Check it out, things are looking different around here. This new theme is much more functional and pleasing to the eye.  It’s also got widgets so my Google Reader shared items now show up. The “From the Tubes” stuff won’t really have any direct correlation to the story, but it’ll be things that I think are interesting and fit into the bigger picture. There is also a second page with a pinned blurb for the book.

As far as the writing goes, I’ve been working with one of the main characters who becomes very important towards the end of the book. Most of the beginning is driven by the ambitions of the teacher and the soldier, but the wanderer comes into play at the end because of what he knows. He really pulls the protagonists into a storyline larger than their own personal journeys.

Below is an excerpt from a chapter I’ve been working on. Let me know what you think.

A feeling trickled down Riork’s neck like drops of cold water running along his spine. He shivered, and a warmth rushed through his body from the base of his backbone.

The sensation was a familiar premonition, and it often portended some venture. He had it last in Esther when the ship moored, and he saw the Eskandarr’s flags waving over the city. Before that, he felt it in Messah with the Diviners in the city of Caru’va’vien when they spoke of the black obelisk and what was buried beneath.

Come to find out, after all the time he’d spent in the sandseas, the blazing hot sun beating down on his neck, constantly digging into the endless sands looking for a buried city, the treasure was waiting back home.

He remembered how, in the desert, when the sun went down the temperature went with it, and didn’t take long to get near freezing. At night the cold air transmitted sound over the barren sands very well so the noise of the approaching marauders came clearly over the raucous, drunken, card game. For all the relentless digging they did during the day, one would have thought the nights would be used for rest. It was not so. Rather, Riork and the treasure hunters (Riork never thought of himself as a treasure hunter, the others did it as a profession, he had done it on a whim) spent the nights drinking and gambling away fortunes not yet discovered.

When the marauders came the treasure hunters decided to stay, protect the dig. Riork was newly broke, actually in debt, and decided to use the moment to escape. As the treasure hunters gathered their weapons, swords in one hand and bottles of brew in the other, Riork slipped out of the tent into the pitch black darkness.

Everything he owned was strapped to his body. He spent hours walking across the cold, dark ocean of sand, away from the sounds of the attack, until the glowing tents lit by campfires were just small dots against a black veil. Drunken thoughts passed through his mind, and he dismissed them all. The treasure hunters were not courageous; they were fools, confident beyond their abilities. Riork wasn’t deserting them; he was saving his own hide. If the marauders didn’t kill him that night, the hunters would have later on. They were not men of high moral character.

Sitting down on the ground, he took a swallow from the bottle attached to his hand. In the distance, the glow became brighter as the tents caught fire but Riork was already out of the nimbus. Something crawled across his hand, and he jumped up remembering the sands were alive with scorpions during the night. He shook out his coat and brushed himself off and danced from foot to foot, making sure no arthropods were clinging to his clothing, waiting for their chance to sting; silent marauders that they were.

With the drink to keep him warm, Riork watched and listened as the dig camp was torn to pieces. He laughed to himself in the quiet night, knowing there was nothing worth stealing—above the sands at least. Once the raiders figured that out, they left, and Riork started the walk through the cold desert back to Caru’va’vien. He ignored the spirits that hailed him by name and the clatter of a cavalcade that could only be the marauders come looking for him, knowing that these illusions would only leave him lost and wandering the desert until his bones disintegrated.

When the pink and orange dawn broke, he saw the great sprawling city hovering on the sandy horizon, wavering and shimmering. It wasn’t until he put his hand against the stone arches at the entrance to the city, that he was convinced it was not just all some mirage.

He had come back from that trip with some very fine steel. Even when he didn’t bring back the renown goods of a location, which he always tried to do, he brought back understanding: of himself, of the world, of the Apeiron, always another grain of sand in his increasing expanse of desert.

This time he had come back with a plan as well. Find the black obelisk he’d seen once before and retrieve what was almost certainly hidden underneath.