Tarina pohtii lojaaliutta ja petosta, sekä tieteen ja yliluonnollisen rajaa. Keskeisimmät henkilöt ovat suomalainen arkeologi Anna, australialainen ammattisukeltaja Ben ja suomalainen arkeologian opiskelija Elina. Mukana runsaasti viitteitä suomalaiseen muinaisuskoon. Olen koulutukseltani taide- ja kulttuurihistorioitsija ja olipas lystiä kirjoittaa aiheesta, joka itseäni kiehtoo.
Kilpailun järjestää amerikkalainen Inkshares ja kirja on tällä hetkellä TOP 50:ssä. Jos se pääsee TOP 10:iin, on erittäin hyvät mahdollisuudet voittaa yksi neljästä tarjolla olevasta kustannussopimuksesta. Kirjan alun voi lukea täältä.
Inkshares myy ennakkotilauksia kirjaan, eli jos kiinnostaa ja haluat tukea suomalaisen kirjailijan pääsyä Ameriikan markkinoille, niin tuki otetaan erittäin kiitollisena vastaan! Hinta on 20USD. Mikäli kirja ei pääsekään kustannetuksi asti, rahat palautetaan 90 päivän sisällä ostosta.
Suomi maailmankartalle! :D
Kirjan ensimmäinen luku kuvan alla. Lahjakkaan veljeni tekemä kansikuva jo valmiina levitykseen.
THE OLD GOD - CHAPTER 1
18 September, Lake Haltia, North-Eastern Finland, near the Russian
border
I can’t find her.
The realisation hit Ben like a boxer’s
punch. He bit the mouthpiece in frustration, scanned around in the dark, plunged
deeper. There was no point in surfacing, signaling to the others. They could do
nothing to help. He was the only one
left with diving gear, skills and experience.
Before venturing further in the darkness
that was only narrowly sliced by his diving torch, he glanced at his wrist, the
diving computer. Not good. He had been underwater for over two hours. His
re-breather tank was not running out of air, yet, but his torch was running out
of battery. He had no spare torch – this was the spare torch. The battery of
the first was already flat. And he was running out of stamina. Nothing burnt
calories and drained muscles like diving in ice-cold water.
The lakes of Finland had an average depth
of six meters. This one, called Lake Haltia, ‘the lake of nature spirit’, was
an anomaly. Created by a meteorite impact some quarter of a million years ago, the
bottom of the lake lay ten times deeper, at sixty meters. The visibility was
ridiculously poor even in the shallower shore waters. Ben was painfully aware
he had only little hope of finding anything here, around the deepest spot,
where he was now performing his diligent search pattern before he had to ascend.
The lake was muddy and the autumn sun already setting. At this depth, he could
barely see the tips of his fingers even with the powerful underwater torch. In
other circumstances, he could have surfaced and tried to track the air bubbles
of the lost diver. But with re-breathers, there were no bubbles. The air was
recycled in the tank – hence the name, re-breather - and hardly anything
bubbled out from the mouthpiece. He had no way of tracking Elina, if she
couldn't or wouldn't signal to him with her torch or by clinking on her tank.
Ben let more air out of his buoyancy vest
to draw closer to the bottom, one last time. He had to get up. This was
unhealthy, dangerous even. His mask had started fogging on the left side,
again, blurring the already poor visibility. He sighed into his mouthpiece,
again, out of frustration. He shouldn’t. He had to make every breath count,
deliver every ounce of the priceless oxygen to his cells, make it last as long
as possible.
He was already feeling light-headed and he
knew it was a high time to start the careful, slow ascend to the surface, for
his own safety. But he had to take one last look at the bottom before returning
to the shore with his devastating news. He had to.
He reached the bottom of the pit, covered
in brown, quietly wavering waterweed. Ben scanned the surroundings with his
torch, left and right, right and left, back and forth. He kicked his fins softly,
rhythmically, to keep the pace steady and efficient, and hovered his hands
close to the bottom, raking the water and weed, to aid his limited vision.
Nothing but more entangling water plants. Twigs. Mud.
Suddenly, he touched something lean and
hard protruding upwards. An arm? Let it be her!
No.
It was a straight, sturdy branch pointing up
from the bottom mud. An unexpectedly straight one, roughly the strength of a
wrist. Whitish. Ben glanced around and even with his blurred vision, he could
see a dozen similar branches sticking out from the marshy ground. Some were
curved, some were straight. In a flash, he understood they were no branches.
In the vanishing light of his dying torch,
he watched the brown viscose water swirl around remnants of once-living beings
– a garden of bones.
****
Sent: 9 September at 12:38
As you have been made aware,
it is of utmost importance that you take care of the situation as swiftly as
possible and leave no time for the opponent to take advantage and execute their
plan. You will be contacted soon for more details. Be prepared.
****
