In accordance with new FTC guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials for bloggers, I would like my readers to know that many of the books I review on my site are provided to me for free by the publisher or author of the book in exchange for an honest review. I am in no way compensated for any reviews on my site.
Let me tell you all I know for sure. My name. Shauna. I woke up in a hospital bed missing six months of my memory. In the room was my loving boyfriend-how could I have forgotten him?-my uncle and my abusive stepmother. Everyone blames me for the tragic car accident that left me near death and my dear brother brain damaged. But what they say can’t be true-can it?
I believe the medicine is doing strange things to my memory. I’m unsure who I can trust and who I should run from. And I’m starting to remember things I’ve never known. Things not about me. I think I’m going crazy.
And even worse, I think they want to kill me.
But who? And for what? Is dying for the truth really better than living with a lie?
Sometimes dying with the truth is better than living with a lie.
After a car accident puts Shauna McAllister in a coma and wipes out six months of her memory, she returns to her childhood home to recover, but her arrival is fraught with confusion.
Her estranged father, a senator bidding on the White House, and her abusive stepmother blame Shauna for the tragedy, which has left her beloved brother severely brain damaged. Leaning on Wayne Spade, a forgotten but hopeful lover who stays by her side, Shauna tries to sort out what happened that night by jarring her memory to life. Instead, she acquires a mysterious mental ability that will either lead her to truth or get her killed by the people trying to hide it.
In this blind game of cat and mouse that stares even the darkest memories in the face, Shauna is sure of only one thing: if she remembers, she dies.
If you would like to read the first chapter of KISS, go HERE
This book is great. I will delve into it more this month and through February. The cover is smoking, in a good way. ;)
Are you a Ted Dekker fan? Why?
Best entry will when a book. Winner will be announced on my Virtual Birthday Party on February.
He currently resides in Birmingham, where he can usually be found with a plate of medium-rare steaks and a laptop nearby.
Show Format
1.Intro
2. Top Topics(Hot Topics) Below for you to look through
Add Commericial
3. Special Guest is author, Patricia Haley, Patricia Haley, national bestselling author of Nobody's Perfect, Blind Faith, Baby Blues, and No Regrets is a trailblazer in the mainstream faith-based fiction genre. She self-published her debut novel, Nobody's Perfect, in 1998 and immediately sold nearly 20,000 copies in an industry where selling 5,000 copies is highly regarded. Her faith-based novel was the first of its kind to repeatedly make numerous national best sellers list, including #1 on the Essence (African-American) bestselling list. Patricia's other published titles are Still Waters (2005), Blind Faith (2003), No Regrets (2002), and a short story based on Sarah and Abraham called Baby Blues. for the Midnight Clear Anthology. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie September 2006 and now Chosen. Thanks,
Former Atlanta Falcon Bob Whitfield has squandered his fortune and failed to pay child support for his two children for 15 months, his ex-wife’s lawyer said Monday.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Tiffany L. Warren is a technology manager who lives in suburban Cleveland, Ohio with her husband and four children. She is also the author What's a Sister to Do and the critically acclaimed novel, Farther Than I Meant to Go, Longer Than I Meant to Stay.
List Price: $13.99 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (January 9, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 0446195146 ISBN-13: 978-0446195140
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Darrin
I'm snatched from my sleep by voices.
They're coming from the living room. The first voice is Shayna, my lover, although she likes to be called my girlfriend. She is not my girlfriend. Haven't had one of those since high school.
The other voice is coming from the television. It's way too loud, but not unfamiliar. I concentrate for a moment until familiarity becomes recognition. The voice belongs to that preacher Shayna likes to watch every Sunday morning.
Is it Sunday already?
I start a mental rewind in an attempt to recapture my weekend. Friday was standard. Edited a short story for a girl in my writer's group. She's entering a romance writer's contest, and wanted my opinion.
I didn't give it to her, because I'm possibly interested in sleeping with her. I told her that the uninspired farce was poetic prose. She won't win the contest, but she won't blame it on me. She'll accuse the judges of being amateurs and then come cry on my shoulder. I'll have tissues on hand – right along with the strawberries and champagne.
