NOVEL SAMPLE: DEMENTIA

ABOUT

In this genre-bending debut the supernatural world of Dark Heavens is forever connected with human life in Urban Falls through the Sisters, a group of Dark beings in charge of human emotions.

When a Sister abuses her power, the balance of human emotions is disturbed and action must be taken to prevent the human world from falling into chaos. The Sisters must be stripped of their powers and be replaced. But there are rules to be followed. The Sisters ask for time to restore the balance and time is granted to them. So begins the hunt for the person that can help the Sisters remain in power, and for all beings that want to see the Sisters gone, the race against time to prevent them from succeeding.

In these turbulent times, Sandrelle Anders (@sandrelle) has to take her own difficult journey through both worlds to discover who she is and what it means to be human.

Dementia is her story.

DETAILS

TITLE: DEMENTIA
TYPE OF WORK: NOVEL
WORD COUNT/A4 PAGES: 83.600 / 220
PRINT LENGTH (PAPERBACK FORMAT): 334 pages
AVAILABLE FORMATS: EBOOK
GENRE: CONTEMPORARY FANTASY

Dementia: Medicine a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.

ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from Latin, from demens, dement- 'out of one's mind'.

--Oxford Dictionary of English, Second Edition


CHAPTER ONE
Screams echoed down the halls of the Home after midnight. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, silence took over, save for the howling of the wind pounding on the tall laminated windows.

The Home, Urban Falls' oldest institution of the insane, stood hidden amidst a thick forest up on a hill and it had been Sandrelle’s living quarters since she could remember. Her room, located on the upper floor of the castle-like building, was void of any personality. There was a bed and a rocking chair, a bay window and a door that was mostly locked--from the outside--and nothing else.

That morning, a crow squawked so loud that the vines creeping high along the building quivered. The bird crushed full force on Sandrelle’s window, and the earth shook for a few long moments.

Sandrelle sat up on her bed and steadied her head against the wall. She lay like that for hours, until, without reason or cause, she slid down the bed and crawled to the rocking chair, dragging one of the sheets along with her.

She had just gotten in synch with the swinging pine trees outside, rocking in her chair, when she heard the heavy door grinding open behind her. A gust of air blasted her shoulders. She had been fed and medicated. What did they want now?
Dr. Fonder appeared in the doorway. A tall, lean man with hair as white as his doctor's coat. "Hello, Sandrelle," he said, stopping by her side. "How are you feeling today?"

"Sick."

"Again?"

"Nothing’s changed, why should I?"

He scribbled on his chart. "No, nothing has changed," he said. "What is bothering you today then?"

Sandrelle didn’t move or speak.

He squatted down next to her and rested his hand on her knee. "Maybe I can help," he said. "I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you."

Sandrelle grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer to her. She kept looking at him in silence, until her face began twitching. "You. This room. This bed and that damn door bother me." Her voice built up, her eyes brightened with tears and a flush of heat reddened her face. "But you know what’s really annoying?"

He stared, trying to read her face. "What is it?"

"Your voice."

Dr. Fonder managed an awkward smile. "My voice? Well, I’ll see what I can do about that, but I’m afraid I can’t make any promises."

Sandrelle's eyes drifted away.

Dr. Fonder looked down. His hand had turned white. He tried to loosen her grip.
"Please, Sandrelle, I understand you’re upset but you need to relax," he said.

She squeezed even tighter. "Just tell me," she said, focusing back on him. "It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked. Twenty years now, I can’t remember. What are you waiting for?"

"You’re right," he said, peeling her fingers off his hand one by one. "But you have to promise me, if I tell you, you’ll stop this stubbornness and start taking your walks again."

"I’ll rest in peace."

Dr. Fonder stood up and turned to leave. Sandrelle jumped off the chair and grabbed his coat, pulling with all her weight. "Please, I promise," she said. "I promise. Just tell me."

"Your mother brought you. You were three. You needed care. There’s nothing more to it," he said, standing unhooked from her grasp and at a safe distance.

"Care? But there’s nothing wrong."

"Nothing?"

"Tell me, why are you not telling me?"

"Why don’t you think about that, and maybe we can talk about it next time," he said and clicked shut the door behind him.

Sandrelle was alone again. She normally liked the silence. But not when she could feel the buzzing in her head. Things just happened then. She paced from door to window, back and forth with increasing speed. Soon, the pacing turned into running, and Sandrelle threw herself with all her strength on the hard metal.

