Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 121

Book of the Week: ODESSA FREMONT

From the Guardians of the Time Stream series, by Desert Breeze Publishing.

Look for MUSIC IN THE NIGHT, the final book in the series, coming at the start of October!



"Which brings us here to this moment." Mr. Lincoln sat back, clasping his hands in his lap. His mouth quirked up and his eyes narrowed just a little, so Ess felt as if he could somehow see through her. It made her want to fidget. "What was your name again?"
"Joshua, sir." A sudden dropping sensation took her breath away. Why would he ask her that? Wouldn't her name have been at the top of the report Sutter gave him?
"You're sure?"
"Sir?"
He raised a hand and a door on the far side of the meeting room opened. Ess flinched, realizing the door hadn't been entirely closed. Sutter walked in, and that dropping sensation increased, making her slightly dizzy. Why had he been listening at the door? Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. The new clothes that felt so fine now felt like a trap. How could she flee, vanish into the streets, wearing such clothes? They would make her stand out like a beacon on a hill.
"I'm curious. What do you plan to do when you can no longer disguise yourself as a boy?"
"Sir?" Agent Sutter said, stopping so abruptly he seemed to lean forward for a second. His eyes widened and he stared at Ess.
"I'll ask you again, young lady, what is your name? Your real name," Mr. Lincoln emphasized.
He laughed softly, shoulders shaking, as Sutter stared, looking back and forth between Ess and the president.
"Odessa Vivian Fremont, sir," she admitted, bracing herself for a torrent of questions.

Ess saw the moment Agent Sutter made the connection, the moment his frown relaxed into understanding and his eyes widened. Then he grinned and she couldn't decide if she should be relieved or perturbed by him.

Book of the Week: ODESSA FREMONT

From the Guardians of the Time Stream series, published by Desert Breeze Publishing.


That night, Ess discovered that Miss Van Hastings or her brother had been practicing forging her signature. The worst part was that the forgeries were rather good. Whoever had covered ten sheets of paper with her name, growing closer to Ess's scrawling penmanship with each try, had a future as a counterfeiter.
Ess didn't have nearly enough copying paper and spray to copy all the sheets to prove someone was learning to forge her signature, but further searching negated the need for proof. She found a master copy of a letter, purportedly from her, to go to Endicott, Lewis and MacDonald. Supposedly she was so utterly wounded by the loss of her grandparents that she wanted Miss Van Hastings to become her guardian. All communication would go through her. The lawyers were to transfer all authority over her grandparents' estate to Miss Van Hastings. By the end of the month, she would arrange to empty out the house, dismiss the staff, and sell the house and grounds.
The vision of Walter Van Hastings coming into her grandparents' home and emptying it of the rooms and rooms of books and archeological treasures and all the clever gadgets her grandmother had invented, the shelves and shelves of archives her grandfather kept for his scholarly friends… it sickened her. Infuriated her. Frightened her.
She couldn't think for several moments. The meeting of the Resurrectionists would be at the same time as the Van Hastings planned to loot the Fremont home. Likely Resurrectionist sympathizers would be recruited to conduct the operation -- and their cause would profit. Ess needed to notify Endicott, Lewis and MacDonald now of the deception being perpetrated on them. She needed to go home before the meeting and hopeful raid and looting, and arrange to hide her family treasures.

Book of the Week: ODESSA FREMONT

MUSIC IN THE NIGHT, the final book in the Guardians of the Time Stream series, steampunk, by Desert Breeze Publishing, will be released at the beginning of October.

The next 5 weeks will give glimpses of all 4 books in the series, starting with the prologue, ODESSA FREMONT.

Enjoy!!


Ess Fremont already hated her boarding school before discovering the headmistress was trying to steal her inheritance. With her archeologist grandparents presumed dead in South America's turmoil, she struck out for freedom.
Guided by her grandparents' maxim to always help where she was able, and aided by their inventions, Ess made her mark. First step: reveal a Resurrectionist plot to the Secret Service before the Southerners could re-start the Civil War.Disguised as a boy, Ess headed West. Sharp eyes, scientific principles, and engineering knowledge put her in the right place at the right time to do the right thing. Powerful allies included President Lincoln, the Secret Service, circus performers, train inspectors, and Pinkerton agents. Not bad for a girl between her fourteenth and seventeenth birthdays.If she could only find her missing brother and uncover the secrets their grandparents kept from them… 

Off the Bookshelf: WINTER'S PASSAGE, by Julie Kagawa

The next book in the Iron Fey series is a novella.

Right on the heels of the events of THE IRON KING, Meghan and Ash head back into the land of faery. She made a deal with Ash and now she has to follow through. In return for his help in rescuing her brother, kidnapped by the Iron King, Meghan must go with him to the court of Queen Mab.

