Post NaNoWriMo Book Update

Includes an Excerpt of Code Name: Eton Mess

Hello!

I am coming off of NaNoWriMo 2020 which, oof, those first two weeks combined with an ailing elder cat were murder on my word count. I got about halfway through and, for 2020, I’m calling that a huge success. I discovered a lot about my writing process—more than that, I am having a blast with a book that is very “me”. This book is everything I love about writing and storytelling and magic.

I wanted to post an excerpt from Chapter One for you today. If you dig Code name: Eton Mess, let me know and I’ll post more like these!

I know several of you follow me for gaming, and on that front? It’s been a tough, tough year all around for me. I am quarantining at home for the foreseeable future, but I’m also taking some digital classes right now to help me fill in the gaps for some skills I need for my wishlist projects.

I have been playing a few games here and there. I’m in a Ravenloft game, but I also started playing Final Fantasy XV and Mario Kart (bumblebutt) for stress relief and am keeping up with Habitica (booksofm).

Upwards and onwards!

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Chapter One

E. Rox Berry Makes a New Friend

Once upon a time, there was a land of eternal summer that had no name and could not be found on any map. Its orange-yellow sun, too bright to examine with or without sunglasses, shone warm rays of life-giving light from dawn until dusk in a sky as blue as a robin’s egg. When the sun stopped shining, sparks of silver glitter twinkled in a black, moonless sky. This nameless land’s temperature, a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit, was so perfect it never wavered. Its sweet-smelling grass was always lush enough to walk barefoot in and its shrubs, flowerbeds, and trees were always green and flowering. Even its precious few rivers and lakes were so clear and bubbling you could see right to their sandy bottoms. Even its fish—freshwater varieties of trout, salmon, perch, and walleye—were always easy to catch.

While most faraway lands were filled with huts, houses, and castles built from wood and stone, all of this land’s buildings were grown from bushes, vines, and trees. Each structure, from the smallest lily hut to the tallest redwood treefort, bloomed into existence just before its first occupant moved into a lovely cottage formed from ivy, oak, and wild roses back in 1923.

Despite its charm, the people who found their way to this fertile land were not totally enamored with it. To them, it was nearly perfect because it was disconnected from all other lands. Its occupants—a motley group of lost, broken-hearted souls—could not use their walkie-talkies, cell phones, laptops, or game consoles. In fact, there was no electrical wires or telephone posts or radio towers of any kind, for these technologies did not work because they were not carved, harvested, or grown from a plant.

Though the land was well-lit by day, the velvet sky was always black as midnight save for the neon varieties of Ghost Mushrooms and Stone Drake that glowed against the darkness. To entertain themselves, the residents often put on elaborate plays, sang songs, judged frogs jumping competitions, read books, rolled dice, played hopscotch, and raced in an event called “The Ultra Great Fantastic Thon”. And, if residents wanted to chat with one another as they often did, all they had to do was whisper into a spider plant’s ear. If their party was available to chat, the two would communicate via a nearby succulent anxious for a bit of juicy gossip or a friendly hello.

Over time, the land’s few occupants grew into a community and that community swelled to the size of a small town. Eventually, the adult citizens decided to organize and lay down some rules not knowing the land had a way of policing itself. They discussed an appropriate name for their home and decided to call it Summerland. The name, according to old Mayor Larkson, was nearly perfect. “We should call the land ‘Summer Vacation’ because that’s what living here feels like,” she said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “‘Cept, nobody calls a town ‘Summer Vacation’.”

Though residents did disagree on a number of things that started with “lawn-cutting” and ended with “proper penmanship”, everyone who lived in Summerland agreed that being in this land felt as if they were all on a long, lazy summer vacation. There were no sciences to learn from, no money to be exchanged, no desk jobs to spend endless hours sitting at, and no other complicated -ist, -ism, and y-ending words. There was only the peace and warm hugs of a fertile land that needed care and tending. At least, quiet until Roka’s Circus of Dreams came to town. When her traveling show arrived, everyone dropped what they were doing—never knowing where or when the circus came from—to attend its starlit performances in exchange for that night’s dream.

Or, so they thought.