Kevin Powers' A Shout in the Ruins, a literary novel of the Civil War and its long aftermath

Some passages in Powers’ second novel (after The Yellow Birds) unfold with a fable’s tragic inevitability, while its specificity of setting and character, both strikingly described and original, will brand them into the reader’s consciousness. In his depiction of America’s heritage of racial trauma, he takes the long view, moving between Civil War–era Virginia and 120-plus years later.

Mystery surrounds the fate of Emily Reid Levallois, mistress of the Beauvais Plantation, near Richmond, after a devastating 1866 fire. Scenes detail her unhappy circumstances: due to terrible battlefield injuries, her father is unable to prevent his covetous, cruel neighbor, Antony Levallois, from wedding Emily. An enslaved couple, Rawls and Nurse, are brought together and torn apart amid this atmosphere.

In a linked tale beginning in 1956, George Seldom, a ninety-something African American, travels through the segregated South to his onetime North Carolina home while pondering the unknown circumstances that ensured his childhood survival. Beautifully formed sentences express unsettling truths about humanity, yet tendrils of hope emerge via stories showing how love and kindness can take root in seemingly barren earth.

A Shout in the Ruins was published in May by Little, Brown; I wrote this review for Booklist's 4/15 issue. This is one among a number of recent books I was assigned on the topic of the Civil War and race relations, which seems to be a current trend in historical fiction.

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Gena Showalter’s THE DARKEST WARRIOR – Waiting On Wednesday Teaser Blitz!

Hello everyone!

The Queen of Paranormal Romance, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Gena Showalter, returns with THE DARKEST WARRIOR, a searing Lords of the Underworld tale featuring a beastly prince and the wife he will wage war to keep. Pre-order your copy of THE DARKEST WARRIOR today!

The Darkest Warrior 

- Lords of the Underworld #14 -

by Gena Showalter

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Expected publication: June 26th, 2018 

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

   

THE DARKEST WARRIOR Synopsis:

He is ice…

Puck the Undefeated, host of the demon of Indifference, cannot experience emotion without punishment, so he allows himself to feel nothing. Until her. According to ancient prophecy, she is the key to avenging his past, saving his realm and ruling as king. All he must do? Steal her from the man she loves—and marry her.

She is fire…

Gillian Shaw has suffered many tragedies in her too-short life, but nothing could have prepared the fragile human for her transition into immortality. To survive, she must wed a horned monster who both intrigues and frightens her…and become the warrior queen she was born to be.

Together they burn.

As a rising sense of possession and obsession overtake Puck, so does insatiable lust. The more he learns about his clever, resourceful wife, the more he craves her. And the more time Gillian spends with her protective husband, the more she aches for him. But the prophecy also predicts an unhappily-ever-after. Can Puck defeat fate itself to keep the woman who brought his deadened heart back to life? Or will they succumb to destiny, losing each other…and everything they’ve been fighting for?

 Add it to your Goodreads Now!

Preorder THE DARKEST TORMENT here!

Amazon | Kindle | Nook | B-A-M | Kobo | Book Depository | Audio

Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the spellbinding Lords of the Underworld and Angels of the Dark series, two young adult series--Everlife and the White Rabbit Chronicles--and the highly addictive Original Heartbreakers series. In addition to being a National Reader's Choice and two time RITA nominee, her romance novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan (Red Hot Read) and Seventeen magazine, she's appeared on Nightline and been mentioned in Orange is the New Black--if you ask her about it, she'll talk for hours…hours! Her books have been translated in multiple languages. She’s hard at work on her next novel, a tale featuring an alpha male with a dark side and the strong woman who brings him to his knees. You can learn more about Gena, her menagerie of rescue dogs, and all her upcoming books at genashowalter.com or 

Facebook.com/genashowalterfans

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads 

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Swimming Between Worlds, Elaine Neil Orr's portrait of the Civil Rights era

Written with candor and compassion, Orr’s second novel takes place in the conservative South in 1959 with short flashbacks to her home country of Nigeria. Through the intertwining stories of Kate Monroe and Tacker Hart, she illustrates the challenges of unlearning ingrained racism and how immersion in a new culture can reveal problems in one’s own backyard.

