CARGO OF BONES
Z. Lindsey
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GENRE: Fantasy
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BLURB:
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Devil bureaucrat Essie Darkenchyl and her friends barely survived the jungle, but now they're going straight to Hell--AKA her hometown! |
Excerpt Three:
“You nicked me in the dance, remember? The council might be scandalized if we slept in the same tent.”
She laughed, remembering how embarrassed she’d been as the other girls gasped and the doctors swarmed him. Her dad said, ‘Essie, if you didn’t want Vashon to be eligible to marry you, you just had to poke him! You didn’t have to stab so deep!’ But she did like him. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t block. And it had been nice to think the one boy she liked couldn’t marry her. There had been more important things than boys. Like Gossen’s Guide to Shipping Law.
“Nicked you?” she asked as she stood and walked for the tent. “Sir, I stabbed so deep they had to use medical magic to get the knife out.”
Vashon touched his shoulder where the knife had been.
“Yeah, like I said, you nicked me. I’ll sleep outside.”
Essie put a hand on her hip.
“It’s too cold, Vashon.” She crouched and crawled into the tent. “It’s not like you’re proposing. If you keep your underwear on, I’m sure the council will forgive us.”
“I’m not wearing underwear,” he said.
“Oh.”
Vashon cleared his throat.
“It’s not part of the cossetter’s ritual outfit.”
Essie bit her lip and looked away.
“Of course.”
“The first cossetters practiced naked to be closer to essential—”
“Okay, I get it!”
“So—I should sleep out here?” he asked.
“Get in here,” she said, then blurted, “but stay on your side.”
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Topic: What was the biggest challenge in writing this book and how did you overcome it?
CARGO OF BONES, the second book in my trilogy about devil bureaucrat Essimore Darkenchyl, is a humorous and antics-filled adventure involving a fight with a group of cultists who are trying to kill the god of death because of undiagnosed PTSD.
If that sounds unexpected, I can tell you that balancing that tone was the hardest part of writing the book. I really wanted this book to be funny and hopeful, but it deals with one of the most profound subjects that fantasy can address: the death of a god. Keeping it fun and lighthearted when the stakes are so high was a difficult challenge, but I think I did pretty good.
Now, I’ve got a bit of a dark sense of humor, so it would always have had dark jokes. Her people do eat hearts. She does kill multiple villains in the third book by accident. She doesn’t like to be touched because the the god of death touched one of her ancestors on the shoulder years ago and the psychic impact still lingers with her.
But I don’t want people to take away dark things from my stories in general. I myself stay away from very dark fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire or the Broken Earth series, so it’s perhaps ironic that I’m attempting to humorously grapple with such intense themes.
But I wanted to address those themes to create a positive message about how hope thrives even in tragedy. Joy and tragedy work together to give our experiences meaning.
All that to say, I was challenged to write a book that was dark, but not too dark. These books were always meant to be funny, and the second one is dark humor. That doesn’t mean it’s not hopeful like the first and third books, just that the journey of exploration of self that started in the first book is about to hit some rocky ground. Actually, it’s about to head deep into a dangerous desert to come face-to-face with the city that guards the entrance to the realm of death.
In the end, I think of this book somewhat like the second Star Wars film. The first one established the themes and the characters, the second got super dark, and the third one had ewoks. Some fans complain about the tone shift from the second to the third movie, but the original Star Wars trilogy is a hopeful story. Luke wins (at least for the time being) and that means the tone of the third movie should be more light-hearted than the second.
But at the end of the second, the characters have lost in some major ways. If you’d stopped after the second movie, you’d probably be a little depressed. Luckily, George Lucas knew there would be a third movie, so he was able to subvert the traditional endings of heroic narratives, knowing we all would get to see the characters experience some form of catharsis in the next movie.
I think something similar happens with the darker ending of this book. The third book is the catharsis, so you have to wait a bit after the second book. (Just six months, though--the third book will be out in December!) I can’t promise every single character you love and care about will make it through every book, but I can say the heroes are working to make a better world, and it’s a world that some of them will get to see.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Zac Lindsey is an anthropologist and a linguist who focuses on the Maya people of Quintana Roo. Since childhood, he's had a not-so-secret love of weird, silly, and well-structured fantasy. When other people's parents were reading them picture books, his mom was reading him Terry Brooks. He typically writes hopeful and character-driven fantasy.
Today, he lives in Quintana Roo, Mexico with his wife, daughter, and various stray cats.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/z.lindsey_fiction/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550498257222
Amazon link to the first book: https://www.amazon.com/River-Against-Sea-Z-Lindsey-ebook/dp/B0CH3TW3YD/ref=sr_1_1
B&N link to the first book (for paperback): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-river-against-the-sea-z-lindsey/1144077772
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