Less than a week until release date. The second story of Smiles Under the Moon is "The Nameless Design - The Ranger's Tale." This was the second story I wrote set in the same world, in early 2016.
At the beginning of the story two rangers - including the viewpoint character - go to find a strange mechanical beast that is roaming the countryside. The genesis for this story came from, of all places, an album cover. Specifically, the cover for Dream Theater's The Astonishing. The story in the album has floating mechanical creations, and I starting thinking about how a story would go where people come across a roaming machine.
This story might be the darkest of the four, with quite a lot of shocking imagery and dark events. So dark, in fact, that the main character begins to lose his mind. He and his partner ranger travel to a strange city where a madman has taken over, and done terrible things to the people living inside the city. What kinds of terrible things? It's too terrible, I can't say.
The story is one of the longer of the collection, clocking in a hair above eighteen thousand words. It's not the longest, but it's quite close. It sets up a lot of worldbuilding that comes to pass in the last half of the collection.
During the editing of this book, I went back and forth with an early reader about whether or not "the designer" should be capitalized. I finally had to put my foot down.
Tomorrow will be the third story (and my personal favorite). You can still pre-order to get this book delivered fresh and hot Monday morning, March 15th!
At the beginning of the story two rangers - including the viewpoint character - go to find a strange mechanical beast that is roaming the countryside. The genesis for this story came from, of all places, an album cover. Specifically, the cover for Dream Theater's The Astonishing. The story in the album has floating mechanical creations, and I starting thinking about how a story would go where people come across a roaming machine.
This story might be the darkest of the four, with quite a lot of shocking imagery and dark events. So dark, in fact, that the main character begins to lose his mind. He and his partner ranger travel to a strange city where a madman has taken over, and done terrible things to the people living inside the city. What kinds of terrible things? It's too terrible, I can't say.
The story is one of the longer of the collection, clocking in a hair above eighteen thousand words. It's not the longest, but it's quite close. It sets up a lot of worldbuilding that comes to pass in the last half of the collection.
During the editing of this book, I went back and forth with an early reader about whether or not "the designer" should be capitalized. I finally had to put my foot down.
Tomorrow will be the third story (and my personal favorite). You can still pre-order to get this book delivered fresh and hot Monday morning, March 15th!