# A Chance Beginning: Book One of the Shadow's Fire Trilogy



## Nosretap23 (May 13, 2014)

*A Chance Beginning: Book One of the Shadow's Fire Trilogy Ch 1 (2000 words)*

Here is the first chapter of my new (and first) fantasy adventure. Please give me honest feedback and if you're interested, check it out at amazon.com. Its been out for only a week and I am pretty happy with my first week's worth of sales. Thank you all and I hope this isn't too much to read. FYI some of the spacing got screwed up when I pasted it, so I apologize for that.

ChapterOne
*Distant Dreams*​Befel threw his rake to the ground. He looked to the east. The sun barely peaked over a horizon of freshly planted fields, divided into neat rows by an oxen-pulled plow.
“It’s not even close to noon and it’s already too hot,” Befel grumbled. He wiped a bead of sweat from his tanned forehead.
“I love the smell of early morning,” Erik said,smacking his hoe against the hard root of a tall, bushy weed. Witch’s Brush his father called it for the shape in which the weed grew, all bushy and stiff and stringy. “It smells like it just rained, doesn’t it? I love the rain. I can’t wait for the monsoons.”
“No,” Befel spat, “it doesn’t smell like rain. It smells like more work, a day full of it.”
“It’s no different than yesterday.” Erik smiled asthe thick, brown root began to crack and give way to his iron tool. “Got you, you stubborn plant.”
Erik squatted and grunted, tugging on the toughroot. It didn’t move.
“That’s the problem,” Befel said.
“What is?” Erik looked up at his brother. “Am Idoing something wrong?”
“No. Seriously, Erik, I don’t know about you sometimes. Don’t you listen? The problem is that we did this yesterday.” Erik just stared at his brother, shrugging his shoulders.
“And we’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. And then the day after that, and the day after that, and for the rest of the days of our life,” Befel continued.
“Not for the rest of our lives; well, your life at least. This will all be yours someday.” Sitting on the ground, Erik smiled, hands still wrapped around the weed’s root, feet propped inside the small hole hishoe dug around the weed. He grunted and pulled on the plant again.
“And you think that makes me happy?”
“I don’t know. It’d make me happy.” Erik leaned back and the plant’s root began to give way.
“I need to leave.” Befel brushed an errant strand ofsandy colored hair out of his face.
“You had better pick up your rake before mother seesyou and gives you a tongue lashing.” Erik held up the knee-high, bushy weed likea conquering hero.
“I don’t care.” Despite his words, Befel looked overhis shoulder at the house and snatched his wood-pronged tool off the ground. “Ineed to leave.”
“And what would you do? Where would you go?”
Befel leaned against the warped handle of his rakeand turned his face to the east. The sun sat several hours above the horizon,glaring at Befel like a condescending eye, one that brought with it unbearable heat and burnt skin.
“East,” he muttered. “I’ll go east.”

