Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

I've loved the Egyptian Gods and early Egyptian society since I learned about it as a kid, despite the tendency of teachers to talk about the Greek/Roman pantheon. The Greeks/Romans were a better contrast of pagan beliefs to Christian than the egalitarian Egyptians. After all, what other society valued marriage as much? Why else do so many hieroglyphs and images portray both husband and wife side by side?
Okay, and  to be honest, the Mummy movies (one and two, let's not talk about three) didn't hurt either, even though poor Anubis got such a raw deal. I guess  a jackal head and being the god of mummification and afterlife seemed more threatening than a 'Set animal' or typhonic being - in other words, the first shapechanger - than Set, the god of chaos and darkness. After all, it was Set who chopped up Osiris and scattered him across Egypt. And Isis who rescued him.
That was part of the attraction - that it was Isis who rescued her beloved Osiris, and that women in Egypt were largely as autonomous as the men. They could have businesses, serve in the army, do anything and everything that men could do.
So, what was it that triggered Heart of the Gods, what made me write this story?
Like all of us, I was as intrigued by the process of mummification as the next person and there was the mythology of the Mummy movies - the person unwillingly mummified. Alive.
And then the scene that opens Heart of the Gods was in my head -

Chapter One

Egypt, 17th Year of King Narmer’s Reign, Early Dynasty

Torchlight flickered over the stone walls of the immense cavern, bathing them in a soft golden glow. That light danced over the massive figures of the Gods, giving the faces of the statues the appearance of expression. It illuminated as well the faces of the priests and priestesses gathered around the stone pedestal that served as an altar. The air was pungent with the scent of burning incense. Chanting echoed throughout the chambers, a sound that rose and fell, a low atonal hum that resonated in the bones.

Mummification had never been intended for use on the living but it was as it must be and none of those gathered there could gainsay what was about to happen. Not General Khai, nor any of the priests and priestesses of the Gods, nor even the High Priestess Irisi herself. Who were they to second-guess the Will of the Gods?

Irisi could not and would not.

It was as the prophecy had decreed however much they wished to deny it. Kahotep’s prophecy. He who was Priest of Horus, the Falcon-God, whose Eye saw everything.

“A darkness rises, oh Pharaoh, to be unleashed across the world. It comes as a shadow rising from the desert laying waste to all of Egypt, scouring the earth as it passes. Death and destruction follow in its wake, and the cries of the people of the world are terrible. From the north comes a warrior, a crowned and golden servant of the Gods with eyes like the sky, bearing swords in hand to rise up and drive the terrible darkness out of the world, and to stand against it for all time.”

That shadow had risen and the battles had been terrible. Now they had a chance, one chance, to end it. Here. Now they had a chance, one chance, to end it. Here.

Servant of the Gods. Irisi was that, she was priestess to both Isis and Sekhmet. To stand against it for all time? What was prisoned in the chamber below would live forever. And so, therefore, must she.

And so, this.

For it to have any chance at success she knew she must accept it without protest, she must give it both her Ba and Ka, her heart and soul, willingly, and so she steeled herself to face it.

There was no other way and there was no other to do it, only she, both warrior and priestess, could, however terrible it was.

Irisi knew only she must accept it without protest, willingly, if this they did were to have the slightest chance of success and so she steeled herself to face it. Even as that other below, Kamenwati, did not. He fought them, writhed and screamed in protest, in outrage. He chanted spells against them even as Awan, High Priest of Osiris, Kahotep, High Priest of Horus and Djeserit, High Priestess of Sekhmet struggled to contain him and his terrible magic. In the back of Irisi’s mind she chanted the words of the two Books she knew so well, the Book of Life, known only to the priests and priestesses of the temples…and the Book of Emerging in Daytime - what some called, wrongly, the Book of the Dead.

Of the priests and priestesses only Rensi, High Priest of Anubis and gentle Nafre, priestess of Hathor, stood with her in the upper chamber. Representatives of their Gods, each had their task. Rensi made certain the rites done this day were done as they must be to keep Irisi’s soul alive against all the odds and to preserve her body in the hope that someday she might reach the afterlife.

Nafre gave comfort to help ease her passage.

And then there was Khai, Irisi’s beloved Khai.

She looked up at him from where she lay on the cold stone of the plinth.

Her breath caught as it always did to look at him. He was so beautiful and she loved him so much. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving him.

Gleaming black hair streamed in shining waves to his shoulders and framed his strong handsome face, high cheekbones and beautiful long-lashed dark eyes. Deep within those dark brown eyes was the hint of warm gold she knew so well. There was grief in his eyes, the sure knowledge of what they were about to do. She knew what it cost him to stand aside and watch, how little he loved to feel helpless, but for once his strength and courage could avail him nothing. This was for her to do, and her alone.

She longed to touch him once again, treasured the memory of his hands on her, his body against and a part of hers. The thought was bittersweet. In that Kamenwati had succeeded, he’d kept them apart for so long. Surely the Gods wouldn’t deny her this much? In her heart of hearts she felt the sweet benediction that was the blessing of her Goddess, Isis, who, having lost her own beloved Osiris for a time, understood her fear and her pain at having to give up her own beloved.

Here, finally for this one time and with these trusted few around them, they could do as they’d wished for so long to do openly.

Kiss.

While Irisi had been Kamenwati’s slave that hadn’t been possible. Or while under his threat. Only that had kept Irisi away, the sure knowledge that Kamenwati would kill Khai had he but known of their love.

His lips touched hers, so warm, the feel of them firm but gentle, a soft caress.

Reaching up, Irisi touched Khai’s stern handsome face for one last time even as the sharp pain of the reeds lanced through her wrist, her ankles. She wouldn’t cry out, not looking up into that beloved face. It wasn’t in her to make him suffer any more than necessary. She loved the Gods, she loved Egypt her adopted home but above all else she loved Khai. It was only for her duty, for Egypt and its people, and the people of all the lands she’d known, that would she would leave him.

The Gods understood.

As did he.

