by Seth Mullins
BLURB:
Following the rigors
of their self-made tour of the West, the members of the groundbreaking and
volatile band Edge of the Known - "hands down, craziest band on
Earth" - have an unprecedented chance to finally expose their music to the
world. Unfortunately, singer/guitarist Brandon Chane, founder member and
erratic genius of the group, is weathering a spiraling trip through an abyss of
heartbreak and despair.
His personal pain
threatens to derail his band's progress even as it fuels some of its most
incendiary songs. To further complicate matters, his mentor, Saul Mason, is
weathering his personal crisis and no longer seems to be the all-knowing spiritual
savant that Brandon first perceived him to be.
The road ahead looks
bleak; and once more, he turns to the one thing that has sustained him
throughout the course of his wounded, conflicted and inspired life: His Muse.
"We'd all thrown
our fates to the wind, trusting in the unknown - in the Unseen, as our EP so
proudly proclaimed - and that leap had thus far landed us in a place where we
couldn't even grope our way forward in the dark anymore."
Discovering his voice
was only the first step of the journey. Now he must somehow learn to trust the
depths from which it comes, and the unknown horizons that it may sweep him away
to, even as every part of his personal world seems to be falling apart.
EXCERPT:
I gazed down at the street below and felt the whole spinning
and sickening free-fall that could bring me to kiss that pavement. A couple
walked by, hand in hand, oblivious to the clamor of Armageddon. I gave up in
that moment. I couldn’t stop her. The gods had granted Janie complete executive
power over my damned soul.
Her heart was turning away, shining its light elsewhere? I
was never going to touch her again? Suddenly the fall from the balcony seemed
the much kinder terror.
“You need someone who can really meet you in those places.
And I…”
“Don’t!” I managed. “Don’t act like you’re doing this for my
sake. I can decide what’s good for me!”
“Fair enough.” Her voice was wispy, insubstantial: An echo
of the distance that had already claimed us. “I need to feel like I can keep
up.
“It’s like… you’re living in this world that’s being totally
reinvented every day. And I’m sort of stumbling along trying to figure out what
the rules are.”
“There aren’t any rules!” I protested. “Just be with me,
and…”
“I can’t.”
Janie bit her lip. One fat tear slid down her cheek. I doubt
that she’d wanted to say it so bluntly. But what gentle way is there?
Folding chairs, and a wooden rail rife with splinters;
cigarette smoke lingering in the still spring air. Nothing there to cling to,
to spare me from the plunge.
This can’t be happening!
I’d once told her that if it ever came to this I would
understand. I’d been a goddamn liar. The death of something so beautiful and
divinely inevitable could never be understood; it was incomprehensible.
Janie reached over and squeezed my arm. “Hey. I do treasure
what we’ve shared.”
“Then don’t turn your back on it and let it die!” I growled.
I could feel my face curling into a snarl. I couldn’t stop it. Janie withdrew.
Having lost the focal point of my anger, I reverted to teetering on the edge of
the precipice.
“I really tried, Brandon,” she said.
It was that voice both forlorn and resolute, and every man
hears his end in it.
AUTHOR BIO:
Seth Mullins
first conceived of his dream to write novels in his early teens, and this one
desire has stayed with him throughout all the other myriad twists and turns of
life. His inspirations include methods of inner exploration such as dream-work
and shamanism and his experiences as a songwriter and performing musician. He
studied creative writing at Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico and Lane
Community College in Oregon.
Seth has
lived in Connecticut, New Mexico, Oregon and (currently) Vermont.
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6 comments:
Thank you for hosting me!
Great post, thanks for sharing the excerpt! I really enjoyed reading it :)
I enjoyed the excerpt! Gripping sentence: It was that voice both forlorn and resolute, and every man hears his end in it. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thanks for the excerpt...I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you Betty. That was one of my favorite lines of the excerpt too. I thought maybe a lot of people - men and women - might relate. :)
Is there a genre you have not written in yet that you would like to?
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