Category Archives for "Uncategorized"
Shark River
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Dindi is kidnapped to be the bride of a shark... To escape she must untangle a terrible curse caused by a love and magic gone wrong.
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This stand-alone novella is set in Faearth, the world of The Unfinished Song. Available here ONLY.
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The Unfinished Song - This Young Adult Epic Fantasy series has sold over 70,000 copies and has 1,072 Five Star Ratings on Goodreads.
September 6, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet
Marisa MacCallum always believed that the man of her dreams was out there somewhere. The problem is—he’s in another dimension.
After the death of her father, eighteen-year-old Marisa’s life is on the verge of imploding. She seeks comfort on her daily ride through the woods of Gold Hill, but when a mysterious lightning storm strikes, she is hurled into the ancient, alternate dimension of Carnelia where she is discovered by the arrogant but attractive nobleman, Ambassador Darian Fiore.
Stranded in a world teeming with monsters, maniacs and medieval knights, Marisa is forced to join Darian on a dangerous mission to negotiate peace with his archenemy, Savino da Roca. Along the way, she sees his softer side and quickly falls in love. But when she learns that Darian is locked into an arranged marriage, her heart shatters.
When Darian’s cousin Savino falls for her charms and demands her hand in exchange for peace, Marisa is faced with an impossible choice: marry the enemy of the man she loves or betray them both and become the catalyst for a bloody war.
For more from Cheryl Koevoet, visit her website, Twitter and Facebook.
September 5, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
5. A Purple Pixie Pesters Cousin Hadi
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
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| “Purple Faery” by Arwen Robertson |
Dindi
… the laces to his legwals. While Dindi tried to guess what the fae was up to, the pixie untied two pairs of laces on either of Hadi’s legs, then retied the wrong strings together. Meanwhile, another pixie buzzed around his ear to distract him. Though Hadi couldn’t see the fae, and couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the hum of pixie voices.
“You little fiends!” Hadi waved his spear. “I know you’re here somewhere! I’ll get you!”
“Hadi, don’t…!”
When Hadi tried to lunge, he tripped because his calves were tied together. He fell face first into the moist soil.
“You mucky faeries!” He pounded the mud where he’d fallen. The pixies cheered and jumped up and down on his back while congratulating each other on their victory over the foe.
Puddlepaws pounced on the pixie. Very proud of himself, he held the pixie by the back of its little tunic and brought it to Dindi.
“Bad kitty! Bad kitty!” cried the pixie.
Dindi scooped up the kitten, freed the pixie, and shouted back over her shoulder, as she took off down the row of maize, “I’ll just go on ahead.”
“Dindi! You are not to leave my sight!” He squirmed in the mud but only managed to dig himself into a shallow trench. “Dindi! Dindi, get back here this instant! I’m in charge of you!”
She just laughed. The empty basket bounced on her back as she ran. The fae followed Dindi in a cloud.
“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!” they urged in a babble of flute voices.
“I can’t this afternoon, friends,” Dindi apologized. “I have to gather soap roots, tallow and ash to make soap and pick and juice blueberries, all by middle meal.”
A purple pixie fragile as a butterfly, landed on Dindi’s shoulder. She twined her tiny lavender hands in Dindi’s black hair.
“Chores are boring, Dindi,” she said. “That’s why they call them chores.” “Don’t let those humans tire you out, Dindi,” chided a green pixie. He landed on Dindi’s other shoulder. A red shoved him off and claimed the shoulder for his own. That enraged the purple, who raced over Dindi’s nose to attack the red pixie. All this activity excited Puddlepaws, who squirmed in Dindi’s arms. She kept her grip firm on the furry pixie-hunting predator.
“Do you mind?” Dindi said. “It’s very difficult to walk when you’re using me as a battleground.”
“Then come dance with us!”
“Yes, yes!” agreed a yellow dandelion sprite. He parted the corn stalks to skip at Dindi’s feet. “You dance with us and in exchange, we’ll do your chores for you.”
“Mm. Just like you milked the bull for me and winnowed the sugar out of the gravel for me, and wove a sitting mat I was to give to Uncle Lubo out of prickly pear thorns?”
“Friends,” the green pixie said to the others, “anyone would think she wasn’t grateful for all our help.”
