PUBLICATION DAY!

I am so excited (and nervous) to be sharing that today is PUBLICATION DAY for my new dark fantasy book A PALE BOX ON THE DISTANT SHORE. This book is available as an ebook and paperback across all online retail stores, and available to order via your local bookshop or library.

You can check this book out via the below links:

• EBOOK: Amazon, Nook, Apple, Kobo (and others too, but I think these are the main ones… also ebooks can be requested via your local library)

• PAPERBACK: Booktopia, Barnes and Noble, Amazon (and can be ordered to your local library or bookstore)

Here is the blurb!

I really hope you will consider checking out my new book!

I am also including a sample chapter from the book below.

Chapter One: Sample

Honnan Skyin was no stranger to death, but it didn’t make burning the bodies any easier.

Each citizen had been taken well before their time, which made him queasy. Or perhaps it was the stench of burning flesh mixed with salt that did it.

The ocean wind howled bitterly cold, though Honnan still sweated from the work, and the cloth tied around his nose and mouth suffocated. The material had turned damp from his staggered breath, but he suspected it was better this way. The air should be avoided near the fires. It stank of death.

The black pebbles of the shoreline crunched beneath his boots as he directed the other soldiers to drag pale wooden coffins toward the sea. The men would light this new batch up and float them out. If they could manoeuvre the pyres past the churning black waves, that was. Soaked to the chest from trying, his soldiers grunted with effort through chattering teeth. Honnan was no better. Even his loose hair dripped salt. Clouds choked the vast sky. He shivered, flexing numb fingers.

One soldier – Carpin, who shared a rank with Honnan – struggled from the churning black surf and stood at his side. Together they surveyed the isolated shoreline. The world was wild at the edge of Death City Island ­– nothing but jagged black rock coastline and rough seas – and as far from the island’s writhing metropolis of tangled towers as possible.

Honnan grimaced beneath his material mask, a crawling desperation gouging his chest as he surveyed all those pale coffins strewn across the black shore. He’d had well enough of this.

‘Reckon we’ll be done before nightfall?’ he asked Soldier Carpin hopefully. The other man was Honnan’s opposite, with dark brown skin to Honnan’s pale, and a round sweet face at odds with Honnan’s own sharp angles. They shared the same black eyes and tangled hair though, worn in the long, loose style of Death City.

Carpin shrugged. ‘If we get it done before night, I’d be true surprised. Reckon we’ve still got … what? A little more than ten to burn, I’d say. Too many, that.’

The slicing wind whipped their uniforms as the latest pyre sparked and burned before it slowly sunk beneath the waves. Back near the body-collector’s cart, a figure trudged the sand toward them. A young woman, dressed in the same crimson that practitioners of the mysterious crooked beat wore, though Honnan knew this woman well enough to be certain she’d protest strongly against such a comparison. Dangerous curse-work like the crooked beat – which had long been forbidden on the mainland – wasn’t something she approved of. He sighed, wrinkling his nose at her approach. In fact, Llewellyn didn’t approve much of anything and Honnan’s day had already been difficult enough with all these bodies to burn.

Besides, it was chewing baccy Honnan was dreaming of, not Llewellyn, who was taking her time over the pebbled beach – still a fair way off. The chill weather wasn’t helping his sour mood. He needed something else to focus on, and seeing his grandnannie sneak some baccy into her tower that morning had stirred his cravings. Wish he’d thought to ask the old woman then, because none of the other soldiers had any baccy, either. He’d already asked.

Hadn’t asked Carpin yet, though.

‘I don’t chew it,’ came Carpin’s answer. ‘Stains your teeth true crimson, that one does. And what good are red teeth, I’d like to know?’ He stared at the next burning coffin, and hummed a death song, followed by words almost ripped away by the slicing wind. ‘What’s dead is dead and all shall die … and live again.’

Honnan ignored his friend’s old superstitions and, still focused on his lack of baccy, he snorted loudly. Not like baccy was easy to obtain in the Red Kingdom, anyway, with Purge House’s habit of outlawing anything remotely interesting from their shores. All that did was spark the black sail trade to rumbling and drive prices sky high. Chewing baccy was too costly on a soldier’s wage, so he wasn’t sure what else he’d expected.

