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writing stuff: cover letter/synopses
Hi there everyone! I'm really trying to work on selling my novels--I have three that are in enough shape to send out, so I might as well. I've just been really disheartened lately.
If someone--anyone--could look one or more of these over, I would be so grateful (and will try my best to return the favor in some way). I've been editing these, but I'd love a fresh opinion. It doesn't matter if you've read the novel or if you know about editing/publishing. If you could tell me if they are engaging, or if there's anything wrong with them, let me know!
Cover letter:
Sorcery has at last returned to the world.
In The Wind and the Foxes (140,000 words), the proud Kelisavian nomads
and the isolated People of the Mering have never met. The two nations
have little in common, yet each bears a burden. The Kelisavians have
lost their homeland, and the people of the Mering have lost their true
nature: they are foxes bound in human form. The two cultures
encounter each other when the not-entirely-honest Kelisavian merchant
Reian takes on his new trading partner, the sarcastic, secretive Imbri
of the Mering. Their partnership is a peaceful one, until an artifact
is stolen from them. The perpetrator of the theft is no human, but a
creature of sorcery, a striking fact in a world that believes its
sorcerers lost. Reian and Imbri set out to solve this mystery and
recover their stolen property.
Their search takes them to the thorny grassland of the Mering, where
they are offered shelter by two women of Imbri's people, the warrior
Neri and her mate, the weaver Kai. Neri and Kai are cast out of their
tribe for harboring the strangers, and when they join Reian and Imbri
on their journey, the four of them discover that the ancient stories
of the Mering and those of the Kelisavians are part of one greater
tale, the ending of which will restore both the Kelisavian homeland
and the true forms of the people of the Mering.
The key to the story is the world's only sorcerer, Nelius, in whom one
of the old bloodlines has unexpectedly resurfaced. He has taken
Reian's artifact to restore the Kelisavian homeland on his own, but
his gift is erratic, and there is another, greater power keeping
company with him, one that threatens all the civilizations of the
world. Reian and his friends must reach Nelius in time to save him
from himself and heal an ancient grief that has poisoned the earth for
hundreds of years.
The Wind and the Foxes is a fairy tale without a villain, the story of
how a few miscreants and outcasts undo the damage done by past
mistakes and ancient tragedy.
My short stories have appeared in Confrontation, Lullwater Review, and
Eureka Literary Magazine, under the name C. A. James. I have worked
as a freelance writer for a variety of clients, including Arbor Books.
This is my first novel.
Thank you for your time.
Summary: short version:
Once, the Wind loved the Sun, as the Sea loves the Moon. They were the four gods of the Kelisavan people, and the Kelisavian Empire was at peace. When the Wind's children, those he had gifted with the power of sorcery, grew too strong and too dangerous, the Sun took note. His own children, those with the gift of sovereignty, struck down the sorcerers, good and bad. He cleansed the earth with his fire and burned the treacherous gift from the blood of the people, or so it was thought.
Since that day, there has been no love between the Wind and the Sun. The Sun shone down too brightly upon the Empire, baking the soil with his anger. The Wind stayed away, keeping the clouds and longed for rain with it. The Empire faded, and its people scattered.
And once, in another tribe of gods, the small and numerous gods of foxes, there was a young, capricious deity named Imbri, with fur of silver and eyes like the sky. He watched the human gods from a distance, eyes wide, and he was much impressed with the human people: the things they made and the wars they waged. So he offered his own people, the little foxes, the same awareness that the humans had: awareness of the self and others, understanding of the meaning of their reflection in the still surface of a pool. Imbri was a troublesome god, and he made his gift sound tempting. There were many takers.
Then foxes, too, began to make fine things. They began to make war. When the other gods realized what Imbri had done, they were enraged. They laid a curse on all the foxes that had accepted Imbri's offer: if they would act like humans, then they would be locked in human form, with all its weaknesses. Imbri, too, they trapped in a human body, and they banished him from the sky, to wander the earth deathless and alone.
Since those long ago times when the Wind and the Sun became enemies and Imbri was exiled, many lifetimes have passed, but in the interim, something unusal happened. The god Imbri, stripped of his powers, went on a search for another god who could help him to protect his people from the world they were ill-equipped to deal with in their new forms. He asked almost every god, but every one turned him away. At last, he asked the Wind. The Wind remembered his lost sorcerers, and he took pity on the god Imbri. He would help, he said, if Imbri would agree to come to his aid, whenever he called. Imbri agreed. It seemed an uneven bargain, but the Wind was content.
In the story of The Wind & the Foxes, which plays on various mythological archetypes, the Wind finally calls for Imbri to repay his debt. Told from the point of view of various characters, as well as the folktales they tell each other, the novel spans generations to tell the story of Nelius, the last of the Kelisavian sorcerers--or perhaps the first of a new line of those born with the gift. Like the old sorcerers, his power is as dangerous as it is fantastic, and he has a choice to make. He can rip the world apart, or start to make it whole again.