“You are Nife-an-Ankh to me,” she whispered, “and Nomti…I love you, I will always love you. Forever.”

Breath of life and strength he was to her. Her heart.

She’d loved him from almost the first moment she’d seen him that long ago day in the desert, standing surrounded by her dead and theirs. He’d offered her honor, then, as one warrior to another. She loved him for that, for his honor, courage and for his great heart.

He was beautiful to her in all ways.

“Irisi,” he said and lowered his proud head to hers.

Khai looked down at his beloved Irisi laid out upon the altar and wanted to cry out his denial of what was to come but he could not. Leaning over her with one arm braced on the stone he touched her face, looked into her lovely eyes, at the glorious length of her hair as it spilled over the sides. So beautiful, so alive…

Breath of life and strength as she was to him as well.

Blood flowed through the reeds, her blood, drained out of her… her lifeblood. The rich coppery aroma of it filled the air, mixed with the scent of the herbs in the Water of Life as it was drawn into her.

It must be and they both knew it. She was the one who must go and he the one who must stay.

Egypt needed her only surviving General.

Irisi’s successor had already been chosen.

Slowly, he touched his lips to hers, the kiss soft as the priests and priestesses chanted around them. Her hand was warm on his face as their lips found each other. Grief lay heavy on his heart. Duty lay heavier. He couldn’t bear to let her go and yet he couldn’t keep her, however much he wished it. He, too, served the will of the Gods. And he could see no other choice, no other way.

The herbs, the potions, flowed into her, burned in her veins. Irisi fought the pain of it with warm feel of Khai’s lips, so long forbidden, on hers…and with the surge of love that washed through her.

“Irisi,” he whispered. “You are my heart.”

As he was hers but she could no longer speak the words or else break the chant that echoed endlessly in the back of her mind.

The stone of the altar was cold and the chill seemed to soak slowly into her flesh.

Around her Irisi could hear the chanting, the minds and voices of the priests and priestesses raised in support of her and of those who fought below, mixed with the drone of the Horn in the chamber far below.

It had taken some little time for Irisi to achieve the semi-trance state necessary to endure what was done, yet some of the pain and the weakness seeped through to batter at her will. As did the will of the creatures in the darkness of the chamber below - the magic of the Horn and her own will, joined to these others, was all held them there. She dared not falter.

She felt her lifeblood drain swiftly away even as she felt the embalming fluids flow in, the natron and herbs bit sharply into her veins. It burned as it went but she turned her thoughts away from it as she turned them away from the other things they did.

Her arms were folded across her breast with a hand on each shoulder and bound so tightly with lengths of linen that she could barely breathe. Her hair was coiled up as the cloth was wrapped around her throat, around her head to cover her mouth and forehead. All but her eyes.

Cold fluid brushed across her belly, followed by numbness. Something pressed just below her breastbone. There was a sense of invasion as they finished wrapping her body in the last long lengths of linen.

Warm liquid soaked her from collarbone to feet. It drenched the linen and stung sharply in the cuts they’d made.

A cry echoed from the darkness below. That, too, fell on deaf ears.

She bit back her own cries. Fought the sense of being constricted.

Khai…

Remaining still by an act of will she kept her eyes focused on his dark ones, sought the gold within them, the warmth even as her own drained away. His will melded to hers, lent her the strength she needed to do this as the weakness grew within her until he stepped back as, finally, he must.

Her heart hammered in her chest, drawing in the sacred herbs, natron and fluids through her veins even as it pumped her lifeblood out. Mixed among the herbs was the blood of the one who lay below so she would be bound to him and he to her.

The last length of linen went across her eyes.  The light disappeared behind the linen to take her down into darkness.

Pain flashed, sharp, sudden, within her to leave a sense of absence, a stillness within her.

It would go quickly now and she was grateful for that.

And it did.

She felt them raise her to carry her swiftly out.

A coughing roar echoed down the tunnel that led outside. They followed that sound, she knew.

The lions, her lions…gifts of the lion-headed Goddess Sekhmet when that Goddess had turned her away and sent her to Isis’s service instead. They would come with her, to keep her company through her long duty so she wouldn’t be utterly alone.

Watching, Khai bowed his head and looked away as they tipped her up for he couldn’t watch as her linen-wrapped form slid with a splash of the Water of Life into the hollow in the stele they’d prepared for her.

He could wish this had been done in sunlight as Irisi was and always had been a creature of light and not darkness.

His light…

Irisi.

Grief burned. If only he could have gone in her place…

He could not, he was no priest, he had no magic, nor as Egypt’s only surviving General could he leave his country and its people undefended any more than Irisi could have refused this.

Duty and honor wouldn’t allow it.

He laid a hand against the cold stone, listened as the hammers beat above him, pounded the sealing stone into place with steady rhythmic blows so much like the sound of a heartbeat. Sealing the stele with Irisi inside it. What was it like for her in there, in the darkness filled with the Water of Life?

Like drowning.

He willed her the strength and courage to endure. Like the beat of her valiant heart, each blow of mallet on stone reverberated, echoed from the distant walls, to whisper back over the grassy hollow within them.

Above, through the narrow break in the cavern roof Khai could see the stars glitter coldly. 

Desperately, instinctively, Irisi’s lungs sought air, her body fought…even as she clung to trance, to will, to the spells in her mind, to the endless mental chanting of the words from the Book of Emerging into Daytime – the Book of the Dead.

She had to hold against the grief and the fear, the close space that enveloped her. What lay below, him and them, battered against her will.

Khai was still here, though, her beloved Khai and these others she loved, Awan, Kahotep, Djeserit, all the priests and priestesses with whom she’d served over the years. Even poor Saini in the distant chamber below, seeking his redemption, watched the last faint light disappear as the doors shut on him to seal him in among the Dark, among Them…

She could almost pity him, not knowing which of them suffered the worst fate.

Faintly, she could hear the Horn call as he blew endlessly, drawing air in through his nose, blowing out through his mouth. That sound must not falter until the doors were shut and sealed. Forever.

