Tonya R. Moore's Blog: Tonya R. Moore, page 31
January 18, 2017
Hybrid Published in Black Girl Magic Lit Mag
December 21, 2016
The Lore of Hegira
“The Lore of Hegira” includes the series of short and serial stories about certain denizens of a ship named Hegira.
Hegira is a behemoth, home to thousands of sapient alien races. The ship of legend, left behind by a nearly extinct race of beings called Starchasers, is a powerhouse barreling across galaxies. Many seek to take control of the leviathan, but to rule this ship, one must control her pilot.
Slumfairy
Bex Atria is many things. Violent. Human. Mercenary. She is one of two billion sapient beings living aboard Hegira, a wandering world of horror and boundless beauty. Bex has lived in the slums of Hegira all her life. She’s done it all. She’s seen it all. Nothing can surprise her. Sumida is everything Bex isn’t. She is soft-spoken. Inhuman. Sheltered. She’s about to turn Bex’s world upside down.
Starchaser
Laila sets out across the galaxies alone, in search of the ultimate trump card to help her to wrest control of the leviathan ship, Hegira from those who would seek to steal her ancient birthright. Laila’s pride and passion war with love, fear and her inferiority complex caused by her luminous rival and soul twin, Sumida.
The Advent of Hegira
Sumida is accompanied by the mercenary, Bex Atria and an alien named Klang. Her survival will depend on three things: dumb luck, Bex’s talent for weaseling out of a sticky situation and Klang’s penchant for secretly murdering anything that threatens the well-being of his beloved Bex.
December 18, 2016
A New Place to Read My Stories
I’ve made a new website to share all my Spec Fic webserials and free short fiction in one place.
The site is www.specfics.com
The following stories are serialized:
Blood Binds
[image error]What if you could hop across dimensions? Would you spend fifty years slumming it in a backwater world where few believe in magic or even the multiverse? Would you befriend a vampire because he happens to be the doppelganger of your dead child? Helioselene is a wayfarer, descended from a clan of transdimensional nomads. Her stolen peace on earth is shattered by an attempt of her life, closely followed by the arrival of her estranged husband, Charls. He brings devastating news. Someone is killing wayfarers–Helioselene’s kin, to be precise.
Firecracker
[image error]Cassandra Baron is a god. She’s got the awesome powers to prove it. Too bad they can’t keep her out of trouble.
The Advent of Hegira
[image error]This is the SEQUEL to Slumfairy and Starchaser! In this story, Sumida is accompanied by the mercenary, Bex Atria and an alien named Klang. Her survival will depend on three things: dumb luck, Bex’s talent for weaseling out of a sticky situation and Klang’s penchant for secretly murdering anything that threatens the well-being of his beloved Bex.
Dorian’s Task
[image error]Dorian, wayward prince of Avanu, has a very important mission. He is transporting secret intelligence but can’t seem to remember to whom or why. Torrin, humble servant of Avanu, thinks that there’s more wrong with Dorian than being a little messed up in the head.
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December 3, 2016
Sea Witch Song, a Novelette
When I set out to do NaNoWriMo this year, I wasn’t sure how far I would get with my story. I certainly didn’t expect said story to rapidly escalate and end way under 50 thousand words. I went with the flow, quit NaNoWriMo, and spent the rest of November editing and polishing the story. The result is my newly published novelette, Sea Witch Song.
Sea Witch Song
Tarah Jackson died at sea. Her secret lover, Uma Brown, attends the funeral with no choice but to bottle up her grief. At Tarah’s wake, a drunken fisherman claims that Tarah was killed by a monster from the deep. Late that night, while the other fishermen who witnessed Tarah’s death drink and wrestle with memories of the monstrous encounter about which they dare not speak, Uma Brown takes a bottle of rum and her fiddle to the sea. There she plays a song raw with grief. She lets the tears fall free. She drinks from the bottle, cries out the heavens, and curses the sea. Along comes the monster from the deep.
