David Ekrut's Blog, page 5

Episode 2: Welcome Back

Abigail lifted her hands up in surrender, “Why the hostile face? I just want to talk.”

“You killed Victoria,” he said, pivoting toward the door. “There is nothing to talk about.”

She blinked in genuine surprise. “Have you not heard?”

“Heard what?” I said, trying to push aside sudden doubts.

“You really have stepped away from the Collective. She was right.”

“Who was right?”

“Vicky is alive,” she said, “She has joined me.”

“I saw her die.”

“Did you?”

“You stabbed her in the chest. She was ripped into a wyther rift. I saw the darkness take her.”

“It was just a portal. I healed the wound.”

“Lies.”

“Join us, Liamor. This world is about to change. You can be a part of it.”

Here we go, the predictable Join us or die moment.

“I thought Artemis hated men. Am I to be the one exception?”

“You cannot be a Nymph or Demigod, but she always needs more hunters. Still, you will hold far more power than ever before. She is a force of good and is loyal to those who serve her.”

I gave an obviously fake smile and spoke in an equally bogus tone of enamored awe. “Of course. I will set aside all of my morals for the power you are freely offering and bind my eternity to Artemis the wise and just goddess of all that is good in the world.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You will not mock my goddess. Do so again and our conversation will come to an abrupt and violent end.”

“You see, I can’t tell. Is that threat from you or her?”

“I still have all of my mental faculties. You have been lied to, Liamorandus. Binding yourself to my goddess will not leave you a witless automaton. It does not work that way.”

“Said the witless automaton.” Before she could retort, I asked, “Tell me. If you were being controlled, how would you even know? She can alter your perception of reality and supplant thoughts in your mind. How can you sort through which ideas are your own and not hers?”

“I know when she is speaking to me. I can feel her presence.”

“Or so you believe. She has the power to silently pull your strings with you being none the wiser.”

“She would not do that. It is not her way.”

“Right, well. It seems we are at an impasse because I’m not willing to take that chance. So can we get on with this? I’d like to get back to pretending to be a college student.”

Abigail sighed. “You know I cannot allow that. You’ve likely deduced why I am here. I cannot have you running back to the Collective, now can I?”

I could see in her eyes, truce talks were done, and I knew Abigail would not care about collateral damage. Her time bubble had failed to capture me. She could not sway me to join her. All these people were in imminent danger. The loss of innocent life would not deter her. Worst of all, I was not likely to defeat her alone. I needed to get her away from here. Then, by Loki, I needed to find a way to lose her.

How the fuck did she know I would be here?

No, gods damn it. I needed to focus. I could worry about that detail later. The runes on her blade irradiated with energy. I leapt back through the doorway and ran toward the stairwell.

“Gaeta,” I snarled, releasing a burst of ether.

The gathered energy stuck against the wall opening a portal to the outside. Leaping, I glanced back. Abigail was air bound. She soared from the classroom, sword in both hands, eyes now ablaze with energy.

Pulling more ether, I flew toward the portal. The moment I was through, I let the energy collapse. The opening closed, returning to brick and mortar. I knew the wall would not stop her, but I hoped it would give me a few seconds of concealment to escape. No such luck. Abigail did not bother making a hole. The wall crumbled as she ripped through. Part of the roof collapsed, but I could not stop to assess the danger to those inside.

I surged skyward. I felt wyther energy chase me. She rode the trail of burnt ether, gaining speed as she chased. Pulling in more ether, I flung myself to the side. A concussion of wyther hit the space where I’d been. The dark ball imploded, sucking inward from every direction. The force yanked me toward it. I resisted. My body jarred to a stop, but the flip-flops were ripped from my feet. They hit the center of the dark hole and vanished in a puff of brown dust.

“Gods damn it!” I yelled. “I just bought those.”

The maelstrom was too strong. I could not fly away. Below me, Abigail kept her distance. I could see her smile. She floated in place, maintaining the vortex. Likely, I could not outlast her. If I diverted any ether away from my fly spell, I would be sucked into oblivion. My hip buzzed. I cursed. Then I realized it was my phone.

Like a dumbass, I pulled it from my pocket. I saw Aiden’s name before the phone was jerked from my grasp and burst into tiny particles.

“I wonder if that is covered under AT&T’s insurance plan.”

Far below, I felt a pulse of thaumaturgy. I did not look down. Instead I shouted, “Is this the best your little goddess can do?” Then I laughed maniacally.

