Moon-Sitting: Section Release and Other Goodies
Pre-Amble:
So, yesterday was a bit of a kerfuffle. Between getting a flu jab and e-mailing folks about ARC copies, I accidentally published the paperback copy of Moon-Sitting a whole month early. After a frantic call to KDP, I discovered that they don’t offer paperback pre-orders and managed to get Moon-Sitting taken down. Ah, the wonders of being a first time indie author.
That being said, I am still in the mood to celebrate! Firstly, I am finally formatting free! Moon-Sitting was uploaded to KDP in the wee hours of Saturday morning and my proof copies are on their way. Unless something’s horrendously wrong, I don’t have to stare at fonts and section breaks again for some time! In addition, I have discovered the pre-order tab on KDP reports, and people HAVE ACTUALLY PRE-ORDERED THE MOON-SITTING EBOOK. You have no idea how happy this made me yesterday, after two weeks solid of staring at text.
So, to celebrate the above, I thought it was about time I gave you a taster of things to come. Below you will find the first 1,102 words of Moon-Sitting (I couldn’t find a nice round number to stop on, it irks me too). If you like them there words, and find yourself hankering for more of Lucky’s adventure, the ebook is already available for pre-order here (or search your version of Amazon for Moon-Sitting) and the paperback will be released on the 12th of November. Remember, liking, sharing and commenting on my posts about Moon-Sitting also helps me a HUGE amount. Algorithms are pesky things beasts, but interaction helps make Moon-Sitting visible.
For the latest news on Moon-Sitting, you can follow this blog, my Twitter (@EM_Writing) or my Instagram (@em0rt). There might be a giveaway happening some time soon ~waggles brows.
I’ve also left a link to something special at the end of this blog post, so stick around!
Moon-Sitting: Opening Pages
The Moon fell into the Ocean and the Waves wept. Their tears swept the lands clean and left the World feeling painfully empty. And so, to fill the aching void, the World gave birth to us, the people of Infinity. The World smiled and danced around the Stars with joy.
That’s the story we tell children when they ask how Infinity came to be. It’s the fairy tale we were told to tell. A bedtime story for tiny tots. If children ask why the Moon fell, their parents shuffle awkwardly and say it was a silly Moon, or a sleepy Moon. They don’t tell them the truth.
The truth would give them nightmares.
Hell, I’m thirty-seven and it still gives me nightmares.
Every time I close my eyes, I find myself walking toward my cabin door. There’s an angry red light coming through the windows and the metal walls are humming with energy. As I touch the latch, I feel every hair stand upright. My skin tingles.
I push the door open and step out onto the deck. I look at the Moon. It’s glowing. I’ve never seen it glow before. Part of me wants to run back to my computer to check the readings, but something stronger is pulling me away from the old cargo ship I call home and down onto the pontoon.
Before I know it, I’m running along the floating jetty, out into the middle of the ocean. The waters are completely still. No waves. Not even a ripple from my weight skittering along the surface. I pause and look down. No face looks back at me. I feel my nose wrinkle and my brow furrow, but I don’t see it. So I continue running. And running.
The Moon sits two miles off the southern coast of Infinity’s single mass continent. The original scientists that held our moon-sitting posts positioned most of the bases far enough away that they would have time to send a warning, should the Moon cause another unnatural disaster. Hector resides in the shipping container five miles from the shore, and Belle lives ten miles inland, in an old caravan. The cargo ship, however, positioned itself right on the beach. I think we’d all prefer it to be further away from the Moon, but it was too useful not to convert for moon-sitting.
As I run, I think of my fellow moon-sitters. I wonder if they’re watching, if they see me sprinting. They must think I’m mad. My dark skin and scutes flake away, revealing ice-white flesh and new, pearly horn. I worry that the light from the Moon is burning me away, but it doesn’t hurt.
Then comes the moment where I’m standing at the foot of the Moon. I’ve never been there in real life. Council law dictates that we must stay away from the Moon unless given special permission. Moon-sitters can only break this law in an emergency, or else face imprisonment. See, the enormous spherical structure isn’t actually a moon. Not really. We don’t know what it is, just that it didn’t so much fall as land with a big enough bump to send tsunamis and earthquakes skittering across our planet’s surface.
