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Spotlight: “Daughter of Winter” by Amber Argyle

In Amber Argyle’s Daughter of Winter Elice, the Winter Queen’s daughter, lives a life of isolation in the land of ice and snow, unaware that she is a key part of a bargain that was made long, long ago.

When a whaling ship crashes just offshore, Elice doesn’t hesitate to rescue the lone survivor, Adar, who quickly becomes her friend. But the closer Elice and Adar become, the more desperate she is to keep him hidden from her mother at all costs.

For if the Winter Queen discovers Adar trespassing, she’ll kill him.

When her mother reveals just how dark her soul has become, Elice realizes she is as much a prisoner as Adar. Worse, she begins to see hints of something more nefarious. The darkness that has taken hold of her mother is spreading, staining the world with its influence.

Daughter of Winter is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

Her grandfather rested a hand on her shoulder. “She’s your mother and she loves you. She just doesn’t see the world the same way.” Elice folded her arms over her chest and looked out across the sea without actually seeing anything. Her grandfather sighed and pulled her around to face him. “Where Ilyenna sees facts, you see possibilities. Someday she will understand that your way of seeing the world is a gift and not a burden.”

The bells at the palace pealed again. The Winter’s End ceremony would begin shortly. Elice gritted her teeth as she watched her mother disappear into the open-air throne room without a backward glance, the details of her lost to the distance. “Lowl gives that speech every year. And it’s always the same. Every year, we get closer to winning. But we never really do. I hate it.”

“Elice,” her grandfather softly reprimanded. She dropped her head. He brushed the crook of his gnarled finger down her cheek and then stepped into the net her mother had left behind—only one net, not two. It took a few thousand fairies to carry her grandfather, and they were all waiting, their movements erratic with their impatience. “You best hurry. The ceremony starts soon and your mother hates it when you’re late.”

Elice debated telling him that her gift wasn’t finished yet. When the light hit the tree . . . but she turned away instead. “You go. I’ll be along later.” He hesitated, and she knew he was deliberating whether or not to push the issue. But then he nodded to the fairies, who lifted him up and toward the palace.

Elice simply waited. She’d started this project the year before, marking exactly where the light crossed the pinnacle of the glacier and hit the spot where she stood. Alone, she watched the tree as the sun crept into view, bathing the tree with a rosy light. One by one, each of the thousands of prisms inside the tree lit up in smoky sparks, shooting fractured light all across the newly fallen frost, which she’d laid down last night. It glittered like the dusting of a thousand diamonds.

—from Daughter of Winter by Amber Argyle

About Amber

Bestselling author Amber Argyle writes fantasies where the main characters save the world (with varying degrees of success) and fall in love (with the enemy). Her award-winning books have been translated into numerous languages and praised by such authors as New York Times bestsellers David Farland and Jennifer A. Nielsen.

Amber grew up on a cattle ranch and spent her formative years in the rodeo circuit and on the basketball court. She graduated cum laude from Utah State University with a degree in English and physical education, a husband, and a two-year-old. Since then, she and her husband have added two more children, which they are actively trying to transform from crazy small people into less-crazy larger people. She’s fluent in all forms of sarcasm, loves hiking and traveling, and believes spiders should be relegated to horror novels where they belong.

Find Amber

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Spotlight: “Faeborne” by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

Jenna Elizabeth Johnson’s Faeborne takes us to a land where the Morrigan, the goddess of war and strife, aspires to become more powerful through the use of violence and sacrifice. This is a wonderful tale of how even in dark and complicated circumstances, one can find love, trust, and happiness.

Stolen from his family at the age of sixteen and forced to use his glamour in the service of Eilé’s most malevolent goddess, Brennon Roarke has little room for warmth in his heart. For seven long years, he endured hardship and pain, only to escape and find his parents and sister murdered, his nephew left blind and broken. With the stain of dark magic on his soul, Brennon perseveres for the sake of his young ward, always worrying that one day the evil infecting his spirit will destroy him for good.

Born to the Fahndí tribe of the Weald, Seren’s glamour allows her to transform into a deer and grants her the power to heal grave wounds, but it also caused her to become an outcast.

Seren and Brennon are brought together in a single, life-altering moment.

Faeborne is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

Brenn sighed, running his hands over his face and through his hair as he fell back against the mattress. Well, he couldn’t very well go downstairs and tell the girl to leave now. And in all honesty, he didn’t want to. He was intensely curious about her. Where had she come from? Why was her glamour so powerful? And more importantly, what was she? No common Faelorehn woman, that was certain.

