The Sword of Ixchel- Chapter 1: The Offer

(NOTE: This is an excerpt from my newly released debut novel, The Sword of Ixchel, which is now available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon)

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Chapter 1: The Offer

The day his wife was stolen would haunt Molan Apraxas until the moment of his death. It happened beneath a flawless sky, rare during the jungle rainy season. Six days of unbroken storms abruptly ceased, and the clouds peeled apart to reveal perfect blue, horizon to horizon. Molan took a break from tilling to knead his aching neck as the sun poured over his maize field. 
    Yields are down, the village lord said the day before. If things don't pick up, Molan, we may need a sacrifice. Get back in the gods’ favor.

    Molan mopped his brow with the frayed end of his pati and exhaled slowly.
   "Xuna," he called to his daughter. She glanced up from the hewn dirt and leaned on her mattock. Her lanky shadow spread across the ground between them. "Not too close to the others."
   "I understood you the last time," she huffed.
   "You're doing very well," he added, feebly. She grunted something inaudible and turned back to the work.

Molan prayed in silence. Give life to these seeds, he pleaded the gods. Let them resurrect the holy maize. He listened as Xuna’s mattock chopped moodily through the soil. And let my daughter’s roots sink deep. Help her grow tall and strong, not bent and broken like me.
    It was this precise moment when a distant scream pierced the perfect day and jolted him from his fieldwork. Seren, his wife and greatest love, was in trouble.
    “To me Xuna!” he cried, casting aside his tools. “Hurry!”
   Molan seized his daughter's hand and together they dashed for home as fast as Xuna's young legs allowed. Every terrible scenario swam through Molan’s head as they ran. There were many demons, gods and wicked men in the jungle whose attention they might draw. At last, they crested the final hill and skidded to a halt with dust eddying around them.

       Below, two enormous men surrounded their cottage door, armor and spears gleaming in that flawless sun.

          "Who are they?" said Xuna, unable to hide the tremble in her voice.

    The two warriors were tall and broad-chested. They packed the space beneath the cottage’s thatched awning. Plates of brine-soaked leather armor hung across their broad chests. They had identical, dark-teak skin knotted with muscle and long, sleek hair as black as a grackle. Each held a jade spear in one hand and a shield painted with a coiled snake in the other.

    The emblem was well known. The Kaan Dynasty.

    "Royal guards. Of Calakmul," he answered. Royal guards were only found with royalty. He squeezed his daughter's hand. "The gods will grant us courage."

    Molan eyed the twin warriors as he and Xuna approached. Up close they were huge. Wider than Molan by half and a full head taller. Their faces were identically grim and emotionless. Molan placed his hand on Xuna’s lower back and guided her between them into the cottage.

    A handsome, majestic woman occupied their family table with a cloud of warriors—twins of the two outside—hovering around her. Servant girls immediately attended to her every comfort. Molan had never imagined so many people in their tiny space.

    “Where is Seren?” he demanded. “What have you done with her?”

    "Molan Tak'aan," the woman said as she swept to her feet. The richness of her attire juxtaposed harshly against the cottage background. A jaguar-fur quechquemitl spilled from her shoulders, hems and straps embossed with jades, opals, and silver. Gold rings decorated each knuckle. Molan recognized her at once. She was Tunial Kin Mai, famed sorceress and high priestess of Calakmul, one of the two greatest cities in the realm. Molan had despised and feared her from the moment they'd met all those years before. “Do not worry about your wife. She is quite safe.”   

    "I insist to see her!"
          "Or what?" said Tunial. Her dark eyes thinned to poisonous slits. Molan couldn’t stand to look at them. She thrummed with power and he was no match for it.

    "Nothing, my lady," he growled, slumping into a defeated bow and gesturing for Xuna to do the same.

    “As I expected, Molan Tak’aan.”

  "It is just Molan, kin mai.” His back cracked painfully as he straightened upright. “I vacated those titles long ago."

    The sorceress smiled hollowly. "No need to be coy, Molan Tak'aan. We both know all about your past."

    Xuna's head tilted in his direction and Molan attempted to catch her eye. Tunial must have noticed, for she appraised his daughter for the first time and grinned, exposing a full row of gem-studded teeth.

    "The kalomte heard rumors of your offspring." She brushed the back of her hand and its many rings over Xuna's cheek.

    "Kalomte now, is it?" said Molan, steering the conversation away from Xuna. "Ka'b Hix has finally grown a spine! I wonder what the King of Tikal thinks of his rival’s self-applied title?"

