Thursday, July 31, 2014

(Spoiler Alert: Ice.) Over 3,000+ blog views and a little something I just found...

    Okay, so I'm getting back into my online writing courses after being horribly disorganised and constantly finding things to procrastinate. But no more! As I was recounting through my different assignments I found a small, third-person short-short story that I wrote about the Glass Girls from the Poseidon's Girls trilogy. Now, it felt rather weird. Maybe because I am now writing in first person. Maybe because it has something to do with what happens later in the book. Maybe even if it's because I wrote it long before Ice came to fruition! There may be some inaccuracies due to the roughness of this short-short story (I haven't read it again just yet. Just found it thought, 'Something to share!' and putting it straight up) and received the following comment from my teacher, 'Great start. Intriguing characters create mystery and hook the reader in.'
So as a celebration to the fact I have now received over 3,000+ blog views and over 4,000+ downloads of Ice since May, I would like to reveal this unedited, pre-Ice age (haha! Get it?) short-short story that I wrote to my teacher for my romance writing course, June Colbert in February, 2014.

Please note: The short story I have included in this post is especially a piece that readers who love the intrigue of Iris x Xanthias will love to bits! Lots of intrigue. Some kissing. Lots of toned muscle!

The following is taken from June Colbert's Amazon page:
I am a former teacher and published author of four previous young adult novels (through Hachette Livre/Lothian.) I was born in the North of England but moved with my family to Australia, where I studied at Sydney University before becoming a high school teacher. I've also had acting experience and for many years wrote engineering contracts and tenders.
Being an odd, strange and quite peculiar person, with a taste for the steampunk and the gothic, I began writing novels and short stories instead of contracts and tenders.
Watching young people gazing silently at their phones, ignoring everything and everyone around them but that tiny mesmerizing screen, gave me the idea for 'The Silencing - Text Me', my fifth novel.
My sixth book for young people, out now on Amazon Kindle, is a mega-easy to read diary style novel called 'Trout Pouts and Fake Bakes.' It's teen angst with added Botox.
'Vampyre Idol' is American idol with added fangs. The X Factor for the Undead.
'Drowning World' is climate change with added water, and nasty things in that water.
For younger readers, 'Fangface: The Wheelchair Werewolf'
and 'Nerd Boy and the Zombie Toe of Terror' have both now gone live on Amazon Kindle.

Without further ado, I present...

Tides of Love

A Poseidon's Girls Short-Short Story
by M.S. Watson
© 2014
 Iris couldn't really determine who she was.
Her family weren't all they were cracked out to be – literally, they weren't even of blood relation. She and her sister, Lainie, grew up knowing hardly anything was amiss. Now, everything changed.
It wasn't their adopted family's fault that they were discarded shortly after birth. Perhaps they were meant to be brunette rather than blonde, their eyes much too aqua than copper in colour. Perhaps it was simply the fact their real parents were attempted murderers.
At the very least, they had been saved, even if it had been by mythological beings. Poseidon and his wife Amphitrite defied what most deities appeared to do – cause havoc and hardship – and both Iris and Lainie owed their lives to them. Amphitrite in particular was a highly maternal figure in their lives, whilst Poseidon begrudgingly accepted that the girls were a part of their lives.
Iris loved this.
She stretched her toes in the shallows of the water and found that they instantly began to web together. In sync, the two feet waded a little deeper and she found herself pushing off the edge of the dock and into the body of the small waves. They lapped against her, the lusciousness of her legs becoming one, finned entity too blissful for her to contain her sigh of happiness.
In the distance whilst she was finned and one with the sea, she could hear her sister by Atlantic Beach, trying to coax her love interest Ryker in full view of his girlfriend, Isabella. Her sister's song rang through the harmonics of the ocean, joined by the sounds of sea life as they were drawn to her beautiful voice. Iris rolled her eyes and turned in the opposite direction. At least by now she'd told Starden – Lainie's current boyfriend – about Lainie's ways to gain Ryker through him.
Guilt rang through her like a bell, leaving her jolted and nervously rubbing her nails against the skin of her fingers. The ocean called to her and pulled her along with the currents, deeper and warmer until she reached the bottom of the ocean. The gentle prodding of the currents left her feeling sleepy, her short body no match for its coaxing ways.
Had she been entirely human, it would have killed her, but as it was she found that sleeping on the ocean floor had a calming effect that sleeping on land failed to provide. Her legs were bound in beautiful, luminescent scales that shone aqua blue in the light provided by the sun far above the surface. When she moved, her eyes half-lidded, she watched dreamily as the magic Amphitrite had had instilled within her left an aqua-lilac misty substance drifting about.
It got caught in the current and moved to her hair, leaving it stained with small lilac and aqua strips through the bleach-blonde strands. The essence of Amphitrite's goddess power ran through her veins and she wondered about her mortality. She almost completely shut her eyes when there was a disturbance in the water, followed by a tail narrowly missing her face. When she whipped her head around, she saw only bubbles. She frowned, turning to face the opposite direction when the movement came again and she froze time, using the gift that Poseidon had given her.
She still couldn’t use it for prolonged amounts of usage, but in that moment she was able to see who had disturbed her calmness. There, beside her in mid-glide, was Xanthias.
He was handsome, as always, but he was focused on her. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she looked at him, his golden tail caught in the sun’s rays. He couldn’t possibly know what she was doing, but his eyes were fixed on her, as serious as the day he’d asked her to stay with him, in the safety of his home rather than risk her life to save Chris and Nevada’s.
This was the first time she’d seen him up-close since he’d started avoiding her following Cronus’ rise from Tartarus. She’d been trying to contact him ever since.
He looked more of a God than Cronus ever would, all tight muscle that wasn’t too much but still showed definition. With his golden tail and dark hair, his eyes were mysteriously cyan. Everything about him called to her.
Ignoring her best instincts, she swam forward and kissed him.

Did you love this story?

Would you like to hear more?

Head to Smashwords to download Ice for free. Glass Bones is currently a paperback giveaway for AU residents only (due to astronomical postage costs). Frost is set for release on the 1st of September. Tempest will be released in 2014, too.
Forward this to your friends and family, spread the love around. Comment on what you'd like to see more of in the future books and short stories. I have some plans for Starden. That's all I can reveal right now. In the meantime, any smaller updates will be accessible at www.facebook.com/officialmswatson and @MissaBooks on Twitter.

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