QSFer Marie Brown has a new MM fantasy book out:
Farven and Telion return in the conclusion to the Hidden Game series. Humanity is given a fresh start on the beautiful, unspoiled world known as Dawnfire, but the two Princes must leave the lovely world behind on a journey through the worst hell of all to rescue God’s partner, a Divine held captive in the Obsidian Heartbreak for six hundred years.
Hidden Game Book Three
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Excerpt
Nestra lay on the ground of the new world, assessing the myriad changes in her environment. The ground felt different, vibrant, alive. . . and humming with a creative force that stemmed from an entity other than her God. Or rather, mostly from another entity. She could feel God’s touch on this world, woven in with that almost-familiar sense of other. Why would the signature of an unknown Divine feel somewhat familiar, like something she’d sensed before? That made little sense. Perhaps all Divine beings left behind a similar spiritual trace. Although it felt different than any of the Divines she’d met. . .
All around her, the few survivors of humanity slept a heavy, exhausted sleep. Nestra wished she could join them. So few left. . . Their population had never been all that huge to begin with, due to the limited amount of land they’d had to live on, and now. . . God’s estimate of two or three thousand fell a good bit short of reality, but still, pathetically few of her species remained to carry on. And from the look of the horizon, the way the ground seemed to arch upward before meeting the sky, this planet must certainly be a lot bigger than the one they’d come from, with most likely far more land. Their old world had only two continents and an assortment of islands. The larger continent, reached by three weeks of sailing, was completely uninhabitable. It appeared that the entire land mass comprised a vast volcanic system. Boiling pools of acid, unpredictable and violent geysers, toxic gassesâexplorers couldn’t get at all far into the hostile environment, and sailing the coastline only revealed a mammoth volcano, so tall it reared its head well above the clouds. Their home had smaller volcanoes, of course, but the monster located on that deadly continent could have swallowed each and every one of them, with room to spare, in one single gulp.
Nestra shifted minutely under her less-than-adequate cloak. She had given up her chance for a proper blanket, trading with a less fortunate soul so someone else could keep warm. Her mind approved of the decision, but her flesh had other ideas.
Comfort. Who would have believed God demanded hedonism of His followers, rather than the pure and holy abstention from worldly pleasures the Church taught? Such dramatic change. . .
Nestra moved again, then surrendered. She’d lain on the cold ground for hours, waiting to fall asleep, and it hadn’t happened yet. Despite the stresses and horrors of the preceding weeks, despite the vast amount of energy she’d used in yesterday’s battle, she just felt far too keyed up to sleep. So she rose quietly, putting her inadequate cloak back to its proper use after shaking out the dirt and bits of twigs and such, and started picking her way through the camp.
This world apparently had four moons. Maybe more lurked above, in an invisible phase, but for the moment, four moons rode high in the sky, each a different size and color. She felt further off-balance not knowing what to call them. Domina and Mineur had ruled her life, marking the nights with their steady, predictable phases, for so long that it felt unbelievably wrong to see four unnamed moons overhead.
But moons were beside the point. Nestra picked her way through the sleeping people, reassured to catch sight of a faint golden glow off through the trees. Good. Gold meant a communication from God, or so old texts always claimed. There must be something important over there, something God wished her in particular to see.
Or perhaps someone?
Author Bio
“Marie Brown has lived in many locations across the United States, but spends most of her time exploring the realms of imagination. Currently located in Colorado, her brief moments of free time are spent in front of her computer, frequently covered in cats.”
Blah.
Yeah, okay, that’s all true. But I’m tired of hiding behind a bland, third-person pseudo-bio, utterly lacking in personality.
Hi! I’m Marie Brown, and I write a lot. I self-publish through Smashwords and Amazon because I got tired of getting “well-written, but not our thing” rejection letters. Because, you see, most of my fiction tends to include characters that are either bi or just plain homosexual, and despite increasing acceptance of human sexuality and its many variations across the world, heroes and heroines are still supposed to be straight.
Well, mine aren’t. So if you’re brave, and you don’t mind that the main character of a story either isn’t interested in sex at all, or is quite likely to hop in bed with someone of the same gender, then give my writings a chance. Come explore my fantasy worlds, or my science fiction worlds, or even spend some time with an occasional random love story set on Earth.
And by the way, just this once, I wrote this entire blurb without a cat on my keyboard.