Jamie Mayes: A year in writing

Hello internet world!  My name is Jamie Mayes and I’m here to raise funds in order to be able to spend one year dedicated to writing two novels. 

Why, you ask, would someone seek funding?  I’ll make this as short and informative as possible for you all.  My adult life started with me, like most, not having a clue what I was doing or where I would focus my skills in order to have a “career”.  I was married young (20 and yes, we are still happily married 18 years later).  Shortly after marriage we had our first child, a son.  This made deciding on a career a priority and at the time I had spent many years in retail working in cash offices.  I made a quick trip to the closest staffing firm and was rightfully placed into an accounting position.  I have excelled at this position but it has not fulfilled my lifetime desire of being a published author.

I started writing at a very young age.  In fourth grade I wrote some of my first short stories and continued writing all through my teenage years.  It was always a dream but one that reality slapped out of my hand when faced with being an adult with a child and marriage.  Then our second child, a daughter, was born four years into our marriage.  Once again, I knew I had to make sure and provide for my family so I began working on a degree in Accounting. 

Fast forward about ten years and I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder.  It was a very stressful and chaotic time in my life and I turned back to writing and painting for therapy.  I discovered my love and desire to be a published author had not waned only sat back and waited for a turn.  After a decade of working hard to improve my diagnosis and survive each day without making things worse; I have overcome this obstacle.  Yet, because of this diagnosis I am forced to be extremely careful to keep myself from becoming too stressed, not simple daily living stress but the more serious, “I’m overworking myself and pulling more all nighters than actually sleeping”, kind of stress.  This has made me not only have to take a step down in my career but also makes it very difficult to dedicate what little extra time I have to write as it means I’m either not sleeping (equals bad bad days) or I’m not taking care of my responsibilities sufficiently as a mother, wife and employee.

So, what am I asking?  I am asking for funding in order to take a full year off from work so that I can complete two novels I have been working on.  They are smashingly good stories.  One, a sci-fi adventure and the second is a fantasy novel.  I will include the epilogue of The Story of Six: Darkness Falls and Jason Leeks: Accidental Space Pirate below for you to decide how much you want to see these stories make it to your local bookshelf.  You will also be able to follow me on my blog as I chronicle the year of writing for you (www.jamiewriteswhat.com).

The funding you may contribute will help immensely and I won’t be fully dependent on you as I will also be working freelance accounting projects online as much as possible.

Should you decide to donate, the top 10 donors will receive a free signed copy of both books upon publication.   The top five out of the ten will also receive a signed sketch with their books and finally the top three donors will receive both books, signed sketch and will be recognized on the book’s dedication page.

Thank you for considering my gofundme campaign.  I hope to be able to bring you two fabulous stories with your help which can provide me the launching board to work on and complete the dozens of other stories in my head.

The Story of Six: Darkness Falls
Epilogue

There was Darkness.  It was all encompassing and was all there was to be seen or felt for all eternity.  The Darkness held within its deep secrets many beings that thrived on the recesses of the blackness and chaos of such an existence.  It was many millennium that saw them gain strength.  The power contained in the Darkness was unmatched as nothing else was ever born or produced that could rival the hold it had on the whole of all imaginable. 

Deep in the midst of the Darkness, a mix of conflicting emotions were at war.  In the turmoil of the Darkness was borne a new emotion unfelt, ever. The foreign ideas emanating from them terrified the Darkness.  As they fought for their place in the Darkness and beat upon each other, there was a spark; a miniscule dot of Light in the deafening Darkness of eternity.  The dot of Light, once brightened, was uncontainable.  It fought for existence as it was brutally attacked.  Growing, the tiny dot became a large ball of bright white energy.  The emotions of Darkness; hate, fear, war all pushed mightily against the emotions of the Light; love, peace, forgiveness.  As the two fought the Light grew stronger and increased in size until a vast section of the Darkness was shoved back and was unable to contain its hold on space and time.

An explosion, the Darkness howled in the vacuum of its reality.  The Light spread at an exponential rate until it enveloped the entirety of Darkness.  In its birth, a new Universe was created and shined across the cosmic realm; one that sought for a life of tranquility and beauty.  Yet, the Darkness was not gone.  It was still contained as a part of the Light, enraged, insistent in its desire to regain its clutch on all but held back imprisoned by the Light.  The Light knew its hold was tenuous at best.  They did not want to give up however and in the beginning created The Three Guardians.  They were placed upon the Universe and embedded within them; the whole of creation was made a part of them in order to understand the protection that would be required from them.  Forever.   The Darkness, not to be forgotten, spun itself The Three Warriors to seek out The Three Guardians wherever they should be and destroy them along with the Light they protected.

