An alien ship rests over Water Island. For five years the people of the US Virgin Islands have lived with the Ynaa, a race of superadvanced aliens on a research mission they will not fully disclose. They are benevolent in many ways but meet any act of aggression with disproportional wrath. This has led to a strained relationship between the Ynaa and the local Virgin Islanders and a peace that cannot last.
A year after the death of a young boy at the hands of an Ynaa, three families find themselves at the center of the inevitable conflict, witness and victim to events that will touch everyone and teach a terrible lesson..
Cadwell Turnbull is a graduate from the North Carolina State University’s Creative Writing MFA in Fiction and English MA in Linguistics. He was the winner of the 2014 NCSU Prize for Short Fiction for his story “Ears” and attended Clarion West 2016. Turnbull’s short stories have been published in Nightmare, Lightspeed, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. His Asimov’s short story “When the Rains Come Back” made Barnes and Noble’s Sci-fi & Fantasy Short Fiction Roundup in April 2018. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Lesson is his first book.
Anubis was the god of embalming and a protector of the dead in Egyptian mythology, he also oversaw the weighing scale during the “Weighing of the Heart”, in which it was determined wether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.
Nut is the Egyptian goddess of the sky and all heavenly bodies. Envisioned as as star-covered woman arching over the earth, Nut is the barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos in the world and is considered to be one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon.
As the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, Nut is regarded as the mother of the gods and of all things living. She and her husband Geb are considered to be the givers of food and water, not only to the living but also to the dead. In this role she is seen as a protector of the dead.
My favorite Haitian painter 👨🏿🎨🙌🏾 🇭🇹 Emilcar Similien, known as Simil was born in 1944 in St. Marc. From 1965 to 1971 he studied painting, sculpture, and art history at the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Port-au-Prince. Simil uses his images of women only as means for displaying patterns, color, and the sparkle of gold jewelry on black skin. He paints with acrylics on Masonite of any size. His surfaces are smooth and polished. Simil delights in beauty, elegance, and grace. “Well trained by masters who taught him to excell in his form, Similien’s works also contains discrete messages”
As part of their year-end conversations with people who had big years, our pals at All Things Considered talked to someone who’s had a HUGE year (three years, in fact) – author N.K. Jemisin, who just won her THIRD Hugo Award (the only author ever to do so!). Check out her conversation with Ari Shapiro here.
– Petra (not dying of fangirl envy or anything, noooooo)
