Set in an isolated kingdom ruled by a vindictive, theocratic regime, Blank Slate follows a diverse cast including a grizzled mercenary, a devious minstrel, a rogue knight-errant, and a heretical nun. In the face of oppression these unlikely companions must fight to survive–and to make sense of the strange and demonic entity that links them together ever more strongly with each passing season.

The man who stood in the intersection was a peaky fuck, pale and thin. His black hair was neat and short, not a single lock out of place. His eyes were an empty blue. The winter sky, on a day when the cold gets into your bones, and you know without even having to step outside that it’s cold enough to kill you within the hour.

I hated him.

I hated him immediately, in the poisonous way that I hated seeing broken bones sticking through skin. Seeing him felt like the first time I’d ever been kicked in the head. The vomit feeling I had when I thought of eating raw chicken. Looking at him was the feeling of looking at your hand and seeing one finger less than usual, but in the shape of a man. It was the sensation of missing the last step and falling up the stairs, prolonged and condensed into a personality. But whereas falling up the stairs or losing a finger were temporary, limited events, his presence was continuous, ongoing, and intolerable. He stood there in front of me breathing and alive one second after another, one heartbeat after the next, and to have to kneel there on the stone floor and look at him was a wrenching personal offense and violation that cut me fresh every moment.

Excerpt From

Blank Slate

Written By

Michael Quevedo

Michael Quevedo is a Mexican-American author with wide-ranging interests in fields from astronomy to anthropology. He has lived in many parts of the United States, but retains an especial fondness for the ecosystems of the Pacific and New England coastal regions. An endlessly curious writer with a broad and rigorous philosophical background and an idiosyncratically anticolonial approach to fun and florid fiction, he has been writing since the age of 11, and is always delighted to present his newest project to a wider audience.

Text © Michael Quevedo