I’ve contributed a short story to Fighting for Gwen, because …

Well, a lot of reasons. Mostly, Elizabeth was really kind to me on a few occasions, and Shreyas too. Plus, Gwen sounds awesome.

I just heard back that (a) I am pointing at the correct link to publicize; and (b) that my story is going out on the 30th of this month. So there you are!

It’s called the Prince’s Rule, it’s a pretty awesome fairy-tale romp, and I guess that the cheapest way to get it is to donate $10 to what will eventually turn either into helping the Sampats or helping autistic people in general, which should get you at least three other stories by other people too.

**

In other news: I can’t get a copy to look it over myself right now, so I don’t want to do a serious sales push until I hear back from someone who bought it, but https://www.createspace.com/3753902 is An Unclean Legacy in print form.

Best wishes,

Jenna

Here’s the summary:

**

A world fell into the void. It put down roots there.

Somewhere in that world is Town. Its main urban center is Horizon, all overbuilt and Gothic. That’s where Principal Entropy keeps his School. He’s God or the Devil, the stories say, although they’re a bit ambiguous on which.

I started School about 5 years ago. I’ve known Kseniya pretty much that whole time—a foot taller than me, stronger than all the boys, with the blood of giants and magicians coming down to her from both sides. I didn’t meet most of the others until a year or two later—not Vanessa, who wanders the basements like a spirit in a wan white dress; not Giselle, who’s something of a fiend for checkers; not Mikhael, who does chemistry for Lee Scathing and is a bona fide Christian; and certainly not Elya, who I can’t actually remember but who probably was nice.

Mom was a scientist—I mean, ordinary science, I mean, clean science, not the other stuff. I don’t have as much to remember Dad or Desmond by.

This is the story of my first kiss, how I was struck by a dodgeball and achieved enlightenment, and how and why I plan to turn into a brass cephalopodan war machine and rip up Death.

I’m kind of the boring one, though; it’s really rather more about my friends.

Fable of the Swan is the first book in the “Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine” transmedia project, with more books and RPG products forthcoming from Jenna Katerin Moran and Eos Press.

**

I’m also putting An Unclean Legacy on sale for a bit—ideally until my next book release—at $.99. If you’ve been curious, now’s a good time to pick it up!

I’ll add a link to all this on the sidebar soon.

Best wishes,

Jenna

However.

I wanted to let you know that my next novel, “Fable of the Swan,” the first piece of the Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine transmedia project, should be ready for electronic release soon—roughly a week.

After that I’ll be picking up some scattered strands of my life, possibly including Hitherby.

“Fable of the Swan” has thematic connections to Fable of the Lamb, so you may want to reread that. Actually you may want to reread that anyway; it’s one of my favorite Hitherbies, although it’s full of spoilers if you haven’t read the rest. ^_^

**

“He was shining,” Micah says. “I will have you know that in that time he was shining, was the King. He was bright. He was a thing of virtue, all mixed in with the pain.”

“What is done by the Kings is right,” Liril says.

“That’s so,” says Micah.

He hesitates.

“Is that so?”

She gives him half a smile. “Who are we to judge a King?”

“He came upon the monster, who stood on the building’s roof, and the monster was looking at him with this weird and twisted smile. ‘I’ve called you here,’ the monster said, ‘to break the bonds of Lia and Amiel.’

“And the King, he bowed his head.

“And the King was vaster than the sky; he was the roiling of green and purple clouds, he was the hollow metal drumbeat of the chamber of the world, he was the strangeness of the lights that moved within the sky, and all around him death, and mold, and life, but still he bowed his head, one monarch to another, and then deeper, in submission, and then came tumbling down like falling stones upon the monster’s brow.

(Though I want to include something like: “It came down to Elm Hill,” Micah says, “and the monster stood before it, holding the Thorn that does not Kill in his pale hand. And it was bright, and garbed not then in its vestments of indigo and green, but rather lightning.”)

“But the monster was afraid.”

Liril shakes her head.

“He was,” Micah repeats.

“Nuh-uh,” Liril protests.

The darkness beats vividly in her mind with the memory of the monster’s wings.

“In that moment,” Micah says, “he understood that if he were freed from the bonds of Lia and Amiel, he would cease to be the monster, but only a man, in possession of his sins; and so he struck the King with the Thorn that does not Kill, and punctured the membrane boundary of that life.

“And if you were to ask me why it is that life must war with life; if you would ask me why the flesh doth move unsettledly in our kingdom; if you would wonder why we to Elm Hill do not go, I would say: for this, for that the monster broke the King of Life with the tip of his brutal Thorn.”

From an early version of Micah’s birth scene

**

Micah’s eyes are having trouble getting used to the light in the office. He is reaching around him. He is trying to adapt to the presence of the world.

His hands are still slick with the substances of his birth.

He coughs up liquid on the monster’s shirt.

“The next name on the list is Preston,” the monster says. “You don’t seem a terribly useful god, but you’ll forgive me for noting that you’re mine, and I can hurt you, or her, at any time I please.”

Micah looks blankly at him.

“What are you for, Preston?” the monster asks.

“My name is Micah,” Micah says.

“That’s not an answer,” the monster points out. “That’s just defiance.”

Micah flounders around in his brain. Liril makes a pained noise; his heart leaps in sudden panic, he is moving to try to console her; but a twitch in the edge of the patterns of his will drags his attention back towards the monster once again.

“I have a surprisingly relevant knowledge of historical trivia,” Micah says.

“Oh?”

Micah consults his knowledge of historical trivia.

“Please don’t eat me,” he says.

The monster frowns at him.

“Because sometimes monsters eat people,” Micah says. The monster gives him a deeper frown and adjusts his tie. Micah babbles, “It’s surprisingly relevant!”

The monster sighs.

The monster touches Liril’s hair.

“Small experiment,” he says.

He places his hand on Liril’s chest. He puts pressure on a broken rib. She cries out.

Micah has gone very still.

“Nothing to stop me with, then,” the monster says. “That’s good to know. Unless there’s some bit of surprisingly relevant historical trivia that applies?”

“You don’t want to break her flesh,” Micah says.

The pressure of the monster’s hand lightens.

“Is that so?” he says.

“She is tainted,” Micah says, “by the passage of a King.”

**

(Later)

He is searching around him in the dark. He puts his hands against the bars of the cage. They are still slick with the substances of his birth.

The cage is one unbroken trap.

Something terrible is approaching in the dark.

He sits cross-legged. He pulls her head into his lap. He says, “You do not need me. You are already in a cage.”

It hurts him terribly that she is damaged.

“I need you,” she tells him.

He bites his lip. He looks around, pointlessly. He thinks.

“I have a talent for surprisingly relevant historical trivia,” Micah says. “Would you like me to use that to set us free?”

“OK.”

Micah sits there in the dark.

Liril coughs.

He suspects that there is blood.

“Let me restate that,” Micah says. “Would you, ha ha, like me to use a talent, ha ha, for surprisingly relevant historical trivia to break us free from this cage and the miles of horror that surround us?”

“Oh,” Liril says.

She coughs again. The fact that he is being sarcastic bludgeons the solution space of her thoughts like a sledgehammer upon a melon.

She ignores it.

“OK,” she says, again.

“Oh,” Micah says.

He looks up. There are red eyes in the darkness, staring down at him. They are swaying a little. They are quite large. He does not like to imagine the mouth that must be attached.

He licks his lips.

He tells the story.

“There is,” he says, “a King.”