A Sneak Preview & Some Inspirations

From my novel-in-progress, still a very rought draft excerpt. A fantasy/speculative fiction work with a heavy journey motif. I've been watching different parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, reading Garcia Marquez' ornate yet precise prose, and thinking frequently about the aftermath of the tsunami in South Asia, and how it might affect the final version of my book.

This is just a brief glimpse of the book, an excerpt that's not too reliant on the reader knowing much about what's happened thusfar to understand. I hope you enjoy it.

The lush canopy of the Rainforest of Marala enveloped the traveling party in a humid, almost stifling embrace, the air heavy with the heady scents of lussa and jollom blossoms and the odor of multitudes of living things dwelling secretly in the crevices of the trees and plants and rocks. Each being in our motley crew had his or her own reaction to this vibrant lushness, the drapery of branch and leaf and bush that seemed to never end, that seemed to only thicken and grow more complex as they walked further towards the very heart of the forest.

Koii-Ma felt nearly smothered, felt the moist and heavy heat press against her skin like a tightly woven cloth. Such heat--especially now that she had not all her natural strengths and defenses about her--made her perspire as if she were running up the Cerulean Mount, even when she was standing quite still. Behzyl relished it after the bitter cold of the Brunne pass, and was soaking the welcome heat into his skin as if he were a sea sponge from Llyr, dropped into a warm bath. Gull and Corthys were virtually oblivious to it, and to its effects on the others—Gull because he was just happy to be standing next to Corthys again, to feel the solidity of his lover’s presence nearby, so real; Corthys because the climate was so like to his own homeland's that he felt like a fish in water again after his many long travels back and forth across the galaxy.

Tala, however, thought that every sight and sound and smell of their verdant surroundings was very wondrous and strange, but at turns she felt the heat like a prickly garment cloaking her increasingly sensitive skin, felt her body try to reject it and cast it off, felt the child within her languid and weighty as a granite block; then the next moment found her basking in its rich, supple warmth, the pores of her dampened skin opening to it like a lotus blossom opens in sunlight, and the child within her felt like a small but precious burden to bear.

At certain times, though, Tala found the rainforest a bit frightening—so many wild things tittering and squaking and crying out randomly in the night, their eyes bright as stars but much closer, all around their encampment, staring at their company as if they were on display for the beasts' amusement. But then Tala found the forest fascinating as well, as all new things were to her on this long journey of journeys.