Thanks for checking out my 300 x 2 Giveaway!
Starting today–Tax Day–I’m going to post 300 words from Tears of Min Brock twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday.
The idea is simple. You invest the time to read my blog and you’ll be rewarded with a free book. Okay, not in that I’ll mail you one, but in the sense that my 300 word snippets will amass into a digital blog book.
At the heart of all of this is my desire to connect with you, the reader, in a manner where sales and stats and ratings and what-have-yous don’t color our conversation. Honest.
Enough blah-blah.
Here’s Book 1 from the War of Whispers…
Tears of Min Brock
Prologue
The winter moon glowed ominously. Unusually large and ghostly blue, its sapphire beams dotted the landscape while long shadows crisscrossed the nations.
Despite midnight’s stillness, despite the frigid night, something wonderful—perhaps even magical—stirred.
A breeze.
Leafless trees swayed to its touch, awakening from a dream, and yet, the breeze did not bring a snowstorm or even clouds for that matter.
It simply carried the subtle scent of a flower.
A tulip.
The great oak took note of the phenomenon from atop its knoll, straining with all its might to turn into the wind. Unlike the other trees that encountered the warm breeze, the oak’s sweeping branches danced in the moonlight, for it had been waiting patiently for this moment for many summers.
The breeze became a zephyr and the oak bowed to its might, all the while searching the midnight sky for his anticipated return.
High above in the northern hemisphere, a thread of silver coursed the blackness, and the oak knew this was not a comet or even a falling star. It watched the argent light fly southward before falling from the sky, knowing it had disappeared for a reason. It was on a mission of secrecy, and none of the nations, especially Ebon, could know of its arrival.
Nevertheless, the oak knew the course it would take, and imagined it zipping over the Gilden Sea whose cresting waves were but a blur of sapphire. Next, the tree pictured the silver beam zooming inland and racing across the vast Gilden Plains.
Nearing the border of Allsbruth, the nation the oak called home, it descended to the treetops. Swooping around mountains, darting over the River Arrgient, and twisting along winding roads, the silvery beam flew for the rendezvous with the oak. Approaching the hamlet of Hetherlinn, it slowed to a stop and hovered above the knoll.
J.E. Lowder 