BiBloggers

Pic: Passage of the Spirits by A. A Ruben - De Young Museum, San Francisco.

I’ve written a fantasy novel called Dry Land.  The novel is set in the most beautiful part of the U.K - Lindesfarne, Northumberland.  The island of Lindesfarne is connected to the mainland by a causeway twice a day during low-tide, where you can walk across the North Sea from Berwick upon Tweed.

This novel means a lot to me.  I would love for it to be published.  I’ve tried quite a few publishers and agents already, so now I’m sending it out on the web in the hopes that someone will give it a better chance.  I’ve had over 50 short stories published from 2007 - 2014, and my work has been translated into German and Italian.  Dry Land is 72,000 words long.  If you want to contact me about it, email me at billieprime@gmail.com.

One-line synopsis: There are creatures in the rain who want you to come home.  But is your home on the land or in the depths of the sea?

Excerpt:

New Dad hurried to the front door when we heard knocking.  He returned with a woman I recognised, but whose name I couldn’t remember for a moment.  It came to me as she staggered into the room: her name was Sylvie-Anna, but everyone called her Essay.  I had heard that her mum had been famous back in the day; she had appeared on television and everything.  I’d thought of Essay as being an odd woman on an island full of particularly unique people.  But then as the last few hours had proved, my family were pretty odd themselves.  Maybe being a failed lesbian, wannabe Goth would be my marker of oddness in the village.
Essay sat at the table, landing heavily on a chair.  Her untidy brown hair flopped this way and that. “You all have to get out of here.”  
New Dad passed the woman a brandy.  “Now calm down.”  He crouched beside her.  What’s the matter?”  His voice was gentle and reassuring.
Essay knocked back the drink in a few quick gulps.  “A storm.  A storm is coming this way.  We have to get my Ma.  We have to get out of here.”  The woman ran a hand through her hair; she was visibly shaking.
I checked out of the window once more.  I couldn’t see much, but at least it was dry.  “It rained on the way up, but it was over pretty quick.  I don’t think anything’s coming our way now.”
Essay reached into her coat pocket.  She held up a piece of folded newspaper, and waved it at me.  “Five across.  Seven letters for Shakespeare at sea.”  Essay looked right at me.  “The Tempest.  The storm.”
I looked from the paper to her.  “A crossword?”  This was mad, even for Essay.
Essay snarled at me.  “You think it’s just silly letters.  You think Essay’s just a daft woman.”  She turned to Jake.  “I’m telling you.  We don’t get out of here, we’re all finished.  I saw it.”  She grabbed hold of him, pulling at his jumper.  “I saw it in the paper, and then I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Geez, girl.  How much have you had to drink?”
Essay snapped her head around to stare at Nina.  “Don’t believe me then.”  She stood, rising a good head taller than New Dad.  “I’m going to the care home.  I’m taking my ma, and we’re getting gone.”  New Dad made a move to hold her arm, but Essay flinched away from him.  “Don’t try to stop me.  We got less than an hour.  Causeway won’t stay dry forever.  We don’t get out now; we don’t get out at all.”  
I swallowed with a burst of fear at the very mention of the approaching tide.
New Dad gave Essay a strange look.  “Let me come with you, yes?”
Essay crossed her arms, looking particularly embarrassed.  “Me truck gave out bottom of the road.  Seem to recall that you don’t drive.”
“Can’t you just siphon off a bit of Kim’s petrol?”  Nina suggested.  I tried not to glare at her.  I needed that fuel for myself.  There was nowhere else to get it on the island during the holidays.
“Truck’s diesel.  I wouldn’t ask for a lift if I weren’t desperate.”
I’d rather not leave my home seeing as I’d just got here, but I didn’t want Essay hanging around either.  However it seemed that the crazy old bird was in a state.  I sat back at the table and ate some more of my pie.
New Dad looked at me with his big brown eyes.  “Would you give Essay a lift to the care home?”
“What?”  I looked over at Essay as she paced across the room, checking her pocket watch.
