Goodbye, 2016; don't come back

I am glad that 2016 is almost over.
For me, one of the few great things that happened was that I published three books: The Dragon's Boy, The Vine, and We Are Both Mammals. The year was peppered with negative events, but if I can keep publishing books then I will know that I am on the right path. I'm aiming for a general pattern of three per year.
Reader, I don't know where you are placed, but I hope that you have hope. If 2016 was wonderful for you, that's great; if it was not, then I hope that you will keep fighting. The quickest way to make the future worse is to stop fighting in the present.

2016 was a horrible year for many people throughout the world.
If you are reading this, congratulations: you survived.
You’re still here, and in a few hours 2016 will not be. Do you know what that means?
It means you win.
Mourn for the bad, then turn your thoughts to the good. Find as much peace as you can. Celebrate whatever things, be they tiny or large, bring you joy.
Whether or not you feel victorious, you have won. And next year you get another shot at whatever monsters plague you.

May 2017 be better for all of us.

Poem: Faery Memory

Sometimes I write poetry. 
I think it is one of the hardest things to share with others: poetry is somehow excruciatingly personal, and I'm not sure why.
Here is a poem from more than ten years ago.

———
Faery Memory
25 February, 2006.

And so shall I weep for you, faeries?
And so shall I sing your song?
And will all the nations of the earth
Mourn you ere I am gone?

Will kings mourn for your passing?
Will servants tell of you still?
Will the ones who have told of you since time began
Wish to hear of you still?

Shall the voices of proud and of mighty
Be roused in the praise of your reign?
And will all of Adam’s children
Hope to see you among them again?

What has become of you, faeries?
Wherefore have you taken your ‘fair’?
Do you leave us to gloom and to drudg’ry —
To dullness, dreariness, care?

Then go - but let us not forget you.
Let us wonder and dream of you yet.
The glamour is gone, but the memory —
We live on memories yet.

For such is the fate of us humans;
We live in our pasts, mortalwise.
Immortal faeries can forgo their memories;
For all repeats in their eyes.

I'm on Tumblr

I have a Tumblr blog now: www.g-wulfing-author.tumblr.com

There is not much there yet; I'm still finding my way around Tumblr, and I confess that I'm not adept with social media in general. However, if you are on Tumblr, please feel free to follow me. I will be posting there when I publish a new blog post here, as well as when I publish a new book.

My fourth book: We Are Both Mammals

My first science-fiction book, We Are Both Mammals, has now been published at Smashwords. 
Here's the short blurb:

Daniel Avari awakes in a hospital bed to find that he has been the victim of a terrible accident. He should have died; instead, he has been the unconsenting patient of experimental surgery: he is now permanently joined by a hose to a thurga, a possum-like native of the planet on which Daniel is living and working. This creature is to be his living life-support system ... if he still wants to live.

I posted a short extract from the story on my blog here.
You can read a large sample, and purchase and download the story in a format of your choosing, here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/658269
You may also find it at your preferred e-book retailer (though the price may be different).

Cover art by the gifted DrRiptide.

The story was inspired by a bizarre and slightly disturbing dream I had on the morning of 7 November 2014. In the dream, I or someone else was joined by a tube of skin, containing internal organs, to a strange rat- or possum-like creature with bald patches. Unsettling though this idea was, I woke feeling fascinated by the concept, and, instead of dismissing the idea as silly and the fascination as macabre, I wrote the idea down and started expanding upon it. This, by the way, is one of the chief differences between writers and other people: we run toward our bizarre ideas instead of away from them. The story was finished on 8 April 2015: six months and a day: a remarkably quick time, for me.

A preview extract from We Are Both Mammals

Coming soon: We Are Both Mammals, my first science-fiction book. Here's an extract.

–––––––

The next thing I remember with any degree of clarity is that the clock on the wall read five o’clock, and I could tell by the gloom that it was early in the morning. I blinked, feeling more awake than before, and pressed the pad under my hand.

In a moment a pair of nurses arrived, both female, wearing pale blue uniforms, and they seemed vaguely familiar somehow. They put on a dim light, raised the upper part of the bed a little, and helped me to drink. There was a cabinet at my left that held the disposable cup from which I had been drinking.

As one of the nurses, standing at my left, helped me to drink, I realised that the other was on the other side of the large bed, on my right, doing something. As my brain cleared a little more, I looked sluggishly in that direction, and realised that there was another patient in the bed with me: a thurga.

For an instant my drug-addled brain thought it was an animal, as thurga-a do resemble brushtail possums in many ways, though they have longer limbs and are the size of a large domestic cat; and it was mostly covered by the bedclothes, as I was, as it lay on its back over a metre away from me. Its furry, dark brown arms, with their hands like a rat’s forepaws, lay on the sheets that reached to its chest. As the creature’s bright dark eyes looked back at me from its dark-furred face, I recognised it as a thurga: a native of the planet on which I was living and working.

“Daniel,” said the nurse on my left, very gently, “have you met Toro-a-Ba?”

In that instant, a curious and terrifying thing happened. It was as though my brain realised long before I did that something was horribly wrong. Whether it was the nurse’s tones or the puzzling sight of the thurga sharing my hospital bed or something else, I do not know; but a sick chill gripped my heart. I stared stupidly at the thurga, which held my gaze.

“No,” I murmured, not understanding why I felt such trepidation.

“Daniel, you and Toro-a-Ba have undergone the same surgery.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, wondering vaguely why the thurga’s surgery was relevant to mine.

“Hello, Daniel,” the thurga said to me softly, in English, and there was what seemed like great tenderness in its voice, almost as though it knew me well. Something about this seemed very wrong to me, but I could not understand what. Perhaps I was supposed to know this thurga. To a human, many thurga-a look very similar, so perhaps I did know this one and simply didn’t recognise it, or something … My head felt so muzzy and bewildered …

“Hello,” I mumbled blankly in reply, still regarding the thurga.

But I was weary already, just from being awake, so I rolled my head back to its normal position of looking straight ahead, and my eyes closed almost without my command, and drowsiness subsumed me. I barely felt the hospital bed being lowered gently back into its almost-horizontal position beneath me.

And even as I drifted to welcome sleep, something in the back of my mind squirmed uneasily. 

–––––––

We Are Both Mammals will soon be published on Smashwords, where it will be available to download in a variety of formats for a small price. You'll also be able to find it at a number of other online booksellers.

My third book: The Vine

My third book has been published: The Vine. The story is set in a Morocco-like fantasy realm. Here's the short blurb:

On a blazing starlit night in the desert, the stable-boy Afif cannot sleep. Neither can the sultan’s youngest son, gentle and cultured Prince Zayn. On this unearthly, magical night, the two meet properly for the first time, as they ride their treasured horses through the dunes; but if they ever wish to converse again it must be in secret, for the sultan deems such a friendship inappropriate.

You can read it online, or download it in a format of your choosing, at no charge, here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/629961
You may also find it at your preferred e-book retailer (where it's still free!).

Cover art by the dedicated DrRiptide.

My second book: The Dragon's Boy

My second book has been published: The Dragon's Boy. It is about the last dragon in the world, and an orphan boy who finds her.
You can read it online, or download it in a format of your choosing, at no charge, here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/606582
You may also find it at your preferred e-book retailer (where it's still free!).

Cover art by the excellent DrRiptide.

My first book: Three Short Fairytales

My first book has been published: Three Short Fairytales. You can read it online, or download it in a format of your choosing, at no charge, here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/560031
You may also find it at your preferred e-book retailer (where it's still free!).

Cover art by DrRiptide.