Also had lunch with Priscilla. My mother. The obligatory "good son" lunch that keeps me on the family payroll. I call her Priscilla behind her back, but never to her face. She's petite, cultured and polished but not above going upside a brotha's head.
We had the same conversation we have every week.
"Darrin, when are you coming to work for your father?"
"The day after never."
"You always say that."
"And I always mean it."
I love my mother, but I hate this conversation.
My father, Mathis Bainbridge, wants me to work in an office at Bainbridge Transports, shuffling papers, giving orders, and hiring overqualified people at ridiculously insulting rates of pay. He calls his company the 'family business' but only one person in our three person familia is interested in shuttling elderly people to doctor's appointments and on shopping trips.
It's not Priscilla and it's not me.
"You coming to church with me on Sunday?" Mother had also asked.
I'd let out a frustrated sigh. "I'll see."
My sporadic church attendance is Priscilla's other favorite topic.
"Don't you love Jesus?"
"Yes, Mother. I love Jesus."
That wasn't a lie. I do love Jesus. I just cannot say no to a woman who wants me to take her to bed and I have yet to hear a preacher tell me how.
Priscilla was extra irritated at our lunch date. She got borderline vulgar. "But you're willing to go to hell over some girl's dirty panties?"
I'd laughed then, and I'm still laughing. In Priscilla speak 'dirty panties' was tantamount to cursing me out.
I'd replied, "Mother, please watch your language."
Saturday was worse. I'd spent the entire muggy and rainy afternoon at a 10K marathon to benefit cancer research. Put on a fake smile and interviewed the sweaty first-place winner, asking him questions that no one wanted answers to, all the while thinking to myself, 'Why am I doing this?'
There was a time when I was excited to have comma writer after my name. You know, Darrin Bainbridge, writer. But the glamour that I'd envisioned has not yet materialized, and the less money I make with freelance journalism, the more my father threatens to chain me to a desk.
Then, when I should have been winding down for the weekend I blogged. Blogging is what narcissistic writers do when they don't have a book deal. Yeah, I'm just a bit narcissistic. Besides, people like to read what I think about social injustice, celebrities and whatever else. Ten thousand hits a day on my blogsite can't be wrong.
The thing I love about blogging is that I'm anonymous. Like, last week I wrote a piece on Jesse Jackson and how he's more of a threat to African American progress than the KKK. Then, I chilled with him at a networking function the same night. No harm, no foul.
Since I can no longer drown out the television or Shayna's 'Hallelujahs', I open my eyes and concede to starting the day. I stretch, take a deep breath, and grin at the memory of last night. Shayna's perfume lingers in the air. A fruity Victoria's Secret fragrance purchased by me for my benefit, but disguised as a spur-of-the-moment romantic and thoughtful gift. Yeah…I don't do those. But Shayna was pleased. So pleased that she stayed the night in my den of iniquity and is now watching church on television instead of getting her shout on in a pew.
I jump out of the bed in one motion, landing on the ice cold ceramic tiles. My pedicured toes curl from the drastic temperature change. Yes, a brotha likes his feet smooth. Hands too. What?
My apartment is slamming, and the furniture baller style – especially for someone with such a low income. If it wasn't for the deep pockets of my parents, blogging and freelance writing would pretty much have me living in semi-poverty. But my mother makes sure that I have the best of the best, and a monthly allowance. I keep thinking that at twenty-eight, I might be too old for a $6000 a month allowance. I'd be satisfied with less, but I'm not turning anything down. Priscilla's generosity (behind my father's back, of course) allows me to pursue my dreams, whatever they might be.
I pull on a pair of silk boxer shorts and walk up the hallway to the living room. Silently, I observe Shayna. She is rocking back and forth on the couch, her hands wrapped around her own torso. Embracing herself.
"You better preach, preacher!" she shouts at the face on the screen.
I mimic her movements and hug myself too, but not because I feel the love. It's freezing in here. Shayna likes to turn the thermostat on sixty no matter what the temperature is outside. Freon laced air rushes out of every vent.
