Snippet from FROZEN DREAMS.

The new intro. My wife liked this one better.

I woke up in the night, ripped from a dream of Jeannie. And it wasn’t an easy wake-up. I went from sleepy-time to crouched-by-the-bed, staring-out-at-the-darkness in no time flat. The darkness stared back at me for a while before it turned itself back into my bedroom. Which was also my office; neat trick, that. I should take it on the New California vaudeville circuit.

I shook my head to clear it of the sleep-thinking and realized only then that my left hand was full of gun. I must have grabbed my revolver from the shoulder holster (now carefully draped over one chair, as per the Lore) while I was waking up. That made me shake my head, but in a different way. A Shamus wakes up with his gun in his hand, something’s up and it’s never gonna go down easy.

But there was nothing in the office. Or bedroom. Not even in the kitchen, which was barely able to be its own thing.

I tossed the revolver back on the bed in a way that would have made an Old American wince, but then they had bullets that actually worked. Ours tend to explode whenever a mage sees them; not that New California has any mages.

Well, one mage. But he didn’t count. And he wasn’t New Californian, and would never be.

I fumbled with the string for the lightstone on the ceiling; I was rewarded with a second or two of light, and then a flash and a pop as the magic inside the artifact short-circuited. Guess I should have gotten a new one from the Adventurer’s Guild after all.

Well, I preferred the light coming from the bay-facing window anyway. I opened the curtains to see if there was something going down on the street, but it was just Cin City out there, as asleep as it ever gets. And above it, standing watch out in the bay, was Mount Jeannie.

The light from the magical stars hovering just above the iceberg’s crest shone as brightly and reassuringly as they always did; and if the window was open I’d be able to feel the cool, wet beso breeze from Mt Jeannie that makes this town livable. Nothing was wrong, in other words. So why did I wake up, with a gun in my hand?

I didn’t know the answer, yet. But I figured I would, pretty soon. And I didn’t waste any time wondering whether I’d like it.

One thought on “Snippet from FROZEN DREAMS.”

  1. Looks good. Established the genre, character and the basics of the world building pretty smoothly.

Comments are closed.