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The Rain-Soaked Moore Short Story Challenge 2017 Week 2

Hello! I’m back with my second short story of 2017. Hope you enjoy it! 

Izen

***

The Rain-Soaked Moor

By Izen Lumak

 The storm lashed the moors. Rivulets poured between mossy tuffets and squelching mud sucked at our boots. Rain pelted the ground so that it was impossible to see but a few yards ahead. It had been fine at the conclusion of the day's trading when we left town, but the clouds came up as the sun sank below the horizon. The road is notorious for highwaymen, but I knew Tommy and I would not be troubled. No other living soul would be fool enough to be out in this foul weather.

I thanked God for my hooded leather travelling cape keeping the worst of the icy deluge from my face. Lightning split the sky and thunder crashed above out heads. It was no night to be abroad, however we had no choice but to continue and hope that an inn was close by.

A flash from the heavens lit the moors again, and I heard my companion cry out from a few paces behind me. Certain he had turned an ankle in a pothole, I turned, expecting to find him clutching his leg in agony and needing my help.

Instead, he had sunk to his knees (sunk being the appropriate word, for he was several inches deep in mire). Face white, outstretched hand quavering, he looked as though he had seen a ghost- and for good reason. When I finally coaxed words from his grey lips, he told me that he had seen a vision of Lydia, standing soaked to the skin in her white muslin dress, dark hair stuck to her face in sodden clumps.

I told him that he was a fool; Lydia was not there. We all knew she had run off to Northumberland with the soldier she was dallying with throughout her engagement to Tommy. He pretended not to know, and it caused quite a scandal when she broke her engagement and vanished into the night without so much as a farewell. She could not be here, a hundred miles or more from where her beau was stationed. Besides, had I not been before Tommy on the road? I would have seen her, and I most certainly did not!

Hot tears mingled with frigid rain on Tommy's face. He shrieked as the lightning forked onto the moorland once more.

"She is there," he wailed, flailing an arm in the direction he supposed his lost love to be, "she moves towards us."

I turned, seeing nothing. Thunder boomed once more as another bolt struck; nothing, but he moaned and sobbed all the more.

"I-I didn't mean to, Lydia," he wept, "I was just so angry when you said you were leaving with him… I'd have waited, Lyd. I loved you. I'd have waited till you were done with him. I waited before, remember? I - I forgave you, when you went off with the blacksmith's apprentice that time. He didn't love you- that soldier didn't love you either. I was going to marry you, Lydia, regardless of your past, regardless of how you hurt me again and again. I loved you, and, and, I could share you, even if it meant shame for us both. But I could not let you leave. I was angry, and, and, and I never was any good at aiming. I was not aiming at you, Lyd, b-but… it was an accident, I swear! No! it was an accident. Then I thought, I thought, now I need never let you leave. I could keep you c-close to me. That is why I dug that hole next to the hearth, so that you could be in my home, forever. I-I- NO! Don't touch me. You can't be here, Lydia, you are at home, in my house, in our house. Why are you here, Lyd? Is it to take with you? Is it to trade my soul for your own? Why, why.. I didn't mean it…"

I stood dumbfounded. Why was he confessing? We all thought Lydia was alive and well someplace, so he was under no suspicion.

Still howling his sins and pleading mercy from Lydia, I gently raised my friend to his feet and led him away. He looked continually behind us, sobbing and wailing, certain we were followed, clinging to me for support and safety. I thanked God when I saw a light in the distance.

At the inn, I placed my friend by the fire, where he continued to tremble violently as his clothes sent clouds of steam into the room. I took the innkeeper aside, telling him that my friend had committed a crime and a constable should be sent for first thing in the morning. Until then, all the doors and windows should be kept locked and barred.

We spent a sleepless night, the pair of us, before the blazing hearth, though we should have been fully exhausted. Neither spoke a word, my eyes fixed on Tommy and his on the blazing log.

The constable arrived mid-afternoon, Tommy now staring at smouldering ash in the fireplace.

It all came out in the end, of course. Lydia's bones were found beneath the dirt floor in Tommy's house. He was sentenced to hang.

I attended the execution. He said little on the gallows, except that the sentence was and all good men should learn from the errors of his ways.

And that was the end of my Tommy. The oddest thing about the whole affair, though, was I saw an extra figure on the gallows that day. She stood, dark hair in ringlets once more, muslin dress neat on her dainty frame, pretty face devoid of the colour of life but recognisable all the same. The ghost of Lydia stood impassive until her murderer swung in the breeze. She smiled at me, nodded and faded away.

I have not seen her since, nor do I expect to. Her story is complete.

But that is the curious tale of the rain-soaked moor.

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Dust to Dust - Short Story Challenge Week 1

This is the first installment of my own personal challenge to write one short story per week in 2017. It’s called ‘Dust to Dust’, and I hope you enjoy it.

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Thanks for reading! I copy/pasted the text from Word, but it seems to think it’s an image and I can’t get the formatting to work on it. It also looks really blurry to me in the editor, so fingers crossed it actually looks OK to other people! I’ve tried searching for a solution but I can’t find one (I’m probably just looking in the wrong place!), so any advice for this newbie Tumblr user would be gratefully received :) 

Izen

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“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.”    ―  Stephen Chbosky

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So, who is this Izen Lumak, anyway?

