Wednesday, January 30, 2019

My Boy (excerpt)


Hi guys, and welcome to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by for this, the last of our excerpts for the month of January. In this one, I want to show you a little something about what’s coming, a little flavor of what these people will face.

I want to get you as excited as I am—because preorders hit shelves tomorrow.

So, I hope you enjoy this excerpt. And I hope you see how much went into this story, how deeply this story impacted me.

I can’t wait for you to read the whole thing.

[love]

{Rani Divine}



Excerpt from Anialych: People of Sand


By Rani Divine

© Copyright RAD Writing, 2019

Rhaden leapt onto the back of his horse and firmly took hold of the reins. He didn’t bother to make sure Zion followed suit. The man had already now spoken to Moses himself, and knew there would be no transfers, no reassignments. He was stuck with Rhaden, until such time that he was officially promoted to command.
 The hardest part about this day would be spending it with a man who thought so little of him. Even a few days ago, Rhaden would’ve said that the man who now rode beside him was one of his best friends, that the two of them would likely always play some role in each other’s lives. Now, he wondered how long it would be before Zion gave up and found a way to subvert Moses in order to get out from under Rhaden’s command. Or how long it took him to resign.
 His heart burned in his chest with the movement of the horse beneath him as they started up and out of the valley, around the edge of the cliffs to a path that led to higher ground. When he’d been in Aran’s home, he’d thought it would be the most difficult part of the day; being so close to Delilah without seeing her, having her in the same building, hearing the faint sound of her tears through the door, while not allowed to do anything about it. But that had only lasted a moment, and there was no telling how long this task would take.
 All he hoped was that the army wasn’t already on their doorstep, that they had time to prepare, time to send the women and children away to the Anialych before the battle began. He’d already thought things that far through. If the men were ordered by the village leaders, to send the weak away to another land, they would listen without hesitation. They wouldn’t even have to know where their families were going. The men themselves would stand and fight, if only to protect those they loved. He couldn’t stand to think how much hurt could come over Tywed if the army had already arrived, if the danger was already on their doorstep. There wasn’t much two men on horseback could do to thwart an entire army.
 He sighed under his breath and kept his eyes on the path before him. He’d wrapped a cloth around his head, to keep him cool in their travels. Zion had neglected to do the same, but it wouldn’t be an issue. The man had always been able to last longer in the sun. Only Rhaden’s eyes had been left uncovered, unprotected from the rays of heat that bounced all around them.
 As they went, he scanned the road. Parts looked as though another group had passed through here recently, but from atop the horse it was difficult to tell if the tracks were from other horses or if they’d been made by animals in the wild. With much of the ground hard and rocky, it was hard to tell where anything had actually walked anywhere, or if the mess had only been caused by a landslide. They’d seen dozens of those, in the caravan’s first trek down to where Tywed now stood.
 For hours they rode, Zion a short distance away to Rhaden’s left, as they made their way up the hillside. Neither had spoken a word since they’d left the town, and for Rhaden, it grew cumbersome. The least Zion could’ve done was speak to him about the tracks, the strange markings upon the ground, the fact that there might very well have been an army up there waiting for them. But all he did was ride in silence, keeping his eyes on the path and following in Rhaden’s command. If he hadn’t been ordered to do so, Rhaden had no doubt that the man would’ve stayed behind. He’d done everything in his power to stay behind as it was, but Moses didn’t like to see newly promoted men slacking off. He wanted to see the new lieutenant commanders doing what they’d been called to do, no matter what. So, unhappily, that was what Zion now did.
 When they were almost halfway up the side, Rhaden tugged on the reins. “Whoa,” he said, patting the animal’s thick neck.
 Zion silently came to a halt behind him, as though he didn’t even care why his commander had stopped.
 Sighing under his breath, Rhaden dismounted and tied his horse’s reins to a cleft in the rock formation beside him. “We go on foot from here,” he said, looking up at the lieutenant still upon his horse. “That’s an order,” he added when Zion made no move to follow.
 By the look in his eye, Rhaden knew what the man was thinking. This was far from the first time he’d angered a man enough to have him plotting murder. Unfortunately for Zion, this path was well known by the rest of their people. If he did try something, they would know. Moses would know. And Zion would lose everything he’d worked so hard for—including Delilah.
 “Don’t make me repeat myself,” Rhaden said as he started up the hill on foot.
 Behind him, he heard Zion’s begrudging feet land solidly on the ground. The horse trotted a few steps, and within moments Zion was walking up the hill behind Rhaden.
 That was all he’d needed to know. Zion was still willing to follow orders, even when he no longer fully trusted his commanding officer. It meant he would make a good commander, when the time came. In many ways, he was already good enough to have been promoted. But he was still naïve in so many others.
