The Long Winter

The Long Winter is the story of Myst and her friends touched with the magic of their world. She is a wolf Guqua, cast out by the pakishas because of her powers and her parentage. Five days out of thirty, when the moon is full, Myst is human, for the rest she is wolf and she must find her own path in a broken world where the winters are growing longer, the poisons of the Wasteland are spreading, and the spectre of Shayla looms over them all.  The Long Winter was originally written as part of a four-part prompt series for the Needle in the Hay Wolves Award. At the end of the process everyone who'd written was invited to stitch the four parts together to create a whole and these stories were published in a short story anthology called WOLVES. Everyone who has read The Long Winter has told me it needs to be longer, which is funny because it already is significantly longer than the four parts combined, and was the longest of the short stories in the anthology at 15,000 words.   Having re-read The Long Winter recently there is so much in this story that is hinted at but not really explored, and so many characters of interest that need to be fleshed out more, like Cyrus, the mayor of Fort Town. I hope you will enjoy reading the rewrite of The Long Winter as much as I enjoy writing it. My goal is to put out a new chapter each month, and I hope to be able to do this consistently, but we shall see.