I have decided that on Mondays I will post a section from a novel I am writing set in Pam Uphoff’s Wine of the Gods series. If you haven’t heard of this series I heartily recommend it for sheer entertainment. Don’t be put off by the number of books – a lot are relatively short.
This is the first book. You can start elsewhere but The Empire of One is a good place but really, the beginning is the best place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Outcasts-Gods-Wine-Book-ebook/dp/B005VFXN3U/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2CXFF6S6NS1QR&keywords=wine+of+the+gods&qid=1653894870&s=digital-text&sprefix=wine+of+the+gods%2Cdigital-text%2C277&sr=1-1
now to the first section of Ostraya part 1
Chapter 1
The dirt path that ran along the edge of the cemetery was not used by most people. The two-meter brick wall and occasional crypt upper works made it a gloomy place with its east-west orientation. When combined with the dense scrub, mostly lantana, that encompassed most of the path’s right-hand side, it meant the path was only used by the brave or desperate.
Andrew Harris walked along it steadily, hoping none of the small group of bullies that frequently made his life hell had noticed him duck down the track. The wall that surrounded the cemetery curved to the right just past the end of the track, so if none of them saw him duck right, then they would expect to see him around the curve of the wall. The track itself turned right about three meters in for about two meters, then returned east-west till it emerged on Franklin Street. The odd dog leg was obviously due to some ancient change in land boundaries at the western end, where there were two meters at one alignment and then the rest of the block at a more southerly alignment. It meant the block with the scrub had once been two blocks, really, now that he thought about it.
He glanced around before emerging onto Franklin Street, but he seemed to have escaped the other boy’s attention, if they had come after him at all, rather than just yelling abuse at him from a distance. He could deal with them if he had to, but he would rather not. Too much trouble and awkward questions if he got into a fight and beat up the four of them. Yes, he took karate lessons, irregularly as his mum could afford them, but his blue belt would not seem to be advanced enough to account for his taking them down. Better not to have questions asked by avoiding trouble.
Eight hundred years after the nuclear war, a lot of people had a few of the engineered genes in their DNA, and no one really cared. Andrew, on the other hand, had a lot. By the time society had rebuilt to the point they could actually test DNA easily, the genes had spread so widely from the few modified survivors that had escaped the holocaust in the northern hemisphere that there was not a lot anyone could do about it. In fact, there was a growing movement where people started proclaiming how many of the engineered genes they had like it was some sort of scout’s honor badge or something.
Two main groups were leading the charge, the Tallies and the Purples. The Purples were a group that had a gene that induced a purple shade to their skin and hair. It was not that common, and the purple coloration was extremely faint, but it was definitely there. The Tallies had an engineered gene or genes that gave them great height. Mostly in the plus two-meter category, sometimes approaching two and a half meters. They weren’t the same as normal tall people who tended to be thin, lanky, and somewhat ill-proportioned. The engineered Tallies were proportionally shaped for their height and made up a considerable proportion of the teams in sports that required height, like basketball, and strength, like football.
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