“If her powerful glamour and the fact she had transformed from a deer into a woman before his very eyes hadn’t convinced him she was a stranger in these parts, then her other physical features most definitely did. Her skin tone was the most obvious difference. Darker than his, it reminded him a little of the beautiful red clay he sometimes found by the creek when he was a boy. A golden, pale rust color and smooth as an eggshell. Her eyes were different as well. Larger than his and Rori’s and slanted ever so slightly at the corners. They reminded him of the sly, cunning eyes of the wild things that roamed Dorcha Forest. This girl would definitely stand out in a crowd of people in Dundoire Hollow.

The very thought of Dundoire Hollow and its denizens drew a groan of annoyance from Brenn. He had very few friends living in the settlement closest to his home. Had he decided to turn Seren away and send her into the village, they would as soon stone her to death for her differences as offer her aid. No. He had made the right choice in extending his hospitality. He would keep his honor and keep his word. And protect her from the cruelty and prejudice of those he once called his neighbors and friends.

— from Faeborne by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

About Jenna

Jenna Elizabeth Johnson is a bestselling, multi-award winning author of epic and contemporary fantasy.  She has published several novels, novellas, and short stories in her Legend of Oescienne, Otherworld, and Draghans of Firiehn series.

Jenna’s writing is heavily influenced by the Celtic mythology she studied while attending college.  When not working on her books, Jenna can be found at home tending to her chickens, camping and hiking in Yosemite, and practicing German longsword.

Find Jenna

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Spotlight: “Midwinter Fae” edited by Jamie Ferguson

Dance with the Fae on the shortest day of the year!

On the day of the shortened sun
A battle between two kings has begun.
The old year dies, and the Oak King rules
We celebrate with logs of Yule!
But the Holly King is defeated, not dead
To Caer Arianrhod he heads.
Until Midsummer, when they battle again
And the Holly King will once again reign…

Midwinter Fae, the second volume in the anthology series A Procession of Faeries, brings you nineteen tales of magic, beauty, wonder…and sometimes danger, as the Fae can be unpredictable, and follow their own rules.

Midwinter Fae is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

The Faerie Folk come when the veil between the worlds is thin, spinning their sticky-sweet glamour and stealing children away in “The Madness of Survival,” by Dayle A. Dermatis. The only thing standing in their way: a motorcycle gang made up of broken, lost people who managed to escape from the Faerie Realm after their own abductions.

Part human, part fox, Todd is the grandson of Renart, the king of foxes in Diana Benedict’s “Summerland’s Paladin.” He escapes the deadly wrath of his step-brothers, only to find himself in Faerie on the eve of Midwinter. The queen offers him two choices: find a way to keep winter from tightening its grip on the faerie kingdom, or return to the land he came from and face death at the hands of his brothers. But winter is not the only enemy Todd faces in Summerland.

In Leah Cutter’s “The Ice Skating Fairy,” Cindy is stuck on the sidelines with a broken leg, instead of figure skating in the mid-winter jubilee put on by the best teen figure skaters in the state of Washington. Then a fairy appears next to her…and invites Cindy to her own ice skating practice later that evening.

Addie pays quick cash for cursed objects in Leslie Claire Walker’s “Treasure.” That’s how she makes the innocent safe—and how she atones every single day for the terrible bargain she made as a young, abused girl on the street. She never speaks of the vile price she paid for freedom or the crime she committed—until the victim strolls through the door of her shop carrying the worst curse of all.

In “Winternight,” by Eric Kent Edstrom, Two Starside thieves set out to steal coin for their Winternight feast. But when one is framed for murder, they find themselves in deep trouble with the city’s most feared crime boss.

Fairy magic is rich, beautiful, and filled with the threat of danger in Ron Collins’ “First Rays of New Sun.” Unable to return to the mortal world herself, Katazarra is commanded by her fae lord to entice a human man so that he, too, will be trapped in the land of Fairy and stay beyond the Winterfest celebration. But the man knows something that Katazarra doesn’t…or perhaps it’s something she knows, but doesn’t want to remember.

The biggest festival in Stratford, North Carolina approaches in Rei Rosenquist’s “At the Heart of Trickery”: a Midwinter celebration of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the midst of the excitement, the magical powers around town swell. And Chandra—a transwoman witch in hiding—once again finds it impossible to hide. And then a friendly stranger appears at Chandra’s window, reaches out…and offers the ability to travel to a whole new world.

Once a warrior of the Seelie Court, Rose now exists as a changeling in a twisted human body devoid of magic in Karen L. Abrahamson’s “A Squalor of Chickens.” Only on midwinter day can she taste magic again, in the form of a single spell that allows her to reconnect the ice-cold Earth with the sun’s life-giving warmth. Her one power is the single most important one—ushering in Spring. But then she’s offered the chance to have a real life of her own…

In DeAnna Knippling’s “By Winter’s Forbidden Rite,” a desperate mother summons the spirits as her infant son’s last hope…but what if she’s wrong? A group of women hold a seance on a dark and snowy winter’s night, hoping to summon forth wisdom from beyond the grave in order to save a sickly child. But what is the real nature of the spirit that answers the summons? And will they have to call forth something even worse to save them from what their seance brings?

