Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Excerpt from Savannah Sprites 1

I've just finished my final content edit for my fairy fantasy, The Love Commission. Whew, editing is hard, but it will be worth it in the end to have my book for sale. I can't wait. What makes it even more interesting is that this book was my Nano novel last year. So this time last year I was pumping out that word count and telling Gelsey and Evan's story. The book has been through quite a transformation process - beta reading, several self-edits, and then rounds of edits with the publisher.



Anyway, I have to share an excerpt just to give you a taste of it. It hasn't gone through all the editing processes yet, but here goes:

Excerpt:

Gelsey ate with vigor, all strength and courage returning to her. When she’d washed down her meal with pure spring water, the queen touched her wing to catch her attention. Some fairies danced in the center of the room, the banquet reaching fever pitch. The queen must have chosen the noisiest moment to give her the commission.

“You are to enter the human world…as a human.”

Gelsey blinked, her wings trembling against her back. Five fairies had entered the human world and only one had come back safe, having succeeded in her commission. Two others had remained human, and the last one had been killed.

“I don’t understand….”

“You are a young fairy who has an amazing ability to calm down the most frightened bird or insect. I believe you will be as suitable for this commission as you are beautiful and humble. You know you aren’t perfect. Someone humble enough to admit her weaknesses would be just right for the human world. You won’t lose your personality at all when you take your new form. You won’t even lose your wings. They will merely remain dormant. You will be divested of some of your powers, though. But your power to calm down the distressed will remain. That power will enable you to succeed in your commission.”

“What am I to do?”

“You are to marry a man for a year. You will find out why the humans want love and sex but not children. As you may have learned in your studies at nature school, homo sapiens reproduce differently to fairies. They reproduce by sex between a male and female. But the species have devised several means to prevent babies from being formed in the female body even though they continue to have sex. This has lowered the reproduction rate of the creatures who are important for the balance of the earth, specifically in South Africa. For this purpose, I want you to enter into their world and feel what they feel. You are to know what it is to love a male human with their type of love. You will go at the first break of spring and will be able to return home at the start of the following spring. We will give you your own vial of fairy dust. The gold dust should be used only twice. The first time is when you find a suitable man to marry. When you find someone who is single and who cares about the balance of nature, you must sprinkle the fairy dust on his head. The magic will make him want to marry you. Once the magic has worked, you cannot find another man. He is the one for you. If you mistakenly don’t choose a single man, you will get one more chance.”

Gelsey’s wings beat against her back until they ached. Become a human and marry one? How would she know what to do? And a whole year? She would miss out on spring. It had been a long, cold winter, and she wouldn’t get to see or hear all the new baby birds or play with the flying ants when the rains came.

“The second time you should use the fairy dust is to come home. You are to sprinkle the dust on the man you have chosen to make him turn away from you. He will forget every instant shared with you. He will forget his marriage, and so will everyone he knows. Then you can come home without arousing any suspicion. Ziana will explain where you are to go and what job you will take on in the human world to make you fit in there. You have a month to find this man you are to wed. While you are married to him, you need to find out from him or anyone else you meet, like other females, the reason for the humans not wanting as many children. You are to research your own emotions and those of the male’s, and work out what is happening to humans to change their future.”

“What if I don’t find anything of importance?”

“By becoming one of them, you will automatically understand how they think and what is happening in their hearts. Although you may not comprehend in the beginning, marrying a male human will help you to understand. Well, that’s what we believe.”

Gelsey wasn’t so sure. The queen had much more wisdom than the general fairy, but what if she didn’t know everything? Fairies knew little of the human world. They had never understood humans and their strange behaviors.

“If you succeed at your commission, you will be promoted to Head Endangered Animal earth fairy for South Africa.”

Gelsey gasped. To be able to save an animal from extinction had been her dream for years. But could she fulfill this commission?






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