New Dad gave me a stern look.  “Kimberly Rebecca Bowen, please don’t make me beg you to help our poor friend.  I’ll get on my knees if I have to, but your mother already made me do that once today.”
Nina looked horrified as Jake’s words sunk in, but I just sighed to myself.  New Dad was far beyond inappropriate.  He didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed.  
“Okay, but I want that cheesecake when I get back.”  I ran upstairs, fetched my jacket and my keys.  My bags lay strewn on the bed and floor.  I hadn’t even managed to unpack properly before I had to be off and out again.
Nina was waiting at the bottom of the stairs pulling on her thin jacket.  “No way am I staying here on my own.”  She put her sunglasses on, and opened the door.  “I don’t wanna sit with your newbie dad.”  She hurried to the front car door, scooting in front of Essay as she was just about to open it.  The older woman scowled at her, but said nothing.
Everyone got in.  I reversed the car, and then noticed that Mum was standing at the entrance to the Tide House, looking mightily pissed off beneath the fairy lights.
“I can only think that this panic you’re all in made you forget about me.  That must be what happened.” Mum wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and hurried to the car.  New Dad squeezed over, and sat my mum beside him.  
“Someone will have to stay behind,” I said.  “There isn’t room enough for another.  How’s Essay’s mum going to fit in the car?”
“Well we’re not all going to the mainland with you,” Mum stated.  “I’ve got errands to run first thing tomorrow.  We’re almost out of vodka and brown rice.  Where the hell am I going to get that?”
“I need the rice for a grain loaf I’m making,” Jake piped up.
“Kim can pop over to Greens in Berwick.  Just make sure it’s organic.”
“Mum!”
“Don’t cause a fuss, love.  You’ll just have to come back as soon as you take Essay and her mother across, won’t you?”  Mum adjusted her shawl.
“Bloody hell.”
“Stop complaining and let’s get a move on.  Sooner we start, sooner we’ll be done.”  Mum settled herself back against New Dad.
“Let’s be off.”  Essay prodded me on the shoulder, which I didn’t appreciate.  “Less chatting, more driving.”
I didn’t know when I’d become the taxi service for the whole damn village, but I was outnumbered.  I bit my tongue and started the car.  “So what makes you think the storm is going to be so bad, Essay?” I asked.
“I seen it.”
Nina looked at me sideways.  “Right.”  She twirled her finger against the side of her head, but made it look as if she was fiddling with her hair.  I stifled a laugh as I drove slowly over the very bumpy ground.
“Got a special friend on Farne.  He calls me every Thursday lunchtime.  He never rang.  I phoned him, but nobody picked up.  So I says to myself, call Barney what takes his boat out with the biologists.  I got nothing from him.  Everyone I tried, no response.  Took me own tub to the water, though it were in no fit state.  I see something I never seen before.  Five across.”  Her voice cracked on the last words.  I tried to keep my concentration for the road, but I could see Essay’s wide eyes in the rear view mirror.  I found myself unable to look away from her ashen face.  “A pillar of water.  It weren’t like any spout I seen.  It didn’t move forward or back.  It went up to heaven, just stood there, black like it were made of stone.”
“Are you serious?”  New Dad’s voice was a whisper.
“There’s something else,” she said slowly.  “I felt like someone was watching Essay.  It were just me and the sea.”  She wiped her face with trembling hands.  “I don’t need no crossword to tell me to get gone.”
The atmosphere in the car went cold and still.  
Mum eventually cleared her throat.  “That doesn’t sound very likely, dearest.”  Mum’s words were kind, but I still noticed her shrink back a little from Essay.  “We’re all under stress, what with the time of year.  Maybe we could all go back to the house.  You’re welcome to stay for dinner.  We have plenty of room.  Stay the night, love.”  Mum patted Jake’s hand.  “She could have the Hibiscus room.  You fixed the lights, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.  It’s lovely and warm.  Kim why don’t you turn us around and we can head back?”
“Don’t believe me,” Essay snapped.  “I don’t care no more.  I just wants me ma.”  Essay crossed her arms, stared out of the window.  “Keep your dinner.  Dead don’t need to eat.”