Brea is the daughter of a fisherman and a sea-wild woman who carried magic in her blood in Anthea Sharp’s “Passage.” Brea’s father is dead, her village banished her, and she barely managed to escape the brigands who robbed her. Now she lives alone in the Realm of Faerie, until the winter day when she follows the taste of the rowan berry and finds herself being chased by the Wild Hunt. But fate has more in store for Brea than a simple existence as one of the fey folk, and when she runs afoul of the Dark Queen, she must embark on an adventure that will change her future…forever.

In the deep cold of a midwinter night, Annalise races through a frozen wilderness to bring her injured father to help in Marcelle Dubé’s “Midwinter Run.” But when she stumbles across a pixie on the frozen river, she will have to face a band of angry Fey who blame her for the pixie’s death. If she leaves, she risks the wrath of the Fey—but if she stays to explain, she risks her father’s life.

In Deb Logan’s “Faery Unpredictable,” Claire Murray, a real live faery princess, is spending her first midwinter holiday with her many-times-removed grandfather, the King of Faery. When her boyfriend Roddy, the Prince of Winter, is accused of stealing the Wyrd Stone, a magical artifact that governs the turning of the seasons, Claire must discover the real culprit before the all important celebration of the Festival of Alban Arthan. Can she clear Roddy’s name before he’s banished from Faery forever?

Samuel Lee spent the past few years creeped out by the strange man who lived next door in T. Thorn Coyle’s “The Stars of Neverwhere.” His mother didn’t understand, but she hadn’t seen the man slide through the shimmering air, his skin as white as moonlight on birch bark, and his chin and cheekbones sharp as knives. And then all the neighborhood cats disappeared. 

After finding out she didn’t get her dream job at the arboretum, Holly takes her normal path home through the city park in Jamie Ferguson’s “The Kiss of the Horned God.” Holly is so upset she doesn’t pay attention to where she’s going, and is startled when she notices the path—and the lights of the city—have vanished.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Destiny” follows the Shapeshifter Solanda. The Black King wants her to use her special abilities on a job that will change the Fey forever. But Solanda wants to change the life of one child. Can she do both? Or should she do nothing at all?

The Holly vs Oak exhibition fight looks to be the event of the winter, until someone attempts to poison the Holly King in Rebecca M. Senese’s “Holly vs Oak.” Who is trying to kill him and threaten the peace between the normal world and the Nether Realm?

In Stefon Mears’ “A Last Meal for the Holly King,” after Steve’s wife dies he heads for their cabin in the Oregon wilderness, not intending to come back. There’s no point in going on without Jess. He comes across an old man with scraggly, snow-white hair and a sprig of holly tucked in just above his right ear. Steve offers the old man a meal, but what he receives in return surprises him.

What’s a girl to do when her duties as bridesmaid suddenly require her to wear a wedding dress, too? In Brigid Collins’ “Bride Thief,” the bride’s odd family tradition is meant to confuse evil spirits who seek to steal brides away on their special day. Chelsea might think it cute if she weren’t still nursing her wounded pride after her own disaster of an attempted wedding. But Jennifer’s been there for her as she put the pieces back together, so the least Chelsea can do is put on a stupid dress. Besides, it’s not like a real evil spirit is going to steal her away. Right?

On the Boar Islands in the cold North, Eithni awaits Winter Solstice with equal parts pride and fear in “The Giving Year,” by Alexandra Brandt. Eithni, chosen to enter the chamber of the gods, prepares to leave her human community forever. On the other side of the Stone Door, Sable stands guard in anticipation of a successful solstice, when the veil between worlds will lift…and when Sable’s liege, a lightlord of the fae, will claim the human woman who willingly steps across into the Summer realm. But everything changes when Eithni breaks the rules.

Midwinter Fae is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

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Spotlight: “Tales of Arilland” by Alethea Kontis

Step into the enchanting, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous world of fairy tales in Alethea Kontis’ Tales of Arilland. Alethea received a volume of unexpurgated fairy tales for her eight birthday, and the impact of reading those stories of magic, monsters, darkness, blood, and hope is clear in the nine tales in this wonderful collection.

