Jun 15, 2017
Hello everyone!
I am SO thrilled to announce that Curio Citizen is currently in 2nd place!! I am so grateful to all of you who have pre-ordered or who plan to pre-order. HOWEVER, there are still 11 days left in this contest, and 3rd and 4th place aren’t far behind! Not to mention, any books further down the list could get a large amount of pre-orders at any time and surprise us! So please continue to personally ask your friends, family, and fans of sci-fi to pre-order. Thank you so much for everything you all have done for me and Curio Citizen!
We have hit 86 readers!! This means that I will now announce the titles for the next two books in the Curio Trilogy:
Curio Conspiracy & Curio Criminal!
Catchy, no? :P If we reach 100 pre-orders from separate readers, which I am confident we can do with your continued help, I will release sneak peeks into each of these books (without giving too much away, of course!)
Thank you so much for sharing this journey with me!
Here’s today’s look into the world of Curio Citizen:
Quadrisphere:
Quadrisphere is an exciting sport played on Paz. It draws countless crowds and is the only form of entertainment that rivals the Curio Museums in scale and enthusiasm. It is similar to soccer, played without the use of hands to discourage any form of aggression.
Paz "’sphere" players are greatly admired for their skills. Having evolved to be a generally docile species, most paz lack the needed physical prowess and desire for active competition. They find it highly entertaining to watch, however, and come out in droves for every match. Even more come out to see Carmen when she earns a chance to play on the field.
,
"The pounding beat of aggression, the focused breaths of trained endurance, the adrenaline-fueled drive to take what was mine, the need to prove I was better than any person who dared to stand in my way...
...Did the paz around me feel such a surge of channeled, instinctual violence? The players themselves were focused, athletic, and showed a transcendent joy in the game I had rarely seen in any human player, perhaps because it wasn’t tainted. Their focus was collected, their drive was to support their teammates, and their enthusiasm extended to the opposing team. They sought to win, but they did not fight to win...
...Anyone who had ever said the point of playing sports was to simply love the game, win or lose, was a pathetic liar. This was the dullest game I had ever played...
...But here we were, in the second half. And the Harmonics scored.
I felt a surge of indignation rise up in me. How dare they score?!
As soon as the ball was put back into play, I raced forward.
’Tenaz!’ I shouted. He stole the ball from an opposing player and met my eyes in determined acknowledgement. I ducked beneath a red player trying to block me and caught the ball between my feet from Tenaz’s kick.
Pumping with adrenaline, I shifted the ball from foot to foot with increasing speed. I dodged every player who attempted to steal my ball, racing around them, slipping underneath with startling agility, and in a glance, caught an unobstructed sight of a hoop—directly behind me. I stopped the ball, kicked it vertically, then spun around and delivered a sideways kick with all my might.
It sailed through the hoop.
’Yes!’ I grunted, my fist in the air. The noise from the crowd was deafening, and my teammates were grinning ear to ear. More striking, there were zero boos in the crowd from fans of the opposing Harmonics, and even the players in red right next to me were enthused.
From that point on, the game got much more interesting. My skill seemed to fuel the other players—on both sides—to match it. Well, they tried, bless them.
Invoking my thrill for competition, I performed more feats of skill, some greater than I ever thought possible of myself. Most were moves I had done before in a state championship game, impressive on a high school level, but to the paz, who had evolved to be physically weaker and less competitive than humans, I may as well have been a Hall-of-Famer."
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Thank you so much for your continued support! Please help me stay in the top 3 so Curio Citizen can be published and you all can have a chance to read it!!
--Katherine