Tag Archives: Fantasy

Labyrinth Room Blitz

 

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Fantasy

 

 

Date Published:10-15-2021

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Deserting his regiment in the aftermath of an injury, Torrent is just trying to get home to his fiancée without being robbed or arrested. Reporting the illegal saltpeter mine he finds on his return might be valuable enough for the army to overlook his truancy, perhaps even grant him a pension. If he’s willing to betray Molly to make that report.

For Molly, chemistry has always been more useful than magic, especially now that supplying the opposing side with gunpowder is the only thing keeping her from being ousted from her own farm. After two years apart, Molly knows it’s foolish to trust Torrent with either the mine or her heart. Unfortunately, Torrent’s not the only one interested in Coriander Hollow.

Between Torrent’s desertion and her own illegal mine, Molly has to decide whose secrets she’s willing to protect and how far she’s willing to go to protect them. And Molly hadn’t counted on Coriander Hollow having secrets of its own…

This is an adult fantasy novel, that might appeal to readers of Genevieve Cogman, Naomi Novik or Katherine Addison. It’s historical fantasy-ish (I describe it as ‘steampunk on a farm’), a little bit Cherie Priest meets Cold Mountain.

About the Author

Mareth Griffith

Mareth Griffith bounces between the Pacific Northwest coast and various warmer locations. She mostly lives in Seward, Alaska, and assures you winters there aren’t as bad as you think.
 When she’s not writing, she works as a naturalist and wilderness guide, leading adventurous souls on epic quests to seek out glaciers, bears, and whales in the wilds of coastal Alaska. She’s also lived and worked in Scotland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland—where her nearest neighbors included two thousand puffins and the ghost of a spectral black horse. 
Originally from West Virginia, Mareth attended Smith College in Massachusetts, studying music and theatre. Mareth plays classical violin well and rhythm guitar badly.

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Protectors of Penwick Virtual Book Tour

 

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Rise of the Thrall Lord, Book Two

Fantasy

Date Published: September 16, 2021

 

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A horde of demons from the Abyss. A dread master of the undead. A choice
between saving a single city versus the entire world.

The tower in the mists has been wrested from the Empress of the Damned and
her undead army. Yet demons still hold the tower in the mountains and are
using it to summon more of their kind.

The problem is demons are not your normal monsters. Weapons of great power
are needed to defeat them, demon slaying weapons like those of legend.

At the same time, Penwick has come under attack from the inside. Creatures
of the night have infiltrated the city and people are disappearing at an
alarming rate. Even more terrifying, these vampires might be heralds of the
dread Undead Thrall Master.

With all Arinthar at stake, can the companions protect Penwick and still
find the magic they so sorely need before demons overrun their entire
world?

 

Other books in the Rise of the Thrall Lord series:

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City of Tears

Rise of the Thrall Lord, Book One

A cursed city shrouded in mist. The power to level an army. A deadly race
against demons to find it.

Five hundred years have passed since Naradon, the mad emperor, ruled over
the world of Arinthar. Unknown to all but a few, the emperor left behind a
deadly legacy—seven towers scattered across the globe, each with the
power to lay waste to an army.

Now demons have crawled up from the Abyss and taken one of those towers,
using its power to summon more of their brethren. To make matters worse, a
second tower has been uncovered and the demons want that one, too.

Yet that tower will not be taken easily. Shrouded in mist, the ancient city
surrounding that tower has fallen under a terrible curse. All who once lived
there walk the earth as undead, including the mad emperor’s
wife.

Now a small band of heroes must enter the mists and wrest the tower from
the empress of the damned and her undead army. For if they fail, the entire
world is doomed to become hell on earth.

Enter a world of magic and adventure in this exciting tale of heroes in the
making. Perfect for fans of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons &
Dragons.

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 About the Author

F.P. Spirit

F.P. Spirit is an avid science fiction and fantasy fan. A Trekkie before it
was cool, F. P. became hooked on fantasy the moment he cracked open his
first copy of Lord of the Rings. When he is not lost roaming the multiverse
of sci-fi and high-fantasy fiction, F. P. is either creating adventures for
his roll-playing friends and family or connecting with his mind and body in
an attempt to reach that inner spark of spirit.

To learn more, you can go to his website (fpspirit.com) or sign up for his
newsletter (fpspirit.com/newsletter).

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The Forgotten Sky Virtual Book Tour

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Science Fiction, Fantasy

 

Published: June 2021

 

FREE on Kindle Unlimited!!!