"If you got breath in your lungs and strength in your body, you need to shout Hallelujah!" shouts the preacher.
"Hallelujah!Hallelujah!Hallelujah!Hallelujah!" Shayna's four-alarm Hallelujah sounds like one word.
I am amazed. How can Shayna feel so worshipful this morning when she just rolled out of my bed a few hours ago?
I'm curious. "Do you send this guy money? He's in Atlanta, right?"
Shayna looks up from the program and smiles seductively. Can she be any more blasphemous?
"Yes, Freedom of Life is in Atlanta and yes I do send in my tithe and offering on the regular. I'm a partner." She motions for me to come join her on the couch. I don't.
"About how many members do you think he has?" I ask as the television camera pans to what looks like the crowd at a Destiny's Child concert.
"The sanctuary holds ten thousand," she declares proudly as if it was her own accomplishment, "but there are about twenty thousand members and partners worldwide."
I'm in writer mode now. I can feel the wheels in my mind spinning. Probably something scandalous going on in a church that size. Pastor either skimming money off the top or sleeping with half the choir. Maybe blogging about a dirty Pastor will attract some sponsors. Exposing rich Black men pays well, and if he's truly grimy I won't have a problem spending the money.
Shayna asks suspiciously, "Since when did you get interested in church?"
"Since just now. I could feel the spirit oozing into the bedroom and I had to come investigate."
"I know you better than that. What's the real?"
Shayna doesn't know me at all, but she thinks she does. She assumes that we have a deep bond just because we've shared bodily fluids. There is more to me than my sex drive, but she'll never know that. She's not the wife type.
I humor her and reply, "Well, I just think that there has got to be a story here."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, this guy can't be more than forty five," I'm half-explaining, half-forming the story in my mind. "And he's got twenty thousand offering paying members? I bet he's living large."
Shayna frowns. "What's your point?"
"You don't think there's anything wrong with that?"
"Uh, no. Your daddy lives large."
I chuckle with disbelief. Didn't know she was one of those people. The ones who try to compare pastoring a church to running a business.
Just for the fun of it, I quip, "Jesus preached for free."
"He didn't have a car note," she shoots right back.
"Okay, I see this might be hitting a little close to home, but I bet if I go down there to Atlanta I can dig up a juicy story."
The thought became even more appealing as I put words to it. Atlanta is uncharted territory for me. Fresh stories, different scenery and untapped women. The more I wrap my arms around the notion, the more it turns into a need.
I need to get my butt down to Atlanta and break this story wide open. Blogging on location. Most definitely liking the sound of that.
Shayna leans over the back of the couch pointing her polished fingernail at me for emphasis. "Whatever. Bishop Kumal Prentiss is a man of God and he preaches the Word."
"Kumal Prentiss? That sounds like a hustler's name. And what do you know about the Word?"
"I grew up in church sweetie. I'm not a heathen like you."
"You're not the only one who was raised in church."
I'd had so much church growing up, that if church was food I could feed every one of those starving Ethiopian children who convince me every week to be their sponsor. If church was talent, I'd be singing like R. Kelly and dancing like Usher. If church was candy…let's just say I went to a lot of church.
Every Sunday Priscilla dragged me, unwillingly, into the huge stone building. Me always screaming, "But Daddy doesn't have to go!" Her always replying, "Daddy's going to hell." She'd give me money for my Sunday school offering and send me on my way.
I went through a phase where I enjoyed the services. I was thirteen and my first crush, Alexandra, was fifteen and fully developed. I joined the junior ushers, youth choir and youth department trying to get at that girl.
Then one Sunday morning, old Pastor Davis preached on lust and hell fire. He'd said that if we didn't repent of our lusts and get baptized, then we'd spend an eternity fighting fire. Since I had been drooling over Alexandra and her tight sweater for the entire service, I was terrified. Walked down that center aisle out of fear while Priscilla shouted, stomped and danced. Went down a dry devil, came up a wet devil.
At age sixteen, I just got tired of pretending that I could walk the narrow road. I prayed about it. Told God that I would come to church when I knew I could live right.
