The Door Between

A First Glimpse

Obey. Report. Forget. Welcome to HollowWood. You won’t stay long.

I started The Door Between in January of last year. It came to me in the form of an unfinished dream that refused to stay quietly tucked away in my mind. I wrote the first draft by hand, nervous that the same block that ended all of my other projects would come to destroy my progress. Instead, quite the opposite happened.

Few of my stories have come to life as much as this one. It has sought me out in dreams and split-second glances, reverberated through song and the words of those around me. It is not only something I strive to finish, but something that I delight in writing. These characters are more than words on a page. They live within my skin, to continue on even after they are gone from the world of HollowWood.

And now, dear reader, you will be granted your first glimpse into what awaits on the other side of the Door.

Excerpt from Chapter 1

I watch the leaves scatter in the wind and wish I could be swept away with them. I watch the sunbeams dance against the stone steps and long to step back into the shadows. I watch as the Green fills with bodies, and I am left with the knowledge that there is no part of this I can stop. I’ve always wondered if, in those last minutes, that smile of theirs is fake. How could it be real? No matter whether chosen or not, uncertainty is just that. Uncertain. Whether you choose to take the final steps or are dragged to the very threshold, no one ever smiles when they are forced over a cliff. No one ever smiles when they are abandoned. But everyone smiles when they walk through. Even those who screamed as they were dragged before it.

Every Departure is the same. There one moment, then gone the next. It takes only one blink, one final breath as the hinges squeak, as the cold rush prickles our skin, as the smell of forgotten things left dying in the dark rushes toward us in a gust, for them to be no more. Left to the unknown. Left to the mercy of the merciless Door. They become neither here nor there, simply gone. Another missing piece of the whole.

You would think that such a common thing would become normal. You would think wrong. It doesn’t matter how many I witness. It doesn’t matter whether they are a Will or a Fade. It doesn’t matter whether it is light or dark, day or night, feverishly hot or achingly cold. It doesn’t matter whether I saw it coming. The Departures never become normal. My role in them never becomes normal. Least of all now.

The weight is crushing, a pressure on my shoulders that will not relent. The air is cold, frigid against my skin, piercing through the sleeves of my dress. They’re all watching me. To them, this is nothing new. To them, this is like every other Departure. But that is not what this is. This is the end.

My eyes are drawn to him, even as my body tries to turn away. I want to run. Away from him. To him. I don’t know anymore. But he is there, and I am here. And we are not meant to meet. Even turned away from me, I know he feels my gaze. I see it, in the way his shoulders straighten, in the way he lifts his head, the wind running through the short tufts of his hair. I see him trying to be strong.

Green bleeds down the front of the Door in sappy streaks, bubbling and bursting and smearing. It drips into the grass in hissing patches, leaving black where there was color. Death where there was life. I don’t need to hear the whispers of the others to know what they believe. They see it as a sign. A sign that we caught him in time, that we have regained favor in the face of our misstep. I see it as it is. A warning of what will soon be required of us.

Dread pools in my stomach, turning my hands to ice. Despair spreads like frozen tendrils down my spine. A smile remains moored on my face, taking possession of my features without reaching my eyes, and still he stands there, a picture of peace I know does not truly exist. It’s for me. It’s all for me. It is because of me that he will not fight. It is because of me that he will not run.

It is because of me that I will never see him again.

He will be forced to walk through the Door, and it will be me forcing him.

As if from a great distance, Coralane reaches out, her small hand searching for mine in the crowd of bodies. We both know she cannot reach me. I am set apart. In this, I am unreachable. Wind brushes through the air and I turn from her, my back prickling with a hundred sets of eyes, all staring at me, through me, to the blackening Door before us. The last drop of green falls, leaving in its wake a withered circle. And with that, the cycle is nearly complete. The evidence lies there, in the ash that used to be grass; the symbolic purge of the only thing that could threaten our existence here. A Fade. If only the true thing didn’t have to follow right after.

THE TDB CREW

When it comes to summing up my characters into neat little rows of text, I am at a loss. These people have lived inside every waking moment of my mind for months, slowly revealing themselves through the drafts and uncooperative get-to-know-you sessions. It would be a disservice to confine them to anything less than they are. However, there is one reader who will personally find me if I deprive her, so I have reached a middle ground.

I have picked three characters to briefly feature tonight. At the end of this post, I will put up a poll for you, the reader, to tell me what (or who) you would like to see more of. Happy, Happy?

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Without further ado- The Characters


Erena

I set out on this journey with nothing more than a dream, a feeling, and a character. I spent careful hours constructing her, discovering her past and her future. She, in turn, chose to dispossess me of that outline in a matter of minutes. 

Erena has surprised me from the start. The affection between a main character and their writer is well known, but many MCs fall flat in the face of favored side characters. However, as much as I love everyone else, the connection I have built with her is something I do not believe could ever be replicated or overshadowed. 

Erena is, as many real people are, a not so random jumble of paradoxes. She has the skills to adapt to the cruelty of her world, but a heart that longs to remember the names of the abandoned. She is fierce, but she does not lack gentleness. Perhaps my favorite thing about her is who she is around the people she loves but cannot fully trust. As in life, there is no way to tell the motives of anyone but yourself, and even your own are often not what you would think. 

She isn't foolish. She understands the world she lives in. Yet, she does not let herself fully harden toward others. She allows for connection, even with the very real possibility that it will one day be used against her. While Coralane is the heart of their world, it is Erena who gives the lost their own stars. 



Chasity

Without a doubt, Chasity is the one who keeps me up at two in the morning. Not necessarily because she has anything for me to write down, but because she is a genuinely terrifying character. 

It is incredible how different a character can be from their writer. While I like to imagine I would be the clever one who keeps the group alive, I would not last a second if my leadership were being opposed by Chasity, as Erena's always is. Her determination is both her greatest ally and greatest vice. She truly does not know when to give up. She is both the first to start a fight and the first to finish it. I pity anyone she decides to ruin. 



Winowa

You will never meet her. She is the one who existed before. The sister who vanished. The girl that everyone but Erena forgot. 

She is more powerful in memory than she ever was in life. 

In closing,

I am a year and six months into writing this novel. By the end of summer, I hope to be finishing revisions and edits on this draft.

From there, who knows? Another draft? Beta readers? Querying?

Writing is full of surprises and unexpected outcomes. It is my dream to one day secure a publishing deal, but who knows how long that might take, or how many revisions this story will have to go through before it is ready.

All I know for certain is that TDB is here to stay, and it is my privilege to share this first true glimpse into the world and its characters.