This is Author Thea Atkinson's second appearance as a guest at the Farthest Reaches. And for good reason. Not only is she a tour de force presence in the web writing community, she's a popular and solid writer. Her blog reveals the nature of the writing life unlike no other. Her honesty is prevalent in her relationships in social media, her blog essays and, ultimately, her books and stories.
Today, Thea releases her latest novel, a Young Adult tale entitled Water Witch. After the guest post below, Thea has been generous enough to share an exclusive excerpt from this new tale. It's my understanding this is Thea's first crack at writing towards a younger audience, but it no doubt carries the same signature character depth and yes, perhaps a touch of the serious (even dark) nature of Thea's preceding work. And surely it will continue to build Thea's body of work and solidify her as one to watch, one to read, one to know.
Guests, fellow authors, friends, I give you...Author Thea Atkinson, in her own words:
I'm sitting in my husband's La-Z-Boy while he sleeps. It's early morning as I write this blog post: 6:30 AM, and as usual, my black lab is lying next to my slippered feet and staring, brown eyed, at me hoping for some more floor cereal. My daughter is snuggled, all toasty warm in her bed – I've gone in already and kissed her forehead before setting down to write.
She's 19, and she peeked an eye open and glowered at me in the faint spring light. So much for my poetic morning.
Except for the fact that I'm struggling to write a blog post for a writer I admire, all is truly well with my world.
My contentment brings to mind the title of this blog, actually: The Farthest Reaches. It makes me think of the things we search for that are both temporal, and thus temporary, and the things that are more esoteric and ephemeral. It makes me think of how much we reach for things as human beings and how good it feels to achieve our reach. So often in the past I've found myself reaching beyond: beyond what's good for me, beyond what should be mine, beyond those things I'm capable of. Beyond. Just beyond.
I wanted more money, more vacation time. I wanted to travel, to reach more readers, I've wanted a new car. I've reached for many things and for the most part, acquired them, and felt grand when I did so. Yes, even proud of myself.
I'm not so different than most people. Time itself keeps us always in motion, and so we're almost hardwired to want more. Even if it's beyond our reach, we often stretch for it. And that's OK. It's good to set goals. It does our character great things and improves our self-esteem.
But lately, I've slowed down. A series of personal crises remind me how transitory many of those things were that I was aiming for. It's reminded me once again, of what really is valuable enough to reach for. If self-actualization comes from achieving difficult things, why not aim higher? Aim for the highest, the farthest?
The spiritualists have it I think: live in the moment. That one is so darn tough to do because our natures are to move forward, to keep reaching. Like sharks, we prowl the depths of our lives for the next acquisition.
Finding peace, achieving peace, maintaining it: that should be my farthest reach, and all those things, those transitory, temporary, material things can come along if they like, I'll certainly welcome them. They can find their own snug places in my psyche along with my lab's nose on my foot, my daughter's glower in the dim light, my husband's light snoring in the room next to me.
I will think of those things that are within my reach and bless them, those things that are beyond it, and stretch, but I will not again let myself forget which is which.
Thea's most recent literary reach was to try her hand at young adult fantasy. It's a departure from her usual literary fiction, but it's still character driven. Here, Jason lets her unfold her wings in an exclusive sample: if you enjoy, why not pick up the full novel from
Amazon or
Smashwords.
Water Witch:
The call of a vulture was the sound that brought Alaysha back.
It was always the shriek of the carrion bird that brought her around afterwards, like the sacred minerals the tribal shamans used to bring a dream-walker back to reality. It wasn't as though she fainted during battle -- would to the Dieties she could -- but rather, she sort of went into herself and hid there somewhere inside while the deed was done. After all these years, she supposed her psyche had trained itself to recover only when it heard the sure signs of scavenge and she could know it was over.
She dreaded the sound of the vulture like a dying man would, except for different reasons: while the dying dreaded the sound of imminent death, it reminded her that she still lived.
With a sort of reluctant dread she opened her eyes and let go a gust of breath. Without thinking, she turned in the direction of the bird's call. It was off to the left, circling over a copse of trees. She kept her gaze on the bird, knowing it would circle ever closer to her, bringing with it a brood of others to worry fruitlessly at the bodies littered across the now arid land in front of her. Still, watching the scavenger was far better than facing what she knew was in front of her. Infinitely better, too, then turning to what would wait behind her.
They would be coming soon.
She let her gaze travel from the broad wings of the carrion to the grove of trees beneath that were still lush and vibrant. Strange, how a small oasis of vegetation could be left at all, but there it was. She judged the distance to be at least one hundred horse strides away. So, the power still had its limits then. She did some quick calculations: a few hundred paces short of a leagua? Could that be right? If she remembered accurately, the last time she'd done battle, the line of growth had started just short of a kubit. She'd ridden it afterwards and counted the beats of her mount's hooves to be certain: five hundred horse strides at full gallop, so yes, a kubit if anything, but three times that much?
She measured the breadth of the distance with her eyes, imagining herself atop Barruch's back, his mane in her face as he galloped, measuring with breathless counts, one stride, two strides, three. This time the line seemed pressed back, almost a blur on the horizon. So it seemed that although the power had limits, it was growing.
How long would it be before she couldn't see vegetation at all?
Best not to think about it. They would be here soon, inspecting her work, making sure each enemy and each child, grandchild, and friend of the enemy was gone. And the price of that annihilation was the loss of the very fluid that lent life to the area before she'd come.
She sighed and scanned the few hundred mount strides before her. Nothing but arid sand and crackled, dried out soil. The trees had become tinder on vertical stalks. It wasn't a desert by any stretch, but the vegetation had crinkled to dust and creatures of all sorts had fallen like apples from the trees to their bases. What grass or moss or shrubberies that had padded her bare feet when she'd climbed down from her mount and sent him with a slap back towards her camp, was now dust beneath her soles and dried husks of fiber beside her.
She knew without checking that the destruction went beneath her feet as well. If it stretched out for a leagua in all directions, it certainly went at least a quarter as deep into the ground.
The only thing belying the dryness was the cloud cover. So dense and broodingly heavy with water, it darkened the sky. The rain would come soon; the clouds wouldn't be able to hold themselves together under the weight of the water that fattened them. The lightning, too. Sparking the tinder of trees and shrubs, lighting the area with a blaze fierce but temporary at best in the face of the inevitable downpour.
And then it would seem as if nothing had ever lived.
It didn't matter she'd been doing this since she'd been old enough to sit in a basket hanging from the side of her father's mount, she could never get over the sense of desolation left in her wake.
Water witch. It was a bastardized term that came from her mother's old tongue that she had learned somewhere along the way had originated as: temptress of the life blood. She much preferred the original form to the bastardized phrase her father's people had begun to use long before her sixth birthday. That version, and the way they spat it out was filled with contempt. And fear. So much fear, even she began to understand why they ostracized her so.
At first, she'd thought it was because of her mother. Then she thought it was because of her father. Only when she gained her moon's blood in her twelfth season did she realize that both of those things were the most true.
My thanks to Thea. Gosh. T.A, I do believe you have summed up the glimmering meaning of my website's moniker, and at 6:00 AM in your hubby's recliner, no less. Who knew? My thanks to you, Thea, for a myriad of things, this guest spot included but not as the whole sum of your contribution to me and what I am trying to do out here in the Reaches. For everyone else, thanks for swinging by, for reading and for continuing to read.
All y'all: why not pick up Thea's work from Amazon or Smashwords?