The common room was only a few feet away from Sandrelle’s door. At this hour it was full of patients; some of them stood by the windows staring out in silence, but others talked incessantly trying to anger the calmed ones. It was their voices that dampened every other sound in proximity.

Nurse Kensington had just entered the common room with Dr. Fonder when she caught a glimpse of Sandrelle’s head slamming against the small window on her door. She walked closer and stood outside Sandrelle’s room, peering through the window.

Dr. Fonder broke free of the patients that had managed to surround him and approached her. "Nurse Kensington, is anything wrong?" he said.

"I think she’s having another episode, doctor. Maybe you should have a look," she said, stepping away from the window. There was another thump as Sandrelle hit herself even harder against the door.

"Should I call the men?" Nurse Kensington said.

"No, no need." He paused and let his gaze wander past the nurse. "Yes. I think she’ll be fine for today," he said and turned back looking at her. "Andrew is peeing at the TV again, why don’t you go help him?"

Sandrelle stood in the middle of the room, pressing her palms hard against her ears. The whisperings were too fast, the woman talked too fast. It was almost like singing...

"Receive the glory of life, the glory of death. Child, rise, say farewell," she said.

Hearing those words over and over was like having a bee feeding off her brain. She screamed and cried, and banged at the window with her fists as if it was someone’s front door, and if she hit it long and hard enough, someone would open it. But nothing happened. Then her knees failed her, so she lay down and cried herself to sleep.

***
You can read a longer sample and buy the novel at Amazon:

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Also available at KOBO.

If you'd like a review e-copy of Dementia just send an e-mail at onewomanmedia {at} yahoo.com stating the file format of your choice (.mobi, EPUB, .PFD). A review would be appreciated, but one is not necessary. Thanks.

ONEWOMANMEDIA UPDATE

As of October 2012 the ONEWOMANMEDIA SAMPLES BLOG will be updated with samples of newly released books written by Georgevine Moss, as they become available.

There will still be the odd blog post in the form of a free short story, a discussion topic, a humor piece or anything else that might come up, but these will no longer appear as regular, once a month updates like before.

Please, if you have any comments or suggestions add them in this post.

Coming Releases

A dark contemporary fantasy novel is currently scheduled to be released in December 2012.

ATLAS SHRUGGED: 3 DISCUSSION POINTS

ATLAS SHRUGGED: 3 DISCUSSION POINTS
by Georgevine Moss


SMOKING

1. In the valley where the industrialists settle after they leave the world, there's--among other businesses--a BANK, a POWER PLANT and a TOBACCO COMPANY. And of course, no CHURCH.

Since God has no part in Rand's philosophy, the no church in the perfect new little world the industrialists build for themselves when they decide to go on strike makes sense.

What about the tobacco company?

The novel was published in 1957. Would the author have included such a company in the valley if she'd been writing the novel in 2012?

WORK

2. When that man on the train describes to Dagny how the new plan worked at the Twentieth Century Motor Company (p.608-618) among other things he says:

"...Overtime without pay--because you weren't paid by time and you weren't paid by work, only by need....We who had once been human...We began to hide whatever ability we had...What else could we do, when we knew that if we did our best for 'the family', it's not thanks or rewards that we'd get, but punishment?"

and:

"God help us, ma'am! Do you see what we saw? We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it--for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger the reward you got."

Today, there are laws that protect the workers from being taken advantage of and there's also a system , by which the workers are--at least in theory--paid according to their abilities/contribution. But--in practice--the system can be gamed and the laws can be bend and when that happens, the worker feels cheated.

Someone perhaps would focus on the "paid by need" part of the story and argue about the benefits of today's government programs, but instead of doing that, why not focus on the fact that people need their work to be appreciated and that even that doesn't work if they feel cheated? How can the system and the laws be improved so that unfairness, which can cause serious disruptions in a micro and macro level in the long run, can be avoided?

PURPOSE OF MAN

3. On page 670 the author writes "...and had known that the work of achieving one's happiness was the purpose, the sanction and the meaning of life."

Many philosophers have tried to define what is the purpose of man. Rand's effort seems to be a good one.

In contrast, she offers this when she tries to describe through John Galt's words what the people in charge in her story propose as the purpose of man:

"This idol of your cult of zero-worship...is your image of man and your standard of value...where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure--as if to feel were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not--as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not."