    "Insulting the High King of Calakmul in front of his priestess? Your famous runaway mouth continues to sow trouble for you!” said Tunial. She restored her too-cunning smile. In a flash, she seized Xuna's chin and turned her face from side to side.

    "Has your father ever told you that he was once the prized pupil of Naranjo?" Xuna glanced again at her father from the corner of her eye. "Speak, girl!"

    "No, mother," Xuna said meekly.

    A servant gasped. "Mother" was a formal address to an older woman but inappropriate for the high priestess. A commoner could lose a head for such a blunder.

    "Your father has no honor, no courage. So afraid of the gods' judgement that he renounced his own lord, his own people, all to retire to... this?" She gestured at the dusty shack.

    “Perhaps you could get on with whatever purpose you came for,” interjected Molan. “The village lord is threatening sacrifice if we don’t meet crop quotas. I quite value my head. I need Xuna and Seren’s help if I plan to keep it attached to my spine.”

    Tunial glowered at him for a moment then nodded to one of her servants, who extended a folded swatch of red material. Molan accepted it tentatively.

    "The kalomte's oldest son has been stolen. This token was left at the scene.” After a pause she added, “Only someone very powerful could have managed the crime.”

    Molan unfolded the material and stared blankly at the woven symbol of a hawk encircled with gold runes.

    "The emblem of your dead king in Naranjo,” said Tunial. “A sigil that has been banned for what? Fifteen years?"

    "I am sure Ka'b Hix has others much smarter than me to figure out his little mystery," Molan responded. He re-folded the material and offered it back.

    "You misunderstand things, Molan Tak'aan. Ka'b Hix has passed into the Underworld. Ka'an Paktik is kalomte now."

    "Sky Witness," Molan muttered, rendering the name into the commoner dialect. Sky Witness was just a young prince when his father and the lords of Calakmul sacked Molan's home city. Young but already shrouded in infamy.

    "Kalomte Sky Witness believes you are most suited to answer this riddle. You are the only one left of the old, dead Naranjo order, after all."

    "Sky Witness is even more of a fool than people in the taverns whisper if he thinks I had something to do with this."

    "I am tired of your words, Molan Tak’aan,” she said with a bored flick of her hand. “Your choice is to follow his orders or watch pain fall on everyone around you." She stepped closer until their noses were almost touching. She smelled sweet, like spices and cacao. "Produce the kalomte's heir or your wife will suffer. That is Sky Witness’s offer."

    Molan swallowed. For a long moment, silence hung heavy in the air. He wanted to resist but couldn’t risk harm coming to Seren or Xuna. Or himself.

    "Tell the boy king I will do what I can," he growled in defeat.

    Tunial grinned. “I knew King Sky Witness could count on you.” She nodded to her guards, and the troupe filed neatly from the room leaving only her sweet lingering scent as evidence they’d been there at all.

(Buy me a coffee: view this novel on Amazon, available as an e-book for only $3.99)

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions 

This is It, I'm a Published Author, I Guess...

Well, it happened. My first novel, The Sword of Ixchel, as of midnight last night, has been published. It is now available on Amazon… 

It’s a historical fantasy; a coming-of-age tale of swords, gods and sorcery set during the time of the ancient Mayans. The tale explores the myths and history of the Mayans though the eyes of a father and daughter, simple farmers swept into an adventure they didn’t want, as they venture across the Mesoamerican landscape. 

A (Very) Long Time Coming

It was seven and half years ago that I put the first words on the page. At the time, I wrote the original rough draft in just over three weeks, record speed (for me anyway). I felt so inspired, so solid with my idea, that it felt almost like I wasn't creating the story, simply channeling it from the ether. This was not my first attempt at writing a novel. In fact, the very first time I wrote a novel all the way through a completed rough draft was in 2007. Later, feverishly pursuing this dream, I received a degree in creative writing in 2011 from Colorado Mesa University. I've attempted several other novels since. But there was something about this book, the way it was spilling out of me, that made me think this was the one. It had to be. 

Years passed. I plowed through many draft cycles. It was fun at first, but eventually it grew tedious. Life got complicated. We moved to a new state. We bought a house, then another. We had a baby girl. Sometimes the book would sit in its little corner of my hard drive forgotten for months. 

In 2021, four and half years after "finishing" that rough draft, I decided it was finally ready and began the process of querying literary agents. This method, known in the writing world as "traditional publishing" is still the only way to see your work published by a major publishing house. But after dozens, then nearly a hundred, such queries, the best responses I received were a few form-letter rejections, each an echo of the one previous: "We're sorry but at this time... yadda yadda." It was crushing. And after I had queried almost every reputable agent in the fantasy genre and failed, my dream of becoming a publishing fiction novelist, a dream I'd held for fourteen years, essentially died.