He frowned. How had his grandnannie sourced it then, wily old woman that she was? The black sail trade? Honnan was still mulling it over as Llewellyn finally reached them. Her hair hung in two pale braids over her uniform, and she carried paperwork. Only a little older than Honnan’s own early twenty years, but with frown lines already etched around her mouth and brow. Her severe nature had aged her far beyond her time on this earth. Or at least, that was what Honnan liked to think.

‘Llewellyn,’ he said her name in greeting, though even to his own ears it didn’t sound enthusiastic. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘Soldier Skyin.’ She nodded at him, then averted her gaze to his friend. ‘And Soldier Carpin, too. Both of you up here on the shore, standing around while the other men work, I see.’

Honnan frowned but didn’t rise to the bait. ‘And you, Llewellyn? Here to watch the burnings?’

‘To count them, more like.’ She extended her paperwork. Her report had a series of markings for each pale box, all with a note on the occupant’s name. ‘And I’m true finished. So, what next?’

 She stared at Honnan with brows raised. A little too eager to hear his orders for her own good, was Honnan’s opinion. Personally, he didn’t mind a step or two outside what his duties as a soldier supposed was good for him, but Llewellyn was all about rules. And orders. And right now, she was waiting to hear some new ones from Honnan, who’d found himself unexpectedly in charge of this venture. He put this down to the viceroy having a soft spot for him, even though he was younger than most and less suited for the role.

‘Reckon I’ve got nothing for you, Assistant Llewellyn,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand toward the burning boxes near the waves. ‘All straight forward enough, no? We burn everything until it’s over and done. Then we venture on home. Come back tomorrow and start again. What’s there to ask me about in all that? Just count them.’

Llewellyn seemed pleased enough with this lacklustre order, and Honnan marvelled once more on how a woman’s brows could be so pale they almost disappeared into her face. It gave Llewellyn the faded look of a ghost. An eager one, who was ready to hound him to the ends of the island. He gritted his teeth.

‘Just so,’ came Llewellyn’s response. ‘Everything’s counted and marked good and proper. So, I’ll head on back to Polity House. Reckon I was over this way first to see if either of you had some of that fancy chewing baccy. Got a hankering, I do.’ She smiled behind her cloth mask, and Honnan had a sudden suspicion her teeth might be stained crimson. Either that, or she was lying in an attempt to catch Honnan with some baccy of his own and report his transgression back to the viceroy.

She’d done it before.

He scowled. ‘Reckon I’ve got none. Besides, baccy’s outlawed, so what you want with it?’ Honnan decided she was certainly attempting to set him up, otherwise it was too surprising to think of Llewellyn indulging in anything Purge House didn’t approve of. If they weren’t surrounded by burning pale boxes and this slicing wind, Honnan might’ve enjoyed poking some fun. As it stood, he found he wasn’t in the mood.

Neither was Carpin, it seemed. The soldier simply muttered, ‘Lot of good outlawing does round here, no? People smoke and chew what they want, I reckon.’

‘Just so,’ Honnan agreed. Easy to dabble a little in what was outlawed when you lived close enough to the frozen south to see chunks of pale ice washed onto the shore. He kicked a piece and grimaced. Kicked the edge of one of the passing coffins, too. Barely touched it with his foot, but still felt disrespectful enough to find himself muttering the words. ‘What’s dead is dead and all shall die...’

‘And live again.’ Carpin adjusted the white material wrapped around his nose and mouth. It dripped with seawater and marked a stark contrast to the man’s brown skin. All the other soldiers were similarly masked. Llewellyn was too, though she was no soldier. Her job was unusual and, on the mainland, it never would’ve been given to a woman. Purge House held far too much power over the Red Kingdom for an employer to ever go against the Red Reform, which was strict about such things. To move against Purge House would result in a burning on a pyre.