“Impossible.” The purple one…
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
September 4, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
4. Puddlepaws
(Start at the Beginning of the Novel)
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| “Contement – Siamese Kitten,” L.A. Berry |
Dindi
…formed a circle and shoved Dindi back and forth, finally pushing her into the dust. They laughed and flounced away.
The dust tasted like dung. They were right. No one from Lost Swan Clan had ever passed the test given during the year children disappeared for Initiation rites. She could be taken for Initiation any day now, Dindi thought. And all omens indicated she’d fail miserably. Like her mother. And her grandmother. And every single person in her whole clan since the days of the Lost Swan Clan’s great-mother.
Her basket had fallen. A tiny meow and skritching came from inside. She pulled her kitten out of the basket. His fur stood on end and he looked outraged. She’d rescued the kitten from a grolwuf, a cat-eating goblin, who had already devoured mama cat and the other kits. The little thing had been snow white, eyes sticky shut, but since then his ears, nose, paws and tail had darkened to black, as if he’d pranced in mud, so she’d named him Puddlepaws. She petted and kissed him until his fur settled and he purred to let her know the upset basket was forgiven.
The purring kitten on her shoulder and the beauty of the day rinsed away her gloom on the walk home. Rolling green hills stretched out in every direction under a perfect blue sky marked only with the V of migrating swans. Everything smelled fresh. The corn was shoulder high, while inside the pale green husks, the kernels flushed deeper gold with each passing day. Innumerable clouds of tiny willawisps hazed the fields like sparkling mists. Maize sprites clambered nimbly to the tips of the straight-backed stalks to wave at Dindi when she brushed by them. Pixies of every color fluttered on luminous wings around her head, making her dizzy. Puddlepaws batted at them.
“Wait up, Dindi,” called her cousin, Hadi, puffing behind her. “Aunt Sullana asked me to find you.”
He posed with his spear, in an attempt to look stern. Unseen by Hadi, a pixie banged the butt of Hadi’s dangling spear on his knee.
“Ow.” He dropped the spear and hopped about on one foot. He glowered suspiciously at his spear when he picked it up, and then at Dindi. “There aren’t any fae around, are there?”
“Hardly any,” Dindi assured him.
The pixies laughed as he plowed right past them without seeing them. Most people could not see the fae. Kittens could. Puddlepaws leaped from her shoulder, trying to catch a pixie, missed, of course, and flipped in the air before landing in the dirt.
“I’m not a wayward goat,” said Dindi. “I don’t need herding.”
“I’m older than you and I’m the closest you have to a brother, so yes, I am your keeper,” he said, brandishing his spear. “Once I pass Initiation, and I am a Man, my duty will be to protect your honor from all who threaten it—”
The mischievous purple pixie crouched at his feet, fiddling with…
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
September 3, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
Excerpt: Graceling by Kristin Cashore
She caught the fall of every leaf in the garden, the rustle of every branch. And so she was astonished when a man stepped out of the darkness and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her chest and held a knife to her throat. He started to speak, but in an instant she had deadened his arm, wrenched the knife from his hand, and thrown the blade to the ground. She flung him forward, over her shoulders.
He landed on his feet.
Her mind raced. He was Graced, a fighter. That much was clear. And unless he had no feeling in the hand that had raked her chest, he knew she was a woman.
He turned to face her. They eyed each other, warily, each no more than a shadow of the other. He spoke.
“I’ve heard a lady with this particular Grace.” His voice was gravelly and deep. There was lilt to his words; it was not an accent she knew. She must learn who he was, so that she could know what to do with him.
“I can’t think what that lady would be doing so far from home, running around the courtyard of King Murgon at midnight,” he said. He shifted slightly, placed himself between her and wall. He was taller than she was, and smooth in his movements, like a cat. Deceptively calm, ready to spring. A torch on the path nearby caught the glimmer of a small gold hoops in his ears. And his face was unbearded, like a Lienid.
She shifted and swayed, her body ready, like his. She didn’t have much time to decide. He knew who was she was. But if he was a Lienid, she didn’t want to kill him.
“Don’t you have anything, Lady? Surely you don’t think I’ll let you pass without an explanation?” There was something playful in his voice. She watched him, quietly. He stretched his arms in one flid motion, and her eyes unraveled the bands of gold that gleamed on his fingers.
“You’re a Lienid,” she said.
“You have good eyesight,” he said.
“Not good enough to see the color of your eyes.”
He laughed. “I think I know the color of yours.”