Beyond, outward, there was all of Egypt, all of the world. They couldn’t let what resided so restlessly within that chamber escape to lay waste over it. Not again. She couldn’t set what lay within the tomb loose upon the peoples of this world, not with what they now knew of them. Those below would devour every living thing, turn the people of the Nile, the distant peoples from which she’d come and those of all the lands where she’d served and fought as a mercenary into cattle, chattel, something to feed upon…and their feeding…the torment of it…

Horror shook her.

If they were to be free, safe, she must hold, even as her body bucked, fought for air…and so she held. It seemed an eternity and yet it was only minutes.

She remembered…and clung to her memories, lost herself in them, held them against the pain, against the cold that seeped into her. The cold and the darkness.

Alone in the dark she remembered the ones, the one, she loved and would always love.

His hand upon the stone, Khai remembered, too, remembered his beloved Irisi with her swords flashing, her hair swirling around her as she did battle that first day he’d seen her and all the days thereafter. Priestess and warrior. So lovely, strong, so seemingly indomitable. It was her laughter though, that rang in his memory most. That beautiful hair, her glorious eyes…her laughter and her joy.

In grief and sorrow he touched the face carved into the stone of the stele…laid his forehead against the cold stone forehead of it as he would do with her in life.

His fingers traced the words engraved in the stele, the chants for Coming Forth into the Day, for Going and Coming Out of the Realm of the Dead, and For Taking on Any Shape. She would need to know them.

He willed her strength and he willed her love. How did she fare within? Was her struggle over yet, had the Gods taken her, given her surcease? Were her ba and ka yet free of her body?

He looked to Awan, to Djeserit, and saw the same thoughts mirrored there in their faces.

In the darkness of the cavern far below, the great iron doors slid closed as bands of gold and silver were hammered across it to secure it with the powers of the Gods Ra and Isis. The seal, carefully balanced, was placed in its niche to enclose what lay within, hopefully forever.

The chanting did not end…it was not done, not yet.

As one, the priests and priestesses closed around the stele. Each lay their hand on the stone and willed strength to the one within. The Gods came to the one within then, all of them but Set, each to render her a gift.

Sekhmet was the last.

In the chamber below the great iron doors were closed and sealed, and she set to stand guard over it, to ensure it remained sealed, forever.

Alone through the ages to come.

Tales were told of one’s life flashing before the eyes as one died, but Irisi was not dying nor would an afterlife await her.

So many memories…

Irisi remembered…

Heart of the Gods was originally written a much larger book, but once it was written I realized it was two separate books, both intertwined. Servant of the Gods, the prequel to Heart of the Gods, will be released in September of 2011.

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004RJ8RIW

Sex and Violence or Violence and Sex

I had to chuckle a bit about a reader review I received. It seems the reviewer was a little disturbed about my novella Not Magic Enough. She thought I couldn't make up my mind about whether it was a fantasy, romance, erotica or drama. It was clear that she minded the sex (calling it erotica, which was an intriguing reference) but she didn't seem to mind the violence in it. Never mentioned it.
Now, she's absolutely entitled to her opinion, but I have to warn her then that she probably won't like any of my books. To me without drama there would be no novel - who wants to read about someone's daily undramatic life? And in all my novels the circumstances are what brings the protagonists - the hero(s)/heroine(s) - together. The romance begins, the drama fuels it, and - in any normal relationship beyond a certain age - intellectual and emotional attraction fuels physical attraction. To not include that seems to be a bit...puritanical and unrealistic. As well as unnatural. Some folks will argue that the sex - even expressing love - doesn't need to be so...um...visible, let's keep that behind closed doors. Banning the expression of physical affection between two adults while splattering blood all over the place seems strangely perverted to me. I'd rather project a certain reality, even in my fantasy novels. A reality where it's as okay to portray loving sex as realistically as the violence. And sometimes where the former allows us to express the relief and gratitude at surviving the latter with the one they love.

Fantastic Fridays - Director's Cut

I received a wonderful review on Director's Cut from Jessie at Love on the Bookshelf (  http://loveonthebookshelf.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/review-director%E2%80%99s-cut/ ). She's a theater geek like me and in the review she makes mention of my "knowledgeable descriptions of acting in a Community Theater production."
That brought back memories, both good and bad. Yep, been there, done that - and I sometimes miss it. It was great fun at a time in my life when I hadn't expected to be having fun.
I'd just gotten divorced and was struggling with that, with confidence. Whatever the reasons, however right they might be, a divorce is still an admission that you failed in some intrinsic way. Between one thing and another, I'd also lost some weight and (judging by the pictures) looked pretty good. I was oblivious, still trying to regain my confidence.
Then one day I walked past the old Sherman Theater - and saw an old announcement that they were doing auditions. Sometimes the right things happen at the right time. I'd missed the audition but they needed someone to play the part of the girlfriend in Witness for the Prosecution - the opening scene in Director's Cut. Me, sexy? That little black-striped dress in the scene? I KILLED in it. *sigh, smiling*
Many of the events in Director's Cut mirrored real life events, with a few changes. Of course the names of both the guilty and the innocent have been changed. The on-stage action? That reflected many of my own experiences treading the boards. I still have the reviews to show for it.
Most of the Millersburg Quartet series are based on real-life events. Not all.
But the memories are priceless.

B&N Nook - (special price for the Nook)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Directors-Cut/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012802040

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058KRLVS

Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69814

How to Write a Killer Blurb

A blurb is the book description you find on the back of a book or online to describe a book's contents. After your cover, blurbs are the second most important selling tool you have for your book, so you want it to grab the reader's attention. The blurb is the essence of the book, a distillation of the characters, tone and conflict of your story that should, if it’s effective, lure a reader into wanting to read more.

Most run at least two paragraphs, but some are longer, roughly a minimum of 100 words to a maximum of 250. How can you condense all that important information? 

Here are some examples from some classic novels:
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out." To Kill A Mockingbird

“Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...
The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden.
Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.” Fahrenheit 451

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. The Help

There are a number of commonly accepted elements to creating a good blurb:

The Hook
The story element that grabs the reader’s attention, something unique, a fresh twist, or just the emotional core of the book.

