Imagination

Imagination
pearls and perils of publishing

Esperanza


Thousands of years ago, Esperanza was a nonphysical location,  a place for souls in transition - people in comas,  at the edge of death. Here, a person could decide whether to return to physical life or to pass on into the afterlife. Everything in this nonphysical location was similar to physical life - buildings, towns, cars, cities, countryside, businesses - but desires manifested almost instantaneously and communication was primarily telepathic.

The guardians of this non physical place were cazadores de luz – light chasers - evolved souls whose job was to make sure that transitionals got to where they were supposed to go. Their job was complicated by brujos - hungry ghosts whose only desire was to be physical again.  Over the centuries, the brujos learned how to seize the physical bodies of these transitionals and often lived out their mortal lives. The situation eventually became so dire, so impossible to control, that 500 years ago the light chasers closed Esperanza to transitionals and brought it into the physical world, replete with a history, a mythology. Their hope was that the brujos, robbed of an endless source of physical bodies to seize, would move on. And for a time, they did, scattering across the world.

But about 20 years ago, some of the brujos began returning to Esperanza. Because the town retains some of the magical properties from when it was a nonphysical location, it's the only place where brujos can manipulate energy to create a virtual  environment and virtual human forms for themselves. They built their virtual world in twin peaks that rise from a desolate landscape outside the city. Their virtual physical forms are real and solid enough to fool most of the residents of Esperanza most of the time and provide the  brujos with a limited sensory experience. But it's not enough. Ten years ago, they began to seize people in Esperanza - primarily for sex, but also for the experience of physical life. In essence, they are nonphysical terrorists against whom the residents of Esperanza defend themselves.

In Esperanza, nothing is what it appears to be - not the people, the landscape, the wildlife, not even the fog.

kindle edition
mass market