Common sense told her to kill him. “You’re one to speak of being far from home,” she said. “What’s a Lienid doing in the court of King Murgon?”
“I’ll tell you my reasons if you’ll tell me yours.”
“I’ll tell you nothing, and you must let me pass.”
“Must I?”
“If you don’t, I’ll have to force you.”
“Do you think you can?”
She faked to her right, and he swung away, easily. She did it again, faster. Again, he escaped her easily. He was very good. But she was Katsa.
Also, please visit today’s Mystery Sponsor (don’t lose your head over it or anything)…
September 3, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
Why Are There Mysterious Things On My Blog?
Ok, I realize I started posting excerpts from Initiate on my blog without letting you know what I was up too, and maybe that was overly mysterious. You might be saying, “Hey, Tara, I’ve already Initiate. Duh! In fact, I just re-read it last night, for like the seventeenth time, because that’s how much I love it. What gives?”
Well, I know YOU have read Initiate, because you’re awesome like that.
But maybe you have some friends on Twitter or Facebook who haven’t? So I decided to post the ENTIRE NOVEL up on my blog, 500 words a day, and let your friends read the excerpts, or even the whole novel, if they like, here on my blog. If you’ve already enjoyed the novel, could you do me a huge favor and share it? Because if you do, pixies will bring you flowers. That’s what the pixies claimed, at least….
Now, other news.
I’ve been working on an anthology of science fiction stories all summer and I have been blessed to find some GREAT stories. Look out, because later this week, we are going to have the Cover Reveal!
September 3, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
3. The Goose from Lost Swan
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
(Start at the Beginning of the Novel)
Dindi
… by their movements, tracing out incandescent symbols with their bodies. The dancers themselves glowed too, in the same color as whichever costume they wore. Even now that Dindi knew what to look for, she couldn’t see it all the time, only if she concentrated.
The human dancers encircled the last of the Aelfae dancers, who fell into an artful pile of corpses.
“The Aelfae are no more, the Aelfae are no more,” victors and corpses droned in a mournful dirge.
The chant hit her with a wave of melancholy. The interlocking patterns of light the dancers had created rippled outward like disturbed water, and when the light hit her, vertigo robbed Dindi of her balance. She stumbled, nearly fell.
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| “Rain of Arrows” by Xan-04 |
For a moment, instead of the Aelfae dancers, she saw beautiful beings with wings like swans, and instead of stylized flips and leaps, she witnessed atrocities she could barely comprehend. Aelfae men forced to eat their own intestines, Aelfae women with bloody thighs pinned down under grunting human males, Aelfae babes clutched by their tiny wings and smashed face-first into walls…. Underlying it all, she sensed not one battle, but decades of skirmish and ambush, truce and betrayal, wearing the Aelfae down, driving them to their final extinction, not just in the Corn Hills, but across all of Faearth.
She blinked, and the double vision cleared. Tears streaked her cheeks. It was not just a dance. Though the events reenacted had happened long ago, they were real. Her people had done this, wiped out the most beautiful and powerful faeries in the world, pushed them all to extinction save one. In all the world, except for the White Lady, who was the last of her kind, the Aelfae were no more.
On stage, the triumphant humans split into three groups. One carried a full basket, another a basket split into two halves, and a third a swan feather. They represented the three clans who now lived in the Corn Hills—the victors in the war with the Aelfae. That was the end of the dance. The Tavaedies formed a line and snaked back down into their hole, to their kiva beneath the square.
“Ooooh, look, it’s the goose from Lost Swan,” said a catty voice. Dindi whirled around.
Kemla and a few of her cousins stood there, young women from Full Basket clan who were always harassing Dindi.
“Crying because when Initiation comes, you won’t be invited to become a Tavaedi like me?” Kemla taunted. She always wore as much scarlet as a non-Tavaedi could get away with, and had arranged cardinal feathers in her breast bands to show off her cleavage.
Hastily, Dindi wiped her face. “You don’t know that.”
“It’ll never happen, goat-legs,” snickered Kemla. “No one in your scraggly clan has ever been chosen as a Tavaedi. The closest Lost Swan clanholders come to dancing magic is to go mad and run off with the fae.”
The Full Basket girls laughed. Dindi flushed.