But this was Death City and things worked differently on the Thousand Island Frontier. Purge House’s reach didn’t extend this far into the frozen southern wastes.

In fact, Honnan was rather interested that Llewellyn’s piety to Purge House’s Red Reform didn’t quite extend to rejecting a position they wouldn’t believe fit for a woman. Though he’d grown up with her, he had never understood her. She was a true mess of contradictions.

‘What’s dead is dead and all shall die.’ Llewellyn crinkled her nose as she repeated the words. ‘True enough. Reckon I’m hoping it’ll be later instead of sooner, though, if I have my way. Black lung at this age? Not what I’m aiming for.’

‘Well, we’ll see soon enough, won’t we?’ Honnan squinted against the glare of white clouds that stretched horizon to horizon across the bay. A rusted war fort or two lay in the deep water. Would the sinking coffins become tangled in those vast relic structures from times past? Honnan hoped not. He needed the burnt bodies to sink deep to the bottom and be swept away, because none of these corpses had died good, safe deaths.

A flock of cackling black gulls wheeled overhead, their glossy feathers rustling and nasty beaks gleaming. The massive birds were a bloody omen, according to local lore, and Honnan shuddered. He still craved that chewing baccy. ‘Come on, then. Reckon we’ll get this shift over with. Llewellyn, you can stay until it’s done, no? You need to count the ones that burn, not just the ones lying about on the beach, I reckon.’

Llewellyn didn’t appear quite as eager as usual. ‘Just so. And then we’ll go back for resting and eating?’

‘And reckon we’ll all be back tomorrow to do it over again,’ Soldier Carpin added in a bitter voice.

‘It’s the way things are going,’ Honnan agreed. The muscles in his jaw tensed. ‘Reckon I heard it’s creeping through the next township, too. The little walled one up near the peaks.’

Neither Carpin nor Llewellyn answered, both subdued, and Honnan was left to do what he supposed with distaste was a leader’s job, and lead by example.

‘Let’s stop this yabbering and get it over with.’ He crunched his way to the next coffin, avoiding the plumes of grey smoke swirling from the fires. But still, he couldn’t help but suspect the rumours of the disease spreading might be right.

Black lung had a habit of creeping from thing to thing, and doing it fast.

He tried to ignore the dread swelling in his chest. The soldiers were already dragging the next pale box down the beach toward the water. All was as it should be, except…

‘Stop,’ Honnan called, frowning beneath his cloth mask. ‘Stop a moment, I reckon, and let me take a little look at what’s what.’

Something was wrong with the bone-pale wood of the coffin. The copper nail on the edge had come unstuck and the lid in one corner gaped open. Honnan sucked in his breath before he could stop himself, and shouted, ‘Stay true back! Don’t touch it.’

The soldiers’ who’d been dragging the pale coffin stumbled away. Hands clutched over noses and mouths, fear visible above their masks. One, in his haste, even fell to his knees in the black waves.

Honnan couldn’t blame them. The black lung was different this year. Instead of sliding into the lungs of the old and infirm, to take them when it was their time to go, it’d infected men, women and children far too young to be touched. No one in the city was talking about it yet. It’d only been this twenty or so coffins so far – some old, some young – but Honnan had seen the viceroy’s expression. The man was afraid. And Honnan had also seen the tallies of anticipated numbers. And heard the word the viceroy used.

Epidemic.

Everyone was frozen still, staring at the half-opened coffin. That worming desperation boiled inside Honnan once more, and he bellowed, ‘Who nailed this Dead-Daughter thing shut? Such a foul job it’s flung open with just a bit of rustle and jiggle?’

Glancing at his hands, which clasped the wooden pale box, Honnan staggered back and plunged them with a splash into the sea. He gasped as the icy water chilled his blood and numbed his flesh. But his grandnannie had told him salt was good for washing sickness, and so he grimaced and left them in the churning surf long enough to make his fingers burn. None of the other soldiers made a sound, until Carpin finally spoke.

‘Reckon the jiggle of the body-collector’s cart might’ve pushed it loose, no? No one’s fault, I’d say. A copper nail not gone in deep enough and a road not made for rolling, I reckon.’

