We’re about a month out from my hopeful publication date for Gallery of Myth — more details about that in the coming weeks! But in the meantime, today I’m sharing an excerpt from the beginning of the novel.

But let me back up for just a minute first. Gallery is really different from the short stories and cozy mysteries I’m working on. In fact, it’s not a mystery at all, and I’m publishing it under a different pen name (T.A. Page!). I made this decision in part because I wanted to keep the genres separate, and in part because Gallery is my test-run for self-publishing, so I wanted to give myself license to make mistakes without feeling a lot of pressure.

So, why am I going into all this here? First of all, I like Gallery of Myth, and I think that readers who like the humor and inventiveness of Beyond will find those same things in Gallery. However, I think it’s important to distance Gallery from ideas of coziness, because the main character, Ashley, deals with anger and other un-cozy emotions in the book. It’s also a bit wacky. 🙂 There are two narratives in Gallery of Myth: a fantasy adventure through the constellations, and a glimpse into the modern-day life of Ashley, who is transcribing the fantasy story from her old high school notebooks onto a blog. Each blog post has an introduction from Ashley and a scene or two of adventure. It’s unusual, yes, and it moves pretty fast, but (in my opinion) the way the two stories come together is what makes the book special.

TL,DR: Gallery of Myth is a non-cozy side project. But I love it all the same, and you might too!

Without further ado, here’s the first post (you can also find it here):

(1) Start Here

Hi everyone, I’m Ashley. And I want to make something clear from the start: I’m not into nostalgia. I take pictures of plants, not people, I don’t like sappy songs, and I will pass on any rose-colored days-of-yore-o-vision goggles the moment they come out. But really, sometimes when you find the things the old you wrote, they’re just too funny to pass up.

For those of you who didn’t read the “About” page—and really, I don’t blame you—this is what’s up. Recently I went through the sort of box that gets packed with high school memories and forgotten the moment college begins, and in among the old journals, I found a story I wrote a long time ago. We’re talking long enough ago that the whole thing is handwritten in a series of spiral notebooks. It’s not exactly worthy of the Library of Congress, but it is a bit cute, so I sat down and made this blog in order to put it out into the wide world, one bit at a time. 

Put out the story, that is.

Let’s start before I say anything more embarrassing, shall we?

***

There was a croak in the dead of night as the timber gate of the outer wall swung open. Two armored horses bearing tall, noble riders made their way out through the fields. They made it halfway down one fenceline before the larger form turned and jostled the smaller.

“How about a game of stabsies?”

“No! Why would we be playing any game on such an important mission?”

“You know it always makes you less nervous!”

“I’m not nervous. I just don’t want to be doing this.”

“But it was your idea to make the raid!”

“All I said was we ought to have more information about the people we’re going to fight, and specifically their witch. I did not volunteer to leave court—and without the king knowing!”

The first form struck at the other. The horses continued down the lane at an unperturbed canter. “Terrible dodge! Weak!”

“Rude,” retorted the second.

“You’d better be glad your father isn’t coming,” the first grinned. His easy—if somewhat violent—manner revealed him as Benjamin Knight, the premier longswordsman of the country, sparring partner and frequent aider and abetter of the Crown Prince. 

For his part the Prince, Richard, said nothing. After all, it was true: his father wouldn’t have much cause to be proud of a son who couldn’t deflect an honest jab. Or, for that matter, a son who left the castle in the middle of the knight to spring upon a sleeping enemy: it was very unsporting. 

The light of the moon, unusually bright and close, guided the pair away from the summer training grounds and soon to the border with their sworn enemy. Scouting parties were frequent along the border, and Prince Richard could easily direct his horse and his friend along the paths they needed to take to get to the capitol. Luckily, as they crossed through hostile territory Benjamin became focused, and as the night passed the Prince was safe from any more stabs. 

They reached their target just as the night was at its peak. Leaving tired horses behind, they crept on foot through the town and the maze of walls. Looming above the ominous quiet of orderly streets, the many towers of the Blessed Queen’s castle rose as though to look down noses of cultured stone.

“Guess that’s what they mean by high and mighty,” Benjamin muttered. Richard elbowed him, gesturing at the guard passing them by, but he had to admit—the capitol was much more impressive than its pictures had been.

Still, Richard was if nothing else an excellent studier of maps and pictures. Despite the fact that they were in a strange land for the first time, and trying to move quietly in mail to boot, they had no trouble locating the witch. Of course, that may have been because she happened to reside in the tower which oozed a noxious green smoke, but nonetheless, the mission was going remarkably well.

“Good, good,” said Benjamin as he caught up with the Prince. “We’re scaling it, then?”

“Of course not,” Richard replied automatically. Granted, the tower was on the edge of the castle complex, but if anyone was to see them—his mind raced through the possibilities. Bodily harm ranked high on the list.

“You just don’t want a repeat of last time we went up The Rock.”

“I thought we agreed to be quiet?”

“We agreed to get this done! Come on!”

“But Ben—you saw those armor-piercing arrows yesterday—”

“All you’re about to see is the soles of my boots if you can’t keep up!”

Richard sighed, and resigned himself to the climb. He wasn’t one to believe in dumb luck, but something had certainly favored them this far. Maybe, he thought, the people of Blessed were too exhausted from their feasting and parties to even think about sneak attacks on their witch’s tower. Maybe they were all too soundly asleep to look out their windows and see two large men clinging to the masonry like ninjas who’d failed Subtlety 101. Heartened, he climbed on.

When finally he reached the witch’s window and stepped in to inky blackness, Prince Richard realized how poorly this plan had been thought out. They were now standing in the witch’s quarters—where were they to go? The first thing that came to him as he scanned the room was a strange, earthy scent. The second thing was—

“Oi! Earth to Prince! Why are you always so slow?”

“Hush, Benjamin!” Richard swatted impatiently as though he could bat his retainer’s voice away. “What’s going on?”

“What’s the plan?”

“Couldn’t you have asked me that before dragging me out of bed?”

“You mean you don’t have a plan??”

“Well,” cut in the witch, “obviously the plan is to get rid of you two.”

Richard and Benjamin stared at each other, wide eyes barely connecting through the shadow. 

“Or maybe I’ll get rid of one, and keep the other?” The unseen witch giggled. “For information, you know.”

“Run!” decided Richard, a moment after the knight at his side had done just that. He tried to move, too, and immediately bumbled in to something that chinked and shattered as he hopped past on one foot. 

“Get out of here!” Richard cried to Benjamin, his voice becoming commanding in its desperation as around them the voice laughed. He could hear loud thumps from the other side of the room, and the familiar sound of Benjamin cursing. To get to it he’d have to cut across the empty space he’d just abandoned–the space not illuminated by the window beyond. 

“I found stairs!” yelled Benjamin. The roaring in Richard’s ears increased.

He gasped as he shouted back, “Go on then!”

“Get over here!”

“No, no, no,” said the witch, but not in a despairing tone. It sounded like she was playing with them. “Only one!”

Benjamin, meanwhile, sounded miles away. “Straight through, come on, it’s just an old woman! What could an old witch really do to us, anyway?”

The witch cackled, and the sound seemed to come from everywhere. “You think you can see the right way to take?”

There was crashing, and swirling, and chiming, and Richard could not tell which voice was his own any more. He went headfirst into the blackness and his feet left the ground as he tried one more time to cry out to his friend —

“We agreed to get this done!”