I know: I can never mess up again. All I have to do is keep obeying, pass probation, and stop thinking about the dead.

Which would be a lot easier if I wasn���t haunted.

End, CH1 (updated version Sept. 4, 2017)

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For longer-running fans, the full first beta readers edition is being serialized on Wattpad as BTE Beta1

Confessions, retractions and other wafflings

���I know I���ve been babbling about it all over the place lately and I���ve only just finished switching over graphics and web presence to the new subgenre, but I���m seriously considering changing everything back to the previous (non) subgenre for BLIND THE EYES of ���dystopian dark fantasy���. Which isn���t an official thing, and I know you���re not supposed to genre-blend, but��� it just kind of is. The setting���s pretty dystopian. And it���s definitely future and sort of post-apocalyptic. And dark. And there���s fantasy and supernatural stuff going on. It���s also not a bad fit for urban fantasy, other than the future setting. So I dunno. Waffle waffle waffle. Angst angst angst. lol.

On thing in its favour, the freebie preview ebooks on Amazon got quite a bit stronger downloads when listed as dystopian. So I figure for querying, it should read urban fantasy, and if I end up going indie, dystopian dark fantasy.

But don���t hold me to that, because apparently continuously changing my mind and making work for myself is what I do���

On Monsters, Boundaries and Inspiration

While I love research in a general sense, I more or less refuse to do it while drafting a book. I���m too addicted to that archaeological sense of uncovering another world to allow this one to consciously intrude. However, at some point I generally do have to pull out the books (hi Google) and go hunting for real world equivalencies, or at least reference points.

Enter the Mara. The story that has become BLIND THE EYES emerged out of an image or a scene wherein a girl is saved from monster attack by a hero. And diverged dramatically from there - the Wattpad story-in-progress THINGS GOT OUT OF HAND is closer to the original intent. All that to say, my sense of what the monsters in question were was vague to say the least.

But successive drafts did serve to nudge things along. Fairly early on, I knew the monsters were a waking nightmare, a concrete manifestation of a victim���s fears, though I intended this literally as depicted in TGOOH. Later, with the addition of THE FIRST DREAM (BTE Chapter 8), the nightmare-monsters were found inhabiting a separate plane of consciousness, killing victims in a sort of dreamscape, with only gradual crossover into the waking world.

Around the same time, I realized the monsters, the dream-eaters, had their source in the paranormal world of ghosts or malevolent spirits. Obsessed with mist, fog and boundaries, I envisioned them as hungry spirits of the dead, trapped within a closed city and cannibalizing the living inhabitants. Amorphously inhabiting and twisting victims��� desires or longings to attack, they manifest in the real world with considerably less clarity, little more than a sickly yellow mist.

But dancing around their identity, both named and visual, was adding confusion to an already vague and dreamy draft, and I hated every time I had to write ���dream-death��� or ���nightmare���, feeling it too clunky.

More drafts, more careful excavating of a story world that I could envision but wasn���t making plain enough for readers. My monsters were hemmed in by a literal boundary, a city cut off by environmental as well as spiritual damage. The ocean had risen, flooding the edges of the city, and opening up identities for the monsters in the pantheon of water-monsters that I was most familiar with from Celtic legend. Time to pull out the books.

I started with a survey of aquatic monsters, with a quick turn through dream-eating and nightmare beasts, scanning through familiar Celtic sources as well as Japanese monsters and a brief, not particularly successful survey of Canadian and American First Nations spirits, legends and monsters, and came up with surprising results.

As it turns out, there wasn���t a single likely culprit that blended aquatic and dream attributes, but a Japanese dream-eating monster called the baku came awfully close to meeting my dream-eater needs. It seems to function in a mostly positive way, eating nightmares, but it has a darker side where it can go too far and eat the hopes and desires of a dreamer as well, leaving them hollowed out and empty���

���which as I write this, brings up some interesting implications for a historical angle on the story world���s current troubles. I chose to integrate the aquatic or marine element of BTE���s dream-eating monsters by calling them the Mara. In various Celtic/European languages, this ties in nicely to night���mares��� or nightmara, with, at least in my mind, some shadings of Kelpie and other water horses as well, but functions more like the Japanese Baku.

And there you have it, the not-so-well-researched anatomy of a monster, in which my imaginary demons turned out to have surprisingly connected real-world counterparts, confirming once again that human imagination has its limits. I think I���ll do a feature on the world monsters and their traits in my next newsletter (October) - keep an eye out for it!

Fresh Newsletter and New Freebies

The August newsletter is out! Musings on the finer points of genre, book reviews (still debating whether to add that as a website feature - thoughts?) and a fresh downloadable for this round.

If you haven���t already, sign up for access to the freebie content, which is currently an extended preview ebook or audiobook of the first five chapters of BLIND THE EYES and an ebook-format downloadable preview of THE FIRST DREAM (currently chapter 8 of the manuscript), which is the first instance of supernatural goings-on in the draft and also the bit where I realized I was writing horror and not just fantasy, lol. I do newsletters roughly every two months with updates, insider content and book reviews. I promise not to spam your inbox endlessly!