Priscilla wasn't having it. I think she literally had a nervous breakdown when I told her I wasn't going back to church. She cried for days; walked around praying out loud, lifting God up and putting the devil under her feet.
I didn't budge. And for the first time ever, my father defended me. He'd stopped Priscilla dead in her tracks.
He'd said, "Priscilla, you will not make my son go to church if he doesn't want to. Church is for women anyway, it's about time he found a more productive way of spending his time."
The memory brings a smile to my face, makes me want to taunt Shayna about her hypocrisy. "And since you know so much about the Word, what does it say about fornication?"
She must be done talking to me, because she turns back to Bishop Prentiss who has worked his congregation into a frenzy. Had to give it to him. The man had skills.
"You want something to eat?" I ask Shayna, ignoring her attitude.
Her face softens. "You know I do."
In minutes I've prepared a small breakfast feast. French toast on fresh French bread and garnished with powdered sugar, strawberries and carmelized bananas and a three cheese omelet, browned to perfection.
Shayna's smile returns as she approaches the table. She tosses her red curls out of her honey colored face as she sashays barefoot over to the table. She looks as delicious as the breakfast wearing her baby t-shirt and boy shorts. I feel a hunger starting inside me that has nothing to do with breakfast food.
Shayna's a cute girl, not stunning, but standing there at my kitchen table, with her disheveled sexiness, she's irresistible. But then again, I have the same motto about women that I have about food. Presentation is everything.
"Why can't you be like the average guy and put everything on paper plates? This looks better than at the restaurant."
"For one, I'm not the average guy and two you wouldn't be so sprung if I was."
Shayna sits down and takes a bite before responding. Closes her eyes and chews slowly. I love the way she savors my culinary creations. She sounds just like a baby relishing the first sips of a warm bottle.
"Is that good?" It's real hard to hide the cockiness in my tone.
"You already know it is!" she exclaims, smacking her lips thoughtfully. "What is it that I taste? There's a different flavor in this."
Her observation fills me with pleasure. "Oh, you've been around me much too long if you are noticing flavor nuances. I'm proud."
She licks her fingers, one at a time. "Mmm-hmm. Maybe I have been around you too long, but baby I am not sprung."
This woman is hilarious. Shayna is not only sprung; she's 'in love'. I'm flattered, even if I don't feel the same way. She's been hinting that she wants to move in with me, but that is not going to happen. Rule number one of my cardinal rules is: never turn a bed mate into a roommate.
"Okay, you're not sprung. I believe you. That's actually a good thing, because then you won't miss me when I go to Atlanta."
"So you're serious about this?"
I fold my arms across my chest and nod my head emphatically. "It is my duty as a journalist to expose the charlatans and inform the people."
"You better be careful. The bible says 'touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm'."
"Look at you quoting scriptures. I'm impressed. And don't worry about me. If your precious pastor is everything that he says he is then he has nothing to worry about."
This weekend I had the pleasure of assisting author/playwright and Faith in Fiction Retreat conference founder Tiffany Warren's Atlanta Book Release Party at Big Miller Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia (Southeast Atlanta suburb,) GA. As you look through the pictures you will see three things:
This weekend I had the pleasure of assisting author/playwright and Faith in Fiction Retreat conference founder Tiffany Warren's Atlanta Book Release Party at Big Miller Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia (Southeast Atlanta suburb,) GA. As you look through the pictures you will see three things:
Great fellowship among Christian Writers
Happy Book Lovers
What else? Tell me what you see and how it relates to The Master's Artist. How is G
This weekend I had the pleasure of assisting author/playwright and Faith in Fiction Retreat conference founder Tiffany Warren's Atlanta Book Release Party at Big Miller Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia (Southeast Atlanta suburb,) GA. As you look through the pictures you will see three things:
Great fellowship among Christian Writers
Happy Book Lovers
What else? Tell me what you see and how it relates to The Master's Artist. How is God manifesting Himself in these pics?
Bonus. As we prepare to celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, what about The Master do we not see?