Then, on New Year's Eve 2023, I made a resolution that I was going to "publish my novel or else," even if it had to be self-published. It killed me that all that work would go to waste. If only my friends and family would ever see it, that was okay. At least somebody would read it. I spent another eight months poring through yet another draft cycle, designing the layout and the cover, and uploading it onto Amazon Kindle Direct.  

Do I think it is perfect? No. Could I have kept working on it and improving it? Of course. I'm pretty certain I will always find something to change. But as famous photographer/content creator Peter McKinnon (and many others) likes to say, "done is better than perfect." At some point you have to let go and move on, for better or worse. 

Now this novel is done but definitely not perfect. I think I'm okay with that....

On the Dubious Nature of Self Publishing

There is something dubious about self-publishing. You could, after all, type the letter “z” a few hundred thousand times, upload it onto Amazon and call yourself a published author. That a book full of ZZZ's would literally put someone to sleep is another matter. My point is there is no guarantee of quality with self-publishing, and there are a lot of self-published books that feel more like drafts still needing polishing. While I've worked hard to produce quality work that I can feel proud of, there's a distinct possibility that many of you might feel like this book is unpolished or perhaps even just plain bad.

When I tried the traditional method of publishing, I discovered several harsh truths about fiction writing: only about one in 10,000 manuscripts are ever accepted, and timing and trends are everything. In other words, being merely a “good” writer isn’t even close to enough. You have to be the top 99.99%. And beyond that, not only do you have to be the best of the best of the best, but you have to have impeccable, conceptual timing with literary trends in the eyes of the 100 or so gatekeepers that are the (reputable) literary agents in your genre. Simply put, you could have the right book at the wrong time and fail.

Well, It's Done Now and I'm Scared....

There is something unnerving about putting a work of this magnitude into the world. What if people don't like it? What if it comes across as boring, tedious, poorly developed? Will I feel like a failure? Will it make me want to quit writing forever? It's an intensely vulnerable feeling to hand this baby off, this work that represents so many hours, years actually, of hard work and uses every bit of brain power and skills I spent almost two decades developing. And if it is feebly received, will I be able to handle the criticism? 

The hard truth is that I have to accept these possible realities. The "nothing ventured, nothing gained" adage rings accurate. And even if the novel doesn't break the "friends and family 50" curse (that the only people who buy your book are the 50 friends and family members who buy it mostly because they care about you), I can take pride that I undertook this massive effort and saw it all the way to it's conclusion.

Finally, the Sales Plug

Anyway, I am proud of this work. It may not be flawless, but I believed in it for years and it makes me happy to send it forth into the world. The Kindle e-book is available for $3.99, a price akin to buying me a cup of coffee, and the print version is available for $12.99. Personally, I recommend the print book. In my eyes, that is how it was meant to be consumed. 

For those that believed in me from the beginning and read early excerpts and drafts, your support means the world. And for those that might continue to support me in the future, you also are what keeps that creative flame inside me burning. You are the best. 

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If you enjoyed this post, consider signing up for my mailing list. If you do sign up, you will get a once-a-week update on my posts (if there are any) and NOTHING ELSE! No spam, no selling your email to third parties. Okay, if I ever get around to publishing one of these works in progress that are constantly haunting me, I might send out an email letting you know. In the meantime thanks for reading!

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions 

Publishing Part II: The Perfect First Page

One could argue that the first page of your novel is the most important. Not only is it the very maximum you will ever get from a prospective buyer at a bookstore, but many literary agents, as they wade through mountainous piles of submission, will use your opening words to either shuffle you to the reject pile (alongside 99% of the submissions they receive) or, if you executed it well, give you the chance to fulfill your life dream of becoming a published author.

Online organizations like Writer's Digest offer classes with names like "First Page Bootcamp" where you can get a master lesson and even personalized feedback from established agents about crafting a perfect first page. These classes can run as high as $200. Youch!  I don't know about you but that's a steep ask from me, and an expense I would have a hard time convincing my wife was necessary. However, there is plenty of advice (some dubious) available on the wide web and in my searches I stumbled across a "first page checklist" from established author C.S. Lakin, who has become an authority figure on novel-writing advice, that I found quite helpful. It includes "must-have" items such as a "Opening Hook: Clever writing and image that grabs the reader," and a "glimpse at character’s personal history, personality—shed light on motivation." (You can read/download the full checklist here). I found this helpful in analyzing the ways my first page might not be living up to its full potential.

