The Via Stone
Read a short story sequel to A Land of Light and Shadow
Sedonia’s exiled princess returns home in this gentle tale about family, magic, and un-looked for help in disguise.
Featuring old faces, new mysteries, a stubborn cow, and a touching resolution, The Via Stone is perfect for fans of questing stories and loving family dynamics.
Hi, friends, I promised I would share more of Ardin’s story with you soon, and here it is.
In case you haven’t grabbed A Land of Light and Shadow yet, you can do that here (still for 99¢). The Via Stone is a sequel, so it’s best read after the novel.
If you’d like to read about my process in writing it and my (very tentative) plans for more Tales of Decamonde, read on! Otherwise, you can simply download your free copy of The Via Stone below. I hope you enjoy it!
Download the pdf:
(FYI, the cover art turned out black and white here)
This story is free, but if you’d like to offer dollar or two as a thank you, you can do that when you download the epub or here.
In honor of Juneteenth being tomorrow, I’ll be donating any income from this story from the month of June to the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
And now, for the mysterious inner workings of my writer’s brain (hehe)…
I’ve shared before how I’ve gone back and forth over the past five years about whether the next Tale of Decamonde wants to be a novel or a series of short stories. This year, I really wanted to commemorate my first book baby with a story. Ardin’s waited so long to go home! So I took out one of the plots I’d worked on and, with a little inspiration, I came up with a simple yet satisfying rough outline and wrote the story. It took me a surprisingly short amount of time.
Editing is another story, of course.
Sometimes, writing is picking up your pen and trusting that the magic has done its work in its own time. Sometimes you don’t know if the time is right until you pick up said pen.
I don’t think this is a finished draft. It’s not as polished as it could be, that’s for sure.
I’m not one to write vast tales of political intrigue and complex plots. Every complex plot I’ve tried to finish still sits in my drafts folder.
Instead, I really wanted to focus on the main characters’ relationships: the princess, Ardin, and her parents, Queen Maris and King Orien. And that’s what The Via Stone is really about.
I would love to write another short story this summer, and eventually, compile a several of them into a book. There’s a story featuring Ardin’s fun-loving cousins, Gatlin and Dominic, plus some very silly dragons, that’s been in my head for years. And I’ve been saying for years that this story is like The Hobbit if Gandalf and Bilbo were the same person and if, instead of dwarves, you have teenagers.
Maybe this is the year Sedonia’s magic works on me, too, and I will be able to revisit these beloved characters and their lands in other tales. Maybe the time is near when I can bring these tales back for you to enjoy.
Meet you over the orchard wall, friends.*
*One of my wonderful early readers for The Secret Heart of Maeve MacGowan started signing her emails like this. I like it.
Thanks for being here. My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land.