It is time to play a Wild Card!Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Apology: I was out of town for family funerals, so this post is late. But I wanted to upload the excerpt, because this is one of the best books I've read so far this year. Dee
Tosca Lee is the author of the critically acclaimed Demon: A Memoir (2007), a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Silver Award winner, American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year nominee, and Christy award finalist. Her eagerly-awaited second novel, Havah: The Story of Eve, released October 2008 to high praise, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
A sought-after speaker and first runner-up to Mrs. United States 1998, Tosca works as a Senior Consultant for the Gallup Organization. She received her B.A. in English and International Relations from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also studied at Oxford University.
In her spare time, Tosca enjoys travel, cooking, history and theology. She currently resides in Nebraska.
Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group (October 10, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600061249
ISBN-13: 978-1600061240
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Prologue
I have seen paradise and ruin. I have known bliss and terror.
I have walked with God.
And I know that God made the heart the most fragile and resilient of organs, that a lifetime of joy and pain might be encased in one mortal chamber.
I still recall my first moment of consciousness—an awareness I’ve never seen in the eyes of any of my own children at birth: the sheer ignorance and genius of consciousness, when we know nothing and accept everything.
Of course, the memory of that waking moment is fainter now, like the smell of the soil of that garden, like the leaves of the fig tree in Eden after dawn—dew and leaf green. It fades with that sense of something once tasted on the tip of the tongue, savored now in memory, replaced by the taste of something similar but never quite the same.
His breath a lost sough, the scent of earth and leaf mold that was his sweaty skin has faded too quickly. So like an Eden dawn—dew on fig leaves.
His eyes were blue, my Adam’s.
How I celebrated that color, shrouded now in shriveled eyelids—he who was never intended to have even a wrinkle! But even as I bend to smooth his cheek, my hair has become a white waterfall upon his Eden—flesh and loins that gave life to so many.
I think for a moment that I hear the One and that he is weeping. It is the first time I have heard him in so long, and my heart cries out: He is dead! My father, my brother, my love!
I envy the earth that envelopes him. I envy the dust that comes of him and my children who sow and eat of it.
This language of Adam’s—the word that meant merely “man” before it was his name—given him by God himself, is now mine. And this is my love song. I will craft these words into the likeness of the man before I, too, return to the earth of Adam’s bosom.
My story has been told in only the barest of terms. It is time you heard it all. It is my testament to the strength of the heart, which has such capacity for joy, such space for sorrow, like a vessel that fills and fills without bursting.
My seasons are nearly as many as a thousand. So now listen, sons, and hear me, daughters. I, Havah, fashioned by God of Adam say this:
In the beginning, there was God . . .
But for me, there was Adam.
The Garden
Chapter 1
A whisper in my ear: Wake!
Blue. A sea awash with nothing but a drifting bit of down, flotsam on an invisible current. I closed my eyes. Light illuminated the thin tissues of my eyelids.
A bird trilled. Near my ear: the percussive buzz of an insect. Overhead, tree boughs stirred in the warming air.
I lay on a soft bed of herbs and grass that tickled my cheek, my shoulders, and the arch of my foot, whispering sibilant secrets up to the trees.
From here, I felt the thrum of the sap in the stem; the pulsing veins of the vine; the beat of my heart in euphony with hundreds more around me; the movement of the earth a thousand miles beneath.
I sighed as one returning to sleep, to retreat to the place I had been before, the realm of silence and bliss—wherever that is.
Wake!
I opened my eyes again upon the milling blue, saw it spliced by the flight of a bird, chevron in the sky.
This time, the voice came not to my ear, but directly to my stirring mind: Wake!
There was amusement in it.
I knew nothing of where or what I was, did not understand the polyphony around me or the wide expanse like a blue eternity before me.
But I woke and knew I was alive.
A rustle, a groan practically in my ear. I twitched at a stirring against my hip. A moment later, a touch drifted across a belly I did not yet know I owned, soft as a leaf skittering along the ground.
A face obscured my vision. I screamed. Not with fear—I was no acquaintance of fear—nor with startlement, because I had been aware of the presence already, but because it was the only statement that came to lips as artless as mine.