Conflict
Both external – world is coming to an end – and internal – the H/H isn’t sure they can do what needs to be done.  (H/H - hero, heroine)

Emotion
What drives the H/H, the tone of the book. The driving force – love, vengeance, retribution. The tone can be light, a romp, or a dark fantasy.

Risk
Emotion, physical, societal or whatever. Something important to them can be lost.

Characterization
The essence of the main character(s)

Setting
Both geographic and emotional – lost in a harsh desert, fighting through a lush jungle, romance in a small town

Goals
What are they trying to accomplish? Just surviving? Winning the day? Clearing their name? This is an important element.

Motivation
Why are they doing it? Particularly, why for your characters? Why does Frodo keep struggling to reach Mordor? To save his people? Or to live up to Sam’s view of him?

What’s stopping them?
Who’s the bad guy? Or is it a massive earthquake with the attendant destruction?

Will they succeed?
You don’t actually have to answer this, but you must introduce the element of doubt or leave the question open. Too much information is a blurb’s worst enemy.

In each of the examples, you have a piece of all of these individual elements, sometimes in a single sentence. There’s obviously conflict, risk and characterization in the first– how did Jem get his arm broken? (those of us who’ve read that novel know, of course) ‘enable us to look back on them’ – there’s the emotion. The voice of the blurb sets the tone, setting and characterization, and the goal is to make Boo Radley come out. Nothing, though, is said of the central conflict of the book.

Notice, too, that the first two are considerably shorter, but The Help was a more complicated novel.

Keep in mind that genre matters, too. If you’re writing a terse thriller, you want to keep your blurb terse, too.

From Barry Eisler – The Detachment
When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.
 But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.
 From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.
 But first, they’ll have to survive each other.

An epic fantasy may require more information or you can just set the scene…
G.R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Here’s one of my own, part of my epic fantasy series, and one of my bestselling books – Not Magic Enough
For Delae, a lonely landholder on the edge of the Kingdoms, a frantic knock at the door on a stormy winter's night brings more than a cry for help. After centuries of war Elves have little contact with the men, but Dorovan can't bring himself to ride past those so obviously in need. And so begins a tale of love, honor, duty and determination...

Very short but it's a novella and all the elements are still there.

And for one of my romances – Director’s Cut - the emotional content needs to be emphasized in romances:
Once the golden boy in Hollywood, Jack Tyler's life and career are on the skids. Struggling to find some direction, a visit to an old friend brings him to Millersburg, and the community theater group there. He's fighting his demons, hoping to rediscover his roots and his love of theater, through them.
He also discovers schoolteacher Molly Brighton.
Molly, though, wants no part of the sexy new director. He's too handsome, too charming, too dangerous to her heart.
The attraction is difficult to ignore, especially when aided by Jack's old friend, an unrepentant matchmaker with his own reasons for bringing them together.
Last and finally, the purpose of a blurb is to get the reader to want more, to open that book up and answer the questions each blurb asked. 

How did Jem's arm get broken and why was it so difficult to talk about? Guy Montag was burning books, why? What will happen to the three women when they cross those defining lines? Will Rain and his team of irregulars succeed in their mission – and who is it they’re supposed to kill? What happens to the Starks? Or when Dorovan meets Delae? Will Jack overcome his demons or will Molly walk away?

And that's what a good blurb should do...

Sample Sunday - Nike's Wings

Nike's Wings
They say writers should always go places that scare them, that make demands on their skills. Nike's Wings was one of the more difficult books I've ever written, for a lot of reasons. Nike came to be by way of my vivid fantasy life, an article on parkour and a song - 'She Don't Want the World' by Three Doors Down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bQAs1KYfIk  I could see how parkour would be handy for an assassin who didn't rely on strength or fancy weapons. That song played in the back of my head all through the scene that began it all, the moment when Ty confronts Nike at the abandoned school halfway through the book. I could see the dingy windows and smell the moldy mattresses. So Nike was born. Not only did I want to know how they got there, I wanted to know what happened next. 
I've written harder scenes - the one where Elon and Colath are captured in The Coming Storm, for instance - but some of Nike and Ty's experiences were difficult. I believe you have to put yourself where your characters are, share their experiences, and to some extent at one time I sort of had.
I didn't need to do a lot of research, I'm an avid reader of not only books but newspapers and magazines. The information on the cartels, the wall, etc., are all based on real events. I was surprised when, shortly after writing it, a newspaper article suggested that the situation I postulated for how Nike was turned into an assassin might actually have been real.
Even so, I hesitated in releasing Nike, although I finished it over a year ago. I loved the book but something about it still felt incomplete. Not that the research didn't come in handy *grins* I used it as the foundation for an erotic contemporary suspense called Special Delivery, written under the pen name V. J. Devereaux.
I worked on several novels in between but Nike niggled at the back of my mind. Then, one morning at 4 AM, I woke up. In that halfway space between dreaming and waking, Nike and I walked through those scenes and suddenly I had it. I got up, rewrote them and tumbled back to bed. Woke up, thinking about how it could be stronger, better. Wrote that. Halfway through the day, I had the last pieces, and it all fell into place.
Deliberately, I stepped back for a day or two before going back to her and doing the final edit. I passed her to people I knew and trusted, particularly one. The feedback came back positive, and so I released her.
Now she's yours.


Excerpt:

Chapter One

August 2001 Somewhere in Central/South America

The big custom-built Hummers bumped their way through the jungle along the rutted road to the oil fields. It was hardly Callie’s first trip out there but it was the first in such prestigious company. Her father’s boss and some man from the State Department, of all things, traveled with them. It didn’t look as if she’d need the book she had in her backpack, or get the chance to read it.

Oddly enough, it was turning out to be something of an occasion. Originally, they hadn’t planned to bring her along on this trip but she’d just turned eighteen and was due to fly back home to the states in just a few weeks. In less than a month she’d start her first year at Princeton University with a major in international studies. As it happened, Princeton was where both her father’s boss, Tony Gallegos, and the man from the State Department, Phillip Reeves, had attended college. Once her father mentioned it, both men insisted on bringing her along so they could fill her in and trade stories of their time there.