I've decided to be harsh with my first page, and part of that means laying it out here for you to read and invite your meanest words. Help me beat it up and make it better. It's like a broken arm that healed crookedly: it needs to be rebroken to get it straight. So without further delay, here is my first page as it stands. Please comment below with your harshest, unadulterated, no-holds-barred criticism.

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Chapter 1: The Offer

The day his wife was taken haunted Molan Apraxas until the moment of his death.

It happened beneath a flawless sky, the rarest type during the jungle rainy season. Six days of unbroken storms abruptly ceased, and the clouds peeled apart to reveal perfect blue, horizon to horizon. Molan took a break from tilling his maize field to roll out his twisted neck and stretch his tattered muscles.

 

Yields are down, Molan, the village lord’s son had said the day before. If things don't pick up, my father thinks we may need a sacrifice. Get back in the right with the gods.

Molan mopped his brow with the frayed end of his pati and exhaled heavily.

"Xuna," he called to his daughter. She glanced up from the hewn dirt three spans away, leaning heavily on her mattock. Her gangly shadow stretched across the ground between them. "Not too close to the others."

 

"Yes, father," she said, head sagging.

 

She’s her mother’s child, thought Molan. Gentle, passive, as sweet as sapodilla. It was good, her taking more after her mother than him.

 

"You're doing great," he added, feebly.

Turning back to the earth, Molan prayed silently. Breathe life to these seeds, he implored the gods. Let them resurrect the holy maize. Somewhere in the background, Xuna's mattock had fallen silent. Sink my daughter’s roots deep, he added for her. Let her grow tall, proud, and strong, not bent and craven like me.

It was in this precise moment when a scream—one that changed Molan forever—pierced the perfect day. Seren, his wife and greatest love, was in trouble.

 

“To me Xuna!” he said, casting his mattock aside. “Hurry!”

Molan seized his daughter's hand and they ran for their cottage as fast as Xuna's young legs allowed. There were many terrors in the jungle—monsters and demons, gods and wicked men—whose attention they could draw. Molan imagined every dreadful scenario as the two of them ran and ran, the distances seeming to grow rather than shrink. At long last, they crested the final slope and halted, looking down on their home as dust eddied around them.

Below, festooning the cottage door, were two enormous men, their armor and spears glinting in the flawless sun.

(If you enjoyed that page one, the entire novel is now available on Amazon!!)

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If you enjoyed this post, consider signing up for my mailing list. If you do sign up, you will get a once-a-week update on my posts (if there are any) and NOTHING ELSE! No spam, no selling your email to third parties. Okay, if I ever get around to publishing one of these works in progress that are constantly haunting me, I might send out an email letting you know. In the meantime thanks for reading!

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions 

Publishing Part I: That Perfect First Sentence

Hello everyone! You thought you were rid of me, but I'm back. For the last few years I've leaned on the excuse that platform building took too much time away from actual writing as justification for abandoning my blog, twitter account, Facebook page, etc, etc. Well, after four years of working on it, my WIP manuscript is to the point where I either have to focus on publishing or move on with life. So as I attempt CPR on my blog (I know some of you have heard this before) I'm going to ruminate in a few blog posts on the topic of publishing.

There are, essentially, three avenues for publishing: 1) the old-fashioned, "big 5"  route, in which you court an agent who represents you in a sales pitch for the big publishing giants. 2) The small press route, where you pursue smaller companies who take direct submissions from writers but still provide editors and art departments, etc. And 3) The self-publishing route, where you do everything yourself.

For now, let's examine the traditional route, though much of what I'll talk about is relevant regardless of the publishing route you choose, as you need many of the same components to court a would-be reader as you would a prospective agent or publisher.

Most literary agents require some variation of the following: a query letter, a synopsis, and the first ten pages of your manuscript. I will tackle each, further breaking down the "first ten pages" into a perfect first page and even the perfect first sentence. These opening words are often all you get to impress a busy agent who likely has a slush pile of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of queries.

Let's start gentle... The first sentence. 

The first sentence is supposed to be your hook. It introduces the novel and hopefully draws the reader in so that it's impossible not to keep reading. It may be superficial to judge a book solely by its first sentence, but let's face it, this is how the world works. As "they" say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and this is your chance to make yours.

To tackle this topic, let's examine the first sentences from five books on my bookshelf. To minimize pre-conceived bias, I won't identify which books they are from, but I will say that they are all heavy hitters, including a Pulitzer Prize winner, a megaclassic in fantasy, a megaclassic in science fiction, and two contemporary NY Times Bestsellers. Also mixed in is my own first sentence, just to see how it stands up. So dig in and let me know in the comments which you think is best. I'll reveal which book each was from and do a short analysis in a future blog post.

