Once, in the Time of One Moon, only Luna danced as Earth’s small sister. The land and ocean were separate. The land was dry, the ocean tame. Now in the Time of Two Moons, the land and ocean are no longer separate. The land is no longer dry, the ocean no longer tame.
It is the year of Two Moons 328. I am of the Last People. We are forbidden to make record but I write in the old language because my mother, the last of The Akashic High Priestess, taught and commanded me so for those of The New World, in the time that is next and for those who do not know. My mother is dead. Her name is Nela. My name is Neko.
This is not sand. This stays.
⍜°
400 years after the arrival of the second moon, the Last People face a crossroads: stay on their crumbling ocean citadel of Mitpar and die, or be led to The Mountain by Neko, the last descendant of The Akashic High Priestess, and the sole inheritor of the secret prophecy…
Once upon a dream…
The inspiration for a story, the hint of a possibility for a story, the seed – if you’ll allow the cliche – for a story, can come from anywhere and everywhere if you’re available to it and, most importantly, willing to make the connections and ask the questions that draw to that seed the energy to grow into something.
With The Fulcrum, that seed was a simple image in my mind while I sat in Santa Anastasia, a centuries-old basilica in Verona. With Neko, it was a dream I had in 2021 while holidaying in Knysna.
Dreams are usually a poor source of story material; what feels like a kick-ass idea in the middle of the night needs only the slightest hint of daylight thinking to unravel it as a possible lead.
And yet, on this particular morning, I woke into daylight with the dream sequence intact and still sensible (I’ll say which one much later when the book is actually out) and the world of the story fully formed.
In my journal I wrote ‘Which reminds me of a dream that will be a story. His name is Niko. The history of our future. A journal of a man from the last surviving human settlement on Earth. A man who writes though he is forbidden to…’
As I lay in bed examining what I had, drawing to it questions and ideas that had been floating about me for some time, I knew that I had to find out who Niko (now Neko) was and why this sequence I’d dreamed had happened. It was an excavation really, an uncovering and then piecing together, of the culture and scenes presented in the dream.
The story sat with me until I was able to write it – I was still fully focused on The Fulcrum – and that time only came in May 2023. But I am nothing if not persistent and passionately loyal to my characters, so here we are.
I chose a novella format not only because that’s the requirement of the story, but because I honestly just wanted to try something short after The Fulcrum. A palate-cleanser of sorts. It’s also the first loosely sci-fi piece I’ve written and the first-person voice I’ve taken.
I’ll be doing the cover now (something along the lines of the cover image above) and find myself once again somewhat down about the fact that I can’t just pay someone to do it since my design skills are limited, but I’ll trust that this is as it is and as it is is good enough.
Also, I’m thinking of trying out a preorder goodie the way I see other authors and publishers doing but I’ll need to learn what that business is about before I offer it. But when I do, you’ll be the first to know.
Thanks for sticking around.
t
Photo by Lefty Kasdaglis on Unsplash
TANYA MEESON 