Both viewpoint characters sit at a crossroads. Tacker, a former high school football star, is back in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pondering his career path. During the year and a half he spent in Ibadan on an architectural design project, he’d become good friends with his Nigerian coworkers and soaked up the Yoruba culture. Following his dramatic firing for “going native,” he takes a job at home, managing his father’s grocery. Kate, his former classmate, finds herself alone after her parents’ death. While debating a photography career, she learns a family secret that upends her world. After meeting Tacker again, she finds him attractive yet somehow changed, and he’s drawn to the prickly Kate.

The third protagonist is Gaines Townson, a young black man who Tacker hires and befriends, and of whom Kate is initially suspicious due to his skin color. Through Gaines, Tacker gets introduced to the ongoing civil rights struggle. This is the era of sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters, segregated swimming pools, sexist attitudes, and racist attacks on African-Americans—all sharply rendered (and some of which sadly hasn’t changed). Fortunately, Gaines is more than a vehicle for the others’ emotional growth; he’s a well-developed character with a rich family life and his own future plans.

Against this backdrop of social unrest, their relationships with one another unfold in a tentative, realistic manner, as each decides what’s most important. Orr’s gracefully written, character-centered tale, showing how beliefs are formed and transformed, is both original and memorable.

Swimming Between Worlds was published by Berkley in April.  I wrote this review for May's Historical Novels Review, based on a NetGalley copy. Elaine Neil Orr had contributed a guest post about her on-site research in Nigeria and North Carolina to the blog last month.

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Russia in Historical Fiction: A Journey of Sorrow and Strength, a guest post from Mary Anne Lewis

Today I have a guest essay by a fellow blogger, Mary Anne Lewis of Magic of History, which is a terrific new site focusing on reviews of historical fiction and history in books and on screen. There are a few novels mentioned below which were new to me, and I hope you'll find some worth adding to your own TBRs, too.

~

Russia in Historical Fiction: A Journey of Sorrow and Strength

Mary Anne Lewis

From the icy winter steppe to the towering palaces in St. Petersburg, Russia never fails to enchant as the setting for a historical novel. While there are many novels from numerous eras set in Russia, it generally isn’t considered as popular as, say, books set in the Tudor era, or the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps it’s the fact that Russia has such a repressive, bloody history, or that the Russian people tend toward a dark temperament because of all they’ve endured. Or, perhaps, it’s the lack of novels emanating from Russia since the Soviets took over in 1917.

For all of these reasons, the novelists who tackle Russia are a brave lot. It’s a huge country that’s hard to get to. Traveling the land has never been easy. The language is difficult. And, few nations have experienced the political machinations and bloody regime changes that Russia has. It’s difficult to keep the history straight, partially because there’s so much of it, and so much of it is so hard to believe.

Even readers need courage to consume Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Their books aren’t necessarily difficult, but they are sometimes hard to finish. Current day authors have also written about Russia, from the time of Ivan the Terrible to Catherine the Great to the Romanovs to World War II.

If you want to experience Russia of the old days, begin with Anna Karenina. It’s a tragedy, but also a reflection of what happens when infidelity impacts a Russian marriage and family in the nineteenth century. It’s the story of a young woman, Anna, who decides to leave her husband for the infamous Count Vronsky. Anna Karenina is perhaps the best book to showcase the Russian personality, long before the tsar was deposed and the Soviets took over.

 Some would like to go back even further, to the reign of Catherine the Great. Many excellent non-fiction books deal with this topic, such as Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie. One novel that stands out is The Winter Palace, a novel of Catherine the Great by Eva Stachniak. It’s written from the perspective of Varvara, a serving girl who becomes a spy in the Winter Palace. She’s trusted by Catherine the Great, but the two can’t truly be said to be friends. Catherine’s life contains so many highs and lows that a book about her can’t help but be exciting.

Another book that takes place approximately at the same time is Push Not the River, by James Conroyd Martin. It’s the beginning of a trilogy about the wars fought for Polish independence in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Much of the book takes place in Poland, which was part of Russia on and off for many years. The book is supposedly based on a young girl’s diary from the period. Filled with scandals, the book has a soap opera quality about it, but when I wrote a review on Amazon and said that, the author responded to note all of it was in the diary. But books two and three come from his own imagination.

Now to move forward to the end of the Romanov dynasty. Again, numerous books have been written to detail this period. Most people interested in history know about the assassination of the tsar and the tsarina, their four daughters and their hemophiliac son. All their remains have been recovered, and DNA tests show that indeed, all seven were in two graves.

