No, I Am Not the Horror Western Guy

An Excerpt from Black Wells: Book 3 - ALL THAT MANKIND FAILS TO BEAR

*PROLOGUE*

To stand at the center of Black Wells, Colorado is to be surrounded by a city in white. Marble buildings stretch from the earth, towering over the observer with absolute authority. There is an undeniable majesty projected from the shining, white stone artifice of the city’s historical landmarks, its skyscrapers, and municipal buildings.

All its preserved culture, all its economy, all its governance cut from the singular color that, for the American country wherein it resides, represents antiquity, power, and glory.

To stand at the beating heart of Black Wells is to see the city as it wishes to be seen—an immaculate bride ready for ceremony, celebration and finally, consummation. Adorned in white, she, like all brides, hopes you will admire the tranquility of her form. The grace with which she strides. Her pride. 

Her beauty. 

To stand in that spot over the span of a year a person would find themselves drinking in the alluring shadows darkly outlining winter white-dusted spindles. Their heart seared by the swollen, glass cupola of an immaculate museum that burns azure in spring and summer, slick and wet as a freshly cut sapphire under the cornflower autumn moon. This cupola, set on a hill like a jewel within a wedding band of white gold, serves as the first betrayal of the city’s stark truth.  

At its center, Black Wells is a white city. But, surrounding that gowned lady, fanning out from her central bodice is a train of spectral hues of nature and a population spilling over with color. 

The Astolat Mountains, cutting their stone stockade around the city, reach darkly in gray and blue. Their own crowns are white, too. But brighter, more pure than even the marital marble at Black Wells’ center. 

The Cam River, its source forever a secret, charges, purple and white, southwest into the Starlight Valley. The valley swells, pregnant with marigolds, violets, and swaths of wild sunflowers so vast that from the sky, one might believe they are flying over acres and acres of honeycomb.

Black Wells is a city filled with occupants dancing through spectrums of color, orientation, gender; holding every possible watery shape of precious, heaven-gifted identity.   

Though it is mostly forgotten by the country in which it resides, it is a very American city, which is to say, a city of inequity, bias, and discrimination. Hopeful in what it dreams to be, yet unashamedly cruel. A city with an immobile, ossified heart always poised in uncertainty, ready to panic at the richness of the color surrounding it. Flowing out of it. 

A city that, like the country in which it resides, is unable to endure all that mankind fails to bear.

*Black Wells books 1 & 2 were published by Dark Hart Books in 2022. The series is currently looking for a home. Book 3 is complete and ready to be published.*