Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Shadows of Absolution

I received my first proof of Shadows of Absolution a few minutes ago. The cover was mostly a placeholder so I could get it before I left for vacation and I need to rework it because it printed way too dark (it's darker in person than it is on the pictures below). I'll be working on it over the next week while the remainder of my beta readers finish up.



And, while you're waiting, here's an excerpt from Shadows of Absolution.



He abruptly stopped walking and Dacibrega ran into his elbow. Bethel smiled as he stared in the direction of a collection of flat, concrete walls gracing the village center. “Oh, a labyrinth.”

Some of the slabs had toppled over, but most still stood upright. Their jagged tops mirrored the rise of the Gana range to the north and west. I wondered if my grandfather used this very labyrinth as inspiration for his mountains. I made a note to ask him about it when I returned home. If I returned home. Maybe nature would finally claim me and I would never see any of them again. Maybe that would not be so bad.

I sat on a mossy stone bench near the labyrinth entrance while Bethel stepped into the maze. I closed my eyes and listened to the dry leaves rustle in the slightly salty wind. The sun stroked my face with a surprisingly intense heat, which parried the early evening chill for a short time. I ran my fingertips along the chips and grooves of the bench.

A great and richly thunderous boom rang out between the young trees. The sound did not rattle the branches as I expected. Instead it stroked them, caressed them. They shuddered under its growling vibration.

I slowly opened my eyes and watched Dacibrega swing a dried-out branch at the huge, empty water drum a second time. The drum was taller in diameter than he was and the sound it produced was gloriously deep and beautiful. I smiled at him and kicked at the pebbles around the bench.

“This place is dead?” Dacibrega asked. Or, maybe he stated. I could rarely distinguish questions from statements with him. He dropped the branch onto the cracked pavement.

“No, very much alive,” Bethel whispered. Leaves barely crunched under his feet as he reversed his path to escape the center of the little labyrinth.

“Haunted,” I said. I planted a strong kick on a jagged rock. It struck the water drum with a metallic ping.

“Nature is alive here, and so are we. It is never silent here. Listen to the wind, the little animals, the river. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the roar of Ara. This is not dead. Death is silent,” Bethel responded. He skipped over the last few low rows of the labyrinth and sat next to me.

“How would you know?” Dacibrega asked. “I don’t believe you will ever know death, not for a very long time. Not until she and I are dust under the ground and the stars shift to some unrecognizable sky.”

“I've seen enough death to have a good idea.”

“I do not think you have seen anything,” Dacibrega retorted.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Giveaway!


July 1-17! I am giving away three copies of the paperback of Mayfly Requiem on Goodreads. Enter to win, and good luck.




 
 


    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 



   

        Mayfly Requiem by Courtney M. Privett
   


   

     


          Mayfly Requiem
     


     


          by Courtney M. Privett
     



     

         

            Giveaway ends July 17, 2012.
         

         

            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         

     

   

   


      Enter to win


Paperbacks Available


All four books are now available in paperback! The trilogy is currently live on Createspace and should be live on Amazon in the next day or so. Mayfly Requiem is also available in paperback on Amazon and Createspace and as an e-book on Amazon. I'm not sure why the thumbnails are so fuzzy.
zy



Sunday, June 10, 2012

Snippet Sunday: The Shattered Veil



"I dream of darkness, of an endless knot of mirrors and fire. Every time I try to unravel the knot, it twists tighter and tangles around my soul. All I see are paths, spiraling, meandering paths into the black haze of the void, but every path is wrong and every path leads to death. The reflections, the flames, all are spinning, all are twisting, and nowhere am I free from its embrace. I can only dance in the twilight, dance on the edge of the abyssal oblivion, with the dying sun laughing behind me and the withering darkness ahead. The darkness, the knot, unbinds for but a second, only to reach out and hand me a silver shell, a conch, yet another twisted spiral. All around, feathers drift on the fragile winds of nihility. There are no stars, no moon, only knots, only the promise of death. Drums cry out in the abyss and then fade with everything else. Even the shadows fade and all that is left is death. We are all dead, we just haven't figured it out yet.”
-Rhodren Briarwind, The Shattered Veil

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Shadows of a Teaser


I was playing around with the camera while my kids napped this afternoon and came up with this little teaser. If I decide to use this one, it will change slightly as the spine is added in the center, but it continues the picture. I hunted around for a while to find objects significant to the book.  Bethel's charavens (couldn't find any metal feathers and was too impatient to make them up as they should look), symbols of time, Dacibrega's runestones, Redemption's lantern, a metal fox, seashells (for the location of the second act), and a calla lily (this one is a teaser for the final chapter). I was thinking of going dark for the background, but it doesn't fit this book.  Wrinkled fabric suited it better, like canvas sails on the Chulanlir. I haven't started editing the draft yet because I was gone all weekend and I've been working on copy-edits for the print editions of the trilogy. Mayfly Requiem should be available in print shortly. I ordered what should be the final proof on Friday and it will be for sale as soon as it arrives and I check it over. I really ought to get on my butt and finish those, but the kids only give me a little time each day to work and June is crazy for me this year. My goal is to have Shadows of Absolution out by the end of the year, so I need to stop procrastinating and start editing.