He will not make this choice alone, for two women have been exiled from the grassland of the foxes. Their names are Kai and Neri, and they have a choice to make, too. Cast out for harboring two wandering strangers: a Kelisavian trader named Reian and his odd friend and trading partner with the ill-omened name of Imbri, they must decide where to go and how to make a new home for themselves. It is only by doing so that they can win the opportunity to lift the curse that has beset their people for many years and return them to their true forms.
Reian, too, has a part to play in this new tale. He is the son of a shaman. Historically the counterparts and sometime rivals of the sorcerers, the shamans went into hiding when the sorcerers were wiped out, believing themselves partly to blame. When a relic he is transported is stolen by a lifelike construct of sorcery, he is able to recognize the creature, and he sees that the supposedly extinct sorcerers are more alive than was previously thought. His conscience tells him to seek out the sorcerer, who could be dangerous but all he's ever wanted was to live a simple, peaceful life, unlike the stories of sorrow and wonder he was told in his youth. When the Wind suddenly stops, and he knows a sorcerer is responsible, he can no longer deny his heritage or his duty.
It is Imbri who brings these people together, so they can heal the old wounds of both their civilizations. The Wind and the world are in danger, but they will both be saved. At last, Imbri will repay his debt to the god who helped him long ago. The exiled foxes of the grassland will regain their true forms, the lost gift of sorcery will be returned to the Kelisavian people, and the first of the new sorcerers will find a home.
Summary: long version:
In The Wind & the Foxes, two very different cultures must work together to heal each other's ancient wounds. The novel combines the past and the present, modern narrative and folk tale, and the stories, old and new, combine to change the future for both peoples.
Blight exiled the Kelisavians from their homeland for centuries, and they have since been scattered throughout the world. The Wind and the Sun were once the guardians of their land, but when the Sun angered the Wind, the animosity of the two gods turned the Kelisavian Empire into a wasteland. It will not be healed until the Sun, the Wind, the Moon, and the Waters, all four of the Kelisavian gods, gather together again on earth, a gathering that has not taken place since the beginning of the world.
The People of the Mering are separated from their true forms. They are foxes cursed to live as humans. They were given the gift of humanlike self-awareness by a trickster god named Imbri, which caused them to change in nature and wage war against each other. The fox-gods punished both the errant foxes and the wicked god by placing them in the forms of the creatures they chose to emulate.
The trader Reian of the Kelisavian nomads seems like an ordinary man, and that is all he wants to be, but he is something more than that. In his youth, he left home for travel and adventure, and in the process, he left his heritage behind. His family is the last remnant of an old bloodline with the gift of shamanism, the power to speak to the natural world. By escaping his responsibilities, Reian sacrificed his chance to learn to use that power. His gift will remain forever untapped. Its only expression is in Reian's ability to understand the language of birds.
Reian's trading partner, Imbri of the Mering, is not a man who appears ordinary. No one has ever seen one of his kind outside of their grasslands before. The People of the Mering are diminutive and elusive, almost to the point of complete isolation. Imbri bears the name of their cursed god. He does have magical power, but it is nothing too special. Sometimes he can travel across great spaces in a moment, or perform a novel trick, but it takes a great deal out of him, and he seldom has the energy.
These two unusual merchants run a modest if slightly questionable business, dealing in antiquities and rare items. There is but one undertaking that sets them apart from other, similar merchants: in the course of his travels, Reian is working on completing a series of difficult errands for the Mirza Amerajai, the leader of one of his people's ruling tribes, in order to win the right to finally marry the man's daughter Pasha, the woman he loves.
It is not their ordinary business, but this series of errands that leads them to retrieve a relic known as the Wind's Daughter that once belonged to the Mirza's family. The item has no great power, but according to legend, it is a necessary component in the ritual of calling down the Wind, which binds the Wind God to flesh. It's said that this is the only way that the Wind can be made a part of the physical reunion of the gods that would bring back the old empire, but that's only a story, isn't it? Reian doesn't think much of stories like that.
Reian is wrong to doubt. He and Imbri have no sooner found the Wind's Daughter than two constructs of spirit and shadow appear from the very air to take it from them. Reian and Imbri attempt to escape and keep their prize, but the Wind's Daughter is stolen in spite of their efforts. Imbri uses his power to travel a great distance in an instant, but the shadow creatures follow him, and his effort wins him nothing but a severe wound and separation from his partner.
