Body and Soul

COME TOGETHER IN BODY AND SOUL
When a pregnancy occurs on Heart it is two-fold. The female carries the body and the male carries the soul. Both have to be present at birth for the soul to enter the body, otherwise the body is born useless and the soul is left to dissipate.
Heart is a planet recovering from an unexplained catastrophe which occurred so long ago that the inhabitants are entirely unaware of their history. Most live in isolated settlements that are self-sufficient, thinly populated, and generally happy; their only source of outside information limited to encounters with travellers, lone nomads who have chosen a life of hardship in order to find artefacts, tell stories, and gain wider experiences. Following an encounter with one such nomad, Calvin, a boy on the verge of puberty, harbours a secret desire to travel; but it will take an unexpected act of violence some years later to encourage him to leave everyone he knows and to strike out on his own.
What he discovers is not only unexpected, but will shock him to his core.
Cover design by Alex Storer.

Andrew Hook has had over a hundred and seventy short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. Being a multi-genre writer, his stories have appeared in magazines ranging from Ambit to Interzone. Recent books include a collection of literary short stories, Candescent Blooms (Salt Publishing); Commercial Book (Psychofon Records): a collection of forty stories of exactly one thousand words in length inspired by the songs from the 1980 record "Commercial Album" by The Residents; and Secondhand Daylight, an SF time-travel novel co-written with Eugen Bacon.