Avast

Into the Dust #2

by Ren Cummins

Life in Uphoria is a grand thing - where your deepest wish can often come true, and where all manner of the fantastic can be a real as anything you might have ever imagined.

So it is for Four Eyed Robert, Captain of the Monkey's Duffle. As the Captain of one of the dreaded pirate ships that sail upon Uphoria's sea, he leads his cruel - but oddly disciplined - band of thieves on one adventure after another, pillaging and ravaging the land.

But strange memories cross through the unusually conscientious Captain, images that seem to fly in the face of reason and logic. These distractions keep him cautious of the world around him, and eventually force him to make a choice between the world he lives in and the one he only distantly recalls.

From Ren Cummins, author of the young adult Steampunk series "Chronicles of Aesirium", and Kiri Callaghan, author of "Funeral Potatoes", come this series of childhood dreams, adult remorse and all the fantastic adventures which lie between.

"Avast" is the second story in the "Into the Dust" series, drawing the readers further into the world of Uphoria, and continuing the adventure of a thousand life times.


Sample:

Distorted memories of his childhood passed his thoughts; the insistence and enforced premise that pirates were evil, that they stood in rank defiance to the laws and order which kept society moving, that piracy of all manner was wrong. He had to admit that statements like that made his blood boil furiously. Who are they to say I am evil? Do not some laws require by their nature an act of defiance?

But who says such things? The church, he answered himself, and the government. He spat on the floor, as if trying to purge a sudden bitterness from his mouth. Well, I don’t fear the government or the church. They should fear --

A woman’s scream two buildings away cut through his musings like a gunshot. He ran in pursuit of the sound, even as he could hear voices stirring in the buildings around him.

Ahead of him stood one of the town’s three pubs, its door slightly ajar. It’s Gadrick, he realized, knowing full well that Gadrick always positioned himself to claim the rum on their inland forays. Damn fool is going to get us killed.

32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Born in California, Ren lived in three more states and one other country before finally settling down in Seattle, Washington. There with his wife and daughter and their two dogs and one of the heaviest cats in existence, he juggles a love of writing, music, science fiction and the occasional desire to make an honest buck.

After a college professor in his English department took a good look at his work and aspirations, and subsequently challenged him to find his voice out in the world and not in a classroom, Ren decided to interpret this challenge positively (and not in a "why don't you just sod off, you tosser!" sort of way) and has been working to find that very voice ever since.

Along the journey, such relatively mundane occupational interruptions like working as a hotel manager, music studio engineer and middle eastern drummer for belly dancers offered their respective distractions, but only served to diversify his voice, granting new accents and dialects. His life-long studies of philosophy, religion and the evolution of language have also played their part in affecting the development of his writing style.

Along with short stories and a developing anthology of Children's stories, Ren has been writing a series of steampunk-themed novels, collected into the "Aerthos Trilogy", an epic adventure centering around a twelve year old orphan girl who discovers that her own destiny is tied irrevocably to the past and future of their divided world. The first novel, "The Morrow Stone" was nominated for the Steampunk Book of the Year 2010 by Steampunk.com.

When not working on novels, Ren can also be found sipping on a white chocolate mocha, playing RPGs (dice or video games) or trying to teach his dogs not to jump on the couch.