 

Unrest smolders in a galaxy where most citizens endure the oppressive society of the Northrite corporation.

Run by six masked council members, the Northrite exploit the powers of Elemiscists—those with magical abilities—and keep them as indentured servants. When a nearby sun turns blood red and begins pulsing, people flee their homes, and the millennia-old government is plunged into chaos. Six diverse individuals from across the galaxy become entwined in a struggle for survival and to overthrow the Northrite corporation.

These six share a strange dream: a figure composed only of shadow, holding the pulsing red sun in its palm. Jaycken is an audacious and sarcastic young military recruit who dreams of harnessing Elemiscist powers, and Rynn is a sheltered but perceptive young woman who flees her home planet in search of her missing mother. Nyranna is a cunning Elemiscist slave, seeking to free her people from oppression, and Seeva, an operative and activist, tracks down a branch of the Northrite corporation that funds poachers and decimates endangered creatures for profit. Elion is a morbid bounty hunter, and Cirx is a medieval knight who seeks revenge for the death of his people.

Praise for The Forgotten Sky

Like nothing you’ve read this year. Layered in story and intrigue and brimming with character.”—J.L. Lux, Team Seeva, author of The Fall of Dalmorall

“… compares favorably to … Dune, and Schultz’s impressive worldbuilding skills are apparent …”—Kirkus Reviews

“R.M. Schultz is a master storyteller, and his effects are spectacular … The Forgotten Sky … is a gorgeous treat not only for fans of science fiction but for any reader who adores superior storytelling.”—Readers’ Favorite

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EXCERPT

 

Seeva

 

Seeva didn’t expect fresh powder in this frozen tundra, but the brittleness is also odd.

Her slender legs aid her in stepping out of the icy sinkholes she creates. Now she wishes her feet were larger, much larger—like snowshoes—so she could scamper across the surface.

Seeva squeezes her pulser gun’s grip within a gloved hand and flexes her fingers. Her glove freezes to the metal and tears as she studies a spotty trail of blood that has thickened over the last kilometer.

This planet … again, but now its remotest region.

Shadows loom ahead. Two silhouettes: trees, crystal trees. They appear as bony hands with gangly, naked fingers, tearing their way from beneath the ice.

Ori—Seeva’s only companion, a flying creature resembling a monkey but covered in black and white feathers—howls, his tone armoring his sorrow. His flapping wings are as silent as his breathing, as silent as the calm of night.

Crunch. The snow sounds like breaking bones beneath her boots.

Seeva hunts the hunter, rushes to protect the defenseless inhabitants of this planet against humans, or humanoids, and their destructive nature.

Ice crystals drift up into the light, the snow dust of the tundra turning softly and twinkling: luminous, midnight blue, violet, carmine, shimmering like miniscule fairies who can only shout in color, the colors of the winter night.

Thirteen moons seem to suspend the sky over Seeva’s head. Glowing spheres or sickles form a vault of pale light; silver and azure shades paint the snow. Floating ice particles create a nimbus around the moons, some of which are as large as suns while others appear like crescent blades that could be carried on her back, waxing blue and waning copper. Another’s lighted surface is pocked by meteoroid strikes.

All Seeva recognizes in this shape is a skull with a depression fracture.

Biting cold.

Another strained step, and Seeva’s foot punches through crusty snow. Air almost as thick as ice burns as it claws its way into her throat and then explodes in her lungs like smoke inside a burning building. Even the heated inhalation mask and the coils in her snowsuit barely keep the subzero temperatures out of her lean body.

A cloud of breath plumes from her mask into the night, turning to hoarfrost in the air before being sheared away by a rising wind.

Who the fuck could have done this? Tracked their victims through this region?

A gust of salty wind batters Seeva’s masked cheeks, the smell of blood hanging thick. She sees it: a splatter of black liquid against the restless white haze of hills and jutting mounds.

Her stomach solidifies into a dense ball of tension. Sparse hairs on her arms stick up; her scalp tingles.

Red light falls in a soft curtain, coating the landscape, washing out the moonlight. Seeva glances skyward.

Something is out there, something massive, beyond the moons. It pulses with a red glow like the heart of a god.

Seeva knows anarchy reigns out near the drifters, at the extremity of the galaxy, where unusual planets and peculiar people dwell. Where habitable worlds are sparse and civilizations sparser. Where many become lost. Where beyond the drifters lies the dead zone, an emptiness between galaxies that is always dark. Where no suns and no planets roam, where no one ventures.

