T.H.o.E: Part 1 of 3

    I'm not doing great at adulting this week. I should be working on my next novel series, hocking my wares by dropping off sell sheets at local stores and booksellers, getting pushy-pushy-pushy with marketing my published books, throwing around on all social media my cool book trailer that was made up by the team at Austin Macauley for An'ji, and getting a plan together for Tracon for when it comes out next month. What I am doing? None of that. Instead, I'm playing in a fan-fic story that will likely never leave my desktop, building vegetable gardens for the kids, and trying to stay ahead of laundry (which is physically impossible).
    I'd like to say that I'm feeling productive because of what I've accomplished, but my brain is wired that I only see what I haven't done yet and then feel bad about not working on what I "should" do. So, to my brain: I've still written 20,000 words in the past few weeks, my back yard really is nearly done and will provide some tasty treats later this growing season, and my house isn't a messy disaster because vacuuming, laundry, and play-space cleaning up happened this week. Those accomplishments still matter.
    For everyone else feeling like I am today, your "not-what-I-had-planned" accomplishments matter, too. Hope your weekend goes great, even if it's not what you had planned. :)

Book Trailer for 'An'ji'

Woo! I advertised :)

1. The Hour of Eternity

          The Fates met at the start of the day and took up their five seats of Decision. Future, Past, Present, Change and Chaos adjusted their robes and settled in for the long hour ahead of them.
          "Everyone ready?" Present asked. Change shifted in her seat once, then again, before lifting a single eyebrow at her sister. Chaos slouched, scowling, and kicked at the cornerless table in front of him. Past shot a tight-lipped glance in the young Fate's direction before nodding to Present that at least he was prepared. Future simply shrugged as if already bored and stared off into the shadows. Present shook her head, sighed, and turned the heavy glass.
          The sand remained suspended in the upper half.
          "The hour of eternity begins."
          "Oh, happy time," Chaos muttered, glaring at the center of the table. Present gave him the stiff-lipped look this time. Past stood and faced the shadow around them.
          "The world as it was," he stated simply.
          The shadow exploded into light, crystal sharp images of millions of lives a million times over erupted around the Fates. Everything that had occurred since their last meeting was displayed in textbook clarity all in one moment, advancing to the exact point that the glass had been turned.
          "The world as it is," Present stated. Every life lay open to them, frozen in time, in all its truth as of that moment. In the midst of the absolute stillness, one child was heard to sigh in her sleep. A grain of sand fell to the bottom of the glass.
          Present scowled at her sister.
          "She was uncomfortable," Change muttered, shifting again. Chaos snickered, drawing a frown from Past.
          "You two never learn," he reprimanded. "The seats you take so lightly are a great responsibility, and one that –"
          "There was no harm in it," Future interrupted. "All still passes as it should."
          Past gave the dreamy-eyed Fate beside him a sideways glance from under his thick brows. Chaos smirked across the table at them both.
          "The way the world shall be," Future said, cutting off any further arguments on the topic of Change and Chaos for the moment.
          Faster than times gone had been presented, the coming times blinked by. Drawing more and more hazy and blurry as time progressed, the shadows that had blanketed the room when the Fates had arrived began to block out the transparent and fuzzy images. When Future blinked, the images as seen by her eyes froze in place.
          About a dozen lives, stopped at various points throughout the history of the future, were shown in clear, solid detail.
          Chaos finally sat up and looked about at the lives before him. "Give me that one," he nodded to one of the lives off to his left.
          "No, give him the choice of his own Fate," Change argued.
          The other three Fates sat back and settled in for the long haul. The two younger ones starting their arguing this early in the hour over only a single life that had not even been set to be conceived yet was a bad foot to start on. But, as the three periodical Fates knew, Change and Chaos had to be decided between each other before paths could be decided. Otherwise they would have barely the gap of a generation between these meetings, and none of them could stand the others enough to see each other that often.