HEART OF SILVER Chapters: Excerpt 1

Good morning, lovelies!

As promised, I am posting the chapters of the rough draft--emphasis on rough--of Heart of Silver, the sequel to Heart of Iron.

A quick note: this book has multiple timelines, bouncing between the American Civil War, WWII, the 1970s, and the modern day as pacing and tension dictates. However, to keep the tattered remains of my sanity, I am writing this story chronologically. In other words, I've written all the Civil War stuff and gotten a good start on the WWII stuff, but haven't even written the prologue yet, because that takes place in the modern day.

This also means that these chapters will be posted chronologically as they happen to Patrick, Cyrus & Co, but that is not how they're going to be presented in the final product. Does that make sense?

Also also, all of the Civil War stuff are excerpts from "history books," as are a couple of the WWII chapters. Meaning you're going to get frontloaded by a bunch of exposition that will--theoretically--be woven much more naturally into the final version.

Rough drafts, guys. They're a wild ride.

I cannot give a full list of trigger warnings at the moment, because even I don't know everything that's going to go down. However, so far I can promise blood, gore, and some historically-accurate racism, especially toward Patrick. There's also some sexism toward Janine. (Her deadname is Jackson Clark, btw, if you're wondering why so much attention is given to this random Civil War soldier. The historian writing that book, of course, would have no idea of Janine's current whereabouts or the fact that she's trans.) I will, of course, give trigger warnings as they appear in specific chapters.

Because I'm a history nerd who's trying to put some sense of accuracy in this story about dragons and werewolves, I'm trying to use language and terms that would've been used in those time periods. This is why Patrick and everyone around him refers to himself as an Indian in '40s and '70s, while in the modern day he and his friends use the term Native, which is most often the preferred term these days. Stuff like that.

But because this is a rough draft, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these WWII vets are talking in a very modern way, at least until I can go back and fix their dialect. This is why I don't do historical fiction; it's a whole other step in the process.

Final note: the first three chapters that I have in this excerpt are free. All the other chapters that I'll be posting (hopefully every day, especially since I have a decent buffer) will be at the $2 Fairy Tier. This is because the economy sucks ass, and as much as I'd like to give away my stories for free, I have such hobbies as eating and enjoying shelter. If $2 a month is too much, you're just going to have to wait until either the Kickstarter (if I decide to do one for this project), or when it's available on bookshelves in 1-3 years.

Excerpts are uploaded as PDFs for my convenience, and in a dyslexic-friendly font for yours.