A lock of Seeva’s sable hair lashes out from its typical location, clipped around the oak-dark skin of her neck like a scarf. The strand appears like black water, only hungrier, obscuring her vision as the wind skirls around her. She tucks it behind the orange-tinted view of dynamic lenses, projections from her v-rima thin silver band stretching from the ends of each eyebrow, a central dip at the bridge of her nose—a viewer for all the information she needs plus a link to the galaxy’s central network.

Seeva marches on, her feet sinking through brittle snow, her breath spewing into brittle air.

She wonders what kind of person could do what she’s worried she will find: the victims, the source of the blood trail. What backward fools with hearts of molten coal treated others like crops?

Seeva recalls a trial and lawsuit her Silvergarde Alliance discovered occurring on the neighboring planets, one hushed up from public scrutiny. The Northrite council, the primary governing agency of the galaxy and the largest corporation, was attempting to obtain mining rights to these planets.

She also recently heard of a newly discovered planet blanketed by a liquid sea—instead of clouds—the water suspended in its atmosphere by the gravity of its thousand moons and tensile troposphere. Only in the past year had people discovered land below, and then found native humans already living there, living in medieval conditions on a continent isolated from the rest of the galaxy.

Consciously aware humanoids have been venturing out from their planets of origin, dispersing throughout the galaxy and between solar systems, since the first age. Before Elemiscists discovered Striding, traveling so many light years could take families generations to reach another planet in their own galaxy, even traveling at the speed of light … generations … unless the occupants were placed in cryosleep. Slowly, over tens of thousands of years, the mixing of peoples and humanoids is now commonplace. And humans, as if by divine design or grievous error, have spread throughout the galaxy like the most adept colonizing virus. 

Seeva is too similar to them all for her liking, even with her short stature of one of the ancient races, one dating back before the time of the communicating galaxy, before the time of even the written word. The small women of old, the ancient, dark-skinned sirens. But she’s not special: no magic, no enigma, no fading into fog.

The pulsing red light radiating from the heavens grows brighter, pulling Seeva back to reality.

“What the fuck’s causing this and what does it mean?” She points the muzzle of her pulser gun skyward.

“Time to leave,” Ori seems to say with only his pink and emerald eyes as his head rotates fully around his body. He’s wary of hidden spirits in this desolate place, wary of memories, of emotions. Ori’s native planet. She knew he’d be affected coming back here.

Seeva recalls a recent dream: a sound like wind shuffling leaves, a shadowy figure concealing something in their palm, something red and beating. Coincidence?

She strides forward.

Hunter, I know your path. I feel your presence. This trick with the light will not stop me.

Ori’s wings beat against the wind without a whisper.

A tower of a mountain soars upward in the distance, dark against the flashing red and pewter sky. A range of sharpened cliffs—which appear as black flames frozen in their fury—run before her, jagged peaks of petrified fire roasting the belly of the night.

Seeva follows the blood trail, climbing in lunges and bursts. Her feet crunch and slip on icy stairs of rock as minutes wear out and fall away, the flashing red overhead the fiery breath of a monster kindling her anxiety.

Beyond the crest of a white mound, a ravine of snow emerges. Massive forms lie scattered about, limbs stiff and stretching toward the moons.

The victims.

As Seeva approaches, a shape becomes more distinct. An enormous animal. Purple hide as tough as leather wrought with iron. Stocky body and legs. Clubbed feet. Spike-like horns should have protruded in dense rows across its body, but only blunted stumps remain. Black liquid has pooled around the carcass, staining the snow with a macabre, amorphous shape resembling a distorted man.

The innocent and the weakest are always the first victims, in times long past and in the present. Only the perpetrator—this butcher—and their master and how to find the two of them changes. But this … this pointless slaughter.

Something inside her lashes out in anger, through the cold in her heart, with tongues of flame.


About The Author

R.M. Schultz

R.M. Schultz lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, daughter, and many pets. He enjoys the outdoors, playing the guitar, and reading and writing across genres but always includes fantasy or science fiction elements in his work. He founded and heads the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Group.

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White Lotus Virtual Book Tour

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 Book 1 of The Tripitaka Chronicles

 

Fantasy, YA, Historical

 

Date Published: August 15, 2021

Publisher: NewLink Publishing (an imprint of Mystic Publishers)

The year is 1799, and a woodblock engraved with a mysterious message is unearthed near a Korean temple. A novice monk, Kyetsu, is sent north by the abbot on a mission to deliver it to the king. On the journey he meets a great warrior, the leader of a secret society called White Lotus. Kyetsu will need all the help he can get, as there are powerful forces working against him. He must learn the deadly martial arts style practiced by the White Lotus and must look for help in unlikely places. The fate of the kingdom is at stake.