Discover the story of Bluebeard’s first wife (“Blood From Stone”), what really happened to Snow White in those dark woods (“The Unicorn Hunter”), how dangerous the Little Mermaid might have been (“Blood and Water”), and just how far Little Red Riding Hood was willing to go (“Hero Worship”). Included in this collection is “Sunday,” the original novelette that inspired the award-winning novel Enchanted, as well as “The Cursed Prince,” the previously untold history of Prince Rumbold of Arilland…and more.

Tales of Arilland is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

The king liked to surround himself with fairies and fey-bloods. It was common knowledge that proximity to someone with fairy blood elongated one’s lifespan, and while no one could remember exactly how old their handsome king was, they knew he had been around long enough to outlive one queen and marry another while still in his prime. Rumbold recalled the prevalence of dark-hair among the dignitaries at court, darker than his mother’s long chestnut curls, but none of them with tresses as black as Velius…

“Am I fey?”

Soft fingers paused in their meandering trail across his furrowed brow and slid down his cheek. “My never-constant son. What makes you ask such a thing?”

“The boys at the training ground today said that Velius was fey.”

“Velius. The duke’s son.”

Rumbold nodded. Velius was a duke’s son, but nobody ever called him that.

“Well, they’re right in any case,” she answered. “It’s too late an hour for me to go into, but yes. Your cousin has more wild fairy blood in him than anyone I’ve ever met.” She looked away, and the lamplight turned her blue eyes golden. “Almost anyone,” she added as an afterthought. “What does any of that have to do with you?”

“The other children say that I’m fey too, because I have dark hair.”

Contagious as his mother’s laugh usually was, it didn’t make Rumbold feel instantly better. The enthusiastic kiss she placed on his forehead did. The pillow haloed her dark brown curls around her as she settled back down and took a deep breath. Rumbold knew that breath meant a story, so he closed his eyes and snuggled into her warm body again.

“Faerie is a land so large its size mirrors the human world—perhaps even surpasses it; no one knows for sure. Deep in the heart of Faerie lives the Fairy Queen. She is its only Queen, and has reigned over the land since the beginning of time. Her hair is as black as night, her skin as white as pearl, and her eyes are deep violet, as deep and rich as dragon’s blood.

“She has no children because she cannot; in order to give life to another being of her own flesh, she would have to sacrifice so much of herself and her power that there would be nothing left. But it is said that those humans with the most fey blood in their hearts look very much like the Fairy Queen.”

— from “The Cursed Prince” in Tales of Arilland by Alethea Kontis

About Alethea

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, a voice actress, and a force of nature. She is responsible for creating the epic fairytale fantasy realm of Arilland, and dabbling in a myriad of other worlds beyond. Her award-winning writing has been published for multiple age groups across all genres. She is the host of “Princess Alethea’s Fairy Tale Rants” and Princess Alethea’s Traveling Sideshow every year at Dragon Con. Alethea has narrated for ACX, IGMS, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders, Shimmer, Apex Magazine and Clarkesworld Magazine, and she contributes regular YA book reviews to NPR.

Alethea’s YA fairy tale novel, Enchanted, won both the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award and Garden State Teen Book Award. Enchanted was nominated for the Audie Award in 2013 and was selected for World Book Night in 2014. Both Enchanted and its sequel, Hero, were nominated for the Andre Norton Award. Tales of Arilland, a short story collection set in the same fairy tale world, won a second Gelett Burgess Award in 2015. The second book in The Trix Adventures, Trix and the Faerie Queen, was a finalist for the Dragon Award in 2016. Alethea was nominated for the Dragon Award again in 2018, for her YA paranormal rom-com When Tinker Met Bell. In 2019, the third in her Harmswood Academy trilogy–Besphinxed–was nominated for a Scribe Award by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

Princess Alethea was given the honor of speaking about fairy tales at the Library of Congress in 2013. In 2015, she gave a keynote address at the Lewis Carroll Society’s Alice150 Conference in New York City, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She also enjoys speaking at schools and festivals all over the US. (If forced to choose between all these things, she says middle schools are her favorite!)

Born in Burlington, Vermont, Alethea currently lives on the Space Coast of Florida. She makes the best baklava you’ve ever tasted and sleeps with a teddy bear named Charlie.

Find Alethea

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Spotlight: “Primary Fault” by Sharon Kae Reamer

Primary Fault, the first book in Sharon’s Schattenreich series, is set in Cologne, Germany. Sharon, a retired archeoseismologist who actually lives in Cologne herself, creates a unique, engaging, magical world which combines mythology, seismology, history, and romance.

After leaving small-town Texas for Cologne, Germany, Caitlin’s seismologist brother Gus vanishes, and is wanted by the Cologne police. Caitlin’s search for her brother—and his doppelgänger—earns her a bump on the head and a trip to the hospital.