Thus, we begin our known Universe.  One of bright splendor and life, yet, death and despair always lies just underneath us all.  The two sides ingrained in the whole constantly affecting everything as they struggle to both exist. 

The Three Warriors. 

The Three Guardians. 

Now, we begin the Story of the Six.

Jason Leeks, Accidental Space Pirate
Epilogue

The door rattled in its frame; a loud beating of fists on cheap pressed wood echoed through the tiny apartment.  Jason bolted upright on the couch he had passed out on hours ago while drinking his weight in beer in order to forget the shittiest day of his life.  Booming knocks shook his brain and he covered his ears with his hands as he sat trying to figure out what day it was or even if he was alive; his head near exploding from the cacophony at the door.  He swung his legs from the couch and put his feet to the bare concrete floor.  The noise was not getting any better so he drug himself from the couch to a standing position and wobbled to the door of his apartment expecting to find the asshole who lives above him angry and yelling about the TV that still blared behind him; probably had been going for hours. 

He turned the key in the deadbolt and slid back the chain stealing a few breaths to prepare of an onslaught of profanity from the asshole then pulled the door ajar.  The moment the seal cracked the door was shoved into Jason’s chest.  He was flung backwards onto his back, the wind knocked from his lungs.  This was not the jerk who stomped around upstairs trying to annoy him on a daily basis.  This was some new more annoying and physically larger asshole.  Jason worked himself from his back to a sitting position with his legs splayed out in front of him.  “HEY!  Dickhead, what the hell?”

Raising his head confused in anger he saw who shoved him finally, it was not encouraging.  Large and taking up the entire space of his doorframe stood a beast of a man dressed in a long black robe cinched at the waist with rope.  The hood covered most of his face and had intricate geometric patterns woven all over the arms and front from the waist to the tips of the toes it touched.  Jason was not sure but he realized whoever he pissed off this time it probably had nothing to do with the obnoxious volume of his television.  He leaned forward to stand when the robed figured brought up his left arm and the club he was carrying became visible.  He had no time to react and felt the pain radiate from his skull, down his shoulders and into his back.  His eyes closed without any conscious help from him and Jason was once again napping but no longer due to the overconsumption of beer; it was now the overconsumption of clubs to the head.

The smell of old, wet and very dirty cloth filled Jason’s nostrils.  His head was bouncing around on this neck so much he felt like a bobble head doll.  Trying to breath, he opened his eyes and found exactly what he knew he would when he had them closed and could pretend that none of this was happening to him.  A burlap sack encased his head and accounted for the nasty smell.  He was laying in what he could only assume was a rather large trunk in a really old clunker based on the size mixed with all the creaks and groans as he was bounced around huffing exhaust.  Jason had gotten himself into some really crappy situations in his life but this was a first for him.  He could not even fathom what he did that got him sacked and thrown in a trunk.  All of his problems usually consisted of drinking too much and mouthing off to the wrong person which always resulted in an immediate response that consisted of flying bottles and fists.  Unless he really pissed someone off or actually landed some good punches for once, kidnapping just didn’t figure in to what was his normal range of repercussions for his buffoonery when out in public.

His back was up against something very hard and riddled with sharp edges.  He tried to adjust with his arms and found that his captor was wise enough to tie them behind his back instead of just throwing him in the trunk.  With all the space provided he scrunched his knees up and used his body weight to try and push himself off the offending object.  In doing so he managed to smash his head into something with sharper edges and quite an unforgiving in mass.  His eyes burst with stars and rainbows of colors.  He dropped his chin into his chest and scrambled back to the less painful position with the sharp objects in his back; a preferred method of torture over knocking himself senseless once again.  The car continued to chug along at a fairly fast clip down, who knew what road.  Jason was beginning to think maybe this was something more than a bar fight but there was nothing in his brain that could connect the harsh reality of being tied and his head stuffed in a bag to the waterfall of stupidity that ran out of his mouth regularly when filling it with beer.  Maybe this was mistaken identity.  They’d finally stop and the weirdo in the Halloween getup would open the trunk and his boss would just stare down at Jason and smack the lumbering giant for getting shit wrong.  It could happen.  He could also open the trunk to the damn club again and then even worse once they drug him limp and unresponsive from the car.  Jason just did not see how this was going to turn into anything other than him being dead somewhere and not a soul would care or grieve.  He was good at turning the world away from him and now he realized that it was probably a terrible habit to spend his life drinking and pissing off the universe because when you were being beaten about the head and kidnapped there was now no one who would notice your sorry ass was missing. 