So...in random order, let's dive in:

1) First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

    Okay, so that was actually two sentences, but since they were short and intimately connected, I included them both.

2) "Ninety-eight--Ninety-nine--One hundred."

    This one starts with dialogue. Effective? Let me know if the comments...

3) His wife’s scream the day she was taken would haunt him at the moment of his death.

   A bit macabre. Do you want to know more?

4) "Oh dear," Linus Baker said, wiping sweat from his brow. "This is most unusual."

    Again, technically two sentences. But it just didn't have the intended kick without them both.

5) If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

    The longest of the opening sentences. Effective? Comment below if you think so (or not).

6) The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.

    This one gives a little setting. Is it effective in building intrigue? Comment below.

That's it, ladies and gentlemen. If you have thoughts on which of these works best and why (or any other comments) I hope to hear from you below. Look out for analysis and a reveal of which book each is from to come! 

Read the Next Part of the Series Here:

Part II: The Perfect First Page 

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If you enjoyed this post, consider signing up for my mailing list. If you do sign up, you will get a once-a-week update on my posts (if there are any) and NOTHING ELSE! No spam, no selling your email to third parties. Okay, if I ever get around to publishing one of these works in progress that are constantly haunting me, I might send out an email letting you know. In the meantime thanks for reading!

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions 

A New Song

Life as an artist, in all guises we artists come, is far from easy. What market exists is often concentrated at the top, into those fortunate enough to have "struck it big." Those lucky, talented few who have captured the imaginations of pop culture fans seem to live a luxurious, jet-set lifestyle while the rest wallow in the mires of obscurity and financial toil. We "starving artists," however, are always quick to argue that we create our art for the love and passion of the pursuit, for the pure joy of conjuring something completely original and novel seemingly from the ether, and that is true. However, in the hearts of almost all of us, lives a longing to join that rarefied club who clamber up the proverbial ladder to the top. Perhaps not even the highest rungs, but high enough that we can quit our cubicle jobs and meet that threshold of success where we could look someone in the eye when asked what we do for a living and answer, without deceit, "I am a musician. A writer. An artist..."

Anyway, enough digression. Here is a new song I recently recorded and released on Soundcloud. I've been playing with the technique of melding acoustic and electronica music and this song is one of the best examples yet of this new attempt at conjuring something fresh and original (as aforementioned). Please enjoy. Or don't, if it's not to your taste. And as always, I am open to feedback and well-worded, well-intended criticism...

Brian Donald Wright · The Beach

An Ode to the Mountain

What is it about a mountain that so thoroughly ensnares the human imagination? Is it the jagged immensity? The superhuman scale? Or is it the allure of secrets hidden in every fold and crevasse? Perhaps it’s simply the exhibition of nature at its grandest scale. The unmitigated authority of such a colossal body and its total freedom to build, act, and even collapse, in whatever way it pleases. Maybe we just admire the mountain for appearing not only immortal but supremely hardy: donning and shedding mounds of ice like a weekend wardrobe, and letting the severe winds curl around its body like the fingers of a lover. The mountain embodies not only the best, strongest and most admirable of human traits, but piles them to a scale we can never hope to emulate, only admire from a distance….

New Music and Photography Pages!!

As mentioned in a previous post, I have been planning to expand my blog/website to include original music and photography as well. This past week I launched pages for both and I am really excited! If you get a chance click over to see these new elements to my website. I am always happy for comments and questions.

Original Music

Music conveys the ineffable: sensation, emotion, love and fear. If words are the language of our minds used to transmit ideas from one to the next, music then is the language of our souls...

Photography

Photography is painting with light and lines, the artistic effort to capture the beauty of the natural and cultural worlds in clear verisimilitude and provide a perfect window into places far away in space or time.

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If you enjoyed this post, consider signing up for my mailing list. When not spending my time living my dream of being a river bum, I blog about all sorts of crazy, educational, entertaining, and occasionally funny topics from what makes an effective first paragraph to giant redwoods, medieval sailboats, the ancient Mayans and more. If you do sign up, you will get a once-a-week update on my posts (if there are any) and NOTHING ELSE! No spam, no selling your email to third parties. Okay, if I ever get around to publishing one of these works in progress that are constantly haunting me, I might send out an email letting you know. In the meantime thanks for reading!

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All writing, photography and music is the original work of Brian Donald Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions