![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Root-User-Cover-v1-blogsize.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Well, so insanely busy, I haven’t posted in a while. But not for want of working on things that I want to post about! Most pressingly, my Camp Nano project for the July Camp of 2018, and what I hope is the last major chunk of the third book in the Cinnamon Frost series … SPELLPUNK: ROOT USER<\/a>!<\/p>\n Cinnamon Frost, once-delinquent weretiger stray, is now a rising star in the secretive werekindred kingdom … until she unwittingly unleashes an ancient faerie monster and is banished to the human world as a result. As the monster wreaks havoc on human and werekin alike, Cinnamon must scramble to save herself, save her city – and save her mother, as the monster turns upon them all in its rage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, of course, the obligatory excerpt:<\/p>\n I clenches my fist. The fox shimmers, his magic going through my fingers; of course, it\u2019s a magic projectia, not a holographic projection. Mom told me about this: an entombed court of faerie, and the warriors that went back to finish the job. I folds my hands to my breast.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I says. \u201cI knows the story. I just didn\u2019t know it happened here too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnly three of us were left,\u201d the fox says. \u201cMy shattered body. The queen, entombed in layers of crystal too hard to be destroyed\u2014though she freed herself and left us, I have no idea how. And the other, the Ere Mother, entombed half-alive, half-dead on the other side of the cavern; I have not seen her directly for centuries \u2026 until now.\u201d<\/p>\n The hair creeps up on my spine: the cracking and scraping is louder now.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you free her?\u201d the fox asks. \u201cPerhaps she will be grateful\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n I whirls. Behind the shattered iceberg, something looms, a glint of red\u2014and a mammoth bony paw slams down to the iceberg\u2019s right. Rock scrapes on rock, and the crystal-encased paw grinds against stone, formin\u2019 and reshapin\u2019, crystal planes flashin\u2019 intermittently within as it rearchitects itself. Then the lumberin\u2019 split head of the sloth-corpse roars into view, wobblin\u2019 on a half-crystal, half-bone neck, its single red eye blazin\u2019 like a laser.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe yes,\u201d I says, \u201cand looks like no!\u201d<\/p>\n Red eye blazin\u2019, the Ere Mother screams magic at me in a rasping bellow of rage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, none of the Cinnamon Frost books have been published yet; since Cinnamon Frost #1, #2 and #3 are interleaved in time with Dakota Frost #4, #5, and #6, and since both are loose trilogies, I’ve been working on all six together, in a giant manuscript which would be close to 750,000 words if all put together. Oy! But the outcome is I understand the story much better, and when this giant Hexology is finally put out, I think it will be a much stronger story.<\/p>\n Onward!<\/p>\n -the Centaur<\/p>\n Pictured: a mockup cover for SPELLPUNK: ROOT USER, based on a picture of an eremotherium by Eden, Janine and Jim<\/a>, and a picture of Doll’s Theater in Carlsbad Cavern picture by Daniel Meyer,<\/a> both licensed for reuse with attribution on variants of the Creative Commons license<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, so insanely busy, I haven’t posted in a while. But not for want of working on things that I want to post about! Most pressingly, my Camp Nano project…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,197,198,202],"tags":[234,6,134,91],"class_list":["post-4278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-fiction","category-urban-fantasy","category-writing","tag-cinnamon-frost","tag-dakota-frost","tag-fearful-symmetry","tag-nanowrimo","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4282,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions\/4282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![Doll’s Theater in Carlsbad Cavern picture by Daniel Meyer,<\/a> both licensed for reuse with attribution on variants of the](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Dolls_Theater_in_Carlsbad_Cavern-120.JPG\"){kind=link}