Imbri finds himself in his homeland, the Mering. There he meets two women of his people, the weaver Kai and her mate, the warrior Neri. Kai can weave the grasses where they stand, and Neri has the heightened ability to protect those in danger: small gifts given by their small gods. They find Imbri strange and his legendary name ill-omened, but ignoring their misgivings, they take him in and allow him to rest and recover from his wounds. Imbri waits with Kai and Neri until Reian is able to find him, using his knowledge of Imbri's origins and his ability to speak to birds. Reian's arrival has an unintended consequence. When Kai and Neri's tribe discover that the women allowed an outsider, a giant who is considered a monster, onto their lands, they are banished from their homeland, as this is against their people's law.
Reian and Imbri, feeling responsible for their exile, offer to take Kai and Neri with them. The women have never left home before, but they have nowhere else to go. The resources of the Mering are scant, and other tribes can only allow outsiders to stay on their lands for short periods of time. Life is hard for exiles. Though they are grieving the loss of their home, Neri has long been curious about the world outside the Mering, and she decides she would rather look for a new life than face a bleak certainty. The less adventurous Kai chooses to accompany her mate, out of love rather than curiosity.
When they leave the Mering, it is not without purpose. The encounter with the shadow creatures has shown Reian a truth he believed impossible. Such creatures must have been made by a sorcerer, yet according to the stories of his people, the last sorcerers died hundreds of years ago, when the old empire fell. The sorcerers' power was traditionally the complement of the shamanism of his family line, but the ancient sorcerers grew too vain and too powerful, and at last the Sun destroyed them. This was what caused the love of the Wind and Sun to sour, for sorcerers were sacred to the Wind.
Unbeknownst to Reian and to almost everyone else, there is one sorcerer in the world: a young man named Nelius, who is only half Kelisavian, in whom the gift has unexpectedly surfaced again. He was born and brought up in the nation of Vata. Like most with such mixed heritage, he was not accepted by either race. The landowning Vatans and nomadic Kelisavians have a long history of animosity. Abandoned as a child and raised in an orphanage, Nelius was later sold to a solitary scholar named Maral, a man fascinated by the ancient sorcerers who had been searching for someone of that supposedly extinct bloodline for years. Maral hungers for power above all things. He wants to use the ancient gift to benefit himself.
The sorcerer Nelius is not the only thing Maral found in the course of his searching and studying. He also discovered an item made by one of the sorcerers: an object known as a Singer, it has the power to gather and amplify sorcerous power. This Singer is ancient, possibly the last of its kind. There is also something very wrong with it. Maral discovered it buried near a poisoned well, the water of which drove those who drank it mad. Maral thinks nothing of carrying this powerful item with him, but his carelessness has unforeseen consequences.
The Singer is not what it seems. Having played a part in the great tragedy that destroyed the Kelisavian Empire, it was transformed by rage and grief and has developed a primitive consciousness of its own. When it is introduced to Nelius, it begins to have an effect on him, amplifying his power and disturbing the mind of the already distressed and withdrawn young man. Nelius gives the Singer a name. He calls it the Needle.
Nelius' power, made unstable by his mixed heritage, becomes too strong for him to control. When Maral pushes him too far, Nelius destroys his master, but this act does not free him, for the Needle is a more terrible master. It leads him to the Kelisavian Empire's lost capital city, which was sealed away by a great act of sorcery when the empire fell. Alone, unknown, he spends years in that empty place, his power and his instability growing.
Reian and his companions set out with the simple goal of warning the Kelisavian authorities in the shifting tent city of Teres that there is a living sorcerer who could present a great danger to the world. What they do not know is that Nelius has a plan. He has taken the Wind's Daughter in order to call down the Wind. Though never accepted by the Kelisavians, he feels betrayed by the Vatans, and he wants his other people to accept him. He intends to bring back the Kelisavians' ruined homeland and earn their approval, but calling down the Wind is no simple matter.
As he makes his way to Teres, Reian encounters someone he hadn't expected to see: the Mirza's daughter, Pasha, his betrothed. She has left home to find him. Made impatient by her father's seemingly endless delaying of their wedding, she decided to take control of the situation. Pasha has an important message for Reian. She received a visit from one of the gods, the Moon, who told her that she and Reian must find the ancient capital and the sorcerer who waits there. Reian has no intention of getting tangled in what seems to be the complex web of a story, because he knows that not all stories have happy endings--quite the contrary--but he finds he cannot refuse a direct request from a god.
During their journey to the city, which lies in the middle of the wasteland that was once the fertile empire, the friends, old and new, share stories. Through the telling of these tales, it becomes clear that the Kelisavian nomads and the People of the Mering have more in common than they realized. The god Imbri of the Mering once made a promise to the Kelisavians' god the Wind, swearing that in return for protecting his cursed people in a time of need, he would help the Wind whenever the wind called for his aid.