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Excerpt 

“I am traveling north,” Kyetsu said.

“North? Where?” The man looked out into the bleak night.

Habit made Kyetsu pause but something told him he could trust these people. “To Hanseong.”

“Hanseong!” The man shook his head in disbelief. “That is some way from here. Tell me then, which way is north?”

Kyetsu looked in every direction before his shoulders slumped.

“I’m not sure.” Chui might have been right. He had not the faintest hope of making it to the capital.

“The black tortoise,” the woman said. Her wavy hair and round cheeks offered a warmth that drew Kyetsu in and made him feel at ease.

“What?” Despite having surrendered to the woman’s maternal glow, Kyetsu had no idea what she was talking about.

“The black tortoise.” She rested a hand on his shoulder and pointed toward the horizon. “Can you see it?”

“No.” He looked up at the clear black sky, filled with countless stars, trying to glimpse at what she pointed to.

She waved her hand in a smooth, swirling motion, tracing a pattern in the stars. “It is locked in an eternal struggle with the snake.” She now traced the serpent, wrapped around the tortoise in fierce combat. A gasp escaped from Kyetsu, and the man chuckled.

“I can see it.” Kyetsu felt as though he were taking in the heavens with new eyes.

“Follow the tortoise,” the woman said, “and you will always find your way north.”

“Is that how you travel,” Kyetsu said, “by the stars?”

“You can count the starry nights on one hand this time of year.” The man laughed, shaking his head.

“Sometimes.” The woman tsked at the man before offering Kyetsu a smile. “But a road is often easier to follow.”

“When you can find one.” The man laughed again, nodding in the direction of the wild mountains beyond the camp.


About the Author

Seb Cielens

Seb Cielens is a South Australian writer who has immersed himself in Asian culture and history since he was a child. His stories recount the turmoil of life in late imperial Korea and China, weaving hundreds of hours of historical research into vivid and inspiring fictional tales. When he started training in Kung Fu at the age of thirteen, Seb had no idea that it would lead to a lifelong passion for this amazing place and time. After training in Chinese, Japanese and Korean martial arts for much of his life, he began putting it together with a lifelong passion for writing. Seb is a high school History teacher by day, and writer by night. He has managed these achievements despite being legally blind. White Lotus is the first novel in what promises to be a bountiful career as an author.

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Soul: Part One Virtual Book Tour

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Fantasy

 

 

Date Published: 05-11-2021

Awakened from an ancient slumber, a warrior of the old gods finds his immediate future bound by fate to the failures of his past. As he struggles to gather allies amongst the untrusting denizens of this oppressed new world, the ancient warrior seeks to secure the plans for the weapon his unit died trying to destroy, only to find himself hunted not only by those who stole those plans but by the very people that he seeks to save.