Of course, magical creatures -- frightening ones -- are hunting for the half-blood daughter of King Oberon.

Their chase takes readers into some more creepy yet fascinating spots where the world of the faery overlaps the Human world, with magical creatures living opening among them -- and Humans don't see, or at least don't notice.

Of course, when Meghan finally gets to the icy underground kingdom of the Unseelie Court, things don't look very good at all. And that's the subject of the next book, IRON DAUGHTER.

Thank goodness for Overdrive and borrowing e-books from the library, and being able to download and start reading instantly. I wanna know what happens next!

ANALOGS: Phoenix Fan Fiction

Read the whole story on Wattpad: CLICK HERE

"What have you gotten yourself into this time?" Preminger said under his breath, standing at the foot of the hospital bed. "Just when I thought we were both safe, you show up. Who got you? They took your medallion, you know. Whoever it was." His throat tightened and he twisted his hand around the med rail to keep from making any sound.
It was crazy, he knew. For the last year and a half, he had been hunting Bennu. For the last year they had been friends of a sort, one of them showing up just when the other needed help.
Too often he had been on the verge of being taken off the case, afraid a superior realized he was deliberately letting Bennu slip by. Then Bennu would show up and get past the latest hot-shot agent so easily as to make the man look a fool. And Preminger would be back on the case where he wanted to be.
For three months, nothing had been heard of Bennu, let alone seen. The agency was sure the communists had caught him -- it didn't matter which ones. Preminger had spent his 'free time' studying the Indian ruins, trying to figure out what Bennu was up to now that Mira was gone. He was coming to like the subject as much as he was coming to like the alien.
And now this had to happen. Some farmer had heard an explosion in the middle of the night and called the sheriff before investigating. They found a crater, five feet deep, ten feet wide, with an injured man in the bottom. The sheriff was only too happy when he recognized Bennu. Now he was in the hospital, under guard, still unconscious since they had brought him in ten hours before.
"Bennu, how could you be so stupid?" Preminger flung himself down in the chair by the bed, prepared to wait until his quarry/friend woke up. Maybe he could think of something to help both of them before then.

Book of the Week, FELIN-RU, Wildvine Book 3

Wildvine Series
Book 3
Fantasy

From Writers Exchange

            “Doc?” Daniel resisted the urge to yank on his guardian’s sleeve. He felt very small and lost.            A rocky mountainside spread around him, sloping downward to the foot of the Silver Mountains reservation. This was where all the rangers and investigators and scientists who had studied wind and rain directions and angle of descent said he should have come through the mountains, that day he was found.
            “Daniel?” Khyber stood on his other side, bracketing him between her and their teacher. “Are you okay?” she said, dropping to a whisper, and squeezed his shoulder. “You’re white.”
            He shook his head, though now that she said it, he did feel a little queasy.
            This was wrong. Very wrong. He looked at a row of three trees and his mind told him he should see a pile of boulders instead. He saw a gouge in the landscape where water runoff had worn away softer soil between the bedrock of this slope -- memory said he should find slabs of moss in scarlet and purple, and a slight mound instead of a gap in the rock. Daniel tried to remember the wind and rain and flashes of lightning Khyber had described when she went through the same storm only a few hundred yards away.
            Nothing.
            Something did flicker at the back of his mind, a memory trying to surface, but he got hazy images of sunshine and trees and emerald lawns and heard flickers of laughter.
            Those shadowy creatures from his dreams were there, though. Big and black, towering over him, only the jewel-toned eyes distinct in sapphire, emerald, and a deep purple that made him think of snow-topped mountains at dusk.
            Dr. Harland linked their arms and drew him close. “What’s wrong?” He signaled the ranger retracing the “scene of the crime” to stop.
            “Sit him down,” Khyber urged.
            Daniel grinned crookedly as he realized that the world was tilting. He leaned against Dr. Harland while Khyber dabbed at his face with her red bandanna and the contents of her canteen.
            A cat-like creature with green and silver fur peered through Khyber’s loose hair, perched on her left shoulder, watching Daniel most solemnly.
            That was enough. He shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists and wished the illusions to go away.