Now the Wind is calling, with an absence of voice. The group has not reached the edge of the wasteland when the air around them suddenly goes dead. Nelius has brought the god down and bound him to a physical form. According to the myths, that is the first step in repairing the damage done to the old empire, but isolation and loneliness have not been kind to Nelius, and he does not move on to any next step. The air remains lifeless for days. Something has happened that Reian and his companions cannot guess. In his madness, Nelius has fallen in love with the Wind, and he does not wish to let him go. With no Wind, all weather will stop, and the world will slowly sicken and die. The travelers hasten their pace and make their way as quickly as they can through the unforgiving environment of the wasteland.
The old magic that guarded the lost city made it possible to enter only in the presence of a sorcerer or one of royal blood. With Pasha present, they should be able to enter the city, but Nelius has sealed it with new magic. There seems to be no way to enter or communicate with Nelius within, until Kai discovers she can enter the city. The protection only keeps out humans, and Kai, whose people were foxes, and who sees herself as a fox, is able to enter and reach Nelius in the midst of his madness.
When Nelius realizes that Kelisavians have come to his city, he is reminded of his initial goal. He allows the others to enter, but he is distracted and uneasy. That is because the Needle has grown in power over the years, and it has a great deal of influence over Nelius. Poisoned by grief, it desires nothing so much as the end of everything: a complete and utter silence. It does not like these newcomers, so Nelius' welcoming mood does not last long. When he realizes that they have come to the city to free the Wind, he grows angry.
The power of his madness and anger begins to destroy the city, but even in the midst of such turmoil, Nelius holds back and does not directly attack his visitors. Buildings and streets explode in showers of stone, and Neri uses her gift of protection to guard her friends from harm. Instead of fighting Nelius, Reian decides that he will try to help him. He follows and tries to reason with him. Reian again reminds Nelius of his original goal, and Nelius begins to struggle against the Needle's influence. This pits Nelius against the Needle itself, with all its rage and grief.
Reian offers up the power of his own untapped shamanism, and Nelius uses him as a kind of amplifier, in place of the Needle, but this is not enough. Yet it does provide a distraction, and Kai takes advantage of it to use the power of her weaving to undo the magic that binds the Wind. Once the Wind is freed, his time in physical form is limited, but he makes use of it, and the other gods come to join him. The Sun takes up residence in Pasha's body, the Moon in the birds Reian speaks to, and Imbri uses the last of his power to call the Waters up from the earth. In so doing, Imbri dies.
The gods come together to put the Needle to rest, giving it the peace it has so long sought. At last, they heal the old Kelisavian homeland. Wind and water return to the dry, suffocated land. The gods cannot remain embodied long without causing harm to their hosts and the earth, so they quickly disperse. The Wind remains the longest, to keep his promise to the god Imbri. He promised he would protect Imbri's people in return for Imbri's aid. He asks Kai and Neri what he can do for them in exchange for Imbri's help, and they ask to have their people returned to their original forms. He takes them away with him, back to the Mering.
Imbri's tale is not yet over. The gods of the Mering descend from the sky to find the man who is their kin, the one they cursed so long ago. Although Imbri's mortal body was destroyed, his fellow gods do not believe his punishment is at an end. They return him to life. The people of the Mering have been restored to their original forms, but the god Imbri must walk among humans for a while longer.
Imbri returns to Reian's side. The story seems to be ending, but a new one is beginning. Reian and Pasha decide to take care of Nelius and return the gift of sorcery to the world. Without the Needle's influence, Nelius is much less of a danger to himself and others, but he is still in need of care and attention. Imbri, sure that they must need his valuable help to carry out such an ambitious plan, decides to stay with them for a little while longer.
A little while turns out to be the rest of Reian's long life, and the story ends with a vision of their new tribe well-established as Reian spends his last hours in the company of his family and friends. Imbri says good-bye to his old trading partner, then sets out on his own again.
If someone--anyone--could look one or more of these over, I would be so grateful (and will try my best to return the favor in some way). I've been editing these, but I'd love a fresh opinion. It doesn't matter if you've read the novel or if you know about editing/publishing. If you could tell me if they are engaging, or if there's anything wrong with them, let me know!
Cover letter:
Sorcery has at last returned to the world.
In The Wind and the Foxes (140,000 words), the proud Kelisavian nomads
and the isolated People of the Mering have never met. The two nations
have little in common, yet each bears a burden. The Kelisavians have
lost their homeland, and the people of the Mering have lost their true
nature: they are foxes bound in human form. The two cultures
encounter each other when the not-entirely-honest Kelisavian merchant
Reian takes on his new trading partner, the sarcastic, secretive Imbri
of the Mering. Their partnership is a peaceful one, until an artifact
is stolen from them. The perpetrator of the theft is no human, but a
creature of sorcery, a striking fact in a world that believes its
sorcerers lost. Reian and Imbri set out to solve this mystery and
recover their stolen property.
