Where Fish Can Breathe

By Tricia D. Wagner

A sense of belonging may only come from accepting how different we are.

Ten-year-old Swift is weary of being "the lad," and he longs to feel a sense of belonging with his three older brothers. When a chance strikes to go night fishing together on their father's

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lyridae Books
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781961921092

Tricia D. Wagner

As a young reader, writers were like gods and goddesses to now author Tricia D. Wagner. She never could have imagined weaving tales like her favorite storytellers, until a fateful April dinner conversation with her husband about a lecture he attended got her mind whirling. By the end of that summer, she'd written 400,000 words: a speculative fiction trilogy. Wagner felt as if she'd emerged from a chrysalis as some new sort of creature. She was hooked.It was important to Tricia to sharpen her skills, and she immersed herself in workshops, guides, and writing communities, learning from editors how to hone her craft. She did this for years, and the result is her a growing collection of published novels, novelettes, and poetry collections. She found writing to be a method for becoming the person she felt she was born to be. In writing her stories, Wagner was surprised and delighted to discover how real the characters become to an author; that for many writers, their characters end up as their most treasured friends. She loves to delve into them to mine their natures, secrets, and desires-to tell their stories with the legitimacy they deserve. In studying her characters, she finds she has the opportunity to shape herself, inching closer to the person she wants to become.Wagner hopes her readers feel enchanted when they read her stories. This is exactly how she feels when she finishes writing a story. She hopes that her writing might expand their minds, spirits, and worlds, and she hopes they fall in love with her characters and are moved by her artistry of language. When she isn't writing poignant works of literary fiction, Wagner works as a Director in Higher Education. In her spare time she enjoys refining her writing craft to discover new angles and landscapes that might enrich her writing palette. One such example is a recent course she took in learning to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, something that's sure to end up in a story at some point. Wagner lives in Rockford, Illinois, with her husband and darling cats.

Book preview

Where Fish Can Breathe

TRICIA D. WAGNER

LYRIDAE BOOKS

Contents

Where Fish Can Breathe

Swift’s Journey Continues

Also by Tricia D. Wagner

Also by Tricia D. Wagner

About the Author

Author’s Note

Copyright © 2017 Tricia D. Wagner

Date of publication – March 2, 2017

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-961921-08-5

Praise for Tricia D. Wagner

In Where Fish Can Breathe, Tricia D. Wagner’s beautiful imagery and lyrical narrative will carry you on a voyage into the world of a young boy torn between his father’s expectations of becoming a man and his desire to love all creatures great and small. You will root for Swift the whole way.

- Madcity, Reviewer

From the first page, the rhythm of the words and the rhythm of the sea set a pace that drew me in entirely. I was there on the boat with little Swift, nothing but the sea for as far as we could see, my own life left behind and out of sight beyond the horizon. The story is lyrical like a poem or a song… I found myself in places short of breath as though I had myself been stunned by the physical / emotional forces that are buffeting the young protagonist throughout his life and throughout this story.

- Rose Brookins, Reviewer

Clearly Tricia D. Wagner is a powerhouse description artist, and her skills include getting her readers to emotionally relate to each of the characters she has created. I grew to wish I had an older brother who watched out for and cared for me the way Swift’s brother did for him.

- KnightStar, Reviewer

I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae.

A two-fold office the gods allotted you, O Shaker of the Earth,

to be a tamer of horses and a savior of ships!

Homer

Where Fish Can Breathe

The first time Swift’s father, Justus, took him sailing on the North Atlantic, compelled by a ferocious father-love, he schooled Swift on the many ways boys could be killed by water and wind.

Justus taught his lad that he must hang on for life and limb when the sailboat was cruising over the water.

And now, hang on Swift did, because his brother Trystan was at the helm.

Trystan punched the auxiliary and raced the wind toward a silver sunset, rocketing their father’s boat across the sea, eluding its sucking tug when he was with the