The Okal Rel Universe in evolution and in the world.

 
Wrote up the synopsis of Healer's Sword, below, as an intro to a sample chapter I am sending to a travel-grant opportunity, and rather liked it so I thought I'd share it here as a sneak preview to Part 7: Healer's Sword which is awaiting editing by editor Richard Janzen for release no later than 2011. (Next book out is Part 6: Avim's Oath - Aug 2010 from Edge.) I don't include the unedited chapter, below, just the synopsis introducing it.

Synopsis introducing sample chapter

In Part 7: Healer?s Sword, middle-class Ilse Marin gets embroiled in the reforms of military genius Horth Nersal in an attempt to solve her financial problems back home. Against her better judgment, since Horth is not only her social superior by birth rank but belongs to an incompatible sub-species of human with respect to male/female behavior, Ilse falls for him very hard in a lustful sort of way that she has never expected to experience. Sevolites, like Horth and Ilse, are bio-engineered humans designed for the faster-than-light mode of travel called reality skimming which is too taxing for most ordinary humans (a.k.a. commoners). However, the bio-engineering took place on Earth a thousand years ago. Sevolites have since rejected their origins to evolve a neo-feudal culture with two distinct sub-species: the Demish, like Ilse, who believe in treating men and women differently; and the Vrellish, like Horth, who are all male in terms of their behavior from the Demish standpoint. Both the Demish and the Vrellish are leery of bio-sciences due to bad past experiences with a third kind of Sevolite called Lorels, but Horth?s friend Erien is trying to revive bio-science which is where Ilse got her training from a medic Erien employs named Mira. In the excerpt below we see Ilse doing a work stint on one of Horth?s battlewheels ? a kind of flying space-station shaped like a torus that acts as an carrier for spherical rel-fighters. But in this scene the pilots, or relsha, haven?t been fighting other Sevolites. Instead, they?ve been doing the necessary but menial work of sweeping space lanes free of dust using their skim-intrusion fields. Reality skimming requires hard vacuum to be safe.

Labels: Part 7: Healer's Sword, Richard Janzen

posted by Lynda at 19:27   1 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments links to this post

 
Just got an inquiry from publisher Brian Hades of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy asking about descriptions of character Ilse Marin, the healer with a sword of Part 7: Healer's Sword. And while hunting around for pictures Alison Sinclair had made of Ilse back in 2004, before she bowed out of working on the book with me, I snagged an advance notice of the book on a site called Risingshadow.net. Most encouraging, as I soldier on with the first draft of Part 8: Gathering Storm. Although reading the blurb on Risingshadow.net I realized half of what's in the blurb about this book is really the material of Part 8, as things turned out. The text, added by Seregil of Rhiminee (thank you Seregil!), came from the list of novels on the ORU site at http://www.okalrel.org/saga/saga_list.html ... which are getting slightly out of date as the novels get completed. Although the gist is always still there, as planned from the beginning.

Labels: Part 7: Healer's Sword, Risingshadow.net

posted by Lynda at 13:25   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

I've got piles of lovely e-mails I haven't got to this weekend, due to my trip to Terrace which not only took up a few days but was so inspirational I went on a writing bender when I got home, and have been making much progress with Part 7: Healer's Sword. So I decided to confess, here, about the mail situation to those of you who might be waiting for a reply and to share a bit of the results as proof I wasn't simply goofing off. Back to work tomorrow, but I'll be clearing messages at the usual pace an hour or so every morning before work. Thank you for being in touch! And apologies in particular to anthology authors waiting for a response.

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Excerpt for draft Chapter 11 from Part 7: Healer's Sword

...Amel had the servants, including a Sevolite errant attached to the palace, accompany him to the drawing room where he?d left Margaret less than an hour before.

     He was unprepared to hear shouting coming through the door.

     "How dare you!" Margaret lashed out in a tone Amel had never heard her use.

     "I'm not criticizing your style, you understand!" Eler's voice replied, implacable as ever. "You should be justly proud of holding my attention long enough, by sheer craft, to make me gulp down enough of your syrupy subject matter to reach my insightful conclusion about your motivations."

     "I will kill you!" Margaret ground out in cold fury, making Amel stop and look at the servant frozen in the act of reaching to open the heavy wooden door.

     "Possibly," Eler agreed in his maddening, lazy tone. "In fact, if I am driven by admiration for your literary gifts to absorb the rest of your misguided apology for Amel's past, I may just choke."

Labels: Part 7: Healer's Sword

posted by Lynda at 22:08   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post