“Goat-legs! Goat-legs!” The girls…
September 2, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
2. But She Had a Plan…
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| “From the Ashes,” by Stephanie Pui Mun |
Dindi
Every head in the square was riveted on the Tavaedies. Drum, rattle, and flute flared into dramatic music. The masked men and women leaped into motion. Occasionally, to emphasize the moves, the dancers chanted or shouted as well.
Dancing wove magic. Some ritual dances, or tama, ensured bounty, others averted drought. This tama, Massacre of the Aelfae, recalled history. The Tavaedies only performed it once a year, and as a child, it had been her favorite—until she understood what it was really about.
Half the Tavaedies wore wings. “We are the Aelfae, we are the Aelfae,” they chanted.
The other half of the dancers carried spears. “We are the humans, we are the humans.”
The dance showed a clan of Aelfae, the high faery folk who had lived in the Corn Hills before humans came. High fae were not like low fae, pixies and brownies and sprites and such, but possessed grace and grandeur beyond anything human. In form they were as tall, or taller, than humans, although more beautiful, a strange, glowing people, with wings like swans. There had once been seven races of high fae, and of them all, the Aelfae had been the most beautiful and powerful and wise.
The fake Aelfae took the stage first. They flapped imitation wings. To pretend they were flying, they engaged in numerous acrobatic flips, handsprings, handless cartwheels, and somersaults over each others’ backs. The fake Aelfae flitted about the platform until the “human” dancers with spears arrived.
She had to focus. She had to get this right, every move, every detail. She intended to teach herself everything she could from watching them, so when the time came they would invite her to join their secret society. She wasn’t supposed to know, but she had eavesdropped on enough conversations to learn one secret about the Initiation. Each Initiate would be asked to dance a tama, and only those with magic would perform it correctly.
The two sides began to mock-fight. They punched and kicked and crossed spears, they threw one another and made dramatic vaults over one another’s heads to attack from the rear. The humans began to slaughter the Aelfae. Maybe the dance exaggerated the humans’ prowess, but the Aelfae fled, wailing, across the stage. None escaped the humans.
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While they danced, Dindi reproduced tiny imitation movements with her hands and feet—nothing noticeable to anyone watching her—to help her commit the steps to memory so she could practice them on her own later. At first, when Dindi had started observing the dances with the object of learning them, she had missed most of the steps. Every moon, she noticed more.
Lately, as the Tavaedies danced, she had begun to see the most amazing thing. The interactions between the dancers were not random. They formed rows and columns, circles and chevrons, shaped arrangements of dancers. And these patterns glowed. It was as if the dancers created ribbons of living light…
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
Author’s Comments
You should definitely take a look at Stephanie Pui Mun’s galleries. She sells one of the most gorgeous Tarot decks
I have ever seen — I collect them — and you can also order prints. Thanks are due to Ekwe Martin for his art as well.
I have ever seen — I collect them — and you can also order prints. Thanks are due to Ekwe Martin for his art as well.
Here’s a video that’s taken clips from a video game — Kingdom of Hearts ? — jump in here if you recognize it — and set to Gymnopedie No.1, by Erik Satie, with Sora as the main focus point. CalicoGrace, who made the video, says, “This, I think, is the most beautiful song in the new age genre. The remix is by Cafe Del Mar.”
I chose to add it here because it ties into the mood of becoming lost in the vision of the dance.
September 2, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
Fallen by Laury Falter
Maggie is unaware of the terrifying fate that awaits her. It isn’t until she lands in New Orleans for a full year at a private high school and her unknown enemies find her does she realize that her life is in danger.
As a mystifying stranger repeatedly intervenes and blocks the attempts on her life, she begins to learn that there is more to him than his need to protect her and that he may be the key to understanding why her enemies have just now arrived.
Download Fallen, the first book in the Guardian Triology, from Amazon (paperback too!), Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.
Excerpt 1
“You appear and then vanish like a ghost. You aren’t injured from venomous snake bites. You aren’t killed by wayward, incredibly sharp arrows.” Then, I reiterated, “I am the only one who can see you…how is any of this possible?”
“You do pay attention,” he said, sounding almost regretful, though I didn’t understand why.
“Yes, now will you tell me how you are capable of all that?”
He paused, still looking at me, as he collected his thoughts. The muscles throughout his body visibly flexed, tensing as he prepared his answer. “I have certain…gifts…that not many others can claim…gifts of speed, healing, and regeneration, to name a few.”
He paused, waiting for my reaction.
“Don’t worry so much,” I said, teasingly. “I’m not going to run screaming for the door.”