Speaking a deity’s name is the best way to get them to look your way. Normally, this would not matter too much. Their influence is largely perpetuated by their followers. However, Artemis’s head priestess was currently present and trying to kill me. Perhaps, mocking her was not the best strategy, but that would be a worry for Future-Liam’s therapist, if he survived to go to his next session.

Abigail’s expression did not change, but energy crackled along her skin. She moved closer but stayed outside the pull of her implosion vortex. The ether-wyther balance shifted around me. The source for my fly spell receded, replaced by a dark cloud of energy. Abigail was wrapping a globe of wyther around me to prevent ether from replenishing in the space around me. Within the next minute, I would no longer have ether to draw on.

This is one of those desperate moments I spoke of before. When ether fails, I can draw on wyther. But it is not instantaneous. When the batteries run out on the remote, I cannot draw juice from the new batteries without changing them out. When the ether runs out, there will be a few second delay while I recast the spell and tap the cloud of wyther. By then, I would be sucked into the Loki-damned vortex.

Just as my spell faltered, Aiden appeared behind Abigail, swinging a sword of ether toward the back of her skull. She must have noticed my reaction. She dropped beneath the swing. Before I could see anymore, my body jerked toward the vortex.

I closed my eyes. This was it. Would it hurt when all my atoms were violently ripped apart? Nah. Probably wouldn’t feel a thing, right? Just stop existing all of a sudden.

Wind buffeted my face. Whatever sensation I had expected, this wasn’t it. I opened an eye. The ground rushed toward me.

“Fuck!” I shouted. Then I focused and said, “Eitil trid an aer.”

Ether fused with my body and I stopped falling. The vortex was gone. Two figures clashed together, swords blurring. Aiden’s blade was wrought from ether, Abigail’s from wyther. The very weapons fought for dominance, exploding in arrays of light with each strike.

Filling myself with ether, I rushed to join them. I cloaked myself with invisibility and formed a spear, adding an expulsion spell into the tip. I flew with all my strength. Abigail was faster than Aiden. Her strikes fell with precision. Aiden retreated a dozen paces up and away. When Abigail’s back turned to me, I hurled my spear.

The moment it left my hand, the projectile became visible. It slammed into her hip. Her scream cut short as the expulsion spell took effect. Aiden’s sword swung in the space where she’d vanished a few times, before he finally stopped.

“Where is she?”

I shrugged. “Expulsion spell is random.”

“Bottom of the fucking ocean would be nice. But no, she has the favor of Artemis. Likely, the goddess pulled her along the leys to her own domain.”

“Yeah. That would be my guess too.”

Aiden nodded toward the gawkers in the quad below. “We should go. The Law of Dubiety can only do so much.”

“I need to get back to class.”

“Really? After that?”

“I need to make sure everyone is all right.”

“Fuck it. Let’s go.”

We both cloaked ourselves as we flew back to the maths building, through the hole Abigail had made.

“I’ll fix this,” Aiden said, gathering ether. “You go to your fucking lecture.”

Nodding my thanks, I left him to patch the broken wall and ran back to the classroom. The TA didn’t pause as I entered, but her frown was unmistakable. Heart still thundering, I sat in the open seat in the front row. The board was almost full with very familiar script. This was a basic calculus coarse. Ironically, I taught this material a hundred years ago, albeit with slightly different syntax. At the far left was the TA’s name, Ms. Skyler Turney, along with contact information and office location.

After drawing a graph, she turned to face the class. “Does anyone know the limit definition to the derivative?”

“Yeah,” I said. “F prime is equal to the limit as delta x approaches zero of f of x plus delta x divided by delta x.”

Her frown deepened, stopping just short of a scowl. Probably, she was unhappy that I had vanished suddenly. Sorry, Ms. Turney for saving all of your lives.

“That’s one definition. What do we mean by delta x approaching zero?” She looked over my head as if wanting someone else to respond.

I could not help myself. “The increments between the x points are decreasing in value as the secant line moves toward becoming tangential to the curve.”

“Yes,” she said, lips tight. “Thank you.”

Rather than asking another question, she picked up a new piece of chalk and continued the lesson. First, she repeated what I had said, then she gave basic examples of how to use the definition on simple functions.

Minutes before the bell rang, most of the students packed up. The moment it dinged, the students ran as if they’d heard someone shout, “Free sandwiches in the quad!” Did they still call it a quad? Note to self: look up what this era calls a field of grass where all the cool kids frolicked and strutted as if they were the best thing since sliced bread—and in case you are wondering, yes, Otto Rohwedder the loaf defying guru was a mage. 