A couple of books I’ll mention aren’t necessarily among the best books about the tragedy, but I enjoyed them. The first is The Passion of Marie Romanov. Written by a Russian, Laura Rose, it’s a rather preposterous story of how third daughter Marie loses her virginity the night before she is murdered. Again, it’s supposedly based on diaries and letters, this time from the Romanov family. Unlikely or not, it’s very readable and imaginative.

 The second book, Anastasia, by Colin Falconer, is set in the 1920s, when rumors were rife that the youngest daughter of the tsar had survived the slaughter. This is another “light” book which can’t be taken seriously. It’s about a woman who claims to be Anastasia and how others try to discover the truth. Colin Falconer has written more than forty books about a variety of historical locales and has a big fan base.

Another book set in the immediate aftermath of the assassinations is White Road, A Russian Odyssey, 1919-1923, by Olga Ilyin. I loved it. Technically, this isn’t fiction, but rather the story of a young woman caught up in the Bolshevik Revolution, written more than sixty years after the fact. The woman who wrote it lived it. She describes how she fled through Siberia in the midst of a Russian winter with her infant son, all because her husband was an officer in the White Army, which lost to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. She was a member of the gentry, and her book is filled with inspiration and hope. She also details her grief at Russia losing its great artists: its authors and musicians after the revolution, something I had never considered before.

Moving forward to World War II, I’ll recommend a book that’s part of a great series by the recently deceased author Philip Kerr. It’s A Man Without Breath, about intrepid German detective Bernie Gunther. While he isn’t a Nazi, he is sent to Russia in 1943 to investigate the murder of Polish troops, and manages to escape certain death in a labor camp. While most of the series is set in Germany, this book shows that the Nazis weren’t the only cruel ones in the conflict.

I’ll mention one more book in a more modern setting. It’s Stalina, by Emily Rubin, the story of a Russian woman who travels to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. While she wants a new life, she’s conflicted. She used to be a chemist in her homeland, but now she’s working in a seedy hotel. Again, it’s a great portrait of a Russian character.

All these books are dark, at least a little. But they open a vista into a mysterious land and the people who have called it home.

~

Mary Anne Lewis is a former journalist, a historical fiction fan, and the blog mistress of http://magicofhistory.com.  Once, long ago, she worked in a library.

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NERD Book Blast: Tell me no lies by A.V. Geiger + Giveaway!

Note: Sorry, I'm late putting this up. Family issues came up. The giveaway is still going on! 

Hello, fellow book nerds! 

Welcome to the Nerd Blast for

Tell me no lies by A.V. Geiger!

Tell me no lies is the second is the Follow me back series.

If you enjoy YA thrillers that keep you turning pages long into the night then check out these books! You have a chance to win a signed copy of the book as well as an amazon GC! So after reading this post be sure to enter the giveaway below.

Enjoy!

Title: Tell Me No Lies

Author: A.V. Geiger

Series: Follow Me Back (Book 2)

Paperback: 336 pages

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire (June 5, 2018)

Love. Obsession. Jealousy. Murder.

No one knows what happened to pop icon Eric Thorn. His Twitter account? Frozen. His cell phone? Cracked and bloody, buried in the snow. 

Agoraphobic fangirl Tessa Hart knows the truth, but she's finally left her #EricThornObsessed days behind. She has no intention of ever touching her Twitter app again. But Snapchat... That's safer, right?

After months of living under the radar, Tessa emerges from hiding, forced to face the deadly consequences of her past. But in the interrogation room, answers only lead to more questions in the pulse-pounding conclusion to the Follow Me Back duology.

You can pre-order Tell Me No Lies at the following Retailers:

  

Praise for FOLLOW ME BACK

"Debut author Geiger's social-media-saturated thriller (which fittingly got its start on Wattpad) should transfix teens for whom online relationships (romantic and otherwise) are integral parts of daily life, and catfishing and hacking are genuine fears. Tweets, direct messages, and police interrogation transcripts are incorporated throughout, throwing the reliability of both narrators into question and hinting at the sinister thread underlying this boy-meets-girl story. " ―Publishers Weekly

"Pieces are revealed one at a time until they all come together at the end-right before everything falls apart before a final, dark twist. A page-turner for young adults invested in social media, fandoms, and mysteries." ―School Library Journal