That night, Erik sat behind his father’s barn,staring at the moon and the stars hanging in a cloudless, crisp sky.
“What are you?” He pointed to each star like bubbleshe might pop floating along a gently churned stream. A sudden breeze glided along the still fields. It kicked up loose dirt that swirled into short-lived tiny tornadoes. Despite the warm ground, Erik shivered, the gentle wind carryinga coolness collected from the dozens of ponds that dotted the farmstead.
The moon stood high this night, looking down on the Eleodum farm. Cricketsand night birds sang by the darkness of the world. Courageous rabbits wandered into newly planted fields, the moon like a beacon lantern spying a fugitive hidden in a dark corner. Their daring could be a death sentence if Erik’s father caught them—or a wandering fox or coyote for that matter—and still they braved the chance at tasty seeds and young shoots. Erik threw a rock at one, a little grey fellow with a skinny tail and short, fat ears. The skinny, grey-haired creature scurried away. Erik watched it hop to the first row oftrees in his father’s apple orchard and disappear.
“You’re lucky you’re not fat and I’m not hungry, orI would’ve hit you and had you for late night supper,” Erik lied. He could never hit anything with a rock, except for himself, testimony of the dying weltjust below his hairline—a failed attempt to hit another rabbit with a sling the week before. His cousin, Bryon, would never let him live that down. Erik seemedto have a soft spot for small, furry creatures.
“How can I kill them? They look like one of Beth or Tia’s toys,” he would tell his brother, his heart almost aching as Befel and Bryon laughed at the rabbit or squirrel they had just killed, jiggling them about by the ears or tails as if they were, indeed, dolls.
“You say that and then go hunt with father, skinning and gutting whatever he kills right then and there,” his brother would respond.
“It’s different,” Erik would reply.
“How?”
“It just is. They’re not small and furry I guess.”
Erik heard the crunching of wood and iron hooves on pebble covered ground and the jingling of iron bridle and bit—his father’swagon and their mule.
“You’re early,” Erik muttered. He rolled over to his hands and knees and peered around the corner of the barn. A lantern hung fromthe wagon’s post by an iron hook and bobbed back and forth each time the wagon rolledover the bumps and dips of the rough road. His father’s head hung, chin dippedalmost to chest, the long, thin pole of a whip leaning against the footboard.It moved out of view, but Erik heard the crunching of the wheels and the clopping of hooves stop. Erik crawled along the backside of the barn and peeredaround another corner.
The wagon sat in front of his house, right in frontof a small, wooden gate that opened to a slab stone walkway. Red, pink, whiteand yellow roses that glimmered and shined even in the moonlight bordered thewalkway on both sides. His father slumped in the wagon’s seat and sighed sodeeply, Erik could hear it from where he crouched.
“You’re not due back for another two days,” Erik mumbled.He stayed just inside the shadow the barn created. How many times had he gottenin trouble for being out by the barn this late?
His father removed his wide-brimmed straw hat and turnedit repeatedly in his hands for at least several minutes, inspecting it, poking his index finger through several of the holes that dotted it. Erik smiled, rememberingmore than one occasion when his mother tried to throw that thing away. Finally,the Farmer Eleodum climbed down and leaned against the side of his wagon, backfacing the farmhouse, arms crossed across his chest. Erik heard him whisper,but couldn’t hear what he said. Then, the front door opened. A wash of candle and lantern light flooded the wood porch. Erik’s mother walked into the night,wiping her hands with the white apron she always wore. She walked to herhusband and stood in front of him. An old and yet well cared for shawl of whiteand red hung around her shoulders to ward off the same breeze that caused Erikto shiver. The middle-aged farmwife nuzzled her forehead into the man’s hard chest, finally resting her cheek there. She closed her eyes.
“You’re home early, my love,” she said, her eyes still closed. His tensed shoulders relaxed a bit at her soft voice. “Was the market good to us?”
After a moment, she looked up at him, head at hischin’s level, eyes trained on his, a smile on her face. Erik’s father alwaysdoted on his mother, often mentioning how not on a single day in her life, noteven on her wedding day, did that woman wear any sort of paint on her face likethe ladies from Hámon and still, here in the darkness of midnight, her lips gloweda red as bright as her roses.
Erik found it interesting how so many people reveredhis father, patron of the Eleodum Farmstead. It didn’t seem to matter how talla man was—he and his brother stood eye level with their father and, yet, theyfelt like he towered over them. People watched him from some seat below as hestood behind a pulpit and spoke truths and wisdom. Farm elders, travelers,broad shouldered youths, even wealthy merchants from Hámon, they all listenedintently to Rikard Eleodum when he spoke, and they all seemed to revel in whathe said.
“The blooming market.” He grumbled and turned hishead away. He could never meet her eyes and curse at the same time. “To hellwith the bloody, flaming, maggot infested market.”
“That bad, my love?” She dropped her apron and rubbedher husband’s shoulders.
“The sheep-loving dung beetles in the market,” hehissed.
“Husband!” She whispered loudly. “Must you curse so?”
“The nobles of Hámon.” He finally met her gaze.
Looking into those blue eyes could be dangerous. Erik knew that all too well. They saw lies. They read minds. It felt they turned him to stone more than once.
“They grow crops half as good as ours. On the backsof little better than slaves, too. They demand the highest price. They leavenothing for us. Those burning, flaming idiots think it’s the seed that givesthem crops that aren't even worth cattle feed. So they demand the first seed;and at lowest price.”
“Shh . . . You’ll wake the girls.” She soothinglyrubbed his chest. “We will make do. We always do. We will send up our prayersevery night and the Creator will watch over us.”
“There is talk that Hámon is expanding its lands.”Erik’s father pushed on as if he hadn’t heard his wife. “They mean to take our lands, lands our family has farmed for hundreds of years as free men. They willcome take our lands, demand a price we can’t pay to keep them, and then turnaround and make us work them anyways, sending our best crop and livestock tosome noble who sips spiced wine and walks around in slippers all day. Thosebastards!”
“Rikard, please,” Erik’s mother scolded, folding herarms across her chest.
“I am sorry, my love.” He pulled her close. “I onlyfear that I will not be able to pass this land to Befel, as my father did to meand his to him. I also fear that I will not be able to give Erik a small plotof land that he might work and grow for his own like my brother did. I fearthat my daughters will not have strong, faithful men to marry, ones who willprotect them and put a roof over their heads and food on their tables and sayprayers for them every night.”
“It can’t be true.” His mother closed her eyes. She sighed and pressed herself closer to her husband, wiping a single tear from hereye. Her auburn hair blazed in the moonlight and Rikard kissed that hair. “Theycan’t mean to take our land.”
“The world is changing, Karita. We can only hope theCreator will have mercy on us.” Rikard stared over the top of his wife’s head,looked in the direction of Erik. The boy slinked even farther back into the shadow. Under the darkness of the barn, he could barely see his own hand. Certainly, his father couldn’t see him. Still, Erik thought he did. “And if they do come,we will fight.”