“Why are you still sitting there?”

I stood. “Lost in my own thoughts.”

“Find the rest of the calculus class in there? Seriously, why are you in here?”

“Need the credit.”

“Why?” she asked, still obviously annoyed. “You clearly already know the material.”

“I have an eidetic memory,” I said, which isn’t exactly true. All trained mages are skilled at organizing our thoughts, and I can tap ether to store the memories I want to keep. It was easier to tell normals I have a photographic memory than to explain real magic to them.

“Must be nice,” she said in a voice that suggested it was anything but. “So … what, you have already memorized all the material?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know you can test out of this course, right?”

“My transcript from my associates degree was too old. They wouldn’t let me.” Another lie, but she was not likely to check.

Her brow furrowed. “You don’t look that old. When did you last graduate?”

“Six years.”

“That doesn’t seem very long.”

I feigned nonchalance. “My guess, they are more interested in my money than my intellectual prowess. This is, after all, still a business.”

“Don’t get me started on rising tuition costs.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “Wouldn’t dare.”

“Attendance is still mandatory. Where did you go earlier?”

“I, uh …,” What is a good lie? “Breakfast burrito hit me a bit hard. Sorry.”

“Oh,” she said, pink gracing her pale cheeks. Her tone lightened. “Completely understandable.”

“Ahem.”

We both turned to see Aiden in the door.

“That important thing,” he said without an ounce of patience or understanding.

“This is my—”

“Partner,” Aiden said, stepping between them.

“Oh,” she said, taking his offered hand. “I didn’t realize you were—”

“No,” I said, quickly. “Not my partner-partner. We are coworkers of a sort.”

Another bell dinged.

“Shit,” she said. “I have office hours.”

“And we have a thing,” Aiden reminded me. “Literally, life or death. Remember?”

“Figuratively,” Skyler said. “Not literally.”

The corner of Aiden’s mouth frowned. Knowing the look, I intervened before his mouth could spew any vitriol, “I remember. Thanks for your patience Skyler. I will be on time from now on.”

“No worries. See you in class, Wednesday.”

“I don’t like her,” Aiden said before she was completely out of earshot. “Too … American.”

She frowned at him but was in too big of a hurry to turn and defend her honor and that of all Americans.

“This is America,” I reminded him. “You are in their country by choice.”

“Which we can fix, presently. Did you know ley goes straight through this city? All the way to Bermuda and into the nexus. We can hop the cross current back to Europe.”

Then it clicked. “The ley. That must be why Abigail was here.”

“Yes,” Aiden agreed. “But that is just the start. We need to go back to Scotland. Bodhi Caderyn is expecting us.”

“No. I am not getting involved.”

“If you have already forgotten the last hour of your life, you don’t have much of a choice. If you want to get back to normalcy, as you call it, we need to stop Abigail. If you recall, she found you here first.”

Fuck. He was right.

Just to be a dick, he said, “You know I’m right.”

“Fine.” I flicked a hand toward the door. “I need to grab a few things from my basement first.”

Aiden smiled. “Good to have you back.”

“I’m not back. I will help, but I plan to be back in time for class on Wednesday.”

“Of course,” Aiden said with all the snark he could conjure.

It took all I could muster not to punch him in his patronizing face. But I’m a mage. A bastion of stability and mental fortitude. I control my destiny, bend the cosmos to my will.

I hit his arm instead. Clearly not hard enough, because he only laughed. 

Chapter 1: New Beginnings

New Beginnings

The alarm clock buzzed, you know the one. It sounded as though World War Next had begun and if I did not get out of bed immediately, my life, maybe even the world would end.

I hit snooze, of course.

The next I knew, the sun was properly up. I looked at the red digits on the old black alarm on my side table, which read: 8:45 A.M.

“Damn you, Loki,” I said, climbing out of bed.

Not that I blamed him for the time I needed to get up, but of all the gods, Loki is my favorite to curse. He is the only well-known deity not holding a seat of power on earth, meaning he cannot actually smite me for my insolence. That, and his acolytes are jerks, always messing with people for the joy of it. Who better to curse than a grade-A asshole who cannot retaliate? Somehow I knew, the trickster part of Loki’s persona would actually love this reasoning.

I stumbled into the bathroom still cursing, working on this era’s slang. The last time I’d gone to university, everyone still wore suit jackets to class. I’d started studying physics when Einstein wrote Special Relativity and ended when he produced General Relativity. For those of you bored by science, that was roughly an eight year period in the early twentieth century. I had been on a break then too.