 Less than a mile later, Zion was the one to break the silence.
 “Why couldn’t you have brought someone else on this mission?” he asked, exasperated.
 “Moses wouldn’t allow it,” Rhaden replied flatly. If all the man wanted to do was complain, he would’ve preferred if he’d kept his mouth shut.
 He grumbled under his breath, quietly enough that Rhaden couldn’t quite make out the words, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t listen as Zion groaned about his current circumstances, about being stuck with a man who he believed had solicited a woman of the night, a man who no longer held his respect. There was no point in fighting it. If Zion had already made up his mind, how could he hope to change it back? The man was as hard-headed as a mule. Delilah had even said as much.
 “Quiet,” Rhaden whispered as a few stones slid down the hill ahead of them. He couldn’t see where they’d come from, couldn’t tell what might have caused the slide, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
 They stopped and waited a few moments, both men staring in the direction of the fallen stones.
 “It was probably just a lizard,” Zion breathed.
 Rhaden nodded. “Carry on.”
 Again they walked, and again Rhaden felt as though the man at his side wouldn’t bother to stick up for him in any sort of fight. Why would he? He wondered if this task had been a good idea at all, or if they should simply turn around and go back to Tywed. But if they did that, he would have to explain about the druids. He sighed quietly. Many still suspected there were creatures out there. The stories were still told in some of the taverns, late at night. What harm would it be, if they found out how much was true?
 “Zion,” he said, slowing his steps but continuing up the path.
 His lieutenant did not reply.
 “I am aware of your lack of trust,” he continued, glancing over to look the man in the eye. “But things are not as they seem.”
 “Unless you have an alibi I’m not aware of.” Zion shook his head. He saw hope in the man’s eyes, hope that somehow he’d been wrong, that the man he’d chosen for his little sister was not as bad as he now seemed. It spurned something in Rhaden, something that caused him to open his mouth and speak the words he’d been avoiding since the beginning of the incident.
 “That night, when you saw Jezea in my home, I was not in Tywed,” he said, shifting his eyes back to the path in front of him.
 The words were out. If Zion believed him, then the conversation would continue. If he didn’t, then Rhaden would again be scoffed, and they would continue on in silence. Either way, he’d tried. Something had been done.
 For a long time, silence stood between them once again. Neither spoke a word, only kept their eyes upon the path and walked up toward the top of the cliffs. Rhaden’s mind turned back to the mission, to the task at hand, to finding a way to get Delilah back. That was the whole point of this, after all. He’d come out here in the first place to find the army, to tell the leaders of Tywed about the druids, to make it known that he’d gone to see them, and to have a solid alibi. Having Zion by his side now was the one thing he hadn’t accounted for. It gave him pause, made him wonder what would happen if the army really was up there waiting for them. This man wouldn’t be prepared to face them, especially if the plains had sent Scarrah’s best warrior.
 “Why?” Zion asked, breaking the long quiet.
 Rhaden stopped in his tracks and turned toward his second in command. “I saw two creatures, standing on the edge of town,” he said. “I went to them, and they took me to their home.”
 He knew even as he spoke the words how bizarre and untrue it sounded. He doubted Zion would wish to continue the conversation, much less consider the fact that it might be honest. But the man looked him straight in the eye and nodded. “The ones that visit Delilah?” he asked.
 Rhaden’s eyes widened. “You know of them?”
 He shook his head and turned back to the path. “I don’t know what I know,” he breathed.
 Having this new knowledge, Rhaden took a step closer to his friend. “I went to them to ensure your sister’s safety,” he continued. “They asked her to come to their village, to live the rest of her life with them.”
 Zion’s narrow eyes looked back up at Rhaden. “Lilah would never—”
 “What did she do when your brother threatened her?” he asked.
 He nodded slowly. Delilah was going to leave them, when Aran had threatened her. She had no problem turning her back on her brothers, on their whole way of life. Silently, Zion started back up the trail, still following the tracks they’d seen from the very beginning—which were, by now, undoubtedly tracks.
 Rhaden watched him for a moment, sighed, and followed after him. He’d hoped, when Zion knew of the creatures, that he would be more understanding. But this was not the time nor place to discuss such things. Zion had been right to walk away, to continue the mission. He couldn’t have his mind clouded, not with so much at stake.
 He walked several steps behind his friend, and stopped in his tracks when Zion rounded a rock formation and lifted his hands in defense. “Run,” the man breathed, just loud enough for Rhaden to hear.
 “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
 Three more men walked out from behind the formation, arrows pointed directly at them.
 “Take it off,” one of them ordered, gesturing to Rhaden.
 He did as they said, unwinding the cloth from his head and letting it drop to the sand, unsure what else to do.
 “My boy!”
 Rhaden’s eyes closed and his heart sank to hear those words, words he’d hoped he would never endure again. The plains had done as he’d feared.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