We quietly laughed together for a brief moment. When I felt like he was comfortable again, I asked my next question.
“So, where did you get these gifts? Did your parents take some sort of special drug?”
“Not exactly. I can’t answer that, as much as I know you’d like me to. Just suffice, Magdalene, to know that without these gifts, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
Excerpt 2
“So you’re warning me away from you?” I was appalled. “Then why are you doing this…guarding me at all? Why the torment? Why watch over me when you know that…that we should be more?” I felt on the verge of tears, which amazed me. How could pain be so sharp in the afterlife? “Answer me, Eran. Why?”
He sighed. “Because it is my job.”
I gasped, more offended than I’d ever been. “I’m a job to you?” I stared at him and waited for his head to rise but he refused to look at me.
“Yes,” he said weakly, defeated. His beautiful, rugged voice released as a whimper and the pain inside me grew. “You are just a job.”
I didn’t think it was possible but the emptiness I’d felt with Eran being gone those many weeks held no comparison to the magnitude of what I was experiencing right now.
I felt as if I had been gutted.
“No…” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you because you see, Eran, I can feel your emotions run through me. Whether you want to admit them or not, I know how you feel about me.”
Stunned, his head jerked up, his brilliant blue-green eyes drilling into mine. “You feel me too? How can that be?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that I feel in you the same emotions I have.”
He groaned and turned away. “That’s not possible…” he muttered, pausing. When he spoke again his voice was strained, determined. I drew in a breath as the intensity of these emotions ran through me. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let this happen. This will not happen…I will not let us be together.”
“Because you are my guardian? Then let me make it easy on us…You’re fired.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Magdalene,” he said, quieter but still resolute.
“I didn’t want you to watch over me, Eran. I never asked for it.”
As if he’d become an entirely new person, his reply was flat and detached. “You’re a messenger. You require a guardian. It’s as simple as that.”
“Then we’ve just solved the issue, didn’t we?” I said causing him to finally look up. “This will be my last message. It’s from me to you…goodbye Eran.”
Turning swiftly, I walked away just before the tears came.
Find more from Laury on his website, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
September 2, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
Look Inside Mind Games by Kiersten White
Fia and Annie are as close as two sisters can be. They look out for each other. Protect each other. And most importantly, they keep each other’s secrets, even the most dangerous ones: Annie is blind, but can see visions of the future; Fia was born with flawless intuition—her first impulse is always exactly right. When the sisters are offered a place at an elite boarding school, Fia realizes that something is wrong . . . but she doesn’t grasp just how wrong. The Keane Institute is no ordinary school, and Fia is soon used for everything from picking stocks to planting bombs. If she tries to refuse, they threaten her with Annie’s life. Now Fia’s falling in love with a boy who has dark secrets of his own. And with his help, she’s ready to fight back. They stole her past. They control her present. But she won’t let them take her future.
Excerpt:
FIA
Seven Years Ago
My dress is black and itchy and I hate it. I want to peel it off and I want to kick Aunt Ellen for making me wear it. And it’s short, my legs in white tights stretching out too long under the hem. I haven’t worn this dress in two years, not since I was nine, and I hated it then, too.
Annie’s dress is just as stupid as mine, but at least she can’t see how dumb we look. I can. I don’t want to be embarrassed today. Today is for being sad. But I am sad and embarrassed and uncomfortable, too.
It should be raining. It’s supposed to rain at funerals. I want it to rain, but the sun bakes down and it hurts my eyes and everything is sharp and bright like the world doesn’t know the earth is swallowing up my parents.
My parents. My parents. Mom and Dad.
Annie cries softly next to me, her head bent so low we’re nearly the same height. I’m glad she can’t see any of this, can’t see the caskets, can’t see the mats of fake green grass around them. Just show us the dirt. They are going in the dirt. I would rather see the dirt.
I reach out and take Annie’s hand in mine. I squeeze it and squeeze it because she is my responsibility now, and no one else’s. I’ll take care of her, I promise my parents. I’ll take care of her.
FIA
Monday Morning
The moment he bends over to help the sorrow-eyed spaniel puppy, I know I won’t be able to kill him.
This, of course, ruins my entire day.