The car was now beginning to make a wide arc on the road.  Jason contemplated what was going to happen when the trunk popped and he was faced with Halloween man again with his head basically useless and his arms tied there were not many options in the way of escape.  His arms were actually tied somewhat loosely, strange and not very effective but it allowed him to start searching the space around him for any object he could pick up.  He’d be happy with anything as long as it wasn’t toilet paper forgotten from the last grocery trip.  Jason doubted he could manage a wrapping project sufficient enough to keep him alive.  His fingers made jerky dashing movements across the floor of the trunk – running back and forth sweeping the area coming back with nothing but lots of dirt stirred into the air intermixed with flakes of metal.  Of course, his menacing foe would have the trunk empty save for objects that would cause the most discomfort when a body was thrown in among them.

The exhaust had been filling the trunk as the car with Jason helplessly languishing inside traveled down roads to its unknown destination.  The dirt Jason mixed up now filled the air as well and he started to realize that unless they stopped soon he was going to go ahead and die from lack of oxygen.  He was rather unsure of how that prospect sat with him but he thought it might be more dignified at least compared to another beating in a random location only to be found months later after the wild animals had eaten off his face and made off with his meaty (and abundant as far as he was concerned) manhood.  The thought of wild animals running through deserts and forests with his testicles hanging from their jowls gave him a bit more energy to figure something out besides lying quietly in his current position and he started to rock back and forth gently.  He figured if he could find out just how much room he had he could find a better position to be in when the trunk finally creaked open.  He didn’t have anything to fight with but he could at least kick and flail as good as any bug caught on its back (as long as the club stayed put away). 

 

Jason rocked a little more vigorously doing his best to not impale himself on whatever was in his back and at his head.  He could now tell that there was ample space to the front of him he just had to adjust onto his back.  Thrusting his feet forward he used his legs to pull himself forward.  His body drug through the grit on the bottom of the trunk and he could feel a sneeze coming on from the fresh dirt rising in the air.  Dragging his ass forward he then rolled backwards slightly putting pressure on his heels to raise his body and turn onto his back at the same time.  He was almost situated when his nose tickled and his air cutoff with a horrible sneeze that filled the bag over his head with spit and a bit of snot; the force of the sneeze causing him to slam onto his back instead of gently laying down as not to raise suspicions with anyone who might be in the car besides the creepy driver.  Instead he now had spit on his cheeks and bits of his nose garbage resting on various locations across his face while he worked at getting his hands out of the small of his back.  He wiggled and shuffled his arms up, down trying to find a comfortable spot that would allow him to lie on his back without being uncomfortable.  They always make it work somehow in the movies and he worked at finding that spot so he could be an agile victim waiting to spring into action but it was not working out like in the movies and he flopped around the trunk trying to not break his wrists underneath the weight of his body.  While he continued to flail looking like a fish that desperately needs to get back in its water bowl the car suddenly jolted to a sliding halt.

Jason slid across the trunk bottom, scraping his hands against the metal floor and was rammed into the back of the car before settling back into position.  He cursed the pain and felt blood oozing from his forehead.  He had suffered quite a bit so far this evening (or day he had no idea) and was ready to get things over with and find out whether he was going to die or if the whole kicking and bucking like a dead bug would result in him somehow remaining alive.  He heard the seat squealing in protest as the Halloween man opened the door and the entire vessel bounced up then down as he got out slamming the door behind him.  There were footsteps on gravel.  Now at least Jason knew he was probably somewhere near civilization if they stayed on gravel.  He could hear the rocks crunching under the towering jarheads feet (which was disconcerting because if he remembered the dude had no shoes on).  As the steps got closer to the rear tires underneath him there was a loud SLAP on top of the trunk that caused him to jump and once again crush a few fingers tied behind him.  Jason was getting tired of the game.  “HEY ASSHOLE! Let me out of this damn trunk and get this shit off my head!”  The words were muffled in the trunk and came back much louder to his ears than they left his mouth.

Jason was on his back and he could hear Halloween man putting the key in the lock.  He quickly pondered the best first move and as soon as the trunk was cleared he reacted.  While his captor was still slightly bent over the opening he flung his legs in the air and wrapped them around the goons head locking his feet behind his fat neck and squeezed with his calves hoping to block his airway and bring him to his knees.  Instead, unlike every other kidnapped hero of his childhood movies, the overgrown perv stood up and Jason dangled from his neck with his head almost two feet from the ground.