Erik shook his brother awake. Befel turned over,eyes still closed, blanket pulled tight around his shoulders.
“What?” he groaned, eyes squinted. The dimcandlelight that peaked into his room seemed too bright.
“I want to go with you.”
“Where?” Befel mumbled, rubbing his forehead. Heplopped his head back down onto his pillow, pulling his blanket nearly all theway over his head.
“East.”
Befel lifted his head, propped himself up on both elbows. “Quiet,” he hushed. “If mother hears that kind of talk, she’ll switchboth of us. Go to bed. I was only kidding anyway.”
“No you weren’t. I saw that look in your eyes, the look you get when you set your mind to something. You were serious, and I want to go with you.”
“Why?” Befel asked.
“Just because,” Erik explained. “Because ofsomething I heard father say tonight.”
“Father’s home?”
Erik nodded. “How are you getting east?” he asked.
“Jovek’s oldest, Jensen, left last month,” Befelexplained, his voice hushed. “He traveled to Bull’s Run, so I heard. He plannedon either buying his way into a merchant’s train traveling east across the Plains,or going south to Finlo and buying his way onto a ship so he might sail east.”
“A boat?” Erik questioned. “I think I’d rather goacross the Plains.”
“It doesn’t matter how we get there,” Befel scolded.
“How will we buy our way into a caravan?” Erik asked.
“I have enough money saved up, I think. Bryon will go with us too. He has money also.”
“You talked to our cousin before me,” Erik spat in aloud whisper. A hurt look crept across his face.
“I didn’t know you wanted to go,” Befel retorted unapologetically. “Up until tonight you loved this farm life. Somehow, doingthe same thing day in and day out appeals to you.”
“I still love this farm.”
“Then why do you want to go? Are you just trying toget me in trouble?”
Erik ignored his brother’s prodding. “There is money in the east?”
“More than we can imagine,” Befel replied. “And an easy life. Not this getting up with the cock at daybreak and working until the stars come out. Within two years, we’ll have homes of our own. Clean clothes,servants, beautiful women.”
“Enough money to buy a farm; to buy acres of land?”
Befel cocked his eyebrow, tilted his head curiouslyand nodded. “More than we can imagine,” he repeated.
“When do we leave then?” Erik asked.
“We wait,” Befel explained. “We wait until afterharvest. Then we leave this life behind.”