Sea Witch Song is currently available for download at the following locations:
Amazon | Apple | Kobo | Inktera | Smashwords | More to come
Excerpt
Somber men in charcoal suits carried the empty casket. Uma watched, stricken, as they lowered it into the gaping hole beneath the sycamore tree. That crowd that had gathered was silent, many still struggling to come to grips with the reality that had brought them all together in this moment. Tarah Jackson had died at sea. Jasmin Island’s beloved daughter had fallen overboard during a storm ten days earlier and presumably drowned in the crushing embrace of violent waves. Now, with no body to bury, her family was holding the service in the cemetery behind the old Baptist church.
Indifferent to the scene unfolding below them, raucous seagulls shrieked, swooping across the sky. The breeze buffeting against the church building carried the salty scent of the sea mingled with the earthy sweetness of sugar cane from farms far afield. The grass was springy, the ground still moist from rain two hours earlier. The afternoon sun was obscenely bright. It was far too fine a day for a funeral.
November 17, 2016
Poems for the End of the World
Dust We Become
When wither winds fell our brittle towers
And come the dread horsemen, devoid of mirth
trampling to dust the ill-fated flowers,
Misery descends upon the cold earth;
When dark are the angels, fallen from grace
To ashes they burn our earthly treasures
And if all hope is lost without a trace
Will we remember life’s simple pleasures?
Though the aging star bows lowly to weep
And cruel cold cuts the last living breath
Till sinks the last child, deep down into sleep
We speak not of this lonely planet’s death;
Until the bell gongs, for our time has come
When bone turns to stone and dust we become.
~ Free Verse ~
Cemetery Dance
The blood of gods
rains down upon the kingdom fallen
and the ravaged rock
wobbles to weave her cemetery dance;
No sentries guard
the ghostly ships sheltered in the
arms of somber skeletons
of long abandoned hangars;
Ancient code
propels the unmanned war dogs
sharpening their tungsten teeth
upon the shattered ruins;
Dust forgets flesh,
salt forgets the sullen sea,
and the ravaged rock
wobbles to weave her cemetery dance.
November 10, 2016
Lightning
If I am struck down,
let it be by a thought so magnificent
it changes the shape and texture
of the universe;
If I am broken,
let be under the weight of the words
of a poet, overcome by passion
and madness;
If I change,
let it be because I am evolving,
not because I’ve been tread upon
or defeated;
If I am to be saved,
let it be by that which is in me,
let it be that inchoate song
that swells and strikes my heart
like lightning.
November 4, 2016
Review: Apex Magazine, November 2016 Issue
Each month, Apex Magazine serves up a delightful bounty of provocative stories and poems, as well as interviews and glorious cover art. The November 2016 issue, with cover art by Ania Tomicka, certainly follows this trend.
E. Catherine Tobler’s “Every Winter” is a haunting and consuming piece of work that grabs hold of you and begs to be devoured from beginning to end.
Onu-Okpara Chiamaka’s “When She Comes” presents Death personified in a most unexpected fashion. This story is weird, wonderful, and pregnant with tactile imagery.
Natalia Theodoridou gifts us with “The Island in the Attic” which fills you up with frenetic energy and wistful longing for something unnameable. It is the kind of story that you read lovingly, again and again.
Tade Thompson wrote “Rosewater,” a futuristic mind bender that somehow manages to keep it real and “Shadow,” which reads like a weird and wonderful folk tale. “Shadow” is the kind of awesomely eerie story that should be told late at night, preferably over a low campfire somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
In the vein of Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Erica C. Satifka’s “After We Walked Away” is a brutal and captivating story that forces us to consider the implications of humans, with all our cruelty and imperfections, wishing for a perfect world.
The poems included in this issue are remarkable.
I loved Tiffany Midge’s robust and resplendent “Love’s Ideal Envisioned by a Satyr.”
John Paul Davies wrote “The Annual Scarecrow Festival” and captured the energy of the affair so wonderfully it made me think back to my childhood in Jamaica when the Junkanoo would parade at Christmas time.
