Shamanka: The Journey
Amanda James Dill
My current fiction project, titled Shamanka, is the story of a young woman's journey into shamanism. Yulianna--the protaganist--endures pain as well as inflicts it, drifts away from old friends, finds new ones--along with knowledge and power that sometimes frightens those around her. As the work progresses, you'll probably get a glimpse or two.
Shamanka: The Beginning
Mysterious as her name, Yulianna Tohopka appeared on a wave of whispers, though not the usual sort. Most newcomers were greeted with some semblance of civility--but not her. No, her not-so-subtle arrival had sent the small town into a frenzy. Two, actually--the first being the sort of frenzy women are prone to when threatened by the addition of an astoundingly attractive woman to their midst, and the second being that of the men who witnessed the attractiveness.
Shamanka: The Mark
"Did you see?" One young woman gushed to her boyfriend--who did, in fact, see Yulianna, and her soon-to-be infamous tattoo, and understood what it meant. In the weeks before their death, her parents had canceled several planned appearances--and then, just hours before his death, her father had released what was to be his final work of art--a mysterious painting of a young girl, kneeling and facing away from the viewer, her clothes torn and hair piled high atop her head, leaning forward with one hand on the wall in front of her, and in her other hand, a bloody heart. Surprising because this sort of gore was unusual in his work, and strangely regarded due to his untimely death, surely--but these things were not what had the crowd around the lawyer's office astounded on this particular grey morning. It was the tattoo on the girl in the painting's back--the exact tattoo present on Yulianna's skin.There was no mistaking the intricate lines and patterns of the skeleton-wings--at once delicately lace-like and putridly vulgar.