Showering quickly, I mussed my hair with a towel, doing my best to make it look as though I had not showered. According to a google search, that was what the kids did these days.

Fuck. I can’t talk like that. As far as the world is concerned, I am a twenty-five year old boy, whose brain just finished cooking or would soon. The same is true for every ethermage. Working with ether keeps you from aging beyond your peek physical form.

I can still die. But it’s really damn hard to kill me.

My name is Liamorandus Fianna, but I go by Liam Walsh now. I’m two hundred eleven years old, give or take fortnight. At the time of my birth, my parents still adhered to the Julian calendar out of spite to British Empire, so I am not certain of my exact birthday in the Gregorian sense. But I digress.

Ether is the energy from which all matter and energy is formed. Physics calls these particles by various names, but modern scientists are unable to achieve what ethermages can by will, focus, and an assload (or is it shitload?) of discipline. Magic is a dying art, but you can still see some at work in the world if you look closely. From a parent sensing their baby’s angst across vast distances to a grandma lifting a car from atop an injured child, ether is internalized and burnt. This sort of use of ether is called intuited magic and is largely employed by animals and people in great need or distress. Those of us fortunate enough to have received the proper training can harness these energies at will and do so liberally.

My phone rang as I finished pulling on my trousers and stepping into my thongs. No damn it, they are called flip-flops now. I ran to the bar in the kitchen and sighed when I saw Aiden’s name on the screen. I slid the bar to answer.

“For the last time,” I said, putting him on speaker. “I am not coming back to the Collective. Not for a while. I—”

“Just fucking listen,” he said. “Where are you?”

“My house in Tallahassee,” I said, pulling on a Star Wars shirt.

“That’s the United States, right? Florida? Why the hell are you there?”

“Yes, Florida. I needed a change. You know that.”

“Stay there. I’m in Amsterdam, so I’ll be at yours in half an hour. Just stay put.”

“No,” I said. “I am going to the university. I have class. And I’ve told you a dozen times. I’m out for a while. The Collective can keep the world together without me for now.”

“After you hear what I have to say, you’ll change your mind.”

“I doubt that, but you have thirty seconds. You have until I finish brushing my teeth.”

“Not on the phone. I can’t risk it.”

“Nice theatrics,” I tried to say, which sounded more like, “Naw he a hicks.”

So I was impressed when Aiden replied. “This is not theatre. She might have a trace spell on your phone.”

Spitting out my used toothpaste, I asked, “Who? Abigail?”

“Not on the phone. Just wait there.”

Before I could object, Aiden hung up. It took the time for me to rinse my mouth out to decide, he was full of shit. This was not the first time he’d tried to con me back into the Collective, an ancient group of mages who take it upon themselves to keep hell from rising, heaven from falling, and to prevent mayhem from people and creatures with powers and abilities beyond the normal scope of what we consider “human.”

In short, we kick ass and take names, then we get together and laugh about it. All mages work in pairs. And as it just so happened, for the first time in over a century, Aiden and I are both without partners. But I’m not working right now. Call it burnout. Call it a mid-millennium crisis. Whatever it is, I lost someone dear to me to the Eternal War. The fight can go on without me for a time. Something tells me it’ll all still be around after I get another doctorate.

Shoving my phone in my pocket, I ran out the door into my back garden—you call them yards here in the states, which is also a unit of measurement. It’s weird. But anyway. The fence was tall, and I had grown shrubs up high enough to add as much cover as possible without looking overly suspicious, making the space around my house as private as Midtown Tallahassee could offer. I have no desire to have police poking around my basement. No fresh bodies, but human skulls and bones from last century are difficult to explain away and people tend to freak out when they discover them.

I walked toward the Live Oak tree at the center of the yard, drawing in a good amount of ether from the air around me. Energy infused my core. I used the colossal tree to hide myself from my neighbor’s bedroom window, which annoyingly overlooked my yard.

Crouching behind my shrubs, I muttered a few Gaelic words to aid my focus and felt the power release from my core. The space around my body inverted, making me invisible to those outside my dome. Pulling more energy from the air, I shaped ether to lighten my body. I knelt in the superman pose. That never gets old. And I leapt into the sky. Tucking my toes to avoid losing my thongs—eh, flip-flops—I flew over the suburbs and followed Tennessee Street to the campus.