"Told though alternating points of view, tweets, and police reports, this novel is perfect for fans of Sara Shepard, April Henry, or Kimberly Derting. In her debut novel, Geiger creates a rich horror story which is all the more intriguing because of its conceivable possibilities. Using fan culture and social media communications to the best effect, she makes the setting and plot convincingly real." ―VOYA Magazine

"Follow Me Back is the perfect mix of fandom with just the right amount of suspense. An enthralling page turner from beginning to end." ―Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author of the After series

"Timely, twisty, and totally thrilling. Follow Me Back will have readers wondering about the identity of every online friend and follower they've got. A riveting read that will keep you up late and keep you guessing!" ―Paula Stokes, author of Liars, Inc. and Vicarious

"Dark and suspenseful, Follow Me Back is sure to be the next big thing in YA Thrillers." ―Ali Novak, author of The Heartbreak Chronicles and My Life with the Walter Boys

"Follow Me Back is an unforgettable page-turner, and a cautionary tale for any fan who's ever wished that their favorite celebrity followed them on social media." ―Sandy Hall, author of Signs Point to Yes and A Little Something Different

“Follow Me Back is a mystery/thriller/suspense roller coaster ride that keeps readers on their toes. Jaw-droppingly twisty and continually surprising.” ―Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of Firsts

A.V. Geiger is an epidemiologist who spends far too much spare time on social media. By day, she studies women’s psychiatric and reproductive health. By night, she can be found fangirling, following people back, and photoshopping the heads of band members onto the bodies of unicorns. Her writing career began with celebrity fan fiction, and her work draws extensively on her own experiences with online fan culture. Her original teen fiction has received millions of hits on the story-sharing website Wattpad, ranking as high as #1 in the mystery-thriller genre. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and twin boys.

Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Instagram

--Giveaway is open to International. 

Must be 13+ to Enter

ENDS: JUNE 08, 2018

- 1 Winner will receive a Signed Copy of TELL ME NO LIES 

(Follow Me Back #2) by A.V. Geiger.

- 1 Winner will receive a $25.00 Amazon/PayPal Gift Card.

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I Was Anastasia, a novel of identity, hope, and a long-enduring Romanov mystery

The mystery about the fate of Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of Russia’s imperial family, has officially been resolved, but the subject still exerts fascination. Was she murdered alongside her parents and siblings after the Russian Revolution, or did she survive?

Incorporating themes of identity and hope, Lawhon’s novel intertwines two strands: one following Anastasia up to that horrific night in 1918 and another about Anna Anderson, whose unwavering claims to be Anastasia inspired and confounded her contemporaries. Anastasia’s story, evoking her youthful spirit, becomes increasingly tense as her world grows dangerously constrained, while Anna’s story unfolds in snapshots flipping backward in time from 1970.

The suspense hinges on the reader’s unfamiliarity with the real history, and John Boyne’s The House of Special Purpose (2013), also about Anastasia, handles the dual-chronology structure more smoothly. However, Anna’s narrative, involving institutionalizations, glamorous excursions, legal battles, and meetings with people who want to support, exploit, or debunk her, compels with its many contrasts.

Recommended mainly for readers unacquainted with this twentieth-century mystery or anyone interested in Anna Anderson’s troubled life.

This short review first appeared in Booklist's February 1 issue, and the novel (which I read last November as an ARC) was published by Doubleday in March. Some additional notes:

- For my review of The House of Special Purpose, see my post Russian History, a Mystery, and a Reviewer's Dilemma, from 2013.  My sentiments remain, and from that you may understand my thoughts about the chronological structure of I Was Anastasia (I'm not revealing anything about the conclusions drawn in either one, though).  The structure also resembles that in the film Memento, which the author cites. I haven't seen the movie but may have to now!

- There's a lengthy author's note at the end that says "spoilers abound below" and goes on to explain and reveal various things, as author's notes do. It addresses potential readers, assuming they won't know the real history. I was surprised by this (the revelations about Anastasia were fairly big news when they appeared). Given that, I found it odd that knowledge of Grand Duchess Anastasia's fate was a hindrance to appreciating the book in full.

- I've read other reviews since I submitted mine, and it's been very well received by many readers who hadn't known Anastasia's story beforehand, and some who did.  So I'll leave it to you to read it and make up your own mind about it.