Their search takes them to the thorny grassland of the Mering, where
they are offered shelter by two women of Imbri's people, the warrior
Neri and her mate, the weaver Kai. Neri and Kai are cast out of their
tribe for harboring the strangers, and when they join Reian and Imbri
on their journey, the four of them discover that the ancient stories
of the Mering and those of the Kelisavians are part of one greater
tale, the ending of which will restore both the Kelisavian homeland
and the true forms of the people of the Mering.
The key to the story is the world's only sorcerer, Nelius, in whom one
of the old bloodlines has unexpectedly resurfaced. He has taken
Reian's artifact to restore the Kelisavian homeland on his own, but
his gift is erratic, and there is another, greater power keeping
company with him, one that threatens all the civilizations of the
world. Reian and his friends must reach Nelius in time to save him
from himself and heal an ancient grief that has poisoned the earth for
hundreds of years.
The Wind and the Foxes is a fairy tale without a villain, the story of
how a few miscreants and outcasts undo the damage done by past
mistakes and ancient tragedy.
My short stories have appeared in Confrontation, Lullwater Review, and
Eureka Literary Magazine, under the name C. A. James. I have worked
as a freelance writer for a variety of clients, including Arbor Books.
This is my first novel.
Thank you for your time.
Summary: short version:
Once, the Wind loved the Sun, as the Sea loves the Moon. They were the four gods of the Kelisavan people, and the Kelisavian Empire was at peace. When the Wind's children, those he had gifted with the power of sorcery, grew too strong and too dangerous, the Sun took note. His own children, those with the gift of sovereignty, struck down the sorcerers, good and bad. He cleansed the earth with his fire and burned the treacherous gift from the blood of the people, or so it was thought.
Since that day, there has been no love between the Wind and the Sun. The Sun shone down too brightly upon the Empire, baking the soil with his anger. The Wind stayed away, keeping the clouds and longed for rain with it. The Empire faded, and its people scattered.
And once, in another tribe of gods, the small and numerous gods of foxes, there was a young, capricious deity named Imbri, with fur of silver and eyes like the sky. He watched the human gods from a distance, eyes wide, and he was much impressed with the human people: the things they made and the wars they waged. So he offered his own people, the little foxes, the same awareness that the humans had: awareness of the self and others, understanding of the meaning of their reflection in the still surface of a pool. Imbri was a troublesome god, and he made his gift sound tempting. There were many takers.
Then foxes, too, began to make fine things. They began to make war. When the other gods realized what Imbri had done, they were enraged. They laid a curse on all the foxes that had accepted Imbri's offer: if they would act like humans, then they would be locked in human form, with all its weaknesses. Imbri, too, they trapped in a human body, and they banished him from the sky, to wander the earth deathless and alone.
Since those long ago times when the Wind and the Sun became enemies and Imbri was exiled, many lifetimes have passed, but in the interim, something unusal happened. The god Imbri, stripped of his powers, went on a search for another god who could help him to protect his people from the world they were ill-equipped to deal with in their new forms. He asked almost every god, but every one turned him away. At last, he asked the Wind. The Wind remembered his lost sorcerers, and he took pity on the god Imbri. He would help, he said, if Imbri would agree to come to his aid, whenever he called. Imbri agreed. It seemed an uneven bargain, but the Wind was content.
In the story of The Wind & the Foxes, which plays on various mythological archetypes, the Wind finally calls for Imbri to repay his debt. Told from the point of view of various characters, as well as the folktales they tell each other, the novel spans generations to tell the story of Nelius, the last of the Kelisavian sorcerers--or perhaps the first of a new line of those born with the gift. Like the old sorcerers, his power is as dangerous as it is fantastic, and he has a choice to make. He can rip the world apart, or start to make it whole again.
He will not make this choice alone, for two women have been exiled from the grassland of the foxes. Their names are Kai and Neri, and they have a choice to make, too. Cast out for harboring two wandering strangers: a Kelisavian trader named Reian and his odd friend and trading partner with the ill-omened name of Imbri, they must decide where to go and how to make a new home for themselves. It is only by doing so that they can win the opportunity to lift the curse that has beset their people for many years and return them to their true forms.
Reian, too, has a part to play in this new tale. He is the son of a shaman. Historically the counterparts and sometime rivals of the sorcerers, the shamans went into hiding when the sorcerers were wiped out, believing themselves partly to blame. When a relic he is transported is stolen by a lifelike construct of sorcery, he is able to recognize the creature, and he sees that the supposedly extinct sorcerers are more alive than was previously thought. His conscience tells him to seek out the sorcerer, who could be dangerous but all he's ever wanted was to live a simple, peaceful life, unlike the stories of sorrow and wonder he was told in his youth. When the Wind suddenly stops, and he knows a sorcerer is responsible, he can no longer deny his heritage or his duty.
