blog

Thank you, C. Angeles Wolf, for submitting your 500 word entry to Calling All Critiques! We are so happy to post your work and give feedback.

To all those interested in critiquing the work below, please be constructive, proactive, and helpful. Not all feedback has to be positive, but it must help the author improve and/or let him/her know what s/he is doing right and wrong. Your feedback is important to the author, so please provide details and suggestions in a polite way. More info on how to critique here.

Please also make sure to check out our Rafflecopter giveaway for your chance to win two books and an Amazon gift certificate! Critique then enter!

~~

Book Title: The Penumbrae Chronicles: From Ember and Ash
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Entry:

His prison was everywhere and nowhere.

          Bound in inertia, he was blind, deaf, and mute but aware; immobilized yet vigorous in spirit; confined in sleep but lucid in dreams.

          This existence, the enforced stasis, was slow torture. His body was growing steadily feebler while his life force raged within…and therein was the punishment, the…sentencing.

          A great many things had been stolen from him.

          Caged by his own might, the sorcery containing him powered his prison walls; the more he fought to be free, the more unbreakable his shackles became. In essence, he was a prisoner in and of himself.

          Clever, his jailers were.

Meticulously planned, his torment bore insanity in its wake.

         Was derangement even now his for vowing to overcome this restraint? He had a great deal left undone; this would not be his end.

He had no freedom, no power in physicality, but he had Will…one with great strength, rooted in Being, rooted in Blood.

He was learning passivity the hard way; he couldn’t waste any more energy raging against himself. Vitality – it was critical he conserve it.

          Existence narrowed down to little more than torment…and dreams. 

Chapter 1: The Last Outpost

The landscape was a searing empty skillet and it was the sum total of the world around her: nothing but a crust of dead earth, blasted rock and a horizon that enjoyed the chase. As the transport chugged its way across the plain, little else moved but waves of heat shimmying off the scorched landscape.

Earth’s environment was a harsh one, a place of violent weather and no water. Distantly, a massive boiling cloud of soil, dust, and lightning churned through the atmosphere. It stretched over half the horizon, a wrathful paladin unleashed by Mother Nature.

Jade Blackheart turned her outward gaze from the cloudy portal window to the handful of other passengers.

They, too, were journeying across the empty basin once known regionally as the Mid-West, heading for the last outpost of civilization: Frontier Town.

No one among them had the clean-cut appearance of the hospital personnel Jade had familiarized herself with, but so far the trip had been entertaining with a unique array of characters to consider.

The first was an older man whose weary eyes and grandfatherly face didn’t match his crude vocabulary. His traveling companion was a wretched scrawny youth, face full of acne, a mouthful of inflamed gums and plaque-coated teeth. The pair of them wore filth like it was in fashion, rank with old sweat and body odor.

The adolescent caught her looking and waggled his tongue suggestively for her, grabbing at his crotch.

His elder cackled and nudged him with an elbow, then, like the flicking of a switch, cast Jade a baneful glare.

“Look away, bitch!”

The third traveler wasn’t sharing the same reality as the rest of them; with mutterings about a blowtorch and a severed limb, his eyes were shiny bright with mania. He was fully present when he caught her inspection, though, lunging partway out of his seat at her from across the aisle.

~~

Leave your comments below, and take a look at the other entries on Calling All Critiques’ hosts’ blogs:

• (Website not yet live) Before Ink Dries – Mike Verbickas
• M.G.’s Fantasy Blog – M.G. Silverstein
• Magic & Mayhem Book Reviews – S. L. Saboviec
• MM Jaye Writes – MM Jaye
• Official Blog of Brian Basham – Brian Basham
• Proof Positive – Christie Stratos
• Quanie Talks Writing – Quanie Miller

Thank you all in advance!