the fourth book in the series is here
It’s here! We Alter is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.
I’m especially excited for Alter because this is the point in the story where the many narratives finally come together somewhere outside Ha’ere’s visions. You won’t have to take me on faith anymore that these stories connect; the witch’s heroes — the obvious ones and the less likely — are joining forces.
Sorcery is also coming into focus. Ancient secrets will be revealed about how this technology came to be and how it ties in with the magic of other peoples. It was thrilling to write, and I hope you give it a look.
a glimpse inside
one quick peek inside the newest book in the series
Her voice was rising, and she saw heads turned toward her on her ship and among the foreigners. She had been afraid to do or say anything that might point up her differentness, but now she felt like that had been stupid. She didn’t want these people to want her around, let alone think of her as one of them. She wanted off their ship and out of their lives. She didn’t need a human to provide for her, not when she had magic.
“Daughter you must control yourself!”
“Why, isn’t that your job? You and my mother, what did you ever do but lie to me? Oh, I’m sorry, I left out the part where you sold me to an idiot!”
Samrudan had never been so angry, she hadn’t known that she was capable of it. She was hot with rage and felt like she was swelling. Her father had one hand braced on the other forearm and was tugging with one clenched fist, and there was a second when it didn’t click. When she thought he was wrestling with nothing.
But there wasn’t nothing there. There was something that was invisible. They had put a collar on her when they sold her to the wizard so that he could control her, so he could murder her when he died and drag her to his afterlife. She had wound it ‘round her father’s arm to bring him here and her father was trying to use it against her. She screamed in wordless fury.
It shocked her into silence when her father screamed back. He expanded enormously, doughy and bulbous, ballooning into a gray nightmare shape so heavy the ship tipped under him, the other hull leaving the water. Hollering sailors went into the waves and Shesharrans were scrambling for their bows, lining up along the rail. The thing that couldn’t possibly be her father had fierce red eyes, its pupils horizontal slits, and they fixed on the foreign ship.
With a heave, it flipped into the water, and it seemed to have too many limbs. She saw a flick of matte dark gray beneath the waves, and it was gone. For a second, it seemed like the attack was over, but then the day was blotted out by an intense burst of light, so bright it made sight impossible. It made no sound, but Samrudan was knocked down and sent tumbling.
She sat up, and it was like the Ophanite lightning all over again. Dead people all around her, a scene of devastation that seemed impossible. Everything had been fine a few minutes ago. She put a hand to her head. Everything hadn’t been fine—she had been upset—but she couldn’t connect that past to this present.
“Samrudan?”
She looked up, already expecting Jered. This was like last time, too. They would get in the boat and row to shore, but here shore wasn’t home, it was an isolated island too small to have fresh water.
She let him pull her to her feet but tugged against his hand when he tried to draw her away. “Arhe isn’t burning, why are we abandoning it?”
He never let up the pressure on her arm but thrust his free hand to the right. Samrudan looked at the Shesharran ship in time to see a cable thicker than the mast shoot from the water. Some of the soldiers on the foreign ship were still firing arrows, at the Barrachites or into the water, and the cable grabbed one of them. Only when it wrapped around the man and hefted him did she realize she was looking at a limb. The appendage of some monstrous aquatic animal.
She didn’t linger to watch the screaming sailor dragged into the water. She was fleeing now, running for the boat. A part of her kept thinking But Father! but she never turned around to look for him. She couldn’t stand to think about why she was running and not looking for him.
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