Reading the November 2016 issue (Issue #90) of Apex Magazine was time well spent and I immediately signed up for a digital subscription after reading this issue.
Learn more about Apex Magazine at www.apex-magazine.com
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Nearly Drowning Was Good for Me
Some time ago, I went to the beach and learned something valuable that really stuck with me. I was knee deep in the water. The waves were rough. It was hard to stand in the water without getting knocked off my feet. In fact, I did at one point.
It was a little frightening because getting back up without getting dragged under by the boisterous waves was harder than I expected. Somehow, I regained my footing. I wanted to go deeper out but non-swimmer that I am, I didn’t dare with those waves threatening to knock me about.
That could have been the end of it. I could have thrown the towel in and gone home. For some reason, I stayed there struggling to keep my footing. Then I got knocked over again. I went under. I realized that I’d really be in trouble this time if I kept getting dragged under.
I managed to surface again but this time, I’d inhaled seawater. I was coughing. My lungs burned. My eyes smarted. I was frustrated at this point because the situation was really trying my patience.
Just then, as clear as day, an oddly grounding thought popped into my head:
The water is not your enemy. It is merely present.
Amazingly enough, keeping my footing was no longer a challenge after that. The waves that had been bullying me became irrelevant. I stood there, chest deep in the water and I was comfortable enough to appreciate the warmth and buoyancy of the water.
I’d just learned a wonderful life lesson. How cool it would be if I could approach all the challenges that life throws at me with the same sort of mentality?
Hardships are not my enemies. They are merely present.
Disclaimer: Nearly drowning isn’t fun so please don’t try this at home, kids. Always play in the sea with a lifeguard present. Better yet, learn to swim!
November 2, 2016
On the Brink – Cover Redesign
I have uploaded a new cover for my ebook, On the Brink.
On the Brink is a humble little omnibus of my short science fiction, horror, and urban fiction.
Some of the stories included might have a familiar ring to them, as I have shared them on my blog and made them available as one-shot downloads previously.
This omnibus is more or less an introduction to my work for those who haven’t downloaded the one-shots or read the webfics posted on my site.
In the Stories
Two women with shadowy pasts gravitate towards each other.Ginger, an android, is dispatched to free the denizens of a smart-city gone mad.A spirit medium tries to pin down a ghost. Survivors of a spaceship accident land on different worlds.
A mermaid encounters land for the first time.A traveler meets a shapeshifter in a rural bar.An astronaut dreams in hypersleep.Space miners encounter a legendary asteroid.Sofie Tenna’s blood contract with the legendary vampire, Andromeda Five goes awry.An experimental pilot and her starship come under fire after picking up a distress signal from one of their kind.A primeval monster brings an urban nightmare to life. Far future witch meets earth deity.
The cover image has not updated in the various stores yet. I will update this post with links when it does.
October 28, 2016
What Genre is my NaNoWriMo Novel?
NaNoWriMo begins in three days and I’m all set to begin.
I think that my NaNoWriMo novel is something of a departure from my usual stuff but it promises to be loads of fun to write. There’s just one tiny problem.
I can’t decide whether this story is science fiction or horror.
Premise
Sea Witch SongTarah Jackson died at sea. Her secret lover, Uma Brown, attends the funeral with no choice but to bottle up her grief. At Tarah’s wake, a drunken fisherman claims that Tarah was killed by a monster from the deep.
Late that night, while the other fishermen who witnessed Tarah’s death drink and wrestle with memories of the monstrous encounter about which they dare not speak, Uma Brown takes a bottle of rum and her fiddle to the sea.
There she plays a song raw with grief. She lets the tears fall free. She drinks from the bottle, cries out the heavens, and curses the sea.
Along comes the monster from the deep.
Night after night, Uma seeks out the monster, her last connection to Tarah, until someone dangerous learns her secret. Then all hell breaks loose.
So, what do you think?
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