This is my book contest entries, shorts, teasers, tags, rants, among other Hero Things. If you want to learn more about the second book in the Damsel[ed] series, or my upcoming novel, Coffee Shop Heroes, add this to your library.
Or, you know, if yo...
Man, that's a title I need to shorten. Anyway, I started writing a story that I'm pretty excited about and I'd like to give you a sneak peek, if you'd want to read it, of the (rather rough) prologue. And, uh, some conceptual cover + character art:
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Star.
I always knew I was different, but it wasn't until someone tried to murder me in my sleep I realized that was a bad thing.
I had just turned ten. I didn't have many friends, so my birthday party, though as exciting and cozy as a ten-year-old's birthday party could be, was small. When I blew out the candles on Dad's home-baked strawberry cream cake only three other kids sang with me in the kitchen, and after they gave their gifts (a piggy bank, a poster, and a ninja sweatband), they bugged out. All except my best friend, Kite, who was and is the best brand of badass a girl can be. She's the type that hangs out behind abandoned malls to sucker-arrow bad guys. Her moms, too, were some of the coolest parents a kid could ask for, so they let her stay over at my house for the night.
My parents gave us temporary reign of the pillows and sheets in the linen closet, and we played forts in the living room, spending hours building a giant pillow fortress that we could easily war from attack. We fell asleep inside, heads poked out in front of Angela Mao's Lady Kung Fu, blown out of our minds and exhausted as heck from the cream cake.
Then the lady came. I remember wearing my jammies, the fuzzy blue ones with the sheep on it, and I remember curling up in a ball around a ratty yellow bear.The sheets from the fort hung low, the rough threads rubbing against my face and neck like a net. Kite had fallen asleep with her head propped up in the crook of my arm. She was trying to protect me. From what? God knew. But she was trying to protect me from something, some dragon or scoundrel or kami that crept into our camp. She wanted to be my knight, even though I, an admittedly short, "soldier" ten-year-old boy, was perfectly capable of being a knight for myself. Still, Kite needed someone to knight for and that someone, as her only friend, had to be me.
Night crawled on. I dreamt I'd fallen off a side of a cliff, you know, generic nightmare fodder stuff, and I snapped awake, breathing heavy in a puddle of cold sweat. Kite's head was on my chest, and though I shook like a spooky scary skeleton, I let out a breath. Kite wouldn't let me fall off a cliff. She'd skewer me with a zip line and yank be back into her protecting arms. I mean, she would at least try to save my butt. That was nice.