Honnan didn’t answer. Something was strange about the pale coffin. The wind rose to a howl, carrying ice from the open sea. His black hair whipped about his face as he examined the box.

The whole thing had fallen on its side as it was dropped, and he righted it with his foot, crouching beside it in the shallow waves and trying not to breathe.

The edge that had come unstuck was at the foot of the box. ‘What’s all this about, then?’ He waved Carpin over and pointed. Llewellyn followed, too. ‘Not a natural jiggle, I reckon.’

 Honnan hovered a hand over the scuff marks indenting soft wood around the loose nail. The marks were carved deep.

Llewellyn frowned. ‘Something true strange to it, alright.’

‘I’d say. Looks like it was stuck tight originally, but then forced loose.’ Carpin turned to them. ‘Odd, that, no? A crack here, even, where the wood’s been levered open a bit.’

Llewellyn leaned closer. ‘Odd enough, I reckon.’

Honnan agreed, his stomach queasy and hands clenched into fists. Sweat prickled his brow. ‘You reckon the loose bit was big enough for a stealer to take a little something from the inside? You think we had a thief messing around with us and all this?’

‘Could be.’ Carpin’s expression had gone tight as if with dread above his white mask.

That same dread had already filled Honnan’s chest like flooding water. Someone poking around inside a pale box was a bad problem in more ways than one. Not only had a thief stolen something from right under Polity House’s nose, but now an unknown citizen ran loose about Death City who’d been close and personal with the black lung.

Honnan shuddered. He’d heard stories from the far north of the Red Kingdom, of those days the black lung had raged and raged. Great pits, they’d dug. Big enough to pile thousands for burning. His grandnannie said the sky had been black with smoke for forty moons.

A spreading sickness like that wouldn’t take long to creep about the island, and then there’d be no chance of keeping the calm like the viceroy wanted. So far, Polity House had cordoned off a township or two in the mountains, which was easy enough to do. But if this new black lung crept into the tangled slums of Death City, there’d be nothing anyone could do to contain it.

‘Reckon I’ll take a small peek inside.’ Honnan didn’t want to do it, but burning a half-opened coffin without knowing the reason it’d been opened, or who had opened it, sat ill with him. Besides, if someone was spreading black lung and running loose, he’d rather know who it was.

All the soldiers took scrabbling steps away, though Honnan was grateful when Carpin and Llewellyn stayed by his side. They both seemed to share his feelings. This was a bad problem, and burning the body wouldn’t solve it. In that moment, Honnan liked Llewellyn more than in all the years he’d known her.

‘Reckon I’ve got a copper-tin piece or two in the wagon.’ Carpin was already crunching up the beach. ‘We can lever it open, just the same as your little thief.’

Honnan wasn’t certain he liked having the thief referred to as being his, but he nodded anyway. With a pry bar in tow, Carpin returned, and he and Llewellyn turned their backs to the wailing wind and shoved their weight against the lever. It snagged beneath the pale wooden lid. After much sweating and gasping, the box flung open, sending them stumbling into the freezing surf with a splash. The rest of the soldiers had moved so far upwind, they were nothing but dark shadows on the distant shore. Honnan scowled at them. ‘A brave lot we got on our side, I’d say.’

‘Just so,’ Carpin murmured. It didn’t sound as if he was listening, though. Not that it mattered. Honnan’s words had dried up anyway, and he stepped to Llewellyn’s side to stare in silence at the pale box’s contents.

The body inside was a young man in his prime. Clearly a bone-miner who’d been busy working the death giant corpse, judging by his dress – white shaggy furs and a red copper mask. Both were designed to keep out the deadly cold while chipping away at the precious red bones of the behemoth giant lying half-submerged off Death City’s shore. The death giant’s ribs rose like towers from the Black Silt Sea and had done so for the past seven hundred years. Most likely, the next seven hundred, too. As the Red Kingdom’s most precious resource, they attracted a swarm of local miners just like this one.