There were several vehicles in the expedition into the jungle where the oilrigs were located, a truck with some of the oil field workers, cars with guards both ahead and behind, another truck carrying supplies and their own Hummer.

Except for the presence of Mr. Reeves, it was a fairly routine trip. Tensions over the oil were rising among some of the more radical groups in the area so he’d come to try to negotiate with them to see if he could smooth the waters a bit.

First, though, he wanted to visit the oil fields. A lot of people were pretty pissed about it and some of them would be even more so if they knew about this trip. Some of them thought that statement said too much about his priorities, that like in Iraq the oil fields were more important to the U.S. than the negotiations. It was the oil that Reeves really cared about.

Callie had even heard some of that kind of talk on the streets among the people she hung out with there, her parkour and free-running friends.

Listening to him on the way out, she couldn’t really argue the point, it was all he talked about, the importance of the oil fields. That was, when he wasn’t talking about Princeton and the bars she had to visit in the towns near the campus once she was there.

So far, though, the trip had gone pretty quietly with the two men trading stories of their days at college. Callie caught an amused and resigned look from her father when the other two men weren’t watching. He gave her a wink and she smothered a grin.

She glanced out the windows at the thick undergrowth that ran so close beside the windows here along the road where the sun could reach and then up at the trees that towered high above them. Branches clattered and scraped against the glass. The sky was cloudy and dark above them, the sunlight of the morning vanishing as the rainy season clouds rolled in. To those who didn’t know the rain forest it was surprisingly cool, the clammy air thick and heavy with moisture. Some folks thought the humidity at home was bad but they’d never been in the jungle in the rainy season.

Both Mr. Gallegos and Mr. Reeves were reminiscing again over their days at college. Callie restrained a sigh, listening with only half an ear. A part of her longed for the book in her backpack. It was a long usually boring trip, broken only by the appearance of an animal or bird erupting out of the brush but now she couldn’t even read or she’d look rude.

The sudden chatter of automatic weapon fire shattered the boredom, the quiet.

Instantly it became a green and scarlet nightmare as bodies shuddered with the impact of bullets, blood sprayed, screams and cries ran out as men fell amid the shouting and confusion.

Glass shattered in the car ahead of them, every window exploding as bullets stitched along the side of it from the cover of the underbrush. The bodies of those within juddered with the impact of the bullets as blood flew like rain. Some of the guards bailed out of the vehicles in a desperate attempt to return fire and save themselves. Bullets savaged them. Their bodies jerked and twisted as more blood flew. It was so sudden, so shocking Callie couldn’t even draw breath enough to scream. Others tried to run to save themselves and were cut down anyway.

The noise was incredible, the sheer volume of the sound stupefying, overwhelming.

Callie tried to twist in her seat to see the guards that rode in the car behind them. One of them, Jeremy, had been teaching her self-defense. He’d been with the Navy Seals and she’d liked him. Had a crush on him. No one had been expecting any trouble.

Even as she turned, her father unfastened her seatbelt and dragged her off the car seat onto the floor.

She only had a brief glimpse of the chaos erupting behind them before her father’s weight crushed her to the floor of the car. Instinctively she wrapped her arms around her head. She didn’t even know she was screaming as the car bumped and jerked, the driver trying desperately to get around the lead cars until bullets smashed through the windshield.

Hot wetness splashed the side of her face as the car filled with the coppery aroma of blood.

The car jolted to a halt, shouting men firing their weapons into the air pulled the doors open and roughly dragged everyone out, pushing and shoving as the gunfire continued. She smelled burning fuel and scorched metal.

Callie’s father fought to keep them away from her, fought to hold onto her, shouting at them, but the men tore her away. More shots were fired as she was dragged off into the jungle.

When she looked around, all she saw was the men who’d taken them. Mr. Reeves and Mr. Gallegos.

She didn’t see her father.

The rough, dirty, smelly men dragged and shoved her ahead of them, barking at her in Spanish. She nodded numbly, staggering between them along the nearly invisible trail.

She glanced back just once before the jungle closed around them.

Bloody bodies were scattered around the vehicles and the road. No one moved. One of the trucks exploded and she flinched. Thick black smoke billowed. It rose above the trees. She couldn’t see any sign of her father, of Jeremy…then even the trucks disappeared behind the dense foliage.

Somehow she knew her father was gone…dead…but somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. She had no time for tears or grieving, only surviving. If her father had died trying to save her, the least she could do was stay alive.

She was so scared…so scared…but Jeremy’s words as he had been teaching her echoed in her head. “Most people die because they stop thinking, Callie,” he’d advised. “Don’t stop thinking.”

Unconsciously she nodded in response to his remembered words. She wondered if he’d had time to think before he died.

She’d only been taking the lessons from him because he was cute…and he seemed to think she was, too. Now he was dead back there like the others. Because if he wasn’t dead, they would still be shooting and her father would be calling for her. But he wasn’t.

Her throat was tight.

Maybe Jeremy’s words, his training, would save her even if they hadn’t saved him. Tears streamed down her face. That was his legacy to her. That and her life.

Another set of words moved through her mind, words from an old science fiction book she’d read. She thought of deserts, not jungles, and of enduring. Of surviving.

Something about fear.

Her mind worried at the puzzle of those words, trying to remember them right.

The men tied her wrists together, pushed and shoved her along, shouted epithets in Spanish.

Knowledge, too, was a dangerous thing. It was a valuable thing. She would keep her knowledge of Spanish to herself. Everything was an edge. She would survive. Somehow, she would survive this.

Amazon
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A little word on the Indie Author/Editor self-editing conundrum

Lately I've found myself on the wrong end of several sticks on this subject - oddly being perceived as being anti-editing, which I'm not. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Finally, though, I did. It's me. Or at least, maybe it's reality.

