Chapter 5

(In which we are treated to more action and less exposition, and a house is rudely shaken from its foundation)

      Grim did not return the next night, or the next, or the one after that. Elizabeth had taken to checking on the hidden room--what she was gradually thinking of as Silas's bedroom--daily to look for signs of Grim’s return. She became adept at stepping around the end table without moving it from its place or knocking anything off its top.

Initially, her visits were quick ones, just glances to see if the Shade was back. But as the days stretched on, she took to spending more time in the room, examining the clothes left in the drawers and the toys in the closet, trying to imagine what it had been like when she had been younger and the boy in the photograph had still lived there. Had he woken up early on Saturdays and run into her room to wake her? Had she read to him while they shared the rocking chair? She stripped and remade the bed, smelling the sheets to see if any trace of young Silas remained, but the years had bleached them free of odor.

Chapter 4

(In which we explore grieving beneath a blind spot, and learn more about Grim's mission, and Silas, and Edge)

At breakfast, it took all of Elizabeth’s will not to openly gape at the details now evident around the kitchen: the crayon drawings yellowed with age but still tacked to the walls; the photographs with the extra face spliced in; the ceramic plate with a child's handprint in the center, sitting atop the cabinets. Just as she had first noticed with the picture in the bedroom upstairs, the whole house now seemed...clearer. Like she had been looking through a veil and it had just been lifted.

She ate in silence, afraid that she might say something that would give her away, instead spending the time staring at an open newspaper without reading it. Anything to avoid meeting her father's gaze. They had both had something stolen from them, but she was the only one who knew it. His continued ignorance made her feel complicit in the crime.

Chapter 3

(In which we meet a Shade, learn of our villain, and are taught how to clear away a blind spot.)

Elizabeth stood too stunned to speak, her mouth half open. She was suddenly very conscious of the feeling of the air against her eyeballs. The man seemed as surprised as she was, and his hands lost their grip on the book, which slid and bounced off the bed, landing spine down on the floor, its pages swaying in the breeze from the open window

Finally, after a long moment, he cleared his throat and in a hesitant voice, gravelly from disuse, said, "Could you...close the door?" 

Chapter 2

(In which we clean up the aftermath of an avian assault, explore for heretofore undiscovered sources of light, and a foo dog bookend is sacrificed to further the plot.)

     Jacob Warren grumbled as he shuffled through the papers from the insurance company. Most of his words were incomprehensible, the only exceptions being the expletives and something about an “act of God.” Elizabeth looked up from the book she was reading, finished her mouthful of egg and toast, and raised one questioning eyebrow at her father.

     He halted his muttering and cast the papers onto the table. “It’s going to be okay, ‘Lizabeth,” he said. “It’s only the cost of a couple of windows. Even if they don’t pay, I think we can afford it.”

Chapter 1

The house emerged from the gloom like the face of a cliff.  Without a light in any of its windows, and with no signs of life on its broad front porch, it looked as if it had been carved by the erosive decades of wind and snow, a product of the elements rather than anything man-made. It had been painted white with black shutters, but the cloud cover and the failing light of the day conspired to turn it into a dull gray. Elizabeth was home.

The cab was idling at the mouth of the driveway, the driver refusing to go further, fearing he would get stuck in the oceanic puddle that had collected in the hard-packed dirt. Across the yard, fat water droplets congregated as they fell, assuming the shape of walls of glass as they moved across the lawn. Elizabeth tightened the straps on her bulky backpack, took a deep breath, and plunged into the wet.

Instantly, her arms were stippled with goose bumps; the rain was far too cold for an early summer shower. She started running across the lawn, slipped on the grass, and changed to a wide-based waddle. Her clothes were soaked through by the time she reached the steps to the porch, the water on her glasses obscuring the details of the path.

Introduction (read this first)

     So, I wrote a book.
     I know what you're saying: That's easy, anyone could do that. Well, I did it, and here's the proof, jerk. Here's the freakin' book. Right. Here.
     Wait, come back!...Okay, I'm sorry, that got antagonistic kind of quickly. That's not me at all. Nor is it my book. I promise, the book won't call you names. Even when it gets kind of slow, even when it strains credulity. That's the Matt Brown guarantee.
     Synopses are hard. It seems like if you spend a year writing a book, you should be able to boil it down to a couple of paragraphs pretty easily. But, as anyone who's had the pleasure of listening to me stumble about with an explanation of what Im writing could tell you, it's nowhere near as easy as the back cover of a book would lead you to believe. Sometimes you get too close a story, too immersed into it, to adequately break it down with a dozen "Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you about"s. Anyway, here goes:

A teenage girl discovers that her memory has been altered to remove all evidence of a younger brother, a boy who has grown to become the fanatical tyrant of a magical land.

Alone during a summer storm, Elizabeth's home is attacked by an army of foreign birds. Nights later, she wakes to find a light emanating from a room that shouldn't exist, the bedroom of a younger brother her world has been made to forget. Within is a mysterious stranger named Grim, a traveler from a mystical land who is seeking help in defeating Silas the Pretender, the tyrant who rules over the land of Edge...the tyrant who was once her little brother. Eliza of Edge is the story of a girl who is forced to confront not only a powerful magical ruler, but her own forgotten adventures in a world where her name lives within legend.

      That's all accurate, but it's only the first few chapters, really. Just supposed to be a little taste. There's way more that happens. It's really good, I think. It's YA but hopefully accessible to people of all ages. The literate ones, anyway.
      I hope you like it. No, I hope you love it. I hope you want to take it to prom and grope it in your best friend's backseat and then have to make awkward conversation with it until graduation. That's how much I want you to like it. Awkwardly.
     The actual book digresses way less. It's also less icky.

     I would be remiss if I didn't take a second to honor the original readers, the people who pored through this monstrosity and gave me (hopefully) honest feedback and made it a better read. In no particular order: Katie Rathbun, Fran Reed, David "Forrest" Caskey, Alison "Mink" Railsback, John Malboeuf, Kat Lauer, Wendy Roemer, and J. Steven "Explosteveo" Parsons. Thanks, guys. But the biggest of all the gratitudes has to go to Amber Brown, my first reader and most vocal supporter, and unafraid to tell me when an idea is just plain stupid.

     If you like the first few chapters, stick around. More to come, probably posted weekly until it's done. If you really like it, tell your friends. If you don't, and you can vocalize why, then drop me a line (soupbather@gmail.com). Constructive criticism is always welcome.

    I hope you enjoy your time in Edge. I definitely had a lot of fun creating it.

                                                      --Matt