Novel Introduction

Today is the feast of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Beautiful feast day. I just got out of Mass about an hour ago. I have a lot to say about it, but it is late and I am tired and I am afraid I will ramble on making little sense, so I think I will save that for tomorrow.

Instead, I am going to give you an excerpt from the novel I am currently writing. I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but it is a fantasy novel with Christian influences. It is about a fallen world in which three women hold the powers of the body, soul, and mind of all creation. In the world's brokenness, the women are cast to all the ends of the earth and their powers are forgotten, until one evil one sees their vulnerability and tries to capture the women to channel their powers and become an all-destructive god. A man named Marion sees the danger and makes it his personal duty to save the world.

So, here is a blurb from the first draft:

The arrow split the air in two, ripping it apart like a blade cutting paper, separating the winds like Moses parting the sea. It scattered the atoms, soaring through the gases dead on its path—a zip line whipping through the sky. Leaves shivered with its passing, branches waggled as it missed them by millimeters. Dead on it soared, never slowing, never wavering, until finally its journey halted as its tip eased itself into flesh—just behind the shoulder of a buck. Fellow arrows followed, and together their slender straight bodies and fine pointed tips took the massive buck to the ground.

Marion grinned at his marksmanship. His hunt had not failed after all. He would be eating richly tonight. He stood from his crouched position on the ground and started forward, brushing the branches aside as he headed toward the fallen buck. It had been a long time since he had tasted venison. The past week had left him with little more than a couple of rabbits, a bird, and some wild fruit. He needed to head back to his path by the river. That was where the larger animals would roam. But he hated the river. It was too fertile, too full of life. There he crossed the paths of too many other humans. Marion preferred to be alone. He hated the questioning looks of those who found his long, dark, tangled hair unappealing, or his wild fur attire that covered little more than necessary disturbing. His angular jaw was too hairy, his brown eyes too dark, his broad chest too tan. Worse, his social skills were far beneath the rest of those in the nearby town. But that was how he chose to live his life. This life of wandering the wilderness was the life for him. The deep woods was his home—the tree tops his ceiling, the trunks his walls, the ground his bed. And tonight, here, at home, he would feast.