I landed behind Carother’s Hall and dropped my hold on the ether. In the books you read, spells and incantations always have negative side-effects. Reality is no different. I can only funnel so much ether into my body at one time without the risk of frying myself. Think of it like fraying a wire inside an ethernet cable. Sure, it might still send information but far slower than when you pulled it from the package. Fray it enough, and the wire will snap. Likewise, mages can only handle so much ether at a time.

But—keeping with the metaphor—while most mages are dial-up, I am a T1 dedicated line. All of us are limited, but I can burn through far more ether than most. There are ways to bolster one’s threshold for etherburn, but only marginally. The aid of etherfused focal objects, called arrium, allows a mage to use less energy for a spell. Using focus words, which are different for every mage, will also help to narrow the amount of ether burn.

The strongest amongst us can still handle far less ether than bounded mages—those unfortunate souls who bind themselves to a deity or demigod in exchange for exponentially more power. But at a huge cost. Like most forces in the universe, ether has an opposite—a pull to its push. When ether is burned, a residue is left behind called wyther. A very desperate mage can draw wyther for destructive purposes, but it eats away at their lifeforce, chopping years away like hacking at a redwood tree with an icepick. It happens slowly, but it cannot be repaired, even with ether.

Bounded mages do not share this burden, instead funneling the negative energy to their bonded source. In exchange for this incredible power, bounded mages must serve their chosen deity or pantheon for life. Their purposes are all the same, win seats of power, nexuses around the world where ley lines cross. Just like the ocean, ether runs in currents.

It is the business of the Collective to maintain balance on earth, which requires us to hunt down bounded mages and thwart the gods. You know, simple stuff mostly. But that isn’t my problem right now. I’m just a student. Just an ordinary person doing ordinary things.

A bell gonged somewhere across campus.

“Fuck Loki in the eye socket,” I said, walking out from behind the building. I was uncertain if that was the first or second bell. I hate being late. I also love sleep. So sleeping until the last possible second is a must, but so is efficiency. I cannot both sleep in and dally. After centuries of the same internal struggle, I will likely continue to torture myself with truancy for the foreseeable future. I understand this on an intellectual level.

I mussed my already wind-blown hair to some degree of ordered chaos. I was going to need to invest in a helmet. I jogged across the teacher’s parking lot into the Love building. The place smelled like a morgue, a tinge of formaldehyde mixed with lingering mold. The negative energy was palpable. Drawing ether here would fowl up my mood for an hour. Made sense, I guess. After all, this is the place where all the students go when their dreams die, the mathematics building.

A girl stepped up beside me as I hit the button to the elevator. She was short with pale skin and dark hair. She flicked her loose hair over her and smiled at me.

“First day,” she said, sucking in a breath. “So exciting.”

“Meh,” I said. “I guess.”

After all, this would be my sixth university degree, but I couldn’t tell her that without being bombarded with difficult questions.

“Such enthusiasm,” she said, smile even brighter. “I take it you are not a math major, eh?”

“Not exactly. I want to study VFX and programming. Need lots of maths for it.”

“Oh,” she said, perking up. “You are from Scotland?”

“How dare you?” I said in mock offense. “I’m from Ireland.”

“I guessed as much. Just wanted to see if you have a sense of humor.”

“And?”

She smiled. “Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

Ah fuck. She is flirting with you, dumb ass. How do I handle this? I’ve dated innocents before, but never someone whose brain’s not done. The prefrontal cortex—part of the brain responsible for logic and reason—is not fully formed until the age of twenty-five. Even then, it never ends well to mingle with the mortals.

“What’s with this elevator?” I asked, pushing the up button a few more times.

“It’s usually pretty fast,” she said, smile fading. “Likely, someone is holding it open to have a conversation. Math professors here are notorious for that.”

“Maybe we should—”

“Wait. Hear that? It’s coming.”

Before I could take the next step, the doors opened.

I felt as though I was entering a spaceship. The shiny, metal walls with red and blue lights looked out of place in the hundred year old building. I pushed the button for the top floor. Seconds later the doors opened.

“Wow. That was fast.”

“Yep,” she said. “Which classroom?”

“Two hundred One.”

“Well, this will be an interesting semester,” she said with a smirk.

“Why is that?”

She stopped just in front of the room. “I’m the TA for this class. I’m your tea—”

Her lips froze as she took her first step into the room.

“Fuck,” I said.

Few ethermages could summon the juice for a time bubble of this size. The epicenter of the spell was coming from the front of the classroom. His classroom. This could not be a coincidence. If the TA had not gone in front of him, he would be trapped by the time delay. Pulling in ether, he surrounded himself in an ethershield and stepped across the threshold.