It is Imbri who brings these people together, so they can heal the old wounds of both their civilizations. The Wind and the world are in danger, but they will both be saved. At last, Imbri will repay his debt to the god who helped him long ago. The exiled foxes of the grassland will regain their true forms, the lost gift of sorcery will be returned to the Kelisavian people, and the first of the new sorcerers will find a home.
Summary: long version:
In The Wind & the Foxes, two very different cultures must work together to heal each other's ancient wounds. The novel combines the past and the present, modern narrative and folk tale, and the stories, old and new, combine to change the future for both peoples.
Blight exiled the Kelisavians from their homeland for centuries, and they have since been scattered throughout the world. The Wind and the Sun were once the guardians of their land, but when the Sun angered the Wind, the animosity of the two gods turned the Kelisavian Empire into a wasteland. It will not be healed until the Sun, the Wind, the Moon, and the Waters, all four of the Kelisavian gods, gather together again on earth, a gathering that has not taken place since the beginning of the world.
The People of the Mering are separated from their true forms. They are foxes cursed to live as humans. They were given the gift of humanlike self-awareness by a trickster god named Imbri, which caused them to change in nature and wage war against each other. The fox-gods punished both the errant foxes and the wicked god by placing them in the forms of the creatures they chose to emulate.
The trader Reian of the Kelisavian nomads seems like an ordinary man, and that is all he wants to be, but he is something more than that. In his youth, he left home for travel and adventure, and in the process, he left his heritage behind. His family is the last remnant of an old bloodline with the gift of shamanism, the power to speak to the natural world. By escaping his responsibilities, Reian sacrificed his chance to learn to use that power. His gift will remain forever untapped. Its only expression is in Reian's ability to understand the language of birds.
Reian's trading partner, Imbri of the Mering, is not a man who appears ordinary. No one has ever seen one of his kind outside of their grasslands before. The People of the Mering are diminutive and elusive, almost to the point of complete isolation. Imbri bears the name of their cursed god. He does have magical power, but it is nothing too special. Sometimes he can travel across great spaces in a moment, or perform a novel trick, but it takes a great deal out of him, and he seldom has the energy.
These two unusual merchants run a modest if slightly questionable business, dealing in antiquities and rare items. There is but one undertaking that sets them apart from other, similar merchants: in the course of his travels, Reian is working on completing a series of difficult errands for the Mirza Amerajai, the leader of one of his people's ruling tribes, in order to win the right to finally marry the man's daughter Pasha, the woman he loves.
It is not their ordinary business, but this series of errands that leads them to retrieve a relic known as the Wind's Daughter that once belonged to the Mirza's family. The item has no great power, but according to legend, it is a necessary component in the ritual of calling down the Wind, which binds the Wind God to flesh. It's said that this is the only way that the Wind can be made a part of the physical reunion of the gods that would bring back the old empire, but that's only a story, isn't it? Reian doesn't think much of stories like that.
Reian is wrong to doubt. He and Imbri have no sooner found the Wind's Daughter than two constructs of spirit and shadow appear from the very air to take it from them. Reian and Imbri attempt to escape and keep their prize, but the Wind's Daughter is stolen in spite of their efforts. Imbri uses his power to travel a great distance in an instant, but the shadow creatures follow him, and his effort wins him nothing but a severe wound and separation from his partner.
Imbri finds himself in his homeland, the Mering. There he meets two women of his people, the weaver Kai and her mate, the warrior Neri. Kai can weave the grasses where they stand, and Neri has the heightened ability to protect those in danger: small gifts given by their small gods. They find Imbri strange and his legendary name ill-omened, but ignoring their misgivings, they take him in and allow him to rest and recover from his wounds. Imbri waits with Kai and Neri until Reian is able to find him, using his knowledge of Imbri's origins and his ability to speak to birds. Reian's arrival has an unintended consequence. When Kai and Neri's tribe discover that the women allowed an outsider, a giant who is considered a monster, onto their lands, they are banished from their homeland, as this is against their people's law.
Reian and Imbri, feeling responsible for their exile, offer to take Kai and Neri with them. The women have never left home before, but they have nowhere else to go. The resources of the Mering are scant, and other tribes can only allow outsiders to stay on their lands for short periods of time. Life is hard for exiles. Though they are grieving the loss of their home, Neri has long been curious about the world outside the Mering, and she decides she would rather look for a new life than face a bleak certainty. The less adventurous Kai chooses to accompany her mate, out of love rather than curiosity.