With the help of the sexy aristocrat she’s fallen for, Caitlin locates a vital witness: her brother’s former lover. When Caitlin arrives late to the rendezvous at Cologne’s Gothic cathedral, an earthquake flings her into a bleak Otherworld. There she finds the woman she arranged to meet—and a tall, gaunt wraith she has no desire to see.

Primary Fault is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

The creepy but shapely blonde from the airport stood in front of me facing away across a long room. She looked into the distance as if searching. Her voice sounded distracted. “Reality is not always what we imagine, is it, Caitlin Schwarzbach?”

As I walked towards her, she faded away. A wrenching physical displacement followed a vibration from below, and I closed my eyes against a sudden dizziness. When I opened them, the room had changed to a meadow clearing enclosed on all sides by trees that formed a leafy canopy, open in the center. Moonlight cast the clearing in pale relief edged with shadow.

Something large flew over the trees. It’s big enough to eat you. Run away. I cringed and fought the urge to run for the trees as the huge black shadow flew in front the moon, blotting it out.

After it had gone, I noticed the woman. She stood a few feet away and had positioned herself between two men, her arms crossed and her legs spread in a fighting stance. The jeweled hilt of a sword strapped to her back jutted above her shoulders. Long, coal black hair framed a fierce expression and matching posture. She stared at me with bold dark eyes full of arrogance, but her slanted smile suggested amusement. I crossed my arms back at her.

Three fat crows with metallic black beaks and shimmering feathers picked at the grass at her feet. At the far end of the clearing, a half-dozen long-necked birds burst out of the trees and ran toward us. Ducks? The black-winged creature swooped down like a fast-moving cloud of death and gripped a duck in its distinctly reptilian beak before flying away.

The remaining ducks quacked and ran in agitated circles at the loss of their companion. The excited noises faded to the sounds of the two men gabbling at each other, augmented by angry gestures. Shadows hid their faces. They were tall, taller even than Gus, but about equal to each other in height. I caught a flash of blue eyes as they looked around and appeared to notice me for the first time.

A jolt within me accompanied a rumble of ground that threw me to my knees. When I looked up again, the clearing was deserted. Overcome with exhaustion and relieved to be alone again, I curled up on the grass to sleep.

— from Primary Fault by Sharon Kae Reamer

About Sharon

Now a full-time writer living near Cologne, Sharon Kae Reamer’s speculative fiction is inspired by her participation in various archeoseismology projects during her twenty-something years as a senior scientist at the University of Cologne. Locations that include the Praetorium and medieval Jewish settlement in Cologne, ancient Tiryns in Greece, and Greek ruins in Selinunte, Sicily, provide perfect backdrops for creating fantasy stories rich with history and mythology, such as her Immortal Guardian and Schattenreich Mystery novelette series and her five-book Schattenreich novel series.

Her love for mixing and mashing science fiction and fantasy continues unabated. Night Shepherd, in the Schattenreich universe is a spinoff (one of many) of her soon-to-be-published first novel in The Sundered Veil series, a further conception of science fantasy.

Sharon still pursues archeoseismology projects. She also cooks daily (German-English), gardens (chaotically, at best), knits (badly), does needlepoint (rather well) and reads (everything) all the damn time.

And, of course, she has cats.

Find Sharon

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Spotlight: “One Dark Summer Night” by DeAnna Knippling

Things often take an unexpected turn in DeAnna Knippling’s stories, and One Dark Summer Night is no exception. In this book she’s created a dark, intriguing world with fairies who are more complex than they first appear.

Della Rae is only in this podunk Midwestern university town for the full-ride biology scholarship she’s getting. In a year or two, she’s going to Oxford as an exchange student, she knows it. Her eventual goal: to cure cancer. 

Only life doesn’t go like that. The way you planned.

 Something’s going on in the basement of the science building, something that’s tied up every single professor and sends the summer work-study students running. Rumors are going around that the professors are performing a vivisection. And nobody wants to see that.

 But it’s probably not going to be performed on the lab rats. Because this town has always had something weird going on.

 Something that involves Della Rae’s best friend, Merc, and a few other kids in town, all who have the same face…

One Dark Summer Night is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

Back in the days when Ireland was the home of the fairies, well, one of their homes, they hid their bridges between our world and theirs in secret places out in the middle of nowhere. That’s how it is here—this is about as close to the middle of nowhere that you’re going to get in modern America, right? Right. Kinda right. I mean, there are other places. Arizona. You know. But you see what I mean. Too far out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s too obvious to the locals when you cross over.

But a college town? Who even pays attention?