The face disappeared and returned, blinking into my own, the blue above captured in twin pools . Then, like a gush of water from a rock, gladness thrilled my heart. But its source was not me.
At last! It came, unspoken—a different source than the voice before—the words thrust jubilantly to the sky: “At last!”
He was up on legs like the trunks of sturdy saplings, beating at the earth with his feet. He thumped his chest and shouted to the sun and clapped his hands. “At last!” he cried, his laughter like warm clay between the toes. He shook his shoulders and stomped the grass, slapping his chest as he shouted again and again. Though I did not understand the utterance, I knew its meaning at once: joy and exultation at something longed for suddenly found.
I tried to mimic his sound; it came out as a squawk and then a panting laugh. Overhead, a lark chattered an extravagant address. I squeaked a shrill reply. The face lowered to mine, and the man’s arms wrapped, womb-tight, around me.
“Flesh of my flesh,” he whispered, hot against my ear. His fingers drifted from my hair to my body, roaming like the goat on the hills of the Sacred Mount. I sighed, expelling the last remnants of that first air from my lungs—the last of the breath in them not drawn by me alone.
He was high-cheeked, this adam, his lower lip dipping down like a folded leaf that drips sweet water to thirsty mouths. His brow was a hawk, soaring above the high cliffs, his eyes blue lusters beneath the fan of his lashes. But it was his mouth that I always came back to, where my eyes liked best to fasten after taking in the shock of those eyes. Shadow ran along his jaw, obsidian dust clinging to the curve of it, drawing my eye to the plush flesh of his lips, again, again, again.
He touched my face and traced my mouth. I bit his finger. He gathered my hands and studied them, turning them over and back. He smelled my hair and lingered at my breasts and gazed curiously at the rest of me. When he was finished, he began all over again, tasting my cheek and the salt of my neck, tracing the instep of my foot with a fingertip.
Finally, he gathered me up, and my vision tilted to involve an altogether new realm: the earth and my brown legs upon it. I clutched at him. I seemed a giant, towering above the earth—a giant as tall as he. My first steps stuttered across the ground as the deer in the hour of its birth, but then I pushed his hands away. My legs, coltish and lean, found their vigor as he urged me, walking far too fast, to keep up. He made for the orchard, and I bolted after him with a surge of strength and another of my squawking sounds. Then we were running—through grasses and over fledgling sloes, the dark wool of my hair flying behind me.
We raced across the valley floor, and my new world blurred around me: hyssop and poppy, anemone, narcissus, and lily. Roses grew on the foothills amidst the caper and myrtle.
A blur beside me: the long-bodied great cat. I slowed, distracted by her fluidity, the smooth curve of her head as she tilted it to my outstretched hand. I fell to the ground, twining my arms around her, fingers sliding along her pelt. Her tongue was rough—unlike the adam’s—and she rumbled as she rolled against me.
Far ahead, the adam called. Overhead, a hawk circled for a closer look. The fallow deer at a nearby stream lifted her head.
The adam called again, wordlessly: longing and exuberance. I got up and began to run, the lioness at my heels. I was fast—nearly as fast as she. Exhilaration rose from my lungs in quick pants—in laughter. Then, with a burst, she was beyond me.
She was gone by the time the adam caught me up in his arms. His hands stroked my back, his lips, my shoulder. I marveled at his skin—how smooth, how very warm it was.
“You are magnificent,” he said, burying his face against me. “Ah, Isha—woman, taken from man!”
I said nothing; although I understood his meaning, I did not know his words. I knew with certainty and no notion of conceit, though, that he was right.
At the river he showed me how he cupped his hands to drink, and then cupped them again for me. I lowered my head and drank as a carp peered baldy from the shallows up at me.
We entered the water. I gasped as it tickled the backs of my knees and hot hairs under my arms, swirling about my waist as though around a staunch rock as our toes skimmed a multitude of pebbles. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders.
“All of this: water,” he said, grunting a little bit as he swam toward the middle of the river where it widened into a broad swath across the valley floor. “Here—the current.”