In other news, I���ve been dreadfully sick for the last week and therefore have gotten a bit behind again, but I���m planning to pick up with the final nitpicky little changes next week and start the querying process. There���ll probably be an update to the preview freebies following this round, as the first chapters continue to tighten up bit by bit; keep an eye out for it! Also, enjoy the Instagram feed I finally figured out how to embed! Turned out to be way less complicated that posting journal entries with individual IG shots, and innit pretty? ;D

Book Geek Time - Queries Round 3

Last query round for now. For the super publishing geeks in the audience, here���s the final Query I went with for Pitch Wars! If any of the mentors send back notes, I���ll be sure to post them for reference!

Dear Mentor,

I���m pleased to introduce my YA novel, BLIND THE EYES, in which a not-quite alive girl and her not-quite dead ghost discover that authorities lie, allies have their own agendas and all monsters wear masks.

In a world where hope kills and dreams are deadly, obedience is the only way to survive. But when one girl learns her society���s absolute control and guarantee of safety are both illusions, she must figure out who to trust to bring down the state and stop the dying before the nightmares eat her alive.

BLIND THE EYES is a stand-alone YA urban fantasy novel for ages 14 and up, complete at 100,000 words, with series potential. A dark and dangerous journey of discovery fraught with monsters both traditional and of the human persuasion, BLIND THE EYES evokes STRANGE THE DREAMER and THIS SAVAGE SONG with the flawed, challenging voices of PLACES NO ONE KNOWS.

Thanks for your consideration.

K.A. Wiggins
[+contact deets!]

Book Geek Time - Queries Round 2

I may have used up all my luck before the submission window launched, but I was fortunate enough to win a query and first chapter critique from the awesome Lindsey Frydman. I���ve included the query with her markup/revisions for the writing/publishing geeks out there plus anyone thinking of subbing to Lindsey who really wants to do their research!

Lindsey���s the author of YA contemporary romances with a twist THE HEARTBEAT HYPOTHESIS, TO WHATEVER END, and PROJECT A.I.D.E.N..

Find her on Twitter or online.

Lindsey���s comments are marked ( LF ).

In a world where hope kills and dreams are deadly, obedience is the only way to survive. (LF: A query really should start with the character, so I���d put her name in the sentence. ���obedience is the only way for Cole to survive. When she learns her������ ) But when one girl learns her society���s absolute control and guarantee of safety are both illusions, she must figure out who to trust to bring down the state and stop the dying before the nightmares eat her alive. (LF: I think this should actually go at the end���after reading the whole query a couple times, I think it definitely belongs down there. )

All desires and distractions are forbidden in authoritarian tower-state Refuge. That doesn���t stop 17-year-old failed trainee (LF: Trainee for what? I think you should add that in here. Round it all out. ) Cole from longing to be accepted as a full worker. But, secretly obsessed with the dead and haunted by the ghost of a child, Cole���s one step away from being abandoned to the Mara, nightmares that devour souls. (LF: This should come after your very first sentence ��� in my opinion. Tell us about her, who she is, what she wants. ���� I do love the creepy feel to this story! )

A surprise assignment offers Cole a shot at promotion, but when she succumbs to temptation and reaches out to a corpse, she learns her world is a lie and obedience to the state is no guarantee of survival. Shocked and angry at Refuge���s (LF: I don���t know who this is. It sort of pops up out of nowhere, so maybe a short explanation of them here? ) betrayal and the futility of trying to live up to its rules, Cole vows to expose its lies and sets off to find the allies she needs to take revenge and end the suffering.

BLIND THE EYES is a YA Urban Fantasy complete at 113,000 words. STRANGE THE DREAMER meets THIS SAVAGE SONG with the flawed, challenging voices of PLACES NO ONE KNOWS. It is one girl���s journey through a world of dreams and ghosts, monsters and magic as she learns to own her choices and transform weaknesses into power. BLIND THE EYES is a standalone with series potential.

I���ve been a crusader against the evils of corporate entropy, a mercenary word-weaver and a guardian of empty spaces. I convinced my classmates there were witches in the back wood of our elementary and my sister that faeries lived in the snow melt (���cause they do���) and dreamed of growing up to be Martin of Redwall (because small animals with swords and battlecries), Frodo of the Shire (because heroes can be small and still do great things), a Fantasy or Manga Editor (because languages are magic), and a rock star (done). Still waiting for a wardrobe to open, but in the meantime I create my own magical worlds at http://kaie.space (LF: As awesome as I think all this information is, I think you should cut it from your query. It���s just not relevant enough. And you really don���t need a bio if you have no credentials. Not unless an agent specifically states it on his/her submission rules. )

(LF insertion: Thank you for your time and consideration.)

Best,

K.A. Wiggins

Switching features

I���m switching formats a bit to end the Journal segment and hopefully bring in Instagram and Goodreads feeds. When I started the journal, it was a great solution. It helped me frame my writing time, keep consistent records, continuously update with new content and hopefully provide value for writers and publishing geeks by chronicling in exhaustive detail the long slog of writing. Turns out I suck at updating the website and there���s more actual news these days, plus spending more time on Twitter lately has reminded me that transparency, while an important and meaningful value, is not good policy in today���s climate. So instead I���m planning to feature more pretty books. Journal archives are here for now.