Spirit ~ Elemental Series Five
Today I’ve got a bonus guest post so you can all read about YA author Shauna Grainger’s new release, Spirit. It’s book five in her Elemental Series and it’s a totally awesome piece of work. Shauna and I bonded over Twitter sprinting, and I swear she’s done more than just about anybody else to increase the word count of my last couple projects. Check out her excerpt below, and be sure and leave a comment, because I’ll be drawing a winner for your choice of any of the five books in the Elemental Series.
Book Description:
Always careful to watch out for others, Shayna put too much trust her abilities to keep herself safe and has been cut down by crazed man. Now she is trapped in the land of the dead, watching as her two best friends suffer the consequences of her death; their powers are fading and soon they will too. Shayna is desperate to return to the land of the living to save them from a similar, cold fate. To save her friends Shayna must turn away from the Light and, in doing so, sacrifice her wings.
But the longer Shayna stays among the dead, the further she slips from sanity. If Shayna cannot find her way back she will be condemned and lost forever among the restless souls of the dead. With nothing left to lose, she will do whatever it takes to fight her way back, with or without her wings.
Excerpt
On the night I died, when Liam had walked me away from my friends and the wreckage of the house, the tips of my wings had dragged along the ground. I thought maybe that, though dead, I was still an earthbound angel. I thought I would get to stay, and I just had to wait for someone, like my guardian angel, to show up and tell me what I was supposed to do.
But that’s not exactly what happened. My guardian angel did show, in a burst of blinding light, glorious in his power with his wings spread behind him as he floated. I felt warmth radiating from him and the tunnel of light, trust and some form of relief rushing through me, making me believe I hadn’t been abandoned while falling through the crumbling house. He held out a hand for me as he came close to the ground, his feet landing silently. I started to lift my hand to take his, I always took his hand when he reached for me, but the closer he came, the closer the Light came. I felt the pull of the Light somewhere in my center. I suddenly knew if I touched him, took his hand, let that Light envelope me, I would leave this world and my friends behind.
“Wait,” I said, snatching my hand back and taking a number of steps backward, nearly tripping over my wings.
“Shayna, what are you doing?” he asked.
“What happens now?” I curled my hands into fists and kept them close to my chest.
“What happens now?” he repeated. By the look on his face, it was obvious no one had thought to question him before. “We go into the Light, you join our ranks, and you become the guardian angel you were meant to be.”
“And Jodi and Steven?” I asked. “What happens to them?”
“They are alive and well.” He shook his head and started to take a few steps toward me. For every step he took forward, I took one backward, keeping my distance.
“No,” I said, “what’s going to happen to them? Are they going to be all right?”
“Shayna, that’s not our concern,” my angel said, making the bottom of my stomach drop out. I felt as if the world had turned on its side, and I thought I was going to fall over. “You were my charge; they are not your charges, so you cannot concern yourself with their fates.”
“But something is going to happen, isn’t it?” I pressed. “My dying, that is going to do something to them, isn’t it?”
“Shayna, just come with me.”
“Why won’t you answer me?”
“Shayna!” He rushed forward, his hands outstretched. I dodged, hitting the ground and rolling in a mass of limbs and wings. He tumbled forward, losing his balance when I suddenly wasn’t there. Getting to my feet was difficult, but when I finally did, I ran, flexing my wings behind me, working them desperately, lifting and bobbing awkwardly in the air. I heard him yelling for me, still tangled where he had fallen since he didn’t have the same desperate need fueling him. The Light sliced through the air and trees easily. My back warmed as it touched me, and the sensation to turn toward it pulled at me.
“No!” I screamed, willing myself to go faster, farther, just get the hell away from it. That’s when the burning began.
~~
About Shauna…
Like so many other writers, Shauna grew up as an avid reader, but it was in high school that she realized she wanted to be a writer. Five years ago, Shauna started work on her Elemental Series. She released the first installment, Earth, on May 1, 2011 and has since released four sequels, with the series coming to an end with Spirit. She is currently hard at work on a new Urban Fantasy series, staring a spunky witch with a smush-faced cat named Artemis.
You can find Shauna online on Facebook, Twitter, on her blog and the Spellbound Scribes blog, and on Goodreads.
Don’t forget to leave a comment with your email address and your choice of one of the five books in the Elemental Series: EARTH, AIR, WATER, FIRE, or SPIRIT.
Elemental Series:
EARTH
Shayna and her two best friends have the abilities to manipulate and control the four elements, earth, air, water and fire. While learning to hone their growing powers, they discover a new and malicious presence in their sleepy beach town. Someone is performing blood magic and threatens to expose their small magical community. So far only small animals have been slaughtered, but then the nightmares start.
Shayna suffers nightmares of being chased and sacrificed only to wake up bloodied and bruised. She thinks her magical blood is the ultimate target for the final blood rite. When an innocent girl, Tracy, is kidnapped Shayna knows it’s only a ploy to draw her out; she can’t let someone die because of her.
AIR
It was a rough start to the school year for Shayna and her friends, Jodi and Steven, but thankfully summer break is near. Trying to sort out her feelings for the new guy in town, Shayna agrees to let Jensen join her on a group date with her friends. While out they end up at a local coffee house where their classmate, social outcast Jeremy McCormick, is humiliated by his baseball star brother. When Jeremy runs away from the jeering crowd, Shayna and Jodi hear the unmistakable sound of a thousand wings chasing after him, but no one else seems to hear them. These are not like any air elementals that Shayna or Jodi have ever encountered before and they fear Jeremy has gotten himself tangled up in something too dangerous for him to handle. But when Shayna tries to help Jeremy control his magical abilities she realizes it might be the biggest mistake of her life.
WATER
Shayna’s first surfing session of the summer is interrupted by the screams of a mother who has lost her little boy in the water. Without regard to her own safety, Shayna swims out, rescues the boy, but must escape the clutches of something far worse than she could have ever imagined – mermaids.
Compelled to answer the sirens’ call, the boys of Shayna’s town are drawn to the sea, but when they return are afflicted by an unknown illness, a sickness which is draining them of their life force. Unable to tell anyone about the mermaids, Shayna and her friends are forced to solve the mystery before it’s too late, and in doing so, Shayna will finally have to face the full force of her powers. Whether she’s ready or not, she will have to face her true nature.
FIRE
Demons, faeries, and mermaids. Claws, teeth, and nightmares.
They have been beaten and bruised, set on fire, and nearly drowned, but manage to always find their way home. Over their last Winter Holiday break before college, Shayna, Jodi, and Steven try again to put aside the magic in their lives for a little mundane fun. But Shayna’s mother is having dreams of fire and death. A mysterious stranger by the name of Liam has just arrived in town. And Shayna’s attempts to manage her new angelic powers are set back by Steven’s insistence that the trio intervene in a riot outside of a concert, with disastrous consequences.
In her attempt to stop the riot, a man sees Shayna use her magical abilities – a man driven mad by watching his brother die at the hands of a black witch. He stalks Shayna, plotting to destroy her and her friends. With her mother’s warnings echoing in her mind, Shayna is now in the fight of her life against an unlikely foe: a human man.
