Cali’s Journey of Discovery

The novel that Alban Lake has accepted for publication is called Cali; A Journey of Discovery.

Cali is an Atlan. But even among this race of unusual women, Cali is... unusual. She could pass for an Outsider.

Cali has brown hair. Unheard of for an Atlan.

Cali has brown eyes. Unheard of for an Atlan.

Cali has all three of her tribes’ birthmarks denoting power. Until her birth, each Atlan only had one.

No one knew what to think. It was reluctantly decided that birthmarks alone did not make her an Atlan, and she would be sent to her father as a child, as if she were male. As that day grew near, an aunt overheard Cali tell her playmates that ‘bad men’ were coming, and turned to find the girl had white hair and blue eyes, which quickly returned to brown.

Further testing revealed that Cali had all 27 Atlan powers, which she could call up by having her hair and eyes change to the correct colors, and tying them to the requisite birthmark. But training her was difficult, because no one else had to choose which power they would use; they only had one. And she was already late starting her training; trying to learn 27 disciplines put her further and further behind.

As a young woman, Cali accompanied two small children on a trip to the Outside. She had not completed her training, but she was both a BlackBird (warrior) and a Watcher, so she was chosen. However, Cali was not always a BlackBird, nor a Watcher. She never spoke of what was done to her, but she brought the children’s mutilated bodies back to her village for burial before she set off to find the men responsible. Blackbirds wanted to go, but the Doves told them she must do this on her own.

Sidek found her in a flooded river, and pulled her to safety. Uncertain she’s ready to continue traveling, he tagged along with her. For some reason, she didn’t object.

During this journey, Cali discovered far more than she ever wanted to know about the Outside world. Sidek discovered far more about the Atlans as a whole than he did about her. But when the trek was finally over, it was Sidek who helped a sick and weary Cali get home.

This story does stand on its own, although I have started the next story, where Cali and Sidek travel again the next year. And there may be a third story after that. We’ll see.

Seeing What's There

Okay, I’ve told you about BlackBirds, MetalWorkers and ClayWomen in the Atlan tribe, all of whom have black hair and black eyes, and all of whom are often seen as a huge group of BlackBirds. There are still more Atlans who are easily mistaken as BlackBirds, especially at a little bit of distance.

The next batch of these ‘apparent BlackBirds’ has black hair and blue eyes. Those with the moon birthmark are WaterWoman, the heart birthmark denotes a LeatherWorker, while those with a sword birthmark are called Makers.

It seems to me that the occupation ‘leatherworker’ is pretty self-explanatory; they take raw animal skins and tan them into leather. They also use the leather to create shoes and clothing, wineskins and waterskins, gauntlets and sword sheaths and anything else they decide to make. Like many other types of specialists among the Atlans, this is not a glamorous type of Power, but it is supremely useful.

Understanding a WaterWoman’s Power is a little more complicated. This is the woman who can locate water, whether it’s running (like streams and rivers), standing (ponds and lakes) or underground. She can even feel an approaching storm front, although a WeatherWoman would probably be aware of storms before the WaterWomen were. A WaterWoman can get the water to take a new path to create a spring, thus avoiding having to dig wells. This also helps when crops need to be irrigated. A really strong WaterWoman can walk through a heavy downpour and not get wet because she directed the raindrops to change their path to avoid her.

And that leaves the Makers. On Earth, within the last couple centuries, an Atlan Maker might have been called a machinist or an inventor. These are the ones who first figured out wheels and axles, sails and rudders, and a whole slew of other items. They don’t do this entirely alone. For instance, it took a Maker consulting with a WaterWoman to figure out water pipes in order to invent sinks, showers and eventually, toilets.

So, these are not Mighty Warriors like BlackBirds, but they are definitely useful Powers for a village to have. And if the tribe finds themselves at war, the more women they have who might be mistaken for BlackBirds gives the Atlans that much more of a psychological edge.

Woman on the Dock

If you read and enjoyed my first published e-book earlier this year, then maybe (hopefully) you've been wondering when my next one would be published. Actually, as the days ticked away, becoming weeks and then months, I started to wonder myself. The manuscript was polished. The cover was chosen. The CEO of MoonPhaze Publishing was someone I'd known most of my life; we could share anything and work through any problems, so what was the problem?