I guess you could call them aliens, kind of. They come from another dimension. I’m not sure how the science works, it’s just too far from anything that I understand. Maybe there’s a scientific way to describe it, but I don’t know what it is. Mom might know—but I am not going to ask her. She gets touchy about things like that. It doesn’t matter. It works, another dimension, blah blah blah, and then you get fairies.

Most of the time they look like us. But it’s a trick. A glamour? If they traveled to another world where the natives looked different (of course they would, wouldn’t they?), then they would put on their glamour to look just like these other natives. They try hard to fit in.

Why are they here?

That’s a good question. I think they just like to get up and shake it. But I don’t know.

— from One Dark Summer Night by DeAnna Knippling

About DeAnna

DeAnna Knippling is always tempted to lie on her bios. Her favorite musician is Tom Waits, and her favorite author is Lewis Carroll. Her favorite monster is zombies. Her life goal is to remake her house in the image of the House on the Rock, or at least Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. You should buy her books. She promises that she’ll use the money wisely on bookshelves and secret doors. She lives in Colorado and is the author of the A Fairy’s Tale horror series which starts with By Dawn’s Bloody Light, and other books like The Clockwork Alice, A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters & the Macabre, and more.

Find DeAnna

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Spotlight: “Entangled by Midsummer” by Jamie Ferguson

Mark, a selkie, is trapped on land after his sealskin is stolen by his human lover in Entangled by Midsummer. He turns to a faery woman named Merenna for help. But Merenna has her own problems—she left Faerie to escape a dangerous man whose ambitions would make her his bride and his pawn, and his liegemen have found her. The net of intrigue closes in around Mark and Merenna as Midsummer approaches—a time when vast forces align, sinister plans come to fruition, and destiny itself can be rewritten.

Entangled by Midsummer is available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

Laran stared at her for a minute, and then bowed his head and walked off toward the wine barrels, the solidity of the steps of his booted feet at odds with his presumed lack of sobriety. Merenna clasped her necklace so tightly her fingers ached, and held her breath as Laran eased through the drunken crowd with the grace of a dancer.

As soon as he was out of sight, she hurried away from the bonfire, Cù close by her side. They ran down the grass-covered hill, leapt across a tiny brook, and entered the dark of the forest. The air smelled of leaves, damp earth, and smoke from the festival fires. The branches and leaves of the tall trees formed a canopy that blocked out most of the light from the stars.

Merenna moved as quickly as she dared. She could feel the energy from the nearby track, but couldn’t see it. She glanced down at Cù. His bits of white fur seemed to almost glow in the darkness. It felt like Laran was right behind her, as if his breath were on the back of her neck. Cù’s footsteps were silent, but she kept stepping on tiny twigs on the forest floor, her feet making crunching sounds as she made her way between the trees. If Laran was following them, he would surely hear her! Where was the track?

And then there it was.

The silvery line curved out of the sky and down to the earth in front of her, like a path made of stardust. She’d been on straight tracks before, but never for very far, and never alone. The light emanating from the track was much brighter than she recalled. The glow before had been faint, like glimpsing the flame of a candle through a thick curtain. The light tonight was almost bright enough to read by.

There was a rustle in the woods behind her. Merenna whipped around, but could see nothing in the dim light. Was it Laran? Had he found her?

She turned back toward the track and set her shoulders. She didn’t know exactly where it would take her, and she didn’t care. Anywhere it led would be somewhere Laran was not. And there was no way he would be able to find her.

Merenna and Cù leapt on the track together and began to run.

— from Entangled by Midsummer by Jamie Ferguson

About Jamie

Jamie focuses on getting into the minds and hearts of her characters, whether she’s writing about a saloon girl in the American West, a man who discovers the barista he’s in love with is a naiad, or a ghost who haunts the house she was killed in—even though that house no longer exists. Jamie has edited over a dozen anthologies, co-edits the anthology series Amazing Monster Tales with DeAnna Knippling, and is a member of The Uncollected Anthology, an urban and contemporary fantasy author collective. She lives in Colorado, and spends her free time in a futile quest to wear out her two border collies, since she hasn’t given in and gotten them their own herd of sheep. Yet.

Find Jamie

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Spotlight: “Faery Novice” by Leslie Claire Walker

Faery Novice, the first book in Leslie Claire Walker’s Young Adult series Faery Chronicles, takes us to a fast-paced world of magic, intrigue, and romance where faeries, angels, and demons are all very, very real. Kevin suddenly begins to hear other people’s thoughts, and there are two men hunting him—but why?

Both Faery Novice and the second book in this series, Faery Prophet, are available for a limited time in The Realm of Faerie bundle.

Enter the Realm of Faerie, a world of beauty, danger, and enchantment. But remember the legends if you want to make it back home again…

Excerpt

Oscar met and held my gaze. “Hearing things lately?”