So... Now I'm about to burst some bubbles.

For those who think editing doesn't matter, but especially for those who think being an Indie writer is a short cut to the kind of success Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath and a few others have had switching to traditional publishers...

It's not.

And most especially for those who think your prospective agent/editor/publishing house will do your editing/polishing for you.

You're about to have a VERY rude awakening.

Think editing is supposed to be collaborative? Interactive, a polite interaction between professionals? Pardon my bluntness, but... grow up, you've been watching too much TV.

Here, courtesy of Jessica Faust from BookEnds LLC - a well known literary agency - from her Submissions 101 blog entry:

Before getting started, before even writing a query, you need to make sure your book has been written, rewritten, edited and polished, and, as you have heard from me before, I even suggest you’ve already started writing your next book so you have something to focus on besides just the query process. Fiction and narrative nonfiction (i.e., memoir) writers will need to have completed the full manuscript.

I didn't even submit my first manuscript until the second was complete.

That's a submission folks, not a completed manuscript. In the traditional publishing world you not only have to be a good self-editor, you have to be a really good one! If that manuscript isn't polished to a fare thee well, it will end up in the circular file beside their desk with a form rejection letter back to you for your troubles. They don't have time to 'fix' your work and to them it says volumes about your commitment to your writing. Or rather, the lack thereof.

A multitude of errors says the same thing to your readers - that you just don't care enough about your craft to do it right! Get enough comments about mistakes and they will stop reading your books. Amanda Hocking hired a good editor as soon as she made enough money to afford one. Konrath was a pro already but there's no doubt he had someone editing for him. What makes you think you're so hot that you don't need to do the same? Or at least a beta reader or three - preferably ones for whom English was a subject they did well with in school.

A good editor doesn't have the time - or to be honest the patience - to mollycoddle your sensitive feelings.  Even, or (that word again) especially, editors for small presses or for Indie writers. It's a job. It's how they make their living and they make their living by doing a lot of editing for a lot of people. And they may do it in addition to their day job, just like you. (Same thing for reviewers, BTW)

A good editor will send back your manuscript with corrections and notes. In the non-Indie world these are NOT suggestions and can come off as downright rude. After all their job isn't to do your work for you, that's YOUR job, and you should have done it right in the first place. A small press editor in this new world doesn't have time to waste. Think they won't ask you to change your manuscript to suit them or what the publisher wants? Think again. Their job is to get a marketable product out. Fast. I know of one author who was dumped by both agent and major publishing house simply because she took too long and it was taking too much effort. And it showed.

Even so, even with all the care I took, my first professional edit was a shock. Believe me, they weren't sensitive to my feelings. Every edit, though, taught me something else. I learned how to look at my work honestly, to see where perhaps this sentence, phrase or paragraph might work better someplace else and that I have a problem repeating myself. Which is why I need my beta readers so much. (God bless you Erin, Angela, Andy and Mateo, et al.) 

So I learned, and learned fast, to be a very good self-editor. It never occurred to me to do anything less. How could you possibly consider yourself a writer if you didn't? Was I really so arrogant as to believe I had written the Great American Novel  in one try? (Heck even Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote multiple drafts.) No. My books were and are edited and re-edited every time I find a new pet peeve on a blog somewhere. Even so I still go back to do another polishing draft, just to be absolutely sure, before I post a single book anywhere.(I'm on tenterhooks waiting for feedback on the latest.) That's why I'd get so frustrated to find myself in the middle of this argument. I thought every Indie author wanted the same, to be as professional as they could be. I still get anxious every time someone contacts me to say they caught a mistake. 

And if you're a good writer, a professional writer, you should, too.

Sample Sunday - Song of the Fairy Queen

A lot of people ask - why this story, what made you write this story? For me it was the image that ends Chapter One and begins Chapter Two and is captured somewhat by the cover - Kyriay, Queen of the Fairy, alighting on battlements, her wings lit by the flames of the castle below. In that instant I also had the title. With it came the theme - what the story at its core is all about. 
In all my stories there is always a central theme. A story can't be just this happened and that happened, there has to be more. If there isn't, it can't touch the reader, can't draw them in. For Song of the Fairy Queen, it was 'how heavy lies the crown'. It was about honor, duty and the choices, the necessary sacrifices that sometimes we all have to make in our lives if they're going to mean something. In Song of the Fairy Queen, all of the lead characters have to make those choices, Kyri, Morgan, Oryan and Gwenifer, Jacob...
There are other themes, too - what we'll do for love, for children, husband, lovers - but at its core Song of the Fairy Queen is about doing what needs to be done, despite the price that will have to be paid.
That's not to say that it's all doom and gloom, any more than life is. There are still good moments, all the more precious because so much is at stake.
So, most of the elements were there, only one was was missing. *smiles* I was holding out for the hero.
Morgan had to be unique, a man of honor and integrity. I didn't want the usual tall, dark and handsome, he had to be striking, different somehow. I just couldn't picture him. Then one day I was watching this movie (which shall remain nameless) which I had been waiting to see for some time and there he was. Perfect. Even better, his physical appearance added depth and complications to the book that helped enrich it. I also fell in love with him, with his strength and courage - because if I wasn't in love with him, how could you, the reader be? And since I was, as was Kyriay...
But I've already given you Chapter One...so I give you...

Chapter Two

A slender figure dropped to the parapet, crystalline wings flaring, a cascade of golden curls shimmering down over her shoulders to nearly her waist and wearing only a simple shift that showed signs of battle. That shift clung to a slender body with ripe curves at breast and hip, fluttered about shapely thighs. Blood stained it, some of it her own to judge by the rent in it. A sword belt hung on those curved hips, a bow at her back between her wings.

So they had been surprised, too.

Torchlight illuminated the fine, amused features of her face, the large liquid eyes…

Morgan’s breath caught.

She was beautiful as only Fairy were or could be… mischievous, fierce when necessary and wild.

Her bare feet touched stone with a soft patter barely heard above the wind.