A thread


Hi there, and welcome to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by in this, the final week of January.

All month long, I’ve taken Tuesdays to talk about the stories behind the Druid Novels. The last few weeks, I’ve talked all about the circumstances surrounding my writings of Coetir, Cedwig, Dwr, and Mynidd. And now, we’ve come to the fifth book, the book that will be available for preorder this Friday. The fifth book to be released, and the first book, chronologically.

That made it a challenge to write, to be sure.

Anialych: People of Sand


Last week, I told you a bit about Mynidd, and how easy it was for me to write. I talked about how simply the words of that story flowed off the page, by the time I sat down to write them. Because of that, it was even stranger for me to sit down and find that I didn’t know how the story of Anialych really began.

Honestly, I didn’t know.
No idea.
Zilch.
Zip.
Nada.
Nothing.

In fact, I tried three times to write the beginning of Anialych, each of which failed by chapter four. That’s almost one hundred pages in. I made it that far in, only to realize that the story wasn’t working and I needed to start over.

This had never happened to me before.

I had no idea how to respond to it, what to do with the mass of ideas in my head, that I knew by now didn’t really go together.

Up until this point, I’d known long before I sat down to write the book, who my first person narrator was going to be (remember, in the Druid Novels there is always one first person narrator, while the rest of the characters exist in third). I always knew that character, long before I started. Always. I knew them. I’d gotten to know them.

With Anialych, that narrator eluded me.


At first, I thought it might’ve been a druid.

I tried to write through the POV of the witch.
I tried again, through the POV of a wanderer, Aedan (you met him, last week).
Then, I tried through Delilah.

The final version of Anialych is actually my second attempt at writing the story through her POV. The first… well, it had issues. A lot of them. But by the time I stepped back and looked at it again, this time in her first person POV, I knew what the problem was.

I had too many ideas, too many things I wanted to express, and I needed to boil it down. The story had one thing it needed to do, one theme it needed to tell.

New beginnings—and the decisions that lead us there.

I’ve dedicated the final version of Anialych to everyone who’s ever looked back on a decision they made, wondering if they did the right thing. I did that, because it’s a major theme of Anialych. The world is going to change, and the people in this story are the ones to kick it off. They’re the ones who will first shake the world, first reveal the druids to humanity. If they don’t do this right, a vein of their failure will exist throughout time. If even one thing goes wrong, every other part of the world will feel it.

And I realized that there was a thread in every story I'd already written, a thread I could tug on. A thread I hope you’ll discover with me, in the first story of the druids.

Preorders open this Friday, only at www.RAD-Writing.com/Store.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Nightmare (excerpt)


Hi guys, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. It’s Thursday, after all, and this month, that means it’s excerpt day!

Today, I’m introducing you to one of my favorite characters. A character I had a hard time writing, all because he’s such an enigma. I think you’ll love him too, once you get to know him.

Today, I want to introduce you to Zion, and to Aedan.

