(The following are the first 250 words from my (soon-to-be) immensely popular young-adult fantasy novel, Dream Warriors of Akaji, for the Birthday Blowout First Page Contest with Victoria Marini. Thanks in advance for reading. Any comments are welcome. Best, A.P.H.)
(NOTE: All right all right! I’m removing all the ital (except this, and the stuff above). Hey, ya know, Faulkner wrote whole chapters in ital. People seem to think his stuff is pretty good! But I get it. So, no more ital. Death to ital. But the rhetorical questions are staying until a high-power editor/agent tells me to nix them, by gum! Thanks, APH)
(NOTE 2: Okay okay! If everybody tells you the same thing they’re right, right. So here it is again, minus the rhetorical questions, opening right up with the Henny Youngman bathroom-joke one-liner. Many thanks to all who commented, APH)
Title: Dream Warriors of Akaji
Word Count: 147,000
Genre: Young-Adult Fantasy
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The first time I left my body, I had to come back to pee. Seriously! People don’t think about these sorts of things when they get into Shamanism, but they should. Sometimes folks come back from another dimension to find a pair of wet pants. Or sometimes they don’t come back at all.
I suppose they need their moms around to remind them, “Remember to pee before you leave your body – at least try – and be sure to come back!”
But peeing your pants or being stuck in an alternate reality might be the least of your worries if you get into Shamanism. Even worse things can happen. For example, maybe a member of your family might get kind of, um, kidnapped. Not their bodies, that is, but their souls. Maybe even your kid sister’s soul might get, um . . . stolen by a demonic entity from another dimension.
Not that that ever happened to me.
Well, yes it did.
But now I’m getting ahead of myself. So before we go any further . . .
Call me Elvis. Tanaka Elvis.
I’m just a normal thirteen-year-old kid. Kinda skinny, long dark-brown hair, an okay face, almond-shaped eyes (got those from my dad), always in a black tee-shirt and black jeans. I like rock-and-roll, my iPhone, gaming, fantasy novels, etc. Like I said, completely normal. Except for one thing: I’m also a Shaman.
But don’t blame me for that. It wasn’t my idea to become a Shaman. It was my mom’s.