Erik opened his eyes with a sudden, quick breath.His nostrils immediately curled as the smell of rotten food, dung, dirt, and stalewater hit his nose. He rubbed his face hard, rubbed his eyes and sat up. Heleaned against the wall that made up the back rooms and kitchen of _The Red Lady_. Befel and Bryon stillslept, curled up under tattered blankets, bent arms used as pillows. The starssparkled overhead, at least what he could see of them past three and fourstoried buildings. He poked at them as if he poked bubbles floating in a . . .he smiled. What a childish thing to think?
“I haven’t had that dream in months.” Erik pulledhis knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs.
A heavy, hacking, phlegm-filled cough from fartherdown the alley echoed off the walls of the alley’s buildings. He hated theothers that slept in this alley. His mother always told him _hate _was a strong word, but that’s whathe felt. They used all their coin for drink and spat at him when his cousin andbrother weren’t around. At night, they looked like shadowy ghosts lumberingfrom wall to wall, stumbling over trash and other bodies.
Erik didn’t need to look to his feet to see whatmade the tiny squeaking sound. He kicked and sent a western rat, white ratsfather called them, flying into a wooden cart. They seemed indestructible andthis one, not as big as they could get, bounced back to its feet and hissed atErik before scurrying away. He preferred the lumberyards to this. The smell ofcut wood seemed to remind him of home, even mixed with the smells of unwashedclothing and open waste pits. He also favored the hot meals and the cot tosleep on to a hard, cobbled alleyway and begging for scraps, but no work meantno work. By heaven, he would take the pigsties of Venton to this. Even when heate slop with the pigs, he ate better than this.
“How much longer?” he quietly asked himself.
He lay back down, resting his head against a sack ofold rags a cook from _The Red Lady _hadthrown into the alley. He needed his sleep. Tomorrow might prove to be a bigday.


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## dmr400 (May 24, 2014)

What is the time period for this piece?


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## Nosretap23 (May 28, 2014)

Medieval Europe time period setting, although it is a fantasy world.


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## WechtleinUns (May 28, 2014)

Hello, Nosretap23!

As far as stories go, you have a solid foundation for an epic story. I can easily imagine this as the early stages of an epic storyline, with either Erik or Befel finding their way as heroes and back to their farm and family in grand style. You might, however, want work on the pacing and the smoothness of the prose. Vast tracts of time pass between the different scenes in this chapter, and much of the good stuff is only talked about.

For example, you have their father come home and inform his family that the nobles of Hàmon (Jamon?!) are going to steal their land and force the family into destitution. Instead of that, why not show the father at the market, actually dealing with the nobles of Hamon. Also, it's not really likely that their father would have been able to meed to the Nobles at the market. Nobles tend to have foremen and production and distribution channels to do that stuff for them. There is absolutely no reason why a noble would personally show up at the market to hawk their wares.

Furthermore, even if a Noble had shown up at market, why would the Nobles inform their father that they were going to take their land? But even with respect to this, Nobles in Medieval Europe were not merchants. Or rather, the Nobility was quite divorced from the Mercantile class. You say that this is a fantasy world, but it seems like a rather generic one. The kind that you usually find in RPG's and one shot fantasy Dungeons & Dragons settings.

But let's assume that these nobles are merchants as well. It's much more likely that the Nobles would keep their prices low, so as to out compete with the farmer father of Erik and Befel. This is a common practice in non American markets, and it was a very common practice in medieval times, ultimately giving rise to the Medieval guild system: The big companies run all the small ones out of business, and then get together to form a cartel and jack up prices. This is how it works(worked!?) with OPEC, the Oil and Gas Russian Oligarchies, as well as the big Industrial Elite families of Japan and other Developed Eastern Regions of the world.

Since the father was let into the market in the first place, I'm assuming that no such cartel has been formed yet in your fantasy setting. This is because, usually, cartels enact high barriers to entry once they are formed. Indeed, if the nobles are clearly offering inferior goods at exorbitant prices, then I don't see why the clientele of the market isn't flocking to the family farm in droves. By all accounts, this family should be doing extremely well.

Problems of Logistics aside, you might also want to try grouping your story into better paragraphs. To be perfectly honest, I can't tell how you originally formatted the paragraphs of this document, due to the errors that occurred when you uploaded the story. However, the fact that you didn't try to correct those errors back into the proper paragraphs is telling. It might be that you don't think proper paragraph divisions are all that important, but not so.

A paragraph is like a snapshot of the scene that you are wanting to tell. If you think about movies, everything from a single camera angle is like a single paragraph. So if you include things in a paragraph that don't belong in that paragraph, and you do this often enough over a long enough section of story, then it's like watching a movie where artifacts from the next scene bleed into the first, and creates a very strange and ugly feeling in the mind of the viewer/reader. The eye will develop a tendency to discount paragraph breaks, and ultimately the story degrades into a panoply of irradiated detail.