When they leave the Mering, it is not without purpose. The encounter with the shadow creatures has shown Reian a truth he believed impossible. Such creatures must have been made by a sorcerer, yet according to the stories of his people, the last sorcerers died hundreds of years ago, when the old empire fell. The sorcerers' power was traditionally the complement of the shamanism of his family line, but the ancient sorcerers grew too vain and too powerful, and at last the Sun destroyed them. This was what caused the love of the Wind and Sun to sour, for sorcerers were sacred to the Wind.
Unbeknownst to Reian and to almost everyone else, there is one sorcerer in the world: a young man named Nelius, who is only half Kelisavian, in whom the gift has unexpectedly surfaced again. He was born and brought up in the nation of Vata. Like most with such mixed heritage, he was not accepted by either race. The landowning Vatans and nomadic Kelisavians have a long history of animosity. Abandoned as a child and raised in an orphanage, Nelius was later sold to a solitary scholar named Maral, a man fascinated by the ancient sorcerers who had been searching for someone of that supposedly extinct bloodline for years. Maral hungers for power above all things. He wants to use the ancient gift to benefit himself.
The sorcerer Nelius is not the only thing Maral found in the course of his searching and studying. He also discovered an item made by one of the sorcerers: an object known as a Singer, it has the power to gather and amplify sorcerous power. This Singer is ancient, possibly the last of its kind. There is also something very wrong with it. Maral discovered it buried near a poisoned well, the water of which drove those who drank it mad. Maral thinks nothing of carrying this powerful item with him, but his carelessness has unforeseen consequences.
The Singer is not what it seems. Having played a part in the great tragedy that destroyed the Kelisavian Empire, it was transformed by rage and grief and has developed a primitive consciousness of its own. When it is introduced to Nelius, it begins to have an effect on him, amplifying his power and disturbing the mind of the already distressed and withdrawn young man. Nelius gives the Singer a name. He calls it the Needle.
Nelius' power, made unstable by his mixed heritage, becomes too strong for him to control. When Maral pushes him too far, Nelius destroys his master, but this act does not free him, for the Needle is a more terrible master. It leads him to the Kelisavian Empire's lost capital city, which was sealed away by a great act of sorcery when the empire fell. Alone, unknown, he spends years in that empty place, his power and his instability growing.
Reian and his companions set out with the simple goal of warning the Kelisavian authorities in the shifting tent city of Teres that there is a living sorcerer who could present a great danger to the world. What they do not know is that Nelius has a plan. He has taken the Wind's Daughter in order to call down the Wind. Though never accepted by the Kelisavians, he feels betrayed by the Vatans, and he wants his other people to accept him. He intends to bring back the Kelisavians' ruined homeland and earn their approval, but calling down the Wind is no simple matter.
As he makes his way to Teres, Reian encounters someone he hadn't expected to see: the Mirza's daughter, Pasha, his betrothed. She has left home to find him. Made impatient by her father's seemingly endless delaying of their wedding, she decided to take control of the situation. Pasha has an important message for Reian. She received a visit from one of the gods, the Moon, who told her that she and Reian must find the ancient capital and the sorcerer who waits there. Reian has no intention of getting tangled in what seems to be the complex web of a story, because he knows that not all stories have happy endings--quite the contrary--but he finds he cannot refuse a direct request from a god.
During their journey to the city, which lies in the middle of the wasteland that was once the fertile empire, the friends, old and new, share stories. Through the telling of these tales, it becomes clear that the Kelisavian nomads and the People of the Mering have more in common than they realized. The god Imbri of the Mering once made a promise to the Kelisavians' god the Wind, swearing that in return for protecting his cursed people in a time of need, he would help the Wind whenever the wind called for his aid.
Now the Wind is calling, with an absence of voice. The group has not reached the edge of the wasteland when the air around them suddenly goes dead. Nelius has brought the god down and bound him to a physical form. According to the myths, that is the first step in repairing the damage done to the old empire, but isolation and loneliness have not been kind to Nelius, and he does not move on to any next step. The air remains lifeless for days. Something has happened that Reian and his companions cannot guess. In his madness, Nelius has fallen in love with the Wind, and he does not wish to let him go. With no Wind, all weather will stop, and the world will slowly sicken and die. The travelers hasten their pace and make their way as quickly as they can through the unforgiving environment of the wasteland.
The old magic that guarded the lost city made it possible to enter only in the presence of a sorcerer or one of royal blood. With Pasha present, they should be able to enter the city, but Nelius has sealed it with new magic. There seems to be no way to enter or communicate with Nelius within, until Kai discovers she can enter the city. The protection only keeps out humans, and Kai, whose people were foxes, and who sees herself as a fox, is able to enter and reach Nelius in the midst of his madness.
