It is October 2023 and I am diving into sharing chapters of my novel, Stranger Skies, with the public.
I wrote this book 10 years ago. It was a Nanowrimo win for me. Since I finished the first book in the series, I’ve been working on the second (yes, that long) — but as I am finally nearing the finish line with From the Ashes, it seems appropriate to share the first story serially, with the public.
Stranger Skies, like all fiction I share on my Substack, will be free to read here. If you’d like earlier access to chapters, I urge you to join the Wild Circle, my Ream membership.
Members of the Wild Circle get early access not only to my backlist (finished novels), but also works-in-progress, short fiction, and writing exclusive to the membership.
Want to skip the preface and just dive right in? Here you are:
Pronouns
The Borderlands Saga is a series with characters using different pronoun sets from the general he / she. These characters play roles sufficiently big to require a guide to figure out their pronouns. To eliminate confusion, here are some notes.
Some characters in the first part of the book use non-binary gender (or gender-neutral) pronouns. (After the first part, I revert to the familiar binary pronouns of he/him/his and she/her/hers for most of the book.)
Those characters in this book who have different pronouns come from a planet with five genders; there are two characters in this book, so I will provide those sets of pronouns.
The sets are categorized as follows.*
Subject: They looked at the forest.
Object: The forest looked at them.
Possessive Adjective: It was their forest.
Possessive Pronoun: The forest was theirs.
Reflexive: They kept the forest for themselves.
Ze/zim pronouns
S: ze (Ze looked at the forest…., etc.)
O: zim
PA: ziis
PP: ziis
R: zimself
Plural: zimin
Jhe/jhen pronouns
S: jhe
O: jhen
PA: jhes
PP: jhes
R: jhenself
Plural: jhe-en
*I have taken this form of categorization from this quite extensive, though no longer existent, database of gender neutral pronouns, by John Williams. I have also copied the sample sentence structure from said database, and, in doing research for appropriate pronouns and the five-gender system, made use of the lists in the database as well as of my own imagination.
Calendrical Notes
The Duchy of Min divides up the 360-day year into 15 months of 24 days each. New Year’s Day is celebrated at the beginning of autumn; each season is about 90 days long. Each day is 14 hours but one hour on Osecou is about 1.65 hours on Earth; thus, the days are about the same length as Earth days. Minae count the years from the date of landing on the island; the story starts on 24th Cufaito in the year 709.
The months are as follows, with any key solar holidays in parentheses.
1. Shyshik (Goavimus/New Year’s Day/First of Autumn)
2. Airoreiph (Daer/Autumnal Equinox)
3. Ibog
4. Sephai (Loasil/First of Winter)
5. Cufaito
6. Sur (Toash/Winter Solstice/Shortest Day)
7. Beilok
8. Ishei (Oroaralra/First of Spring)
9. Waiwod
10. Phamei (Thoans/Vernal Equinox)
11. Ashqi
12. Cige (Ininneli/First of Summer)
13. Oidu
14. Rew (Adivus/Summer Solstice/Shortest Night)
15. Nocu (Lenma; End of Year Celebration)
There is also a lunar calendar of holidays; they fall in different places each year. The two key holidays in this story are Shoron and Saeas Night. Shoron is the closest full moon to the Shortest Day, or Winter Solstice, and Saeas Night is the first new moon after Shortest Day.
Chapters done from the point of view of native Minae will have the dates at the beginning. The rest of the chapters will not.