BETWIXT (where the dead things go)

BETWIXT (where the dead things go) is launching on May 13, 2021 and is available for preorder now at Amazon.  The paperback will be available in the next 72 hours.

EDIT: The paperback version of BETWIXT is now available on Amazon

From the jacket;

There is a razor thin space between life and death, between existence and oblivion, between heaven and hell.  A place caught between light and darkness, a crimson clouded world frozen in Longtime.

When Max Brandt finds himself burning with fever from a deadly infection and steps off a rapid transit train to find somewhere to die in peace, he lands in the realm of the dead.  Natural law is twisted there; water flows from disconnected pipes, buildings reconstruct themselves by growing upward from the ground brick by brick, food appears fresh seemingly out of nowhere.  Whatever vanishes in the real world arrives there, including a WWI Zeppelin.

Everyone Max meets is a walking anachronism; a British Colonial Officer killed during an Indian uprising, a Dead Rabbit from the Five Points stabbed to death in a street brawl, a samurai who lost his final battle, a gunslinger hanged for a horse-thief, and a 17 year old hippie named Olive who died at the Monterey Pop Festival from a heroin overdose as Jefferson Airplane performed White Rabbit.

Max has joined the dead.

Yet like the real world there is evil and horror in this place; tribes of cannibals haunt the ruins of a city with many names, Caribou man and his cult makes human sacrifices to the crow gods they worship, and a Baptist Preacher who believes he is on a mission from his god to raise the dead and return to vanquish the real world.

All reside and will clash within this narrow band of existence called Betwixt.

A deathpunk novel of ghosts, wraiths, zombies, and zeppelins ...

BETWIXT (where the dead things go)

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Flaiđ and Merry-wings ...

Flaiđ sat very still on the log as the sylphids fluttered around ou.  Ou ignored the swoops that drew them closer and closer to ou's ears, ignored their chirps and titters, ignored their mocking attempts to mimic speech.  Flaiđ even ignored the little mouse roars they made imitating Aarthurum's growling, no doubt wondering why the old bear hadn't accompanied him this time.  Ou sat and waited until they grew confused that their usual annoying behaviour just wasn't going to get a rise out of him.

Out of the corner of ou's eye Flaiđ saw the blurred mass of them as they gathered to discuss what might be the matter with ou, ou's keen hearing picking up their whispered voices but not the words they spoke.

At last one sylphid broke away from the group and flew toward ou, hovering in the air in front of ou's face.

"Hello." ou said softly, seeing a sylphid up close for the first time.  She was small, yet tall for her frame.  Her skin was radiant, reflecting light in many colours.  Her wings, though blurred in movement, appeared translucent and there were four of them, two on each side of her body.  Her face was pixieish, thin, yet heart-shaped, her chin pointed, her nose upturned, and her sapphire eyes wide set.  Her hair was light and tinged the colour of moss and as fine as a spider's web.

She hovered in the air not two hands-breadths away from ou's face, her eyes studying ou's intensely.

"My name is Flaiđ." ou said and she tittered.  Then she raised her chin and howled the way a mouse might howl trying to imitate a wolf.  So she knew what ou's name meant in the old tongue.

"Yes, you're very clever and very funny." ou said and smiled, "But what is your name?"

The sylphid watched Flaiđ's eyes for half a moment, then flew high around ou in an arc and hovered next to ou's right ear.  Her wings beating the air and fluttering ou's fur.

"Nýddllawœn." she whispered in ou's ear, then fluttered away to hover in front of ou's face once more.

"Nýddllawœn." Flaiđ repeated her name softly, then smiled - it too was from the old tongue of this land.

"Merry-wings." Flaiđ said, translating it.

Nýddllawœn fluttered and performed a loop in front of Flaiđ, letting loose her high-pitched wolf howl in three ululations of "Wooo-wooo-wooo!" and when she resumed her station in front of Flaiđ, the rest of the sylphid took up the howl as well.

Flaiđ waited until they settled, then slowly raised ou's hand as not to frighten her and braced it against ou's knee, palm downward,

"I have a task for you and your sisters, Nýddllawœn." ou said, "How would you like to torment some very bad men who are destroying your forest?"

Nýddllawœn slowed her fluttering and sat down on the back of Flaiđ's hand, tucking her wings behind her, gazing at him and listening.

"I'd like it if they never slept through the night." Flaiđ began to tell her ou's plan, and as ou did, dozens of other sylphids drew close around them, filling the air with their soft fluttering wings.

"Wolf & Moon'

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Wolf & Moon ...

My first attempt at a YA fantasy novel ...

 "Open the door." Laird Owyn ordered his soldiers as Deien Rowles the Learned, lifted one of the brands from the fire, the tip glowing almost white in the dark night.

"And we shall see what this creature has to say." Rowles smiled as he stared at the bright brand.

As the door swung open and the torchlight lit the inside of the gaol, ou saw the Faie.  It was a girl, ou guessed by the length of her hair and her filthy woolen robe.  She was a tiny thing, kneeling, hunched over, wrists manacled and held by heavy chains fixed to the floor.  Her feet and hands were filthy, her hair a tangled cobweb laced with dead leaves and twigs.

As Flaiđ stepped around a soldier to get a better look at her, ou saw her face in profile, her features delicate, her nose slightly upturned at its tip, freckles across her cheeks and forehead.

In all, the sight of her made Flaiđ want to cry.  She was defenceless and alone, surrounded by men who were about to torture her for what she knew.

"She's beautiful." Flaiđ whispered, feeling an ache in ou's chest that this child of the forest was about to suffer before ou's eyes.  She turned her head at his voice and looked up at ou and Flaiđ felt a chill when ou saw the flames reflected from within her emerald eyes.

Flaiđ knew something was wrong and was already stepping back when the manacles dropped from her wrists and ou was already turning to run when she sprang and the screams began.

Not her screams; these were the screams of the soldiers and ultimately Laird Owyn and Rowels himself that chased Flaiđ across the bailey toward their waggon.  But Merryman Andrú had heard the screams as well and was whipping their horses toward the open gate, scattering the soldiers that had just arrived and those about to depart.

"Merryman Andrú!"  Merryman!" Flaiđ called to him, "Don't leave me!  Don't leave your faithful Flaiđ!"

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

In 1789, William H. Marshall recorded the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular ou : "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will". Marshall traced ou to 14th century Middle English epicene a; having characteristics typical of the other sex.