The dead man’s copper mask was discarded at his side, though the body still wore a mining harness, which meant whoever had laid him to rest in the coffin had loved him at least a little. The man’s hands had even been painted gold.

Honnan shared a significant glance with Carpin. A mining harness like that had bits of true-iron in it, and was worth a lot more than it looked, as everyone in Death City knew. So, whatever the thief had taken, they’d missed the most important prize.

It was the dead man’s face that did it, though. Dried up Honnan’s throat and turned his tongue to ash. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and for the first time all day, his craving for chewing baccy subsided.

Dried blood splattered the dead man’s cheeks; the sign of a man who died coughing up his own lungs. No one had bothered to wash it off, even if they had loved him.

The risk was far too great.

Honnan stood up quick, his hand clutched over his dripping mask.

A black lung death was never clean, and the body stank as if it’s insides had come out. He choked on the putrid air and was filled with relief as a great salt wind gusted in and washed the smell away. And the black lung, too, which for a moment had lingered in the air. Honnan’s heart beat faster. Brave or not, it was a bad way to go.

‘What you reckon our thief stole?’ Carpin stood with his face angled firmly into the fresh salt wind.

For a moment Honnan forgot the threat of disease, the oddness of the situation catching hold. ‘Nothing obvious, that much is plain. But I’m reckoning…’

‘What you reckoning?’ Llewellyn’s pale braids whipped in the wind.

Honnan hesitated. ‘Why steal something from a coffin but go and leave all these true-iron harness bits behind? Seems off, that. The harness is where the coin lies, for certain. What else could there have been to excite a thief more than a spot of true-iron?’

A strange feeling crept over Honnan’s skin, sending shivers down his spine that had nothing to do with the chill. He bent closer over the putrid body and took the copper-tin rod from Llewellyn to poke about at the corpse’s feet. Something – like a ball of material – lay wedged between the dead man’s ankles. Honnan chewed his lower lip, brows furrowed. What was the material for?

‘What you doing, then?’ Llewellyn sidled closer, peering over his shoulder. Not too close.

Honnan’s mind swirled with possibilities, none of them good. He stared at her. ‘Reckon only the bottom of this pale box was opened, right?’

‘Just so.’ She tilted her head to the side. ‘But what’s that prove?’

‘Maybe nothing. Maybe…’ Was he imagining it? Honnan used the copper rod and pressed the material nestled between the dead man’s boots. At first, he’d taken it for a tangled blanket, odd enough, but not too interesting. Now though, he could feel that something lay inside. He peered up at his companions, alarm spreading across his features. ‘What if our thief were no true thief at all?’

Llewellyn took a step away, as if unconsciously. ‘But what’s that meaning, then?’

Honnan tried to ignore the erratic beat of his heart. ‘Reckon someone came and levered up the smallest edge of this old box, not to take something out…’

Carpin’s eyes widened above his mask. ‘But to put something in?’

Honnan was certain his own expression was flooded with just as much shock. It felt like they’d been following one of the mass paths leading into the deep mountains, only to have it end far from the church-tower they’d sought. Carpin’s voice hushed to a whisper. ‘Like what?’

Like what, indeed. Only one way to find out.

Honnan turned to the open sea as the waves crashed against the distant rusted war forts. He filled his lungs and leaned over the coffin, using the copper-tin rod to untangle the blanket. The material was velvet and stitched with fine embroidered bones along its hem.

Death giant bones as red as blood.

The exact kind a bone-miner like the dead man would have worked on, out there on the giant’s corpse that had sunk into the waves off the island’s shore.

Dread bubbled in Honnan’s belly as he pushed the velvet aside. What lay inside drew the remaining breath from his lungs. Llewellyn stumbled back into the churning black surf.

They all stared.

A dead boy. An infant.

Excerpt From: PJ Nwosu. “A Pale Box on the Distant Shore: A Red Kingdom story.”

Thanks for reading the first chapter!

You can check out A Pale Box on the Distant Shore via the below links:

• EBOOK: Amazon, Nook, Apple, Kobo (and others too, but I think these are the main ones… also ebooks can be requested via your local library)

• PAPERBACK: Booktopia, Barnes and Noble, Amazon (and can be ordered to your local library or bookstore)

Author Note: BE WARNED, spoilers ahead!