I tap my fingers (tap tap tap them) nervously against my jeans. He’s still helping the puppy, untangling the leash from a tree outside the bar. And he’s not only setting it free, he’s talking to it. I can’t hear the words but I can in the puppy’s tail that, however he’s talking, he’s talking just right, all tender sweet comfort as his long fingers deftly twist and unwind and undo my entire day, my entire life. Because if he doesn’t die today, Annie will, and that is one death I cannot have on my conscience.
Tara Says:
So Kiersten White is completely awesome, and I’m not saying that just because of that one time we fought off flying sharks with chainsaws together. I loved her Paranormalcy series, which was laugh-out-loud funny, poignant and also romantic and kick-ass. I (mumble-mumble haven’t yet read) Mind Games, but I can tell from today’s excerpt that it’s going to rock and can’t wait to.
September 1, 2013
- in Uncategorized by Tara Maya
1. The Unfinished Song: Initiate (Beginning of the Novel)
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
(This is the Beginning of the Novel)
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| by Toni Cogdell |
Dindi
Dindi scanned the crowd, hoping to slip into the plaza un-noticed. Barter Hill swarmed with people because aunties from the three clans met here to trade every half-moon. A kraal at the bottom of the hill held aurochsen and horses. Interconnected rectangular adobe buildings created a square around the top of the rise. The old uncles, to suit their dignity, leaned against the wall on a log bench, under the shade of the eaves of the buildings, drinking corn beer, chatting amiably. They hid their thighs with waist blankets and caped themselves in shoulder blankets that reached the ground. Dindi slithered by them.
Unfortunately, the first person Dindi locked eyes with was Great Aunt Sullana. Though the whole plaza separated them, Great Aunt Sullana tore across the market like a tornado on the Purple Plains. She would demand to examine Dindi’s basket, and finding nothing in it except a kitten, pinch her cheek until Dindi stuttered some explanation. The natural and obvious defense would be to lie, but frankly, Dindi had always been a terrible liar. Her whole face ripened like a tomato, her eyes slid this way and that, she couldn’t convince a child honey was sweet never mind fool Great Aunt Sullana, who ate secrets for morning meal.
ato, her eyes slid this way and that, she couldn’t convince a child honey was sweet never mind fool Great Aunt Sullana, who ate secrets for morning meal.Evasion her only option, Dindi darted past a couple of elder women haggling over an exchange of vegetables for pottery. Married women, with their salt-and-pepper hair coiled in stacked rings atop their heads, sat with their wares on blankets arranged all around the dancing platform. Dindi wove a path around multifarious piles of tubers and bone awls, behind bunches of water gourds hung like grapes over racks of smoked venison. Aunties shouted and tried to call her attention to bargains by slapping her calves with horse-hair whisks.
Great Aunt Sullana changed course to track her. Dindi hopped behind a group of bare-chested warriors who mock-fought one another, to the annoyance of an auntie whose tower of baskets they upset. A gaggle of girls giggled at their antics. Great Aunt Sullana kept walking in the wrong direction. Dindi sighed in relief.
A slow drumbeat reverberated throughout the market square. The Tavaedies! No one could see the drum, but each beat shook the ground like earth tremors. Heads jerked up and eyes began to sparkle. Rattles and flutes supplemented the drumbeat. From a hole in the ground in a clear space just in front of the dancing platform, a line of masked dancers emerged. Each costume was slightly different, determined by the dancer’s color of magic and the dance the troop performed that day. A large headdress and a matching mask of either cloth or paint disguised each face. Each Tavaedi wore a costume entirely dyed and painted in shades of one of the primordial six colors.
Dindi had never told anyone she aspired to become a Tavaedi. She wasn’t interested in reaping snickers or commiseration. Besides, what did she care what the others thought of her? She knew how hard it was, but she had a plan.
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
Author’s Comments
The dancing societies of Faearth are inspired by shamanistic dancing societies found in a number of different societies. I lived for a year in Cameroon, West Africa, (first in Batie then in Bamenda, for those handful of you who know Cameroon), and had the opportunity to watch the dancing of a group of shamans from a secret societies. It was fantastic. They wore costumes made in the traditional way, for the purposes of the sacred ritual.
The Hopi and Zuni also had dancing societies who practiced and performed in underground rooms called kivas — which you’ll find in Faearth as well. And here’s a video of Aztec dancers, just because they are pretty awesome.
You can find more of Toni Cogdell’s amazing work at faeryclan.co.uk and at toni-art.co.uk. She also writes and draws for faezine.com.