Tommee is a lot like me. She knows she's capable, but starting a new endeavor can make her ... nervous. In all her life, she never really thought of herself as a potential entrepreneur. "I'm not even sure how to spell it, let alone be one!" she told me.

We had worked together to get that first e-book published. There is an entire book giving instructions on preparing your manuscript to upload to smashwords, and even though Tommee is just as good with Word as I am, it happened that she read the instructions out loud, step by step, and I did them. If I remember correctly, it took us nearly two full days to read, interpret, and do. We assured each other that next time would be easier, because the steps would be more familiar.

In the meantime, however, I took on a temp job that took up my days, and Tommee just kept ... procrastinating. The steps wouldn't be that familiar to her; she had done the reading. So in that funny little half-week before Thanksgiving, we spent the evenings together, preparing the manuscript. This time I read, and she did the formatting. By the end of Wednesday, we were ready to attach the cover, but then we decided it needed a little tweaking. Too bad, we thought. We would have liked for the e-book to be available on Thanksgiving. But we sent a message to the cover artist and put the computer file away.

After the remains of the turkey and other holiday dishes were put away on Thursday, I was very surprised to hear that the cover was back! We got together, attached the new and improved cover, took a deep breath and hit the button to upload to smashwords. It wouldn't go! What a let-down. We tried several times that evening, in between checking the trouble-shooting suggestions, but it got late, and I had to work the next day, so we put it away. Again.

What all this rambling has been leading up to is (drum roll, please) my second e-book is published!

The title is Woman on the Dock. It is another Atlan short story, and the cost is $.99, the minimum we could price it. You do get to read the first 30% for free to decide if you want to pay for it. I hope you like it.

And if you like this one, there's still more Atlan stories coming! Tommee has decided the next will be out no later than July 1, 2012. Hopefully, with the experience of doing the formatting of this one, and a deadline in mind, she won't procrastinate so much. Well, here's hoping!

BlackBird

MoonPhaze Publishing is just about ready to post my next 'book' onto www.smashwords.com. I understand they just want to double-check the title page, add a few lines of advertising to the rear to tell readers what's coming, attach the cover and then upload it. With any luck, you'll be able to read this next offering on Thanksgiving Day, maybe as you sit and digest turkey and dressing.

This is another story about Atlans, and as I've mentioned in other blogs, there are 27 known 'types' of Atlans. The main character of this story is a BlackBird, an Atlan premier warrior. Why would they name their warriors after a small bird?

In the very beginning, they didn't. BlackBirds have black hair, black eyes, and a black birthmark in the shape of a sword – all the signs of Crassus, their God of War. But since the Atlans don't get along with that particular god, they didn't want to name their warriors anything that might be a perversion of his name. Also, it took some time for the Atlan population to grow from the 3 original girls to a population that had several of most types, and for them to figure out that each combination had a different set of Powers. So, for the first few generations, the group of Atlans with black hair and black eyes were called 'Blackies'.

Even on their remote island home, the Atlans knew the small, black birds that came seasonally from the north. At first, they were thought to just be small birds. Then a pair of large birds of prey came to the island and set upon all the smaller birds; the white canaries, the orange finches, the multi-colored parrots ... but not the small black birds. Intrigued, the Blackies watched the birds of prey, prepared to hunt the larger birds to keep them from decimating the populations of the smaller birds. But the raptors evaded the first arrow, and after that, they both stayed out of range of Atlan bows. They must have been hunted in other places.

Then they spotted one of the raptors, orange finch in his claw, under attack ... by one of the small black birds! The raptor looped and spun, its beak snapped a hair's breath from black feathers again and again, but the blackness was a whirlwind, flying circles around the bigger bird, darting in over and over to pull off a feather here, take a nip of skin there. The finch was released and fell a few feet before it got its wings functioning and hurried off. The BlackBird kept up its attack until the raptor straightened, spread its wings wide and set off for the distance.

It was a hard thing to believe, but after seeing it a few more times, and after comparing the all-black Blackies' fighting skills to those of the rest of the tribe, they began to call their warriors BlackBirds. They were two creatures of one kind.