MeiLin Miranda's Blog - Posts Tagged "webserial"

An Enthusiastic Hour:

Annabelle preferred to sit in the back pew at church; despite her general self-confidence, church always made her feel exposed and vulnerable. She'd been raised both Methodic and Enthusiastic, the product of a rare mixed marriage and a childhood spent bouncing between one set of relatives and the next. She loved the clean formality of the Methodic Church and its emphasis on logic, but when it came down to it, she chose Enthusiasm: the brightly clanging bells, the incense wafting over everything, the exuberantly decorated altar, the music so loud it shook her bones, the shouts of the faithful in response to a good sermon. And the sermons were much shorter.

Her mind was Methodic, but her soul was Enthusiastic.

A pause, and she turned serious. "You will be around women a great deal in the City, many of them...notorious," she forced out. "I want you to be careful."

"Notorious women?" he said hopefully. This was not the first time his mother had gone on about notorious women, to the point that Temmin was extremely curious to meet one and find out what made them so notorious.

"You'll be tempted to make...make wrong decisions. I don't want you falling into some hussy's clutches, or worse, led into spending time at...oh, at houses of ill-repute!"Temmin had no idea what a house of ill-repute was, and said so.

"This is your father's office, but he would never give you good advice!" murmured his mother in agitation. "It's a house where women sell themselves, a horrible, horrible place! Nothing more infamous!"

"I'm sorry, Mama, but d'you mean a whorehouse?"

His mother winced. "It pains me to hear the word."

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"Lovers and Beloveds" is the 100% crowdfunded first novel in the series "An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom." For more, go to MeiLinMiranda.com.

A Demonstration of Skill:

Annabelle knelt down and opened the leather case.

Inside were a pair of etheric pistols, the first John had ever seen apart from engravings. "Are those really...? Where did you get them? They cost a small fortune! And you can't possibly shoot with them!"

"You try first," she said, handing one over grip-first. She pointed downrange. "The wine bottle to the right, mid-height."

John nodded. "All right, then. I've never worked with one before, though." He aimed at the bottle and reached into the pistol with his mind, as he would to wind his clock or spark his firestarter. He found the hermetauxite hidden in the gun, concentrated on a clear picture of the bottle, and poured all his ability into the ore. He pulled the trigger.

Scryer's Gulch has undergone something of a small explosion of interest; Smashwords downloads of the free ebook of episodes 1-10 went from 925 on Saturday to 3400 as of this morning. I have no idea why. But if you want to find out, come by the site and catch up. Scryer's is a quick, fun read, and it updates every Wednesday.