How It All Began

About two years ago I get approached by a guy in a darkened cyber-alley saying he’s putting together a little anthology. Says it’ll be centered around the theme of Afterlife. Says he wants me to throw a story together for it.

I squint into the pixelated gloom and wait for my pupils to adjust. When they do, I’m surprised to find I actually recognize this digital-hobo.

“What the hell are you doing in this part of the inter-web?” I wonder, but I keep those words in my mouth. This guy has a bit of a reputation. Quite the word-slinger. The sort of guy who won’t hesitate to slit your throat with a quill just to use your blood for the ink.

This ain’t the sort of guy you say no to.

So I say yes.

“When you need it by?”

“Don’t need nothing for another 3 months. You got time.”

“Cool, cool, cool.“

The guy evaporates in a puff of static white and I get to work. Just so happens I was between edits of Mind Breach and needed a break from that particular work. So i roll up my sleeves and start into a story the likes of which I’d never written before.

Fast Forward One Month

I’ve got On the Protean Shore waiting in this fellas inbox (cause I’m an overachiever like that). This yarn is just a hair shy of 10,000 words, and the sort of galaxy-crossing space adventure I’ve never written before. It’s got a bit of everything: space whales, digital afterlife, a sassy space captain named Taryn Skyscape, and intrigue. Oh yeah, it also tugs mighty heavily on the old heart-strings, so you’re gonna want to prepare yourself for that.

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, that anthology never got made. So it goes.

That’s the ever shifting nature of the publishing landscape. You just gotta learn to take it all in stride.

Well, anyways, On The Protean Shore, has been sitting on my hard-drive for quite some time. I occasionally submit it to different writing competitions (it was a semi-finalist for the Writer of the Future contest a long ways back), but for the most part it’s just taking up space.

Not anymore.

I’ve decided to finally let it loose into the world.

But not quite yet. On The Protean Shore will be released on Amazon on 3/2. That’s right, you got just shy of one week to wait.

That’s called building anticipation.

Don’t worry, I won’t send you home empty handed. I’m not cruel like that. Below you can catch an excerpt from On The Protean Shore.

Get down to the comments and let me know what you think!

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On The Protean Shore

[excerpt]

It all began because my dad didn’t die in the war like he was supposed to. If he had, perhaps the galaxy would’ve immortalized him. His actions becoming legend, beyond reproach. Beyond doubt.

We love a good martyr, but a broken hero is just flesh and blood.

Fragile memories eventually faded and we forgot the taste of impending doom. And when the persistent sharp knot of anxiety ratcheting ever tighter in our gut finally loosened, a broken hero, it turned, out wasn’t so terribly different from a scapegoat.

Time and distance softened our memories, replacing doom with apathy. We forgot the brink of annihilation. Convinced ourselves the fear holding us hostage all those years earlier was childish and misguided.

Surely it had never been so bad, we lied to ourselves. Surely we could’ve found another way.

Public opinion shifted slowly, turning sidelong into the atmo before catching the tailwind—just a nudge—before taking off. I don’t blame them. It’s hard to be poor and thankful. Much easier to be poor and angry.

Weak men and women who’d shirked their responsibility when our solar system faced destruction now bravely stood before the cowering, hungry masses professing how soldiers like my father could have done better.

Bit-by-bit they undermined his courage, replacing fame with infamy. After everything he did for us, he deserved better. He deserved to at least die a hero.

But he didn’t.

He died alone beneath the Azhara tree shading my mother’s headstone, coaching me through one high-G, bone crushing maneuver after another.

Too busy playing Icarus, I didn’t catch the message underlying his steady voice as it crackled over the radio. “Come on down, Riley. I need you.”

Words so calm, so controlled. It never occurred to me something was wrong. If I’d paid attention I would’ve noticed his words slurring. So softly then, barely perceptible, but so clear in my dreams now.

After my mother died, my father took me by the hand and told me words that’d gotten him through a different sort of void once before: Fly into the fear.

As a zephyr racer I thought I understood fear. That mountain of pressure squatting on your chest. The trembling hands. The shallow breathing. The hammering heart.

But that wasn’t fear. Fear was when the world dropped out from under you and you were just falling and flailing and numb and helpless against a universe that saw you as nothing but an inconsequential collection of molecules no more significant than the pile of dirt towards which you plummeted.

I never truly knew fear until I saw my dad lying face down beside my mother’s tree. Then I understood just how difficult his words were. Fear could not be conquered, only endured.

How could one fly into such a thing?

In the end, neither fear nor the combined might of the Conclave’s space fleet could defeat my dad. No. It took something so much smaller. A blood clot and a lull of indifference.

Such simple things to kill a hero. Such simple things to end a legend.

If I hadn’t been so selfish, if I’d listened when he’d asked for help it wouldn’t have been like this.

But I didn’t. I failed him.

He deserved better from the world and from me. I promised to find a way to give him everything he deserved.

Now I wish I hadn’t.

Now I wish I’d just left him dead.

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