Morgan looked to his King. Looking up, Oryan was clearly astonished, no more than Morgan, he’d scarcely dared to hope for help but not that the Fairy Queen herself would come.

“What would you Oryan?” Kyriay cried over the sounds of the battle still going on below, her voice soft, but clear and strong. “Haerold’s forces attacked mine, too. I heard your call. And so we came, thinking you might need aid.”

The attack on her embassy had come out of the night as if from nowhere. The flare of magic had alerted her and awakened both her and her Fairy sentries, if not, sadly, Oryan’s or Morgan’s… Even so, they had fought desperately for her. She winced at the memory, at the sharp sting of death so close. Still it had been a battle for her and her people just to find the space to take flight. With a wrench of grief and anger she remembered Ariol’s fall. And then Glennis, her wings striving for height before she spiraled to the ground, a black arrow piercing her. That young life ending as she crashed to the ground. Kyri grieved for her and her mate…

Besides Oryan, Kyri saw only young Gawain and Morgan–Oryan’s High Marshal, who she’d until now seen only in passing, a tall, handsome, powerful man with piercing eyes so clear and bright a blue as to rival a fairy’s wing ― these others then must be his people.

One face that she didn’t see that she should have, that she sought to see and ought to see.

Gwenifer.

Her breath caught…on bitter sorrow.

Grief filled Oryan’s gaze and not only for his people dying below ― as she sorrowed for those she’d lost ― but a greater grief still for the one who had stood beside him, his partner, his wife and his Queen. Kyri’s heart ached. She’d very much liked the tall, calm Queen.

“Kyriay! Thank the stars. Take Gawain, save my son,” Oryan said, as he reached for his son. “Get him away.”

Her chin lifted, she shook her head and then Kyri smiled, albeit a little grimly. She tilted her head to them once, sharply.

“You misunderstand me, Oryan. We came to take you all.”

She gestured upwards, spreading her arms, a graceful gesture of her hands toward her people as they hovered above in the night sky above, their wings beating steadily…a dozen of them or more.

All of them were beautiful, male or female, ethereal, yet all bore swords and bows.

For a moment, Oryan couldn’t grasp it. He’d resigned himself to fighting and dying. His only hope had been to save Gawain. Not himself. Not even Morgan, his friend as well as his Marshal, although he might have wished it otherwise.

Below him in the darkness and flames came the sounds of battle, the screams and shouts, fire and smoke. People, his people, were dying. He’d expected to join them and a glance at Morgan and his people showed they’d expected the same, had girded themselves to a pitched but hopeless battle against an overwhelming force.

Hope hadn’t even entered into it. He hadn’t even dared think it.

“Come, Oryan,” Kyriay said, as she leaned forward a little, holding out her hands to him, wings stroking for balance. “Live to fight another day. The Fair would rather you on the throne than Haerold. He is a cold and cruel master.”

Haerold hadn’t been kind to her folk in his own lands, what would he be like now that he had them all?

“Gawain, first,” Oryan said and she nodded, calling her people down with a gesture.

So, he thought, she didn’t doubt either who was responsible for all of this. It said much of Haerold, none of it good.

“Galan, take the Prince, protect him with your life, if need be, he is our hope,” Kyri said, as the sure knowledge of it coursed through her and Galan came forward, smiling reassuringly at the boy. “Dorien, to the King.”

Her wings stroked, lifting her from the parapet to make room for those above and behind her.  

From below came the sounds of men battering the door. It wouldn’t hold long, it had never been meant to.

There was no time, soon enough the wizards would become aware of them up here.

Kyri looked below to the sounds and cries of battle rising. The sense of dying battered at her. As a Healer, their pain and sorrow tore at her, her heart ached as she each life ended like candles being blown out.

Morgan followed her gaze.

It was a grim scene. Parts of the castle were now ablaze. A small group of Oryan’s Guard was holding out in vain in one corner of the courtyard while random small battles continued elsewhere. It was a terrible sight…filled with death and dying, cruelty and slaughter…

Morgan looked down at the dead and the dying there in the forecourt and at his people standing firm and sure at his back. They would fight and die if he asked it.

The Fairy offered them a chance to fight and live. He wouldn’t ask his people to die if there was another choice, if there was any chance at all.

Fascinated by the Fairy, by the idea of flight, Gawain lifted his arms and went willingly into the Fairy’s hands.

His simple joy and pleasure briefly lightened the horror of the night for those watching.

Those seemingly fragile crystalline wings flared, expanded and flexed, catching air, the next stroke lifting the boy and the Fairy off the parapet to make room for another.

If Morgan was honest, a part of him doubted… Those wings, large as they appeared, hardly looked strong enough to hold the Fairy themselves, much less a man his size.

Oryan looked up as Dorien settled to the parapet and reached for him. He knew this Fairy, as he knew Galan, they were Kyri’s own people.

“Hold on tight,” Dorien cautioned, “take my wrist.”

Those great wings flared, stroked hard and then they rose. Another strong beat and they were clear of the tower. Dangling in mid-air, trusting to Dorien’s surprisingly strong grip, Oryan looked back.

Morgan’s people were being cleared but even as he looked he saw Morgan and two of his people turn toward the doorway…backing up to give themselves room to draw their swords.

A part of Oryan wanted to cry out in protest.

Not Morgan. He couldn’t lose him, too. He had no other left that he trusted, he needed, no other to stand at his back…not with Gwenifer gone. Morgan had stood at his side since they had been boys, been his most trusted lieutenant for his entire reign.

Kyri turned, too, at the motion, her lovely face set as she reached for her bow. Her wings flared, then they folded…and she dove, stooping like a hawk, those wings tight against her lithe body, golden hair streaming behind her. In truth, Oryan had never seen anything quite so beautiful, or so deadly.

Below, Morgan clearly heard the sound of the door below crashing open. It had finally given way beneath the battering.

They had been so close… Morgan had almost begun to believe they might yet make it, they might survive this terrible night when Kyriay and her people had arrived.

He turned to face the new danger, to give the King and his own people time to get away.