Hello, and Happy New Year! My name is Izen Lumak (actually, not so much, but more on that in a moment...), and I thought I’d start 2017 by telling you a little about myself.

This year, I really want to commit to keeping a regular blog- something I have tried on several occasions with various themes, with equally variable success. So, for a little public accountability, I’ll go more into the purpose of my online scribblings later.

But first, let me circle back to where I was going to tell you who I am.

Well, Izen Lumak doesn’t really exist. That’s my pen name, because last year I decided to take a leap into the indie author world and self-publish my first book. As this is a completely new direction for me, I decided that a little bit of self-reinvention might be fun, so giving myself an exotic-sounding pseudonym seemed like a good idea, especially as my real name is quite sensible and ordinary. Also, there’s already an author with name, which was a good excuse to make something else up.

Happily, using a nom de plume works marvellously well with my story, which is all about the secret diary of King Henry VIII of England (you know, the one famous for having 6 wives and a God complex), which explains that all his erratic behaviour was caused by him concealing a massive secret- that to avoid death, he became a vampire. Well, the only person who would publish such a document, should it actually exist, would be a scholar- but which scholar would sign their own name to such a claim and risk destroying their career? So, the character writing the introduction states outright that Izen Lumak is a pen name, which is why I am quite happy to declare that is isn’t my name either. 

(Before you ask, I’m not a scholar who has found such a scandalous document; I’m a writer who made it all up. Then again, that would be a good cover story, don’t you think..?).

Though Izen Lumak isn’t my name, I do actually live Derbyshire in the UK, and when I’m not writing I’m reading or making something. I particularly like knitting and crochet, but I’ll give most creative pursuits a go if I get half a chance. 

I also have a modest collection of old books. Not that all of them get read, mind you- some of them I can’t read, as they’re written in languages I don’t understand, but I’ve bought them because they’re interesting topics (like the German ‘Teach yourself Arabic’ book from the 1890s ) or because they’re beautiful objects in their own rights (like the book that has endpapers in a fabulous Art Nouveau pattern printed in metallic gold ink). There’s even a Latin textbook that I bought because of the amusing annotations of the schoolchildren. I quite fancy doing some blog posts about these books, so if you’re interested in that sort of thing, do keep a look out for that!

I also have a collection of old paintings, etchings and prints. I think I just have a weird affinity with old paper... Anyway, I think they’re lovely, and I will happily blog about those too if anyone is interested. If not, I’ll just sit and look at them :)

For me, 2017 is going to be the year where I start taking my writing more seriously- I’m really only just starting out, and still have a lot to learn! However, I love it, and wish I’d started writing sooner. To that end, I’m going to publish a short story here each week, to get as much practice in as possible. I have no idea what they’ll be about, but I‘d imagine it’ll mostly be historical fiction and paranormal stuff, just because I like that sort of thing. Oh, and I’m not very good at doing stuff just for the sake of doing it; putting it onto a blog gives it a purpose, so I should actually do it!

Have a happy and healthy 2017. Thanks for reading all the way to the end of my unexpectedly lengthy first post of the year :)

Izen

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If you prefer a real book to an eBook, you can now get ‘A conspiracy of Vampires’ as a paperback from Amazon :) 

This one is going on my shelf (which I am SUPEr excited about!), but you can get your own copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conspiracy-Vampires-Izen-Lumak/dp/1540605213/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482404861&sr=8-1&

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My book is now available to purchase! You can pick up your copy from any of the following places:

Kindle (UK store)

Kindle (US store)

Barnes and Nobel (NOOK)

Kobo

and many more!

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This is so important… Feel free to repost📚😊☕ . . . #books #book #read #reading #reader #page #pages #paper #instagood #kindle #nook #library #author #bestoftheday #bookworm #readinglist #love #photooftheday #story #literature #bookreview #amwriting #writingadvice #writeblr

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Are you brave enough to accept a #ReadingDare for Book Week Scotland?

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Testing, testing

Hello! This my first post on Tumblr, with my new blog for Izen Lumak. 

Izen Lumak is my pen name for writing historical fantasy, for no other reason than my real name is rather dull, and not very historically fantastic at all. I’m assuming what I write is historical fantasy, anyway- what I do is find a load of historical facts (preferably which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense), and fill in the gaps with vampires and werewolves and the like. My first foray into this genre is ‘A Conspiracy of Vampires’, which will be available as an eBook as soon as I’m feeling brave enough to hit publish. It’s a novel about how Henry VIII became a vampire after a terrible accident, how this influences some of his erratic decisions, and the struggles he faces in his personal and political life as a result of his deathbed decision. 

The proper description I’ve written for this book goes a little something like this...

The year is 1536, and England's most notorious king is dying.

Henry VIII, life leaking from his broken body, has a choice:

Die, leaving the country he loves at risk of bloody civil war once more in the absence of a strong leader

or

Sacrifice his soul to stave off inevitable death, preserving the fragile peace of England until Elizabeth is old enough to take her father's crown but condemning himself to a tormented existence, far from the God he has served his whole life

Stepping into the unholy darkness, Henry discovers a dangerous supernatural world that has been turning around him for his entire reign.

But there's no going back now- Henry must learn to survive in this new immortal body, or fall victim to the enemies he never knew he had…

As I say, it’s not quite published yet, but it will be very soon! You can sign up for my newsletter of find me on Facebook to be the first to know when you can buy my debut novel :)