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Share an excerpt Saturday
Caitlin frowned at her flowers. Maybe there was something there, a calming feel, a wisp of dust? “What do we need charms for?”
Love and happiness were always welcome, sure. But protection? “What do we need protecting from?”
Beryl leaned forward and sniffed a rose. “Don’t you know by now? The gods of Annwn want his chair.”
The words hit Caitlin hard as if the tree branch overhead had collapsed on her head. She felt faint, and was glad her friend hadn’t brought this up while she was driving. “Why would any— I don’t understand. How can you think that?”
“Look at it, Cait. The horses, the writing he’s carved into the arms and back.”
“What writing? There’s scrollwork, but no writing.”
“Yes there is,” Heather said, “if you look close.”
She shivered. “What’s it say?”
Beryl pursed her lips. “Enough for me to know it’s got all the signs to attract what wants attracting.”
Caitlin pictured the chair in her mind. “No. They’re nothing more than designs, like the ones in his sketchbook.”
“What designs in a sketchbook?”
She led them upstairs to the attic and showed them Trevor’s sketchbook. Spiraling tornadoes, prancing horses and snorting bulls covered the pages in elegant and bold ink lines. Beautiful
drawings that simultaneously awed and scared her.
Beryl shut the book quietly. “I amend my earlier statement.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t just have work to do. We have a ton of work to do.”
If you are interested in reading more, The Artist’s Inheritance is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords, and in paperback at Createspace.
Spooky Saturday
This article I ran across, a little old now, talks about a local theater….
http://brandon.patch.com/articles/ghosts-at-james-mccabe-a-test-for-paranormal-enthusiasts
What do you think? If you heard a local theater was haunted, would you want to join the hunt? Or find a new place to take your date on a Saturday night? 
The fact of the matter is, yeah, I probably would. My husband used to work at a theater in our hometown (not the one mentioned in the article, but a different theatre) that he and some of his co-workers swore was haunted. They’d hear footsteps when they were cleaning a theatre, and find no one else around. There was even one time they found some old lady had died in the bathrooms, poor thing. That really ramped up the stories about ghosts.
Is it really haunted? *shrugs* I don’t know, but I tell ya, despite not letting it ruin a date night, I never wanted to hang around by myself after the lights went out! *lol*
Guest post: Nicolette Andrews: The Prophetic Meaning Of Dreams
Today we have a treat for you, a fellow member of the Magic Appreciation Tour, Romantic fantasy author Nicolette Andrews has stopped by to talk about that favorite subject of most fantasy writers: Dreams. Welcome, Nicolette!
The Prophetic Meaning of Dreams
You awaken in a cold sweat you heart is beating against your rib cage and you fumble around in the dark for your significant other to reassure yourself that you are back in reality. Upon hearing the steady cadence of your loved one’s breathing, you settle in and drift back to sleep. This is the terrifying and urgent nature of our dreams. At times we all are woken from a nightmare of a loved one dying or even being chased by a masked murderer.
But what about our more mundane dreams, the ones where you are smoking cigarettes even though you’ve never touched them in your life or a dream where one color seems more vivid than any other that it leaves an impression on your waking self. Could our dreams hold a significant meaning to our everyday lives? Is our subconscious aware of something your conscious mind is not?
I am not a dream expert or a scientist, what I am is a fantasy writer with an active imagination. What would you do if your dreams came true? Imagine falling asleep at night and in your dream world you see in perfect clarity, your much hated boss getting canned for some shady dealings. You would wake the next morning refreshed and maybe a bit pleased. How surprised would you be if when coming into work the next day and you see your boss carrying a box of his things towards the elevator? How would you react?
In my novel, Diviner’s Prophecy, Maea is a woman born with the ability to see into both the past and future. That is until a spell is put upon her that stripped her of an identity and a past. Her powers are crippled and she was fight to regain her past and save her kingdom from an unknown destruction.
Unlike you and I, when Maea dreams she is looking into the future, seeing what may come to pass. What would you do with that kind of power? What if we already have that power lying dormant within us?
Take deja vu for example: where does that come from? What if our waking mind forgets what our sleeping minds have foretold?
Have you ever ran into someone at the market or the gas station and thought: I was just thinking about you but I cannot remember when. Perhaps the secrets to these questions, these feelings of premonition, lie in our subconscious, our dreaming minds. As I mentioned, I am not a scholar or a specialist; what I am a fantasy writer with a lot of time on her hands.
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Thank you to Juli for letting me take over her blog for today and if you would like to read more about prophetic dreams, check out my Romantic Fantasy Novel: Diviner’s Prophecy now on sale at Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. You can connect with me on my blog, on facebook and on twitter. And happy dreaming.
About Diviner’s Prophecy:
Maea is a diviner, the last of a once influential family of women who could see into the past and future through visions. Though she holds immense power, once sought after by kings, she is helpless. A spell has wiped away her past and crippled her abilities, leaving her dependent upon her foster mother and her companion. Maea wants to trust them but their evasive behavior in regards to her missing memories makes her wary. They claim an accident caused her memory loss. Maea, however, remembers the night the man took her life away. She suspects they are accomplices to the act and further believes they plan to use her in her their own political plottings.