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“THE REAL VALUE OF THIS BOOK”: How the Sears Catalogue Shaped My Novel, a guest post by Ellen Notbohm

Over the years, I've referred many library patrons to the Sears catalog replicas in our reference collection for insight into daily life in the early 20th century. And so I was pleased when Ellen Notbohm proposed to write a post detailing how she'd used one of these catalogs in the research process for her debut historical novel, The River by Starlight, which is set in turn-of-the-century Montana and based on real-life events.  Please read on for more, and welcome, Ellen!

~

“THE REAL VALUE OF THIS BOOK”:
How the Sears Catalogue Shaped My Novel

Ellen Notbohm

How much research is enough? Writers of historical fiction know the dilemma well. We fall in love with our characters and want to know them as intimately as we can. What did their environment look like, smell like, feel like? What did they eat, wear, have in their homes? What were the tools of their trade, how did they conduct business, spend leisure time, celebrate holidays, doctor themselves and their families?

Researching my historical novel The River by Starlight involved six cross-country trips. Close to 100 books and numerous notebooks bulging with documents and newspaper clippings cram a seven-foot bookcase in my office. But as delightful karma would have it, the book I consulted more than any other, the one I dog-eared with use, cost me all of $1.50.

I found the 1902 Sears Catalogue on a lonely back table at a used book sale. As much an anthropology lesson as any textbook, author Cleveland Amory called it “a view of the American scene at the turn of the century with an excitement and accuracy that would defy the most eminent historian.”

“THE REAL VALUE OF THIS BOOK IS PLAINLY SHOWN IN EVERY PRICE QUOTATION” blares the front cover. From the Sears catalogue I learned what everything from thimbles to pianos cost, what they looked like, how many choices there were. What men, women and children wore in every imaginable situation, what size range was available (“Fat men usually experience much difficulty getting a shirt in the right shape.”). How credit worked. How it all reflected the larger economic picture of the country.

Details from the catalogue colored my descriptions of home furnishings, tools and weapons, toiletries and potions. Stoves and washing machines, hay loaders and hobby horses, paint and fabric colors. I acquired some rusty artifacts of homestead life and was able to see what they looked originally.

I wrote a frisky scene giving an intimate look at the layers of societally-required undergarments my female lead, Annie, dares to forego on a sweltering summer day. There’s a charged scene wherein you can all but smell the “overpowering cloud of Le Muguet” enveloping the town’s queen busybody. A gorgeous tortoise shell hair comb becomes an heirloom and a pair of “ugly cloth-top lace-ups” leads to disaster. We see and feel the fabrics used in a prostitute’s costume, a child’s nightgown, a wedding quilt, a funeral shroud, the garish handkerchief of the queen snoop’s informant.

It was exhilarating to slather on such details throughout the story. But how much is enough? Alas, much was lost to the delete button, “cool research,” as more than one editor called it, that didn’t move the story forward. An example: the reader knows Annie and her sister Jenny shared glasses of lemonade out on Jenny’s porch. But they don’t get to see the original version of the scene: Annie sticking a pinkie through a door screen (“handsomer than the cut shows”), opening Jenny’s refrigerator (nope, Sears didn’t call it an icebox) and pouring the lemonade into ruby-stained tumblers while Jenny finishes up her work with a white cedar dash butter churn (“peculiarly adapted for milk and butter purposes”) and puts the butter into brass-locked molds (“securing the utmost possible rigidity”).

But writing those kinds of details helped me experience the world in which my characters lived, and empathize with its beauties and challenges. Even when deleted, the details remained embedded in the story by virtue of how they influenced the thoughts, dialogue and deeds of the characters.

A battered old cast-off catalogue—$1.50. Creating a richly faceted portrait of another time—priceless.

~

Ellen Notbohm
(credit: Andie Petkus Photography)

An internationally renowned author, Ellen Notbohm’s work has informed and delighted millions in more than twenty languages. Writing from her experiences raising children with autism and ADHD, her perennially popular Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew has been an autism bestseller since 2005. In addition to her four award-winning books on autism, Ellen’s articles, columns and posts on such diverse subjects as history, genealogy, baseball, writing, and community affairs have appeared in major publications and captured audiences on every continent. Her article collection for Ancestry magazine (2005 – 2010) related stories both poignant and uplifting gathered during extensive research for her long-awaited debut novel, The River by Starlight, published in May 2018. A lifelong resident of Oregon, Ellen is an avid genealogist, knitter, reader, beachcomber, and thrift store hound who has never knowingly walked by a used bookstore without going in and dropping coin.