When Nelius realizes that Kelisavians have come to his city, he is reminded of his initial goal. He allows the others to enter, but he is distracted and uneasy. That is because the Needle has grown in power over the years, and it has a great deal of influence over Nelius. Poisoned by grief, it desires nothing so much as the end of everything: a complete and utter silence. It does not like these newcomers, so Nelius' welcoming mood does not last long. When he realizes that they have come to the city to free the Wind, he grows angry.
The power of his madness and anger begins to destroy the city, but even in the midst of such turmoil, Nelius holds back and does not directly attack his visitors. Buildings and streets explode in showers of stone, and Neri uses her gift of protection to guard her friends from harm. Instead of fighting Nelius, Reian decides that he will try to help him. He follows and tries to reason with him. Reian again reminds Nelius of his original goal, and Nelius begins to struggle against the Needle's influence. This pits Nelius against the Needle itself, with all its rage and grief.
Reian offers up the power of his own untapped shamanism, and Nelius uses him as a kind of amplifier, in place of the Needle, but this is not enough. Yet it does provide a distraction, and Kai takes advantage of it to use the power of her weaving to undo the magic that binds the Wind. Once the Wind is freed, his time in physical form is limited, but he makes use of it, and the other gods come to join him. The Sun takes up residence in Pasha's body, the Moon in the birds Reian speaks to, and Imbri uses the last of his power to call the Waters up from the earth. In so doing, Imbri dies.
The gods come together to put the Needle to rest, giving it the peace it has so long sought. At last, they heal the old Kelisavian homeland. Wind and water return to the dry, suffocated land. The gods cannot remain embodied long without causing harm to their hosts and the earth, so they quickly disperse. The Wind remains the longest, to keep his promise to the god Imbri. He promised he would protect Imbri's people in return for Imbri's aid. He asks Kai and Neri what he can do for them in exchange for Imbri's help, and they ask to have their people returned to their original forms. He takes them away with him, back to the Mering.
Imbri's tale is not yet over. The gods of the Mering descend from the sky to find the man who is their kin, the one they cursed so long ago. Although Imbri's mortal body was destroyed, his fellow gods do not believe his punishment is at an end. They return him to life. The people of the Mering have been restored to their original forms, but the god Imbri must walk among humans for a while longer.
Imbri returns to Reian's side. The story seems to be ending, but a new one is beginning. Reian and Pasha decide to take care of Nelius and return the gift of sorcery to the world. Without the Needle's influence, Nelius is much less of a danger to himself and others, but he is still in need of care and attention. Imbri, sure that they must need his valuable help to carry out such an ambitious plan, decides to stay with them for a little while longer.
A little while turns out to be the rest of Reian's long life, and the story ends with a vision of their new tribe well-established as Reian spends his last hours in the company of his family and friends. Imbri says good-bye to his old trading partner, then sets out on his own again.
no subject
I don't know what exactly editors look for, so this may not help, but it seemed kind of dry to me because of the focus on the fairy tale aspects instead of on the characters that the world will be seen through, or the kind of action to expect. And I know different readers have different preferences so again this is a big YMMV thing, but this is what I wanted to know more about just from reading the cover letter:
Imbri and Reian, one sarcastic and secretive, the other not-entirely-honest. They get something stolen from them, they go looking for it. I want to know how! Is this going to be a romp of sneaking through the seedier parts of their marketplaces, tricking information out of people, or is it a more straightforward journey until they reach the Mering? Were they supposed to have that artifact in the first place? (I wouldn't change anything if the series of errands was 100% legit, but I'd definitely note if there WAS fishiness about how they got it, and if that makes their search hairier.)
Neri and Kai join the two on their journey. ...But besides that I really don't know anything about their personalities. There's nothing to differentiate the two women in your cover letter except jobs and since they both seem to be main characters it strikes me as fairly important to establish their individuality. And how does the group as a whole interact? Am I going to be reading a lot of sarcastic banter with these guys? Since the girls are foxes, are they perfectly fine with Imbri's and Reian's secretive/sly quirks, or what? Even the longer synopsis left me wondering about group dynamics.
How old is Nelius? (Really how old are any of them, but this lept out at me most with Nelius, whose description gave me no idea what to expect; Reian's I had a guess that was confirmed by the longer summary.) I know it's covered in the synopsis, I'm just saying it gives a different impression of the story if the antagonist (though not really villain) is a kid, adult, or old man.
I know cover letters still have to be brief so, not expecting EVERYTHING to be in there, but these were some of the bits I was really curious about.
no subject
You make some great points and have given me a lot to consider. I should try to work in the answers to some of these these questions. I was feeling maybe it was too dry, as I was struggling to get the most important events in there while being as succinct as possible, so I should definitely add in more about the group dynamics and personalities, as they're just as important to the story in their own way.
And yes, I had to cut out a few important characters in the cover letter, but I think it would be better to include Pasha there, as she is in the main "protagonist group", though she's the last to show up.