Inside, the other students stood frozen like the Improv Everywhere group. Only, these people would not break into theatre. A woman stood at the front of the room. She raised her hands and slow-clapped as he entered.

She wore a pink shirt with “Love” written in rainbow glitter on the front and light blue yoga pants like many of the students wore, emphasizing her athletic build. Her long hair shone red in the light of the open windows, which covered the wall of the room opposite the door. Her blue eyes danced as she drew a sword from thin air. Emerald glyphs sparkled at the hilt and along the blade.

Fuck Loki, Aiden had been telling the truth.

“Hello, Liam. What took you?”

“Abigail,” I breathed.

Then I pulled in as much ether as I could hold and prepared to fight for my life.

The Ethermage Saga

Coming soon!! This action-packed urban fantasy is based out of Tallahassee, Florida and will be released here on my blog. The aim is for one new chapter per week.

After two-hundred eleven years fighting against the malevolent forces hidden around the earth, Liam decides to take a break from the Collective–an ancient order of ethermages, who are tasked with policing everything from criminal mages and errant minotaurs to the occasional god-gone-wild. Turns out, Loki can be a real asshole sometimes, and Aphrodite is no sweetheart either. He just begins his classes at FSU, when his closest friend, Aiden, turns up to destroy his plans for normalcy.

Join Liam and Aiden on their adventure to stop Abigail from world domination!

JordanCon 2020

Ladies and Gents,

It has been a while since I’ve given you an update, but I’m happy to announce that I have begun writing full-time. I am working diligently to get more of Elwin’s story to you!

Also, I will be a guest author at JordanCon 2020 this year! Join us in Atlanta, GA on April 17-19 for all the fun and games. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series had a heavy influence on my journey into the fantasy genre, so I am extremely excited to be a part of the Con.

If you want a book signed, to sign up for the chance to win prizes, or just want to see behind the scenes with great authors in fantasy and steampunk, come on by!!

Check out more details here: https://www.jordancon.org

Updates

There are many changes coming up for me, but I am long overdue for an update. Currently, I am sitting in a cafe in Sydney, Australia going over my notes for the rest of the Elwin Escari series. I have been promoting the first 2 books. It is going very well, and I am excited about moving forward with Elwin’s journey.

Mastering the Elements is in the capable hands of content editors. When they finish, they will get the manuscript back to me for changes. Barring no revisions, this process can take a few months. Then there will be line editing. The cover is also being finalized. After all of this, I will get the finished book to you!

While Volume II of Elwin’s story is in the hands of others, I am revising Volume III outline again (name intentionally left out) and reworking Volumes IV and V to reflect these modifications. Overall, I am very pleased with the direction the characters are taking us, and I cannot wait to get more to you.

I know this was brief, but I think most of you agree, I need to get back to work! As always, thanks for reading!!

Update: July 8, 2017

It has been a while, so I feel as though I owe you an update on Mastering the Elements.

I wrote a draft of MTE that was over 191k words long. The reason you are not reading them at this moment. They were crap.

The plotting of that iteration of MTE was 10 years old, and my skills in the craft of writing have vastly improved since its creation. Rather than forcing out a reactive plot structure, I have reworked the plot for the rest of the series.

I apologize for the delay, but I can say unequivocally, this version will be worth reading. Currently, the new draft is at about 15k words and counting. I promise to get MTE to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience!

 

By the Blade is now available

I am happy to announce that By the Blade is finally available for kindle and print.

Love it or hate it, please write a review!

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Arinth

Elwin’s world is quite large, and we have only seen a small piece of it in the story so far. In Taming the Elements, we saw the Island Nations and some of Alcoa. By the Blade takes place in the desert nation of Kalicodon.

Where else on the map interests you? Can you guess the cultures from the names? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Let’s talk books!

Who are some of your favorite authors in epic fantasy? I love to write, but I am also an avid reader, so I would like to hear from you. What author or series would you recommend for my next great read?

 

 

 

Become a Benefactor!

Having two careers slows progress on my novels. After selling thousands of copies of Taming the Elements worldwide, I am considering moving to writing full time.

If this idea excites you, consider becoming a benefactor to my future novels. If this campaign does well, I’ll get Elwin’s story to you much faster.

If you give to me, I’ll give you my works first. Get a canvas map of my world, Arinth. Be the first to receive my new novels.

No contribution is too small. Can’t give? Please share this link with someone else who loves epic fantasy!

Thanks!

 

https://www.patreon.com/TamingtheElements