I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Fiffer’s comments. The writing not only transports you to another place and time, but you really want to find out what Thyra will experience next - riveting!
We’ve started funding! This might actually happen! Seriously, thank you for the support - I hope you love these characters and this world as much as I do!
I’ll try to have chapter two up tomorrow for you, as well - the book’s all written except for the epilogue, which I’m working on now!
FROM THE BLOG DIARY OF EMILY HUNTER
Entry #14: September 19, 2013
I’m going to try to be a little less somber now.
This is one of the dreams Dr. Harper wanted me to write down the next time I had it. I’ve had it for a long time. For the last few years, I have it once every couple months or so.
I wake up back in my room at Sandy Shores. Only it’s different. You know how sometimes you have dreams about places that don’t look right, but you know where you are anyway? This is like that. I’m in Sandy Shores, but my room is smaller and the door doesn’t have a window (which would have been nice). And I specifically remember this feeling like I’m back, because I’m pissed at myself for screwing up and getting myself thrown back into a place like this. I told someone about all my crazy thoughts, and they threw me back in. They wrote it all down and gave it to the doctors. (I’m sure this is anxiety about therapy. Not hard to figure that one out.) Anyway, not important.
So I wake up and look out the window, and there’s a forest outside. But all over the forest are these people lying down. They’re moving around and talking, but I know they’re dead somehow, and that’s their "graveyard." And Carrot is out there. She’s running through it, and I’m scared they’re going to reach up and grab her. Right before I see if she made it, all the lights go out and the hospital shakes violently as if there were a giant earthquake. The quake is over after a few seconds, and the hospital is ruined.
My door is open, and I walk outside my room. The hallway is destroyed, like it just fell apart. It’s also empty. And I’m walking really carefully and quietly, because I know the devil is under the floor and if he hears me, he’s going to kill me. It’s like directly under the floor is hell. I can see it without seeing it. I just know that under the floor is fire and evil and I have to get out before the devil knows I’m awake.
This is the weird(er) part. It’s at this point, the trek down the hallway, that I remember that this is a reoccurring dream. In the dream, I remember that I’ve done this before, and every time it ends the same. But I think in the dream that this time I’ll go a different way, or try something else to avoid Satan hearing me and killing me.
There’s someone else here too. Someone who I want to help get away from the devil. But she’s already been seen by him and she’s running. She’s a scary old lady, and when I see her, I know she looked at the devil because her head is on fire. She runs through the hall screaming, and I try to will her to be quiet, because at this point I know he heard us, and he knows I’m up here too. But she doesn’t shut up. And she starts laughing because she knows she’s toast.
None of the hallways make sense. I’m panicking now and I’m trying to find the way out, but I don’t know the way. The halls are like a maze and turn in weird places. I pass another person, another patient. She’s sleepwalking and has no idea that she’s in danger. And for some reason I feel like I have to help her, but can’t because I’m too scared. She’s carrying a dead rabbit. I don’t understand it, but I feel like she’s got the right idea. Like the dead rabbit is the key to getting out. Maybe to give to the devil, or use it as a distraction or something. I have no idea.
(You know how sometimes things "feel" in dreams. Like you understand them even though logically they make no sense? My therapist suggested that the dead rabbit is Carrot, or symbolic of Carrot. And as I look back, it sort of makes sense. When I imagined Carrot as a kid, one of her favorite toys was a stuffed bunny rabbit. She always had it with her. So now this other woman is carrying a dead rabbit and walking with her eyes closed. The thing is, Carrot always "feels" a certain way, and this woman didn’t "feel" that way. Does that make sense?)
So anyway this woman turns a corner and I don’t follow her. And I imagine she’s going to be mad at me for not following her.
And this is where last night’s dream goes differently. This time, knowing I always die in this dream, I decide to follow her.
But it ends the same.
I turn the corner this time, and I am in the White Room.
The room is just white. White walls, white floor, and white ceiling. In the middle is a giant skull. This thing is massive and horned, the size of a barrel. And I know it’s Satan, and I wandered into his lair. You can see the heat radiating off the skull, but the rest of the room is cold. The skull doesn’t move but it has a heartbeat. And it’s loud, and that’s how I know it’s alive and I’m about to die. I turn away from it and in the wall is a small observation window. Very very small. Just enough to look through with two eyes. And someone is looking though it at me, waiting to watch me die. A doctor, like just observing an experiment or something. I feel like he doesn’t care that I’m about to die, like I’m a test subject. Just a number.
Carrot is there. Her eyes are closed as always, and I feel like she wants me to close mine too. And I’m sad, because I know it’s over. But I’m also relieved. My fucked up life is about to end, and I got out without losing control and hurting someone, or doing something wrong. (In group therapy I found a common fear among a lot of us was that we were terrified we will lose control of our actions at some point and do something horrible. You know how sometimes you can’t sleep on vacation because you are obsessing over whether or not you locked the front door of your house? It’s like that, except instead of worrying if someone is stealing your TV, you’re worried you’re going to get the electric chair for shooting up a mall.) In this way, my death feels like success, and the world will be safer and better now that I’m gone. I guess self esteem has never been my strength.
My head starts to get hot, and I know the devil is behind me and about to kill me. And at this point, I’m strangely calm about it, and somehow I’m sitting relaxed, although there were no chairs in the room. I’m scared, but I just want to get it over with. The heat is awful and I can’t breathe and my skull starts to crack like glass in the back. I scream.
And wake myself up screaming.
It always ends like that.
Abigail D. Brown was like most eight-year-old girls her age: creative, inquisitive, and precocious, though perhaps taller than some. She spent most of her summers exploring the woods behind her house. Her mother called it a “green space,” but to Abbie it was the forest, and if you called a forest by any other name, it lost some of its inherent magic.
The early summer day began with a rainstorm that blanketed the town in a thick humidity unusual for Oregon. By midday, the humidity had b. . .
Hey everyone! I know it’s been a little while since we reached the goal so I just wanted to let everyone know where things stand. We were originally shooting for an October release date but Inkshares went through some management changes that required their publication schedule to be reshuffled a bit, so our official final pub date is Tuesday, December 13 and I’ve been going back and forth with my editors and my cover artist to get everything just right in the meantime. Sorry for the delay but I can’t wait to share it with you all!
Every last one of you is fantastic. I thank you sincerely and truly for helping this dream come to fruition. The timeline for final production and shipping is fluid, but I am hoping to launch sometime in late Spring, give or take. This may be as early as February but, as my old boss used to say, it’s always best to under-promise and over-deliver
Speaking of, those of you who won raffles or earned prizes; you have not been forgotten. They are coming.
To every last one of you, whether you supported this dream with a follow, a recommendation, a review or even a gorgeous, eternally beautiful pre-order: You are Magnificent. You have helped to sculpt a wonderful reality. You have earned my appreciation.
In short, Borehole Bazaar, the first book the Vow Unbroken series, is in the works and being shaped and polished to accept its physical and digital forms. And a special, extra thanks to everyone who has helped in this process.
I know, I know, you thought I’d disappeared! But fear not, I’m still here and 3point8 is on its way! Get the latest update here!
