"The road is covered by jagged serrations of ice hard as iron. I pull aside the boot soles that are strapped to my feet. Underneath, my feet are streaked with cuts and dark abrasions. Thorns, branches and sharp ice graved their signs on me unknown, leaving behind a medley of runes written in some strange tongue."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"I ran. A path seemed to open before me into the woods, some small track to a little town, a forgotten village.

I sensed the watcher—keeping pace with me in the thickening forest, maneuvering silently through the clasping vines, the slapping branches and heavy windfall logs—close to me at times.

Then my poor left foot betrayed me, catching on an errant vine and sliding helplessly on slick rock. I tumbled into a bramblebush, pushing Christian out of harm’s way before I plunged headfirst into the misbegotten backwater of a summer-shrunk creek.

I pulled myself out of the deep and stinking sludge, clawed my way up the granite, and reached for my crying son, his blanket caught precariously in brambles. But my foot lodged in a fold of robe, and then I fell without stopping, slamming backward against the great unforgiving rock.

The distant thrumming of the hooves still shuddered through me as the stone caught my head on the way down.”

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

SOURCE: lori-rocks

"I am holding now in my hand Moten’s oldest manuscript, the History he scribed throughout his life. The edges of the bits of vellum and parchment that he sewed together into this makeshift book are ragged and irregular. He made this thing of his own labor, out of what was left behind when the true manuscripts were made. Remnants and rags made up his book."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

Reading the ARC of SINFUL FOLK, being released in January 2014 !

"I sleep as a lost child dead to the world, cuddled with the rest of the orphans into that great nest of straw in the open hall of Canterbury Abbey. The warmth of sleeping bodies drew me in. On that first night in Canterbury, my belly full of warm gruel, embraced by other sleeping children, hearing their breathing light and sweet in the night, I felt myself in heaven."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

Picture: Andrea Mantegna. Madonna with Sleeping Child. c. 1465-70.

"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"Now I can hear other sounds. We are surrounded by whistles, calls, and woodland rustling. Birds. My ears are full of the faint rhythm of wood fowl settling down for the night.

I can see larks, swallows and waxwings. Bullfinches too, flashing their black and red plumage and white rumps as they fly away, chasing seeds that remain here, in these unburned woods.

Close-at-hand, a robin twitters on a low branch, and listens for another that answers from beyond the farmhouse.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk 

PHOTO: scienceinprogress:untitled by rustleofleaves- on Flickr.

“Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I wipe my face with a handful of straw and look out on the floating ice. 

The day before my father died, my mother did something I still don’t understand. She took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea—the thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the rhythm never ceasing. My mother waited until we were out of sight of land. She squinted against the bright sunlight, making sure we were alone. And then she taught me something: strange words in a foreign tongue, a lilting singsong cadence to it    She squinted against the bright sunlight, making sure of our isolation.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"As the great stone gate of my cell slams shut again, there are the skittering sounds of insects and mice, the distant shrieks of prisoners in pain in other cells, but I do not fear the vermin or my guards. I fear the dark. I can see nothing now but those faint fairie lights that drift in utter darkness against my eyes."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"Time to go. I move quickly now between the lecterns toward the door. As the guards come in the door, I let the hood drop low, I seize on a book on a shelf near at hand, and hold it near to my face, as if I cannot be stopped from my studies, even in the midst of perambulation. Narrow is my escape. The door of the Scriptorium opens and I sweep through it, imperious in my black Brother’s robe, manuscript held tight."

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

PHOTO: St.Martha’s Church ~ Surrey, England

“The room is round as a turrent and full of light. The roof curves up to an arch. The fire has a screen, and through narrow metal holes carved in cunning shapes, comes a rosy glow. Rushlights burn on each wall, beside tapestries that cover closed and shuttered windows. It reminds me of Nell’s neat croft—the arch she added to the door, the glowing oilcloth across the holes in her walls. Nell’s house was like a tiny hall of a lady or lord, a woodland nobility.”

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

Medieval manuscript… with a paw-print from a cat, in the original text… some monk let the cat walk all over his wet ink!

"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"Ten years ago, at Michaelmas, the early autumn hours were fading into dusk. The day was dying slow. I had fallen off the straight and narrow into a place of harsh rocks and broken brambles, like the story of Satan falling from heaven on Saint Michael’s Day. But I had fallen from no heaven, and those who pursued me were no angels."

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

PHOTO SOURCE: Morning glow

(Source: cachaemic)