Believe me, there’s so much more to come from both of them.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Excerpt from Anialych: People of Sand

By Rani Divine

©Copyright RAD Writing, 2019

Zion’s eyes snapped open to see only darkness around him. His body was covered in a sheen of cold sweat and his heart raced, his hands clenched tight into fists. Never in his life had he had a dream so vivid, so lifelike and real. It was as though he was actually there, as though all of it had really happened.
 It’d been nighttime, and all of Tywed had been in a still silence unlike any he’d witnessed before. It was as though they’d known what was coming, as though they’d known all along and done nothing to prevent its coming. The whole town had lain utterly quiet as arrows of fire rained down upon them, as everything went up in smoke and flames. He’d tried to run out and stop them, to put out the fires or shout for people to leave their homes, but he’d been unable to move. All he could do was stand in the center of Tywed and watch as everything he knew, everything their people had worked so hard to build, was turned to ash and dust. The whole valley oasis had gone up in flames, the fire reaching so high that he couldn’t see anything around him, but he heard their screams. Women and children had cried out for a rescuer, for someone to come and lend them aid, for someone to be their salvation from the depths of the flames. Zion had tried to run out to them, to go out into the village and save as many as he could, but still his feet would not move. He was cursed to stand and watch, to look on as destruction rained down upon the land he so loved.
 Then his body had been taken out to the cliffs, to the top of the mountains to where he was looking down over Tywed. He saw the army that surrounded him, their flaming arrows still shooting down into the former oasis below. None had any expression upon their faces, but simply stood there and did as their commander ordered. He was taken to where he could look out over the army, and to where he could see the very face of the man who’d caused such death and destruction. The man was familiar, as though Zion had seen him and spent time with him on many occasions, but his face was somehow different. He was older, more rage and experience in his eyes than Zion had seen before.
 The man had lifted his sword and cried out in a loud voice, again silencing the whole of Tywed. When his cry was complete, he lowered his sword and watched as hundreds of soldiers made their way into the city to destroy what was left of it. Every last man, woman, and child was destroyed. The animals were burned alive. Crops were set aflame. Houses were torn down and ransacked. The city was no longer recognizable, and the valley could no longer have been seen as an oasis. Zion had wondered if anything would ever grow their again, after that amount of death and destruction. After so much fire, would anything ever find a way to live in this place of death?
 When Zion had looked again to the leader, his eyes had shifted to another man on his knees beside him. The man was in chains, tears streaking down his face and catching in his beard, wails of agony and deepest rage echoing through his soul. This was the man that Zion had known. The man, this chained beast, was the man Zion had known since the time they’d left the plains upon this expedition. He’d watched in silence as the man had cried out in grief and looked up to the leader of the army, begging him to cease this madness—but the leader would not hear him.
 Then Zion was carried to another land, through the desert along the path of the river, to a mountainous region of trees and wildlife. He’d seen the army surround the people who lived there, seen the fire that raged down upon them as well, heard their cries as they were destroyed, their deaths coming even faster than the deaths of Tywed. His heart had ached for them. Never before had he seen these people, never had he imagined that they might exist, and still he hurt for their demise. This should not have come here, to this place of peace.
 Then his eyes had opened and he’d known that it was all a dream, the most lifelike dream he had ever before experienced.
 Zion sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, jumping out of bed when he saw the man standing in the corner of his bedroom, beside the only window.
 “Who are you?” he demanded, taking hold of the sword that lay beside his bed.
 “What you have seen will come to pass,” the man replied, hiding his face beneath the hood of his cloak.
 “Show yourself.”
 “May your eyes be opened, that you will believe,” he said before he disappeared from sight, leaving Zion again as the only person in the room.
 His hand gripped tighter around the hilt of his sword and he turned in circles, searching for the man who had been in this room. He’d heard the man’s voice: it couldn’t have been a dream. The fire and destruction had been a dream, but now he was awake. He felt it. With wide eyes, he went to the window and opened the shutters, allowing the moonlight to filter in through the darkness. Again he turned and looked across his room, but no one was there. He was completely alone. But in his heart he believed that the man had been here, that it had not been a dream.
 As quietly as possible, he went out and checked the rest of the house. He scanned the main room and stoked the fire to ensure there would be enough light before going to each of his sibling’s rooms. Aran was asleep on the edge of his bed, Yosef sprawled out over the whole of his mattress, and Delilah slept with open eyes, but they were alone. No one else was here. The house was empty, save the souls who lived within it.