In my dreams, the jetty ends two feet from the Moon’s smooth, clean face. I have to hold my hand over my eyes and squint to look at it through the scarlet light. Now I’m close, I feel the vibrations coming from the Moon in my bones. It makes me feel like the world is swimming and I throw up into the sea. I wipe my mouth and stand tall, trying to get my footing back. I breathe deeply – in through my nose, out through my mouth – and reach my hand out towards the Moon. I hover the scutes on my knuckles an inch from the surface. I can’t feel any heat, so I touch it.
Noise explodes out of the Moon. It blasts me away and, as I slide arse-backwards along the pontoon, I see the waves rise high above me, like two enormous hands reaching out of the ocean. They slam down onto my chest, pulling me and the bridge under the water. I see the metal and plastic tear in two and wonder how I’m still alive. Then I blink myself awake.
***
Almost every morning since I moved here, I’ve woken up covered in sweat, with the taste of salt water in my mouth. I stumble to the bathroom, check my reflection has returned, shower and swill my mouth out with root water. We Infinitians haven’t quite gotten around to figuring out how to make dental cleaner again yet. It’s been on the to-do list for a while; the public supply ran out when I was still a kid.
Body and mouth clean, I return to my living quarters and turn on my computer. Marcus – who was the ship’s original tenant and my mentor – built the machine from parts found in Infinity’s last remaining city. He built similar setups in the shipping container and caravan too, as well as setting up the wind turbines that power everything here. Infinity was fortunate enough to have a number of good minds, people who understood how things worked, survive the Moon’s arrival, but things are still not quite the same.
This morning, when I turn on my computer, it brings up the usual readings: a consistent low-level vibration, standard temperature, no signs of life. The Moon is an angry black hole on my screen. I pull back my curtains and look at it through the window. Even half-submerged in the ocean, it’s gigantic. The Moon looms over everything along the coast as far as the eye can see, with its summit five miles above sea level and its diameter a perfect ten miles wide. At certain times of year I get very little direct light.
Most people in City have only ever seen the Moon in pictures. They’re lucky. In the early days, they ran a few small memorial trips for folks to pay their respects. Not many people were interested in going anywhere near the Moon, but Mum brought me when I was still young. Funnily enough, I think the nightmares started after that, but back then it was just me running in the dark. I’m fast, but I think I had to run so far that I never quite understood what I was running to, until I returned to start my moon-sitting apprenticeship with Marcus.
I sit down at my desk and send a message to Hector and Belle:
L: Good morning. Same old sphere. You?
An Additional Gift:
If this whet your appetite, you might also like to pop on over to Youtube, where I’ve created a Moon-Sitting playlist. Some songs have a pretty strong connection to a particular scene, others give a general vibe or energy. You might also notice some similarities between the artwork and the images in Moon-Sitting. Moon-Sitting is an idea that seemingly sprang into my head from nowhere. However, a couple of these songs have been on my playlist for a long while (Wildfire by Slow Magic and Way Back by Vicetone). These, along with some of the tracks on my personal playlist, may well have been a subconscious influence. They definitely kept be going through writing, editing and formatting 😉
Final note:
I really want to thank everyone who’s supported this little project so far. I’ve loved writing since I was a child, and pretty soon I’ll be able to hold my own book in my hands. The fact that it’s self-published makes it all the more special. Moon-Sitting will exist because of my own force of will and because of the kindness and enthusiasm of others.
So thank you, and I hope you’re having a good weekend!
EM
P.S. If you’re a reviewer interested in a digital ARC, please fill in this form.
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As I mention above, rather than a prize draw, I will be judging the entries and picking my favourites. These will get anonymised for fairness, and I’ll judge them in terms of creativity and style. Assuming there are enough entries, there will be one winner for the written pieces category and one winner for the visual pieces category. Each winner will receive a signed proof of Moon-Sitting and a Moon-Sitting bookmark. I will also feature other entries that I loved here on this blog.
12th December 1990