Here are some draft sections from my forthcoming novel. The story deals with the progression of a folklorist sent out to the rural hinterlands to study faerie beliefs among the countryfolk. The main locus is a psychiatric hospital, and the protagonist is wondering whether they are a guest or a potential patient, after the trauma of losing their sister and the part they played in that loss. The scenes are not contiguous, but hopefully give a cogent sense of the story’s ambience. It is set in the summer of 1970.

Exordium

My little sister; I lost her when she was just a child. One day we were together, the next she was gone, suddenly and definitively. Her physical memory has become blurred into an arbitrary, flickering collection of blue-eyed glances, soft tones, touches and laughter. But underneath the dulled remembrance rests the overwhelming loss, at least a loss that has…