From The Cutting-Room Floor

Right now I just want to show off a few choice paragraphs that won't be making it into the novel. Most of the stuff I'm cutting has me wondering why I wrote it in the first place, but here and there are some nice bits that simply do not pull their weight in context. Here are a few bits of alternative evolution from the Limbus. These are plants and animals from the Bonelands.

In the pockets of soil were fat green tubes about six inches across, some of them flush with the ground, others growing up to knee height. The tallest were topped with dandelion flowers, yellow sunbursts and white puffballs. The tender stalks were protected by brown, horny leaves growing up from the bass and wrapping around the stems like razor wire, all spikes and edges.

Off in the distance I saw a dark shape hovering thirty or forty feet in the air. It moved with the bob and sway of a daddy longlegs -- it was another horse.

I looked down at the ground and it seemed to move. Bending closer I saw there were mice half an inch long moving in two lanes. In one direction they were bearing some kind of seed; in the other they were unburdened. Something like a scorpion the size of my thumb approached the flow and started eating the mice one at a time. It was shaped like a teardrop and its stinger was double-pronged. I counted six legs and realized it was an insect. The mice swarmed it and it scuttled a foot away from their highway and started picking off its attackers. It was so quiet I could hear crunching as it chewed.