Fuck me.

It had been an honest question, and meant to keep me in my seat. It worked.

“You are, aren’t you?” Oscar asked.

“Not today.”

Oscar leaned forward. “When did it start?”

I crooked my thumb at Rude. “His house.”

“At the party.”

Again with the question that wasn’t. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“I saw it.”

“As in, you were there?”

“As in, that’s what he does,” Rude said.

I took a good, hard look at Oscar’s eyes. Didn’t catch anything special about them.

“I’m a seer,” Oscar said. “But it doesn’t always have a lot to do with my eyeballs. It’s just a term.”

“And that means what to someone like me?”

“You’re straightforward,” Oscar said. “I like that about you. Others might not so much. Check yourself before you get impatient with them.”

How else was I supposed to be? I folded my arms across my chest. “What’s a seer?”

“A person who’s in contact with the other realms—places where humans dare not go, where other kinds of beings live.”

I stared at him, in case he’d actually just said a bunch of stuff about humans and other beings, whatever they were.

“I’m talking about the Fae,” Oscar said. “Faeries.”

For real? “Tinkerbell?”

“Far from it. They’re bigger, for one thing. A lot bigger. For another, they’re not cute. They’re seductive and treacherous and they don’t operate by the same rules humans do.”

He had to be joking. What was I supposed to do—play along? I opened my mouth to snark, then snapped it shut before the first word rolled off my tongue. Man didn’t look like he was kidding. He looked serious as hell. He’d known things about me and where I’d been without Rude or me telling him.

— from Faery Novice by Leslie Claire Walker

About Leslie

Since the age of seven, Leslie Claire Walker has wanted to be Princess Leia—wise and brave and never afraid of a fight, no matter the odds.

Leslie hails from the concrete and steel canyons and lush bayous of southeast Texas—a long way from Alderaan. Now, she lives in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest with a cast of spectacular characters, including cats, harps, fantastic pieces of art that may or may not be doorways to other realms, and too many fantasy novels to count.

She is the author of the Awakened Magic Saga, a collected series of urban fantasy novels, novellas, and stories filled with magical assassins, fallen angels, faeries, demons, and complex, heroic humans. The primary series in the saga are the Soul Forge, set in Portland, Oregon, and the Faery Chronicles, set in Houston Texas. She has also authored stories for The Uncollected Anthology on a mission to redefine the boundaries of contemporary and urban fantasy.

Leslie takes her inspiration from the dark beauty of the city, the power of myth, strong coffee, whisky, and music ranging from Celtic harp to jazz to heavy metal. Rock on!

Find Leslie

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Water Faeries: 15 Tales of Mermaids, Kelpies, and Magical Water Creatures

Jump into the water and enter the world of Faerie!

On a rock by the shore sits a mermaid fair
Dreaming of her lost lover as she combs her hair

Kelpies, and selkies, and the great snakes of the sea
All stop and listen as she sings of a love never to be

For the sailor she saved from those dark, storm-tossed waves
Got back on his ship, and sailed away

Now the mermaid’s alone, with broken-hearted dreams
And far, far away the sailor stares out at the sea

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What if the Loch Ness monster is more than a myth?

Where did the Lady of the Lake go after leaving Avalon?

Can a mermaid ever truly leave the sea, and follow her lover to land?

This collection includes fifteen tales about sirens, kelpies, mermaids, sea monsters, naiads, and other enchanted creatures of the water.

Enjoy the magic and wonder of these watery tales of Faerie!

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The Stories

Lina asks the sea to return her fisherman husband in Jaime Lee Moyer’s “Ocean Daughters.” A mermaid comes to shore to answer Lina’s call, and offers a bargain…but is Lina willing to pay the price?

In modern day New Hampshire Guinevere, now a blacksmith, and the Lady of the Lake, guard King Authur’s magic sword in Karen L. Abrahamson’s “The Lady of Ashuelot.” When Lancelot arrives and demands the sword back it distrubs the peace the two women have built. Now Guinevere must decide whether to spend the magic of the sword to revive Arthur and Camelot, or to preserve her modern world.

In “The Best Disguises,” by Grayson Towler, Moira heads to Scotland to search for the Loch Ness monster, and to prove to herself that the friend—and monster—she’d met when visiting Scotland as a child had actually been real. What she finds is unexpected…because sometimes the best disguises are so good that you sometimes forget who you really are.

Trapped on an island with an abusive husband, Selene struggles with her fear of the sea every day in “I Sing a Song of Mourning,” by Dayle A. Dermatis. But when her husband abandons her to drown, the mermaids give Selene the power to exact her revenge. How she chooses to use that power—and how she faces her fear—will change her life forever.