This is the author note from the back of the book below, reproduced below, which touches on my inspirations behind writing this story. But please be warned, it contains major spoilers.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for the ending of A Pale Box on the Distant Shore.

Dear reader,

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my book. Although I write fantasy, my stories are rooted in real history, which is something I really love learning about in my spare time. Mostly, I just love reading strange and creepy true tales from the past, and that is exactly what inspired this book. Two creepy true-life tales, to be exact. I thought I might tell you a bit about them.

Be warned though, these tales are fairly macabre, so only read on if you’re sure you don’t mind a little bit of dark history.

My first inspiration was a strange story I stumbled across. As they were researching the corpse of a Swedish bishop from the 1600s, scientists discovered via a scan that the bishop wasn’t alone in his coffin! Beneath his feet, hidden in dry herbs, lay a deliberately concealed foetus. Who was this mysterious child? Was the child related to the bishop? For a long time, it remained a mystery. Recently though, using DNA analysis, scientists have discovered the child is indeed related to the bishop. This story still intrigues me, though. Why was the child buried secretly? There are plenty of theories, all of which really sparked my imagination when coming up with the plot of this book. You can read more about this strange real-life tale here if you’d like.

Another piece of history I learned recently, both horrifying and fascinating, was the existence of baby farmers. These were indeed, sadly, a real thing in England, and also Australia, the United States and New Zealand, during the late Victorian era. At the time, no government support was offered for desperate mothers needing somewhere to send illegitimate children in a society that was hugely prejudiced against both unwed mothers and their children born out of wedlock.

The first time I came across the term baby farmer was when reading about a New Zealand woman named Minnie Dean. Hers is a morbid but fascinating story of the only woman to ever receive the death penalty in New Zealand. She died in 1895. At the time, her alleged child murder crimes were so sensational that hawkers sold hatboxes with dolls tucked inside them as souvenirs outside her trial. The reason behind these creepy souvenirs had a lot to do with how her crime had initially been discovered, as she attempted to hide a body using a hatbox. Very disturbing stuff. You can read more about her story here, if you are interested in getting some chills down your spine.

Unlike Minnie Dean in New Zealand, who was perhaps driven to her sad end more by poverty and desperation than any deliberate desire to cause pain, England’s most infamous baby farmer, Amelia Dyer, was a little different. Although largely forgotten by history, it is possible she remains England’s most prolific serial killer, with more deaths attributed to her than to any other (approximately 300 deaths, though this was never proven and she was convicted for only two). Amelia Dyer was executed in 1896 after a 30-year career as a baby farmer. The baby farmer killer in my book was most definitely inspired by Amelia Dyer. Her true story is a disturbing one and can be read about here if you want to know more.

Obviously, my book is total fantasy, but it was very much inspired by these strange slices of history. I always find it easier to understand the present when I learn more about the past, and though we often live in a very dark world, I like to think there is plenty of beauty all around, too. As the citizens say in the Red Kingdom ‘What’s dead is dead and all shall die’, so I hope in the meantime, we can live as happily as possible during our short, precious lives.

If you’d like to read more of my fantasy fiction for free, I have a short story available that is also set in my Red Kingdom world. I also have a free Red Kingdom visual guide available for anyone wanting some character and location art, to help flesh out the world-building. If you join my newsletter (where I share more weird and creepy stories from history) you can grab both for free at www.pjnwosu.com.

And finally, if you enjoyed reading this book, I would love if you can leave a quick review. For small-time authors like me, reviews really make all the difference and enable other readers to discover my work (even just one or two written words makes an enormous impact!). This is the absolute best way to support authors.

Thank you so much for reading my book.

PJ Nwosu.

Excerpt From: PJ Nwosu. “A Pale Box on the Distant Shore: A Red Kingdom story.”

THANK YOU FOR READING

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PJ Nwosu writes dark mystery novels set in epic fantasy worlds.