Novel Series #9: Seer

This was something I had started about five or more years ago. The original was about Shawn and his younger brother Alex who ran away from home and hitched a ride with Ice, Dawn and Eva who were part of a different book.

The second try still included Shawn, ditched his kid brother, and brought in the best friend, Derrick. The disappearances began but Derrick had a girlfriend in that version and Ice and Dawn kidnapped Shawn and Derrick instead of Shawn and Derrick going willingly. There was also a bunch of fluff between chapters that was really redundant.

This is draft three. I usually don't go through so many drafts but I rarely plotted five (and more) years ago so I never finished anything. Plus my writing style changed so much in a short time that anything I wrote even three years ago is drastically different from what I'm producing now. It's the sheer volume that did it but it means I have to go back and tweak about a dozen novels. Anyway, here we go:

Genre: Low Fantasy OR Supernatural

Word count: 92,102

Prompt: A fifteen year old boy can see auras and wants to find the cure for mortality.

Main Characters: Shawn Dixon, Derrick McKillin, Ice, Dawn, Eva, and Ray.

Minor Characters of Note: Zillah, Charter, Synclet, and the immortal Hunters, and Lucas.

Summation: Shawn has always been able to see the electro-magnetic pulses of color around people, otherwise known as auras. When two popular girls go missing from his school and he finds twins who have no auras, he is unintentionally brought into a world full of vampires, werewolves and other creatures that people believe do not exist. His new mission is to find the reason why these "mythical" people are immortal. The problem? He's not the only one looking for a cure to mortality and the group that is are not taking willing subjects.

High Points: Zillah, Charter and Synclet. They were fun to write. Ice was also a surprisingly fun character as well but Dawn, eh not so much. He was kind of there for some back story help and yeah.

Low Points: The auras become too bright for Shawn. That is all.

The World: Ours but with immortals.

Major Plot Twist: The Hunters and Shawn.

Memorable Lines:

"Oh they're really pretty though. Yellow, blue, purple, shining all around you like, like, a cloud. There's a red and black bit here." (Shawn describing auras as a child.)

"No one will understand it. That's okay though: everyone has a special talent that other people don't understand." (His grandmother after explaining auras and telling him not to be so liberal about telling people.)

"Did your hamburger grow eyes?" "With the chemicals they put in food today I wouldn't be surprised. But no, it kind of looks like the patty is made out of meal worms." (One of the few lines that made it into the rewrite...ha)

"We're different. That's what we did."

"Why should we be forced to suppress our differences when we're taught our whole lives to think outside the box, to pursue our greatest desires and to be different? Why should we conform to a bunch of mindless drabble that isn't important? All that matters is that we're happy with who we are." (I love Shawn's delivery of this line.)

"See them? As in you see colors around people?" "Yes."

"Think of your body as a transparent mannequin that can transmit any color from within itself depending on what that mannequin is feeling at that time. The color glows from within, out to surround every living being with a kind of, well, mist. Like everyone one's walking around with a fog of color around them."

"It's always the popular pretty ones who get abducted. There is a certain benefit to being an outcast, huh?"

"Every living thing has an aura. They didn't. And it's not me because I can see yours and everyone else's. There's something different about those two and not in a good way."

"Is that why you want immortality? You want to prove that you can stop your own river and cheat death?"

"Boy, how do you feel about learning about immortality?" (Ice to Shawn)

"Um? Eyes on the road? I'd rather not be an asphalt pancake today."

Dawn and Ice in a nutshell:
"Supplies." Ice said.
"My change?" Dawn asked.
"I ate it."
"Asshole."
"Your cream soda is in that bag."
"Okay, you're forgiven."

"Oh darling, how beautifully naïve you are."

"Now, now, that is not nice darling. Please keep your food inside your body. Mother does not like to clean up those kinds of messes." "I could keep my food in if you didn't mention Shawn using my privates as a model."

"We provide everything and you research a subject you would have anyway." "And there's no catch." "Correct. There is no catch."

"Natural born immortals like succubus, werewolves, orgs and whatever all have an aura. Vampires: the ones that were turned; don't."

"You mean will I help you torture immortals to death looking for what makes them immortal then watch as you inject a human with some kind of weird drug that might or might not work?"

"Humans cannot possibly understand what it means to live forever and they cannot hope to make up any kind of law or test that can determine who deserves it and who does not."

"You do not necessarily have to tell us. We can take it from you easily."

"Oh darling, how sweet of you but you're being utterly stupid."

"NO. The place is done. Finished. Destroyed. Whoever was in there when it went up will be dead."

"You're dead!" "Hm? No, well, technically yes. But we're not, you know, dead-dead. At least not yet."

"Oh good. Would you like to be Tweedledee or Tweedledum?

This is one of the few novels that I haven't been able to put in the "Finished" folder on my computer. It means there is a sequel brewing in the back of my head. I'm not sure exactly how that is going to work considering the ending of this novel.