Book of the Week, FELIN-RU, Wildvine Book 3

Wildvine Series
Book 3
Fantasy

From Writers Exchange

            She knew mud and cold and darkness and the ache in her head and the squirming little boy in her arms. He took a deep breath and she instantly pressed her hand over his mouth to smother another squall. He struggled for a little bit, until she tightened her arms around him. Then he quieted. Just like all the other times he had tried to protest their silence and stillness.
            They had to be quiet. They had to sit perfectly still here in the darkness. They had to stay where they were and never move again.
            “Why” had no part in survival.
            The world consisted of the darkness and the smell of rotting wood around her, the slimy feeling against her bare arms and the sharpness of splinters against her back, the chill mud squishing between her bare toes -- and the smell of dirty diaper coming from the little boy.
            After a time, the darkness grew grainy and turned to gray. She looked up into an immense, reeking darkness. She looked straight forward and watched the darkness shift into more gray with patterns running through it.
            Gradually, in time with the pulsing of growing ache in her head, the patterns turned into trees. She sat inside a huge, rotted hollow tree, holding a blond, filthy little boy in her arms.            She wore shredded green flannel pajamas. The little boy wore a diaper and a T-shirt. Both of them were streaked with mud and darker marks.
            Her mind shied away from examining too closely to see what those darker marks were.

Book of the Week, FELIN-RU, Wildvine Book 3

Wildvine Series
Book 3
Fantasy

From Writers Exchange

Daniel was a mystery, found injured, lost, and unconscious on a mountainside after a freak storm. His miracle recovery and then his brilliant mind made medical history. 

Wren lost all her memory after witnessing the murders of her parents. The trauma in their childhoods unlocked Talents that it would take years for them to explore and understand.


Grown, Daniel escaped his university existence, and set out to explore and search for answers to the mysteries in his life. Taking refuge with a school friend's family, he met Wren, and the two discovered an instant bond of mind and soul and heart. Guarded by the mysterious, interdimensional shadow creatures Daniel knew only as the felin-ru, they dared to try to make a life together.

Off the Bookshelf: THE IRON KING, Julie Kagawa

Book 1 of the Iron Fey series.

Be honest -- what girl wouldn't want to find out she was a faery princess?

Read Meghan's story, and you'll probably change your mind. For one thing, there's finding out that your father isn't your father, and this cold-hearted, coldly beautiful faery king has just announced you're his little girl, but he really, really didn't want a father-daughter reunion. Ever. Then there's the faery king's wife to deal with. She can be kind of nasty toward the illegitimate daughter. Then there are the other denizens of the faery world, who make the political game players in Congress look like a bunch of runny-nose Kindergarteners in need of a nap and a diaper change. (Well ... yeah! And a good paddling and a looooong time out. But that's another story altogether.)

Then there's the whole problem of iron being deadly to the residents of the faery realms.

So when a new king shows up, with not only immunity to, but power over iron, things are starting to get shaken up pretty badly. It's war, like the realms of faery have never known it.

And guess who's in the middle, because as a half-breed,she's immune to iron? Yep. And Meghan thought being teased by the pretty and popular and nasty kids at school was rough. Oh, yeah, and the Iron King has kidnapped her little brother and left a pretty nasty, matricidal changeling in his place. Just to force Meghan to come to him, on his turf. Because he has big plans for her. This girl's got a lot on her plate. Fortunately -- or maybe unfortunately -- she's got some magical friends, or at least allies on her side. Maybe. Turns out one isn't sure if he should help her or kill her.

Yeah, and you wanted to be a faery princess?

I gotta remember to look for the next book in the Iron Fey series when I hit the bookstore tomorrow. Fascinating.

ANALOGS, Phoenix fan fiction

Blast from the past!

This story originally appeared in a Phoenix fanzine called "Golden Dreams."

In 1984.

Thank goodness my writing has improved by a factor of about 100 since then ....

For your reading pleasure, and possible groans ...

ANALOGS
Bennu dreamed of mirrors and doorways that night. Shattered mirrors, the pieces flying at and through him. He was the doorway, and Yago soldiers -- or were they? -- tried to force their way through. Pain. Like a hundred galaxies exploding in his head. Burning. The smell of blood.
He saw Khahli, who should have married his murdered brother. She was engulfed in fire. Hot flames of power and life, but death. She screamed soundlessly, and Bennu leaped through the wall of fire to help her. His own pain multiplied. Something was drawing him back, away from her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her through with him. The final shattering explosion in his head ripped away the visions and he was falling. Falling forever. Blackness.

Light exploded in his eyes and Bennu fought for consciousness. He was sitting up in bed, sweat pouring out of him, the light of sunrise shining through his loft window, straight into his eyes. Bennu took a deep breath and closed them again. Relax. Calm down. It was all just a dream.
But why could he still smell burning and blood?
Downstairs, the mares were moving restlessly, and Bennu could sense the beginnings of panic in them. He slid down the ladder barefoot, dressed only in his jeans, to check on them. It was his responsibility to make sure nothing disturbed the broodmares until their foals were dropped. The smell of blood and smoke grew stronger. He followed it to a stack of baled hay in a store room.

A body lay there, sprawled on the hay. A female, singed and smoky, a long, wide stain of blood down one side of her back. Even as Bennu saw her, she groaned and rolled over, pushing her long tangle of red-brown hair out of her face.