At the royal court, the first diviner speaks to Maea through a vision and charges her with an immense task: to stop a catastrophe that threatens to destroy her, her kingdom and all life in the realm. She must navigate the dangerous waters of court intrigue where foes appear as friends and no one can be trusted. Is she plays the game right, she will regain her past and save her kingdom. If she fails, it means the destruction of every living thing.
About Nicolette:
Nicolette Andrews, a romantic fantasy author, lives in San Diego California with her husband and two daughters. Apart from a good book, with healthy doses of romance, fantasy, intrigue and mystery. She enjoys spending time with her two daughters and her husband. She can often be found enjoying the California sunshine but she is usually behind a computer screen working on her next novel.
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Thank you for being with us, Nicolette and best of luck with Diviner’s Prophecy, and all you do! Folks, I hope you enjoyed Nicolette’s chat. If you’d like to check her out you may do so at the links above.
Author Interview: Juli D Revezzo – The Jeep Diva | The Jeep Diva
I was interviewed this week over at Vanessa the Jeep Diva’s the fantastic place–and her lovely assistant Crazy Granny reviewed House of Cards. House of Cards review
Author Interview: Juli D Revezzo – The Jeep Diva | The Jeep Diva.
I hope you’ll stop by!
via Author Interview: Juli D Revezzo – The Jeep Diva | The Jeep Diva.
Fantasy Book Sale
The Magic Appreciation Tour, a lovely little group of Fantasy authors with which I’m involved is having a sale–and some free goodies are involved. All books are magical fantasy to some degree, all books are under $5. Do check it out , won’t you?
Monday Movies–Dark Shadows
Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows is a “remake” of the popular 1960s television drama (or soap opera, if you will) of the same name. The story of a vampire who returns for the love of his family, here, Johnny Depp plays the inimitable Barnabas Collins. Once the toast of the small and growing town of Collinswood, Maine, he had the bad fortune to catch the eye and heart of a witch. The problem is, he didn’t return her love. So she cursed his true love and forced her, in a trance, to take a deadly flying leap.
And Cursed Barnabas to live for all eternity as a vampire.
In this movie, Barnabas returns to Collinswood, now basking in the psychedelic glow of the 70s, and finds the Collins family nearly living on skid row, with an uptight teenage daughter and a troubled young boy in their midst. The boy, poor dear, lost his mother to suicide but swears he sees and talks to her ghost. His psychologist, Victoria, is working with him to try to help the dear lad separate fantasy from reality.
And when Barnabas sees her, well, he’s instantly in love. It can only be his Victoria returned from the dead. He’ll win her heart he thinks, and bring the family back from oblivion. So long as the matriarch of the family keeps his secret, that he’s 100 year old vampire.
But time has been kind to Collins’ enemies as well and the witch Angelique returns, determined to shred the last vestiges of the Collins family legacy. She controls all but one of the fishing boats in town, and despite Barnabas’ best efforts, that control isn’t going to slip easily. She’ll compromise, however, if Barnabas will bow to her whims and become her lover.
I was far too young to watch the series when it first came on television, and I guess I’m glad I was. I’ve heard lots of bad press about this movie from fans of the television show, and quite frankly the previews made the thing look dreadful. (And Burton’s movies are always, always hit and miss for me. Beetlejuice, good, Willy Wonka bad. Nightmare before Christmas, one of my all time favorite Christmas movies.)
Because of all that, I didn’t have high hopes going into Dark Shadows, and those aforementioned friends of mine who are fans of the show wouldn’t see if it you tied them up like Alex in Clockwork Orange.
It’s well-known (and damn near his trademark) that Burton has a dreadful habit of destroying—erm, I mean, “reimagining” other people’s masterpieces, however… I was quite pleased with how Burton handled this. It has its highly cheesy moments, and if you’ve seen the trailer…you’ve seen about 98% of them. But the story is really good, very dark and broody and almost suspenseful. I felt for poor Barnabas and Victoria and rooted for them to win. And even the cheese factor wasn’t too bad. (I admit it, I found the Alice Cooper section a nice little touch and would’ve loved it if they’d included the entire performance in the extras (gee, wouldn’t that’ve been a good idea, DVD manufacturers, you think?). But hey. I do like his music anyway. >:)) and he pulled together an interesting cast around his core worshippers of Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Eva Green did her best at Angelique, I suppose but I’d rather see her in Camelot or reprising her role as the witch in Golden Compass (where is that sequel??) By god, Burton even conned—erm, hired—Christopher Lee to be in Dark Shadows!
And the ghost! The first couple times Victoria sees her…well, it’s not as creepy as say, The Grudge, or Sixth Sense (*shudder*) but nicely done.
Despite it’s missteps, all in all, I really enjoyed Dark Shadows, and if you go in with an open mind (and maybe with low expectations), you just might enjoy it too.
At Amazon