But by dividing your paragraphs properly, you can add structure and atmosphere to your novel much more easily! Let's look at some examples: There are generally four different types of paragraphs that you can write:


*Descriptive Paragraphs --* These types of paragraphs are primarily used to give the reader an idea of what is in the scene. This is like the view from the camera angle. To do these types of paragraphs, you only want to write sentences that show what is in the scene, and that describe the characteristics of the things inside the scene.

example:_" Erik and Befel stood outside in the fields, though not too far away from the farm house. The sun still peeked from out the distant horizon, but already the boys were drenched in sweat. Erik held his own hoe firmly in his hands, picking and pulling on a stubborn root. As for Befel, he lay face up on the clumpy soil, his arms splayed out wide, and blew bubbles of saliva out of boredom. "_​ 
There's no dialogue and no action in this entire paragraph. It's four sentences long, but you can much more easily picture the scene in your mind.

*Narrative Paragraphs* *-- *Narrative paragraphs are like when the director yells "Action!" and the actors start to move. If a descriptive paragraph is the camera angle, then a narrative paragraph is all the frames within the shot. The key here is that all the sentences within this type of paragraph are sentences of someone or something *doing something.* Here's an example:_"Erik woke up to the sound of a rat nibbling around his groin area. Kicking the critter with his left foot, he screamed and dragged himself upwards, using the nearby table for balance. The rat chittered lightheartedly as it flew, gliding out the window in a smooth arc and down into the darkness. Holding his hand to his chest, Erik felt his pulse slowly calm down, and crept over to the window. Looking down, he saw a couple of a drunken vagabonds passed out in the street. His hands clenched into fists and he snarled, then spit, over the edge."_​ 
Notice that every sentence in this paragraph is of the format, "and then *this* happened...etc". Erik wakes up. He kicks a rat. He goes to the window. And he spits outside. The author isn't writing about the lamp flicking in the corner. He's not discussing the major politics of the day. He's just saying what happened.

In general, you can get pretty far by just alternating between descriptive paragraphs and narrative paragraphs. If you start the story with a descriptive paragraph, then you get an effect similar to a wide pan shot in movies, with the camera surveying everything in broad detail. On the other hand, if you start with a narrative paragraph, then the effect is more like starting with an epic chase scene, as so often happens with bond flicks like Casino Royale.

There are two other types of paragraphs that you can use to help structure your writing and make things a lot easier on yourself. However, I think I've written quite a bit already, such that this post is getting a little bit large. But there are plenty of online resources you can use to to help you figure this stuff out.

In any case, you've got a promising story with interesting characters. At the very least, you were able to get your story published, and you say that you're quite satisfied with the sales you've been getting. That counts for a lot, in that you actually released *something.* So much of this advice is focused mainly on improving the mechanics and other stuff of your story. But you're not obligated to trust blindly in these suggestions. In fact, I would suggest you don't trust blindly what I say, but see for yourself if following the advice yields any benefits to you. If not, then feel free to ignore them. 

Good luck with your writing career, Nosretap23 (Such an Odd Name!)


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## InS_ght (Jun 2, 2014)

I really really enjoyed this. I was hooked after the first few paragraphs, and I want more. Keep up the fantastic work.


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## 30Drummer30 (Jun 17, 2014)

Hmmm... I'm going to be honest I felt like I've read this before. Land going to be taken, restless protagonist wanting to leave home. But that's not to say a bad thing (at least right now) If as the story continues you bring In New and exciting things the intro will work. So when you post more ill def read.


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## Nosretap23 (Jun 21, 2014)

WechtleinUns said:


> Hello, Nosretap23!
> 
> As far as stories go, you have a solid foundation for an epic story. I can easily imagine this as the early stages of an epic storyline, with either Erik or Befel finding their way as heroes and back to their farm and family in grand style. You might, however, want work on the pacing and the smoothness of the prose. Vast tracts of time pass between the different scenes in this chapter, and much of the good stuff is only talked about.
> 
> ...



Thank you for the response and critique. I know left it a while ago, but it is very well received. Nosretap is my last name backwards with one T. Thanks again. I think it is super important, especially with fantasy, to create a sense of realism, so the info you gave is great. I do apologize about the formatting. I dont quite know why it did that when I copied it over.


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## WechtleinUns (Jun 21, 2014)

No problem, nosretap! Glad to be of service.


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## Daviwolf (Jun 21, 2014)

I tried to read it, but ended forgetting what I read. But, I end up doing that with mostly all books. I read the comments and I like the concept of what your book is, it is a nice classic style.


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