Soul: Part One tablet

EXCERPT

Axe and shield in hand, Sassacua charged past Clank at the coalescing cloud of embers and tried to cleave it in two. The axe passed through the thick concentration of soot to no effect. As she spun around, arcing her axe above her to land a killing blow through its head, the creature continued forward towards Clank, the path the axe had taken through its form vanishing as the two halves melded together.
Clank rushed to the left, frantically adjusting the setting on Junker. The metal bear positioned itself between the apparition and its master, growling ferociously. “Damnit, Sassy,” Clank yelled angrily, “you can’t hack and slash your way through this one. This thing isn’t alive.”
Again with the ‘Sassy,’ she thought angrily. Her body glowed brighter, casting the chamber in a red glow. She charged forward, bringing her axe down hard. “You could have fooled me.”
Clank brought Junker up to fire, the interior of the barrel glowing white. “Get clear so I can get a shot.”
But Sassacua was too blinded by determination to heed him. She stepped up for another swing.
The cinder wraith turned its head suddenly to regard her. Its arm shot up, and then a blast of embers surged out. The white dust gushed into Sassacua’s mouth as she roared a battle scream.
She felt it fill her lungs, breathing instantly impossible. Helplessly, she dropped her axe and began clawing madly at the stream of soot,
as if somehow that would stop the influx of powdery corpse remnants into her airway.
Her whole body felt cold. Her muscles slacked. The rage inside her intensified even as her sense of place and self dispersed. The whispers were blotted out by unyielding, universal hatred.
There was a sound like a shout that she barely registered. And then everything went brilliant white.
With a rush of exhaustion the light tore the hatred harshly out of her. She was awake again and aware, her body falling and then slamming hard, left side first, onto the ground. Exhaling from her lungs on its own, the torrent of ash gushed out of her mouth and nostrils. Her mouth tasted like burnt death. She coughed up soot and she spat blood. Her lungs burned as though she’d inhaled a campfire.
“Mandla,” Clank called out as he took aim on the recoiling wraith. “Go do that healing psychic touch on Sassy and then give me a hand.” He pulled the trigger and the barrel erupted with brilliant, burning light. The wraith recoiled and shifted out of the way as the searing glow struck it. But then it resumed its rapid track back towards the sergeant.
As Sassacua found her weapons and struggled to her feet, Mandla burst forward at a run, leaping over Clank, grabbing him by the neck with both hands as she did so. With all of her might, Mandla tried to hurl Clank directly at the cinder wraith.
However, the monk had not accounted for the sheer weight of her enemy. Several hundred pounds of G.R.U.N.T. was lifted off of his feet, rotated head-over-heel, but never quite made it more than a few feet off the ground. Instead of sailing across the room into the wraith, Clank slammed into the bear’s side, causing the beast to howl in surprise, then turn ferociously towards Mandla. The monk rolled from her throw, then backpedaled several steps as the metal bear stalked towards her.
“Keep him back, Scrapyard,” Clank shouted over his shoulder as he fired again. The shot was true, but the creature’s advancement continued, forcing Clank to backpedal and shift direction to avoid being cornered. “This thing’s only getting tougher. It’s absorbing the magic from my attacks.” He switched the dial again, the light vanishing from the gun, the barrel widening. “If this were a zombie that holy light would have dusted it in one shot.”
The cinder wraith was right on top of him. He jammed Junker’s nozzle right inside of its swirling vortex. The burst of thunder that erupted from the barrel scattered the wrath far and wide, the dust settling all throughout the room.
Clank adjusted the setting of his gun again and aimed at Sassacua. “That only bought us a few seconds,” he said, firing.
She tensed, her instincts screaming at her to dodge, but her trust in Clank forced her to remain still. She was rewarded for that trust as the soothing warmth of a healing blast washed over her. Her wounds mended some, but the
beam could not soothe her nerves. She rushed to Clank, axe gripped in both hands. “How do we kill this thing?”
“Not easily,” Clank replied. Already the embers were beginning to reform. He reset the gun again. “Cinder wraiths are the cremated remains of beings so evil and so powerful in life that even burning it cannot prevent it from returning. They’re all instinct and hate, with a loathing for the living that can’t be sated.”
Sassacua, feeling pain within her burning lungs with each breath, gripped her axe tighter. “What did it do to me?” she asked hatefully.
Clank took aim and fired the thunder again, scattering the dust once more. But it didn’t blow the reforming creature apart nearly as much as it had before. “Reproducing. It was trying to burn you from the inside, and turn your rage into hate, steal as much of your burning, charring flesh from you as it could to grow itself, leaving whatever was left as a new cinder wraith.”
He fired again, but this time the coalescing ash barely budged. It was forming together more quickly this time, as well.
Sassacua knew time was short. But one question needed answered before she resumed the fight. “Why is it after you?”
Clank took a knee, withdrew some tools from his belt pouches, and opened a hatch in Junker’s magazine. “These things are particularly hateful of the thing that killed them. Maybe this was the lich in charge here when my unit blew the place up.” He looked at the nearly reformed monster
and then at Sassacua. “It’s absorbing my attacks faster than I can damage it. I have to hot-wire Junker for more output. Keep it busy, preferably without eating any more soot.”
Her chest tightened around her burning lungs as she watched the wraith reassemble, and her heart began to pound. Her legs felt like jelly. Her throat constricted, making it hard for her to breathe. She backed away.

About the Author

Jayson Jolin

I started out writing for myself when I was a pre-teen, during long hours running Sunday open houses for my father’s apartment building, writing mainly to keep myself entertained. My interest in storytelling helped shift my attention to acting, leading to my getting my bachelors of arts in theater. Even after entering more mundane employment, I would often write and draw short sketches and occasional short stories, as well as adventures for role-playing games. After years of dancing around my love of storytelling, I finally sat down in front of my computer and got serious, producing my first trilogy of novels, the first book of which I hope you will find compelling enough to represent.

 

 

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