If You Like SciFi/Fantasy that makes you think

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My newest novel, Witches' Gambit has been called "a masterpiece," "unputdownable" " a modern science fiction classic," and "a clever sci-fi novel which might reach people who don’t read books about politics or philosophy." If you like reading a tale of alien worlds, and people who talk to the dead, that will make you stop and think, you might just like it. Here's the first 600 words....

The Summons

“Now is the time approaching, by prophets long foretold.” Jane Borthwick


“Call me Vitok.”
Aidan Ray’s hand stopped in midair. She placed the white queen down on the chess board in front of her and looked around the living room. Rain drummed on the windows. The lights were dim, but bright enough against the darkness outside to see the shape forming in the center of the room.
It was light, pure blue light, somehow full of substance, enthralling. A swirling column, shimmering with energy. The voice rumbled out of it. Every light wave vibrated with the sound.
Without taking her eyes from the specter, she put her hands into a prayer mudra. Visions were one thing, visitations quite another. And this, she thought, is no earthly visitation.
A head appeared, atop the ethereal body, crowned with gleaming blue light waves swirling out like pinwheels to all sides.
Right in the middle of the head, where a face should be, a dark red, fist-sized eye pulsed. A concentric bright red second band jutted out from that. A thin, shimmering violet ring around that, an orange circle, and a bright yellow fifth glimmering halo band completed the multicolored sphere. Five penetrating lights, focused on Aidan like a superluminal spotlight.
The five-part spherical eye probed Aidan’s blank face. Shocked or not, she knew her expression admitted nothing. She had long ago learned anything anyone discovered about what she thought or felt was a threat. In the litigator’s jungle in which she thrived, only the strong survived.
Aidan caught her breath. Screwing up her courage, her voice quavering, she asked, “Those lights where your face should be, what are they?”
“Eyes. We have five eyes.”
Aidan forced her blurring vision to focus. Eyes?
The thing spoke again.
“I am Nord,” it continued. “From the planet Narr. You, Aidan Ray, have been chosen to represent your species in a matter of grave significance.”
Me? My species? What is this?
“The rest will unfold.”
Drawn like a moth to the flame, Aidan rose unsteadily up out of her chair, took a deep breath, and boldly reached out her hand to touch the shimmering light form.
Her hand went into the body, tingled and glowed blue, and she felt a mild electric shock, but otherwise, felt nothing. Nothing but light.
“Yes,” the voice said after a fleeting pause. “This is what my present body is like. Far less dense than yours.”
What was that pause for? He seemed to be calculating before he answered. Why?
Aidan withdrew her hand from the light, turned it this way and that to see it was unharmed, and then spewed a torrent of questions. “Why are you here? What is this about? Why me? Why now? Why . . .”
“You, Aidan Ray, sixth generation Terran medium, who dances with the dead, have been chosen to save your race from annihilation.”
She fell back into her chair like she’d been hit by a rocket. Annihilation?
Aidan heard herself saying “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
“You knew the situation was bad, Aidan Ray. You see what others ignore. You do more than merely speak with the Terran dead. You are one with them.”
The blue radiance faded. For a moment or two, little lights whirled around the space it had occupied then disappeared, and Aidan was left staring at empty space again. A cooling, refreshing sensation of soothing hands on her shoulders massaged away her shakiness.
“Well met, Aidan Ray,” resounded through the room. “We have much to discuss.