PETALS OF THE TWENTY THOUSAND BLOSSOM (PTTB)
"For as long as the Primordial World Sea People lived on the land, there were Shrines of the Continents. And for as long as the Primordial World Sea People died on the land, they were buried there. The shrines were like love, like compassion, like the value of life for life, like the quest for knowledge; they were intrinsic to the People. In the skin of the dead, there was wisdom. In the blood of the dead, there was knowledge. In the return of these nutrients to the soil, there was the possibility for transmigration, up through the roots, out of fruit and flower and into the mouths and bodies of the living. In this way, the being of parents became the being of children and grand-children and great-grandchildren for as long as the shrines were carefully tended.
And they were carefully tended. The first solid food in every child's mouth was put there by a Gardener, and the last wet, sweet taste of life sponged over the lips of the dying was as well. The holiest of holies were those vaults of flesh and memory, and their tenders were fixtures in the cells of all People. In some, the call of the body was weak, and there was little awareness of the soil that fed it. In others, and especially in the Gardeners, the call of the body lay over the senses like a web and gifted the being with the coalescing sapience of all the People who came before.
And so, when the disparate cultures of the Primordial World Sea People were forced to flee their ruined home in search of a new one, they grieved as a single people over the loss of the shrines and the countless generations buried there. This grief brought them together, and in that sorrow they took the name Petals of the Twenty Thousand Blossom, since the Shrines of the Continents were often and in many languages called the Twenty Thousand Blossom for their fecundity and their history. Their lost world then came to be known as the Home of the Twenty Thousand Blossom, the place where the Shrines of the Continents flourished."
-As told by the Light Singers
World Sea Legacy is the first of three trilogies about the descendants of the original Petals of the Twenty Thousand Blossom. The novels are tentatively entitled:
* Book I: Twilight of the World Sea People
* Book II: Rise of the World Sea Stewards
* Book III: World Sea Legacy
I expect to have completed the writing of the first trilogy by January 1, 2010 and to market the books together to interested publishing houses. For more information about this work, please feel free to contact me.
SPIRIT BOAT
Spirit Boat is a disparate collection of short stories woven together by the threads of a single tale that passes around them like wool on a loom. Fifteen stories will comprise the collection, and one of them will be set in the aforementioned multiverse. This tale, tentatively entitled "Songlines" will allow the reader to witness a crucial moment in the development of one of the PTTB character types that doesn't appear anywhere in the first trilogy.
Having said that, I plan to market the collection with the first trilogy in the hope it will be released between the first and second sets of books in the series. For more information about this work, please feel free to contact me.