“Go,” he said, to those remaining, backing away to draw his sword as he heard the thunder of booted feet on the stairs.

They were coming, fast.

Jacob was at his right shoulder, Liliane at his left, two of his most trusted aides, their swords drawn as the black-garbed soldiers appeared at the top of the stair. More pressed behind them, the stairs limiting their numbers.

The first soldier snarled a smile at the sight of Morgan and his people. Then a Fairy arrow with its unmistakable crystalline fletching took him through the throat. The snarl turned to surprise as he staggered, fell back against those behind him and died. Another arrow took the man next to him.

“Get them,” Morgan heard Kyriay shout. “I’ve got Morgan.”

Jacob and Liliane were literally snatched off their feet, carried up into the air as the enemy soldiers thrust away their dead and pushed forward.

Like an arrow out of the night in a whistling dive the Queen of the Fairy shot past the enemy. The invading soldiers ducked instinctively.

Her hand reached…for him… Kyriay, her golden hair streaming in the breeze of her passage. Beautiful, seemingly delicate and insubstantial, her lovely face intent, eyes narrowed and her wings tucked close…one hand outstretched for his…

“Morgan,” she shouted.

He jumped to the parapet, reaching in return, furious with her for the chance she took. His hand closed around her slender wrist, her long, strong fingers grasped his and she snatched him off his feet. It felt for a moment as if they were falling…down into the carnage below.

With a sharp crack that reverberated through both of them, those great gossamer wings opened, caught air and they shot upward with a shock so hard Morgan thought he’d nearly dislocated his shoulder. And Kyriay? He looked up at her…

In all his life he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so stunning, so beautiful…or so fierce and determined…

Firelight danced over those brilliant wings, reflected the glow, sparkled in the shifting intangible light.

She was glorious.

It had to have hurt her, too, but there was no sign of it in that fine-boned, resolute face.

Muscles straining, that lovely face focused, determined, indomitable, she fought for height against the speed of the dive, her wings cupped, then flattened, shifted. Smaller and lighter than he, even so she held on grimly, her rippling hair streaming in the breeze of their passage.

Insane as it was at the moment, he suddenly realized how very beautiful she was. Different, but not…exotic, incredible…and beautiful.

The hard stone of the curtain wall came at them fast, but they were rising, rising, to shoot over it so closely that Morgan could see the surprise on the faces of those who fought below. So closely he heard an arrow whistle past while another barely missed a wing, as the fighters on the parapets instinctively fired at the perceived threat.

Muscles straining, Kyri fought for height.

Darkness surrounded them. The wall fell behind them.

They had made it.

She banked, searching for the others, for the familiar sense of her people in her spirit and mind.

There. Relief flooded her.

Dizzyingly, to Morgan the ground seemed to come toward them in a rush and then her wings flared again, the shock more gentle this time.

His feet touched the earth and then hers.

Kyri staggered a little but Morgan reached out a hand to steady her. She smiled at him quickly and gratefully.

A different kind of shock went through her at the contact between their hands and then a quick rush of warmth that Kyri had no time to examine as she looked over the small party of survivors.

They had lost no one since the first moments of the attack.

She closed her eyes for only a moment in relief and gratitude. Every life, Fairy or man, was precious.

Her body ached, her wing muscles protesting the abuse and her wings fluttered a little, resettling the feathers automatically… A sword cut on her ribs stung, another on her arm. Until now she hadn’t even noticed they were there.

They were free, though, for the moment.

Oryan stepped through the small crowd, Gawain in his arms.

Turning from him only a little, Kyri drew a silver whistle from beneath her shift where it hung on a silver chain around her throat and blew.

For all that it made little sound, Oryan felt more than heard it, a sharp pressure in his ears.

“Thank you, Kyri,” he said, for her assistance. “Where do you go now?”

“South and west for a time, there is a place, not far, where we will be safe long enough to decide what we do next,” she said.

We.

“Kyri…” Oryan began.

She stilled him with a simple gesture. “Like it or no, our fates are joined, Oryan. Haerold didn’t only attack you, he attacked my embassy here, with the intent to kill or capture me and mine. My people have long withdrawn from Haerold’s lands for the wizards he kept company with. It is likely he will turn against us now whether we aid you or not.”

It was no more than the simple truth and they both knew it.

Oryan nodded.

“Where would you go, now?” Kyri asked.

“There is little time and Haerold will surely go there once he’s learned we’ve escaped, but to Gwenifer’s lands to the south―so that serves us both well―to gather what funds I may. They should be warned, too. Haerold will surely seize them… then...” He sighed. “Decisions will have to be made…”

He looked back at the castle in the distance. Flames blossomed from some of the windows, little else could be seen there.

“Good,” Kyri said, “then we will stand guard for you until you can gain some of that time to make them.”

A thunder of hooves had almost all of them turning in near panic as they quickly reached for their swords. Oryan wanted to shout in frustration and helpless fury.

“It’s all right,” Kyri said, as the horses galloped over the rise, their manes and tails blowing in the breeze of their passage. “I called them.”

The horses of the Fairy raced out of the darkness, gold, silver, bronze and copper, their long manes and tails flagging in the breeze of their passage, beautiful to watch as they ran, the muscles moving beneath their skin fluidly.

Morgan watched them come with the admiration of a true horseman, their gait so smooth and liquid they seemed to float over the ground.

At least they wouldn’t have to walk the miles from here to there.

With practiced ease Kyri caught a handful of mane and vaulted onto a horse’s bare back as it came to a halt, her wings tucked neatly and nearly invisibly against her back, her shapely legs bared high on the thigh as the shift gathered.

Morgan gave his orders, assigning Liliane once more to guard the boy, sending Alain north to call back his people there. As much as he hated it, he must leave the North undefended against the raiders so they could defend the King and what little they could salvage here until the King was back on the throne. Faithful Caleb he sent west and then south to carry the news and call up any of those he could. They would need every man and woman he could find.

He was under no illusions. Their situation was desperate. His job was to find a way to make it less so and then to put the King back on the throne.

It wouldn’t be an easy task.


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