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Book Blitz: For the Ages by Safari Spell + Giveaway!

Welcome everyone to 

For the Ages by Safari Spell BOOK BLITZ!

Be sure to enter the giveaway below. Enjoy!

For the Ages (Long Live Dead Reckless #2)
by Safari Spell
Genre: NA Paranormal Romance
Release date: March 14th 2017

In the much-anticipated sequel to LONG LIVE DEAD RECKLESS, Talor discovers just how far she can fall... in love.

Talor Gardin made her choice, and it turned her entire world upside down. Trapped in the mysterious realm of the Grigori known only as the Valley, Talor is surrounded by brutality, luxury, and power unlike anything she’s ever seen. Torn away from everyone she loves, she can only cling to the hope that Sage will survive long enough to find her before Rami's plan sets into motion. But biding her time won't be easy in an exotic land where hellish beasts prowl the borders, eyes watch her every move, and no one is exactly who or what they seem – not even Rami. 

ex

Unsure who she can trust or if she'll ever escape, her memory grows foggier with each sunset. Once so sure of right and wrong, the longer she spends in the Valley among those who should be her enemies, the more she questions whether Sage told her the truth about anything at all.

ONLY $0.99 THROUGH MAY 20TH ON AMAZON!

and

LONG LIVE DEAD RECKLESS IS FREE THIS WEEK!

Previous book in the Series 
(click on image for Goodreads link):

My feet stopped at the edge of the rickety old bridge as if obedient to some secret intuition I wasn’t aware of. A feeling of overwhelming dread took hold of my core as I placed the first foot on the creaking wood. Looking down at it, there was nothing ominous or strange to see, but I wasn’t so concerned with visible things as I was with things that aren’t. The water sped by on its way somewhere other than under my feet, reflecting iridescent glimmers of the sunshine through the treetops.

When my second foot found the weathered wood, the seal tightened around my ring finger until it felt like being lassoed by a thread – pinpointed pressure. It was startling, but I found myself less afraid the tighter it got. Rami wouldn’t be trying to hold me if there were some danger for me. I knew that by now because of the nature of the seal. It would pulse out almost in anger if something threatened me. But this wasn’t that at all. Rami was trying to keep me from moving forward, and he was using fear to do it.

I dared hope that the thread would break somehow, like if I had the courage to take a few more steps across the bridge, somehow I’d end up back home. I almost ran as that thought latched onto me. Ignoring the seal, I set my jaw and stuck it high in the air. I pushed forward, one foot after the other.

The problem was that I was walking in reverse. I looked at my feet in alarm, wondering how it was that I could moonwalk now. I had never been able to do that, but I did know a guy in seventh grade who did it to get back to his seat every time he finished handing in a test.

To my amazement, I slid backwards. I straightened quickly, shaking my hands off to the sides as nerves took over.

“How is this possible?” I asked out loud.

I wasn’t talking to anyone, so I didn’t expect an answer.

“It’s a blood barrier,” came the voice.

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound. It was male and familiar, but familiar in a weird way, like an actor from a favorite TV show. My head whipped right and left, but there was no one anywhere. The trees played with shadows as leaves tried to control the sun, letting in light here and there and changing position every change of the wind. My eyes were wild and wandering, darting from tree branch to river, bush to shadow. I couldn’t tell where the voice had come from.

A full minute passed.

Still nothing.

I was agitated and fidgety, but the worst part was that I couldn’t move or I would slide even further backwards and away from a very intriguing bridge. My gaze dropped from the thickness of the forest. I knew whoever was out there wasn’t dangerous and they didn’t have to show themselves. If they did, they would have already. Just when I was about to resign myself to an awkward backwards stroll to the castle, I heard the voice again.

“Talor.”

Safari Spell is a native of Albany, Georgia. She has a BA in Journalism from Valdosta State University. She currently lives in North Georgia with her husband, hilarious daughter, and a backyard jungle harboring all the dinosaurs everyone thinks are extinct. Her dreams include chasing autumn around the globe, owning a wallaby, and riding a camel for at least nine seconds.

Author Links:

 

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