“Water,” I said, understanding in the moment I spoke it the element in all its forms—from the lake fed by the river to the high springs that flow from the abyss of the Mount. I felt the pull of it as though it had a gravity all its own—as though it could sweep me out to the cold depths of the lake and lull me by the tides of the moon.
From the river I could see the high walls of our cradle: the great southern Mount rising to heaven, and to the north, the foothills that became the long spine of a range that arched toward the great lake to the west.
I knew even then that this was a place set apart from the unseen lands to the north, the alluvial plain to the south, the great waters to the east and far to the west.
It was set apart solely because we dwelt in it.
But we were not alone. I could see them, after a time, even as we left the river and lay upon its banks. I saw them in sidelong glances when I looked at something else: a sunspot caught in the eye, a ripple in the air, a shock of light where there should be only shadow. And so I knew there were other beings, too.
The adam, who studied me, said nothing. We did not know their names.
The first voice I heard urging me to wake had not been the man’s. Now I felt the presence of it near me, closer than the air, than even the adam’s arms around me.
I returned the man’s strange amazement, taken by his smooth, dark skin, the narrowness of his hips, his strange sex. He was warmer than I, as though he had absorbed the heat of the sun, and I laid my cheek against his flat breasts and listened to the changeling beat of his heart. My limbs, so fresh to me, grew heavy. As languor overtook me, I retreated from the sight of my lovely, alien world.
Perhaps in closing my eyes, I would return to the place I had been before.
For the first time since waking, I hoped not.
I slept to the familiar thrum of his heart as insects made sounds like sleepy twitches through the waning day.
When I woke, his cheek was resting against the top of my head. Emotion streamed from his heart, though his lips were silent.
Gratitude.
I am the treasure mined from the rock, the gem prized from the mount.
He stirred only when I did and released me with great reluctance. By then the sun had moved along the length of our valley. My stomach murmured.
He led me to the orchard and fed me the firm flesh of plums, biting carefully around the pits and feeding the pieces to me until juice ran down our chins and bees came to sample it. He kissed my fingers and hands and laid his cheek against my palms.
That evening we lay in a bower of hyssop and rushes—a bower, I realized, that he must have made it on a day before this one.
A day before I existed.
We observed together the changing sky as it cooled gold and russet and purple, finally anointing the clay earth red.
Taken from me. Flesh of my flesh. At last. I heard the timbre of his voice in my head in my last waking moment. Marvel and wonder were upon his lips as he kissed my closing eyes.
I knew then he would do anything for me.
That night I dreamed of blackness. Black, greater than the depths of the river or the great abyss beneath the lake.
From within that nothingness there came a voice that was not a voice, that was neither sound nor word but volition and command and genesis. And from the voice, a word that was no word but the language of power and genesis and fruition.
There! A mote spark—a light first so small as the tip of a pine needle. It exploded past the periphery of my dreaming vision, obliterating the dark. The heavens were vast in an instant, stretching without cease to the edges of eternity.
I careened past new bodies that tugged me in every direction; even the tiniest particles possessed their own gravity. From each of them came the same concert, that symphony of energy and light.
I came to stand upon the earth. It was a great welter of water, the surface of it ablaze with the refracted light of heavens upon heavens. It shook my every fiber, like a string that is plucked and allowed to resonate forever.
I was galvanized, made anew, thrumming that inaugural sound: the yawning of eternity.
Good Thursday Morning. We are still asking the question How Will You Shine in 09? Magazine Founder Emmy Horstkamp responds.
Emmy Horstkamp wrote:
I have been experimenting with new media for the last few years but will spend this year creating a magazine for print. The first issue will be released in March on a subscription basis. The magazine currently exists in audio format at www.sofiamagazine.com. We tested with podcasts and decided to focus on developing creativity and innovation. The magazine will be published initially in Singapore but will be available internationally.
I think that is a big enough goal for this year. To help the magazine find its niche, nurture it and make sure it makes it through the first year.
Let's keep it coming. Good Ideas. Answer on your blog, email me, send an audio response on Utter, Video your response on Ustream, Twitter or Facebook it, then let me know. Have a great one!
Let me tell you all I know for sure. My name. Shauna.
