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Genre: Science Fiction
About kristelhollyLocation: Los Angeles Home Region: Age:36 Website: http://www.realmofryan.com Favorite novels: The Long Goodbye, The Lord of the Rings, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Stormbringer, The Maltese Falcon, The Hour of the Dragon, Black Alibi Favorite writers: Cornell Woolrich, Algernon Blackwood, J. R. R. Tolkien, Raymond Chandler, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson, Edgar Rice Burroughs Favorite music: Soundtracks to Batman Begins, Dune, Barry Lyndon, The Dark Knight, Cliffhanger Non-noveling interests: Swing dancing, pulp collecting |
Joined: June 14, 2008 This Year: Official Participant NaNoWriMo History: NaNoWriMo posts: 46 NaNoWriMo buddies: 12
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Brief Author Bio: Real name: Ryan Harvey. I was born in Washington D.C., but have called L.A. home since age of four. I was a history major in college (Carleton College, MN), worked in film pre-production for a few years, then did a stint as a speed-reading instructor. I currently work as an English tutor, substitute teacher, and freelance MMORPG author. However, writing is my dominant "work" for the last twelve years. Although 2008 was my first time doing NaNoWriMo officially, I had previously written four novels and found that I love the drive-hard/go-crazy mode of composition. My previous books all crossed the 50,000 word mark within thirty days, and NaNoWriMo makes sure I do it each year. My novels are all YA science fiction, fantasy, or horror, while my short stories are usually adult-toned. I also write nonfiction articles for several online magazines regarding the history of pulp literature and fantasy. I love the style of the 1930s, Western films, giant monster movies, film soundtracks, the Latin language, and swing dancing. I still read obsessively. |
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Synopsis: Turn over the Moon
I would love it if NaNoWriMo had science fantasy in the genre menu, but I guess the site would soon get out of control with requests for subgenres… anyway, I consider this nove science fantasy. Two stories in this setting are slated to appear in Black Gate magazine. This is my first attempt at a novel in the land of Ahn-Tarqa, and stems from events in two earlier stories, "Last Summer in Tyrn," and "An Acolyte of Black Spires."
On the continent of Ahn-Tarqa, humans have always struggled with the mystery of "The Sorrow," a disease of the mind that burdens people with hopelessness, oppresses them with the feeling that they do not belong in their own world. The land is a place of strange science-sorcery collectively known as the Art, and is filled with great saurian creatures. The bizarre beings known as the Shapers, hidden behind featureless masks and wielding the most potent weapons and devices of the Art, have sent their servants to ransack the land to unlock the lost history of the continent. They hope to find the answer to the Sorrow and stop the slow death of their race.
But among the human nations and tribes, there now walks a new people. People born without the Sorrow. The Shapers have turned their effort to tracking them down and finding out what makes them free of the horrible burden.
Young Belde of Tyrn, a city in the southern nation of Iden, is Sorrowless, but her life has its own outer sadness. Her parents were killed by Shapers that were searching for her. An enigmatic human woman hidden under a Shaper's mask helped Belde and her intelligent pet saurian Rint escape her parents' fate. Belde fled to the hills among the dour tribesmen of her mother's people, the Fencer Mountain folk.
Now fifteen, Belde gathers her courage to leave the mountain tribe and seek for the mystery woman who helped her escape three years ago—this woman without the Sorrow. Belde knows the secret of all of Ahn-Tarqa may rest on the Sorrowless coming together to unlock the legends of the continent before the Shapers' quest turns into a war that will rend the continent apart.
Excerpt: Turn over the Moon
Opening to "Chapter III: The Tribe of the Broken Helm"
I had seen the Lazzun Marshes once before, but from a long distance. In the first year that I had lived among the Koltzer people, Kalzzik's tribe had come to the northern side of the spar of the Fencer Mountains that thrust out into the Glossgrass Plains. A prisoner taken during a skirmish with the tribe of Jilyazk the Hairless had told Kalzzik about a tremendour herd of quake foots pasturing close to the north side of the mountains, so the chieftain had ripped up the tent stakes from our late summer camp site so fast that the dust it raised up almost blocked the sun. The tribe trundles to the north plains, and the hunting packs sent out among the herd of quake foots hauled back enough meat across their mounts to feed us through the winter without anyone's belly going empty for a single night.
The marshes lay south from the campsite. The mist of the wetlands clung to the edge of the mountains' feet, filling up from the water trickling down from the white-capped peaks; streams that didn't have the ambition to turn into a river. The melt should have flowed down the southern side of the mountains and joined in the excited waters of the Glosser on their way to the Aman-Sah Sea. But these streams had made the wrong choice in the gulleys of the Fencer Mountains and had falled into the burial grounds of the Lazzun Marshes. The tribe never went near this green blot of mud and reeds, where the only animals were slithering venomous things and scurrying rodents. The quake foot were not foolish enough to wade into swamp land and sink, and only a few hadros would stop there to drink and then move one.
But the tales of the "Marsh Phantoms" did the most to keep the Kalzzik's camp far away. The joy of the good hunting had lifted the tribe's Sorrow during those months of the hunt, and so they did not quake in fear so much at telling the grislier stories around the fires during the brief nights of late summer.
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