After the Christians riot in front of Dionysus’ temple in Thea Hutcheson’s “Coming into the Iron Age,” Mneme, a water muse, and the satyr Krotos head to the mountains to escape. All the old gods have scattered, and the rest have faded into obscurity. What kind of life can a water muse live in this new age of iron?

John falls asleep while sailing in the Virgin Islands, and wakes up to find himself in the middle of the ocean, with land nowhere in sight, in Jamie Ferguson’s “Learning to Sail.” With no safety equipment, and no way to determine which direction land lies, he prepares for his impending doom…and then a mermaid appears in the water next to his boat.

Anthea Sharp’s “The Sea King’s Daughter” goes deep beneath the Irish Sea, where a kingdom beyond mortal men’s imagining lies. The daughter of the Sea King journeys to the surface, and leaves her tail behind so the fisherman she’s fallen in love with believes she’s a beautiful maiden washed ashore. She cannot speak to him in any voice, though her yearning shines from her eyes. But with forces of land and sea arrayed between them, will the couple ever find their happy ending?

Oz heads to a seaside town in Ireland to take photos of the wee folk at the bequest of his grandmother’s will in Brenda Carre’s “The Selkie’s Treasure.” Fairies don’t exist, of course, so he knows his quest is futile…or is it?

A mermaid falls in love with the man she rescued from the sea in “Blood and Water” by Alethea Kontis. She’s willing to pay any price to be with him, for she loves him more than life itself. But is the price of love too high?

Louisa Swann’s “Verbena Draws First Blood” is the tale of a deadly sorceress and powerful necromancer who heads to a lake high in the mountains to thwart her nemesis. But she didn’t expect the lake to contain a kelpie…

Three days after Japanese torpedoes hit the USS Indianapolis, Gordie is one of some six hundred US Navy sailors slowly dying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in Brigid Collins’ “The Road Beneath Indianapolis.” There’s no food, nothing to drink but salt water, and sharks are feeding off the men. Or are they really sharks?

It’s 1934 in DeAnna Knippling’s “Of Drought and Harsh Moonlight.” Claudine lives in a small town stricken by drought and poverty. Change arrives when a sweet-faced, dark- haired, whistling man shows up…but why did he come to town? And how did he know the new bridge had been destroyed when the newspaper hadn’t come out yet?

Linda Jordan’s “Awakening” tells the story of Merial who, just before her sixteenth birthday, learns she’s only half naiad—the father she’s never seen is a dryad. She leaves the water and heads for the forest to find him, and finally understands who she really is.

In Deb Logan’s “Selkies in Paradise,” the seers Artie and Jed are on their honeymoon in Hawaii, far away from the terrors they’ve fought together in other parts of the world. They come across a sad young woman staring out to sea, and realize she’s a selkie—but her sealskin has been stolen, and she can no longer return to the water.

Hagen von der Lahn goes on a treasure hunt in the deepest gorge in France in Sharon Kae Reamer’s “A Recipe for Disaster.” But the historian he’s working with is searching for a different kind of treasure, one which involves poison, an ancient knife, and tangling with a river guardian.

Find Water Faeries

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A Procession of Faeries

Learn more about the series, and follow A Procession of Faeries on Facebook and Goodreads!

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Story spotlight: “An Idol for Emiko” by Travis Heermann


 
In 17th-century Japan, Emiko has always been an outcast in her fishing village. When strange coins wash up on the shore near Emiko’s fishing village, she is the only one who resists the wave of greed overtaking everyone she has ever known. How long can she resist the pressure from her neighbors and from her own poverty? How can she protect her son from the half-seen forms that now lurk in the nearby sea?
 
 
 
 
“An Idol for Emiko” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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About the Author

Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, roustabout, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of The Ronin Trilogy, Rogues of the Black Fury, and co-author of Death Wind, plus short fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines such as Apex Magazine, Alembical, the Fiction River anthology series, Historical Lovecraft, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. As a freelance writer, he has produced a metric ton of role-playing game work both in print and online, including the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Battletech, Legend of Five Rings, d20 System, and the MMORPG, EVE Online.

He has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, a Master of Arts in English, and teaches science fiction literature at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He has presented workshops on writing and publishing at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Pike’s Peak Writers Conference, and Colorado Gold Writers Conference, and regularly appears at conventions across the U.S.

He enjoys cycling, martial arts, torturing young minds with otherworldly ideas, and monsters of every flavor, especially those with a soft, creamy center. He has three long-cherished dreams: a produced screenplay, a NYT best-seller, and a seat in the World Series of Poker.

In 2016, he returned to the U.S. after living in New Zealand for a year with his family, toting more Middle Earth souvenirs and photos than is reasonable.

Find the Author

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