Novella preview!
Those who subscribe to The Crafter’s Guild were given a chance to vote on which novella I would make a priority.
My plan, after an initial run on Kindle Select, during which I will sell them for $0.99, is to give away these novellas for free to generate interest in my series. But I wanted to prioritize the order in which I should write them. These are the three novellas I have sketched out and plan to write:
Back story of Cedric
Back story of Oskar
Origin (birth/youth) story of Aelric (really this one is more about Aelric’s dad—but he’s a fun character, too!)
And the winner was . . . #1! The back story of Cedric!
So, without further ado, here is a first look at the novella’s opening . . .
Cedric looked around the mostly empty room. Almost everything had been carefully bundled up in crates. He’d let his aide take charge of the majority of the items in his study—predominately books, scrolls and other loose writings. But he’d asked him to leave the packing of his trophy shelf to himself. He couldn’t bear the thought that those items might get damaged or lost. So he would see to them personally.
The shelf was more cluttered than he liked. But the items it contained were ones with which he would have a hard time parting.
A troll’s tooth. A bit gruesome, but there could be no better reminder of what he had undergone.
A smooth grey adder stone on a simple twine lanyard.
A delicate wand of wenge wood. The elf who’d passed it on to Cedric claimed it had been a gift from the tree itself.
A raw chunk of silver ore from the Dwarven king.
A fearsome talon he had found in the mountains of Ath. The Krigares were convinced it was a dragon’s claw—though, strangely, it seemed to be made of stone.
And, of course, there were his journals. He’d started keeping them when he was campaigning with the king so many years ago. And, for the most part, he’d done a fair job of keeping up with the habit.
He grabbed an empty crate and set it at his feet. And then he plucked his oldest journal from the shelf. It was smaller than the others. More weathered and tatty. He brought the journal up to his nose and inhaled. The earthy smells of leather, ink and vellum relaxed him. And he leaned back in his chair and stared idly out the window. Dawn would be breaking soon.
He raised the book to his nose a second time and took an even deeper breath. Still calming and familiar—though not quite as transporting as the first whiff. On a whim, he uncoiled the leather cord that held the pages together from around the button on the journal’s cover. And he flipped to the first entry. . . .