Sun Shines, Day Begins…

and Mummer’s Dance is available.

My wonderful editor, Ms Buffy, is a fan of sunshine, and during those prolonged days of gray, sent me images of the sun. There is something amazing about the healing properties of light. That first warmth across your skin never fails to bring a smile. It’s as if nature is telling you that everything will turn out for the best.

So it is with that first flush of attraction, and in Mummer’s Dance, Sookie is finding herself flattered by the attention a certain Fae is paying her. Is it the right Fae? Well, when does her life ever go along that easy path?

Best of days to everyone, and thank you again, Ms Buffy, for your support, your incomparable talent and for being my friend.

Chapter 6  – Mummer’s Dance

Okay… so, a woman walked into a bar….

it’s my birthday and I decided to release an extra chapter because, well, what the heck…

Sorry to throw folks off schedule.  See you Sunday..

Chapter 5 – Stepping In

A Distant Horizon in .pdf

I’ve been asked a couple of times to convert A Distant Horizon to a PDF format for downloading, and happy to report, that’s now available.

There ‘s a link on the main page for Swimming Stories available in PDF. All the stories are now there.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

The Hunt… begins….

Chapter 4 – The Hunt has been posted. I originally planned to use Bill Compton as the wrong boyfriend, but the story is centered in Ireland, and is my tribute to all things Fae, so a different name came to mind. It occurred to me that there was another character who treated Sookie badly and needed some come-uppance, and so we’ll be seeing a fair amount of Breandan Brigant this time around.

And where’s our favorite vampire? He makes an appearance of sorts in this chapter. I didn’t stick to canon, but instead pulled from the broader mythology of vampires. According to legends, vampires glamour, but they can also change shape, becoming smoke, bats or animals – most often wolves, but in this case, a nasty black dog. This fits in nicely with other Irish fairy tales that tell of black dogs acting as sentinels and occasionally harbingers of bad things to come. What more appropriate?

I hope your weekend was wonderful and you are enjoying the blooming of Spring, if you are here in the northern hemisphere, or if you’re in the southern hemisphere, that the last days of summer are treating you well.

Ms Buffy – Hope you are enjoying Spring! Watch out for those deer, they’re everywhere!!

Chapter 4 – The Hunt

And now… Bells Ring

Dinner bell, anyone? The beginning of a race? Bells have held a number of meanings, and it was in my mind as I named this chapter. It is the start, in many ways, of the tale that follows.

I am intrigued by stories of Fairies, as I know I’ve mentioned, but not just the winged kind or the electric-spouting lightning rods on television. The stories of Fae are more subtle.

There are stories that come from every country; creatures other than ourselves who hold powers and granted wishes or cause mischief. They can appear as us, or not. They can be proud and terrible in their wrath, or they can seem more beast than human.

The Celtic countries have stories of two divided Courts, the Seelie and the Unseelie. They are each ruled by Kings and Queens and their followers are different. The Seelie most resemble humans. They are beautiful to behold, but they live in the moment, their lives truly moving at a different pace than our own. They interact with us, but with more than a hint of superiority.

And then, there are the Unseelie. They are the others – the Selkies, Banshees, Poukas and Ghouls. They are smaller or take the shape of creatures. They are more solitary, and the Seelie consider them the ‘lesser’ Fae, but they have their own powers and traits, and both Courts take some care not to tread too far into the territory of the other.

I hope your weekend was wonderful.

Chapter 3 – Bells Ring

It’s a holiday weekend…

here in the United States. We are celebrating one of two holidays in most houses here – either Passover or Easter. For those of us among the Breathin’ Heathen but with employers who allow it, it’s an extra day off to celebrate the coming of Spring. In my part of the world, that means birds have returned and daffodils are dancing.

It’s warmer than past Springs. Make of it what you will, but for me, I will stand in the sun and find all kinds of reasons to be happy.

So, let me pass that happiness along. I’ll be releasing two chapters this week – one today and another on Sunday. It gets us to the place the thread of the story comes together.

Best to everyone, and special thanks to the incomparable Ms Buffy, who cheers me on and picks clean my prose.

Chapter 2 – Day Starts

Chapter 1 – Appearances…

Things are not as they appear. That’s the background for every supernatural story I’ve read, and this is one is no different. Chapter 1, Appearances, is a bit of a history lesson, setting the stage for what follows.

We meet the Fae and the central characters whose long, bitter history will soon collide with the life of Sookie Stackhouse, living quietly across an ocean.

There are many stories of the Fae, and they cross cultures. It’s rare the country that doesn’t have its own stories of others who live among us, magic and mysterious, living by different standards and different timelines. These are the stories I’ll tap into for Baile Siochanta.

Why Ireland? I’m the first to admit I am being pretty cheeky writing about a country I’ve only visited once. Granted, I plan to head back, and I did do my exploring with my feet over fourteen days, but let’s face it. It takes a solid set to dip a toe in a place and pretend you know about it. So I won’t. You won’t see vernacular or an attempt to explain behavior for real people. Instead, I’ll stick to my fairy tale and the supernatural creatures who were smart enough to choose such a beautiful place to cohabit.

The other thing I’ll be doing is pulling pretty hard on fairy tale lore. Vampires exist, but as the Unseelie, the other Court, sharing their less desirable social status in the Fae hierarchy with Selkies and Banshees. They will be called ‘Ghouls’ by the other Fae. Ghouls are known to feed on the dead and walk by night, so it seemed a quick jump to incorporate them into the Fae.

This story is a bit of a slow burner at first. Like my first days walking through the hills of Ireland, it revealed itself step by step. I hope you find the journey enjoyable.

Chapter 1 – Appearances

It’s Spring.. and that means a new story…

Today starts a new story, Baile Siochanta. Sookie is a young woman who’s grown up all over the United States, her family moving under somewhat mysterious circumstances. She knows there’s something different about her, but she guards her secret until one day, she finds another who might be like her.

This story will start with one love interest, but lead to another. I have taken some liberties with Irish folktales and lore, as you’ll see, but I hope you enjoy this walk into the world of the Fae and one woman’s awakening to what she is and where her heart lies.

Thank you Gyllene for your magical banner. It hints of those things that are part of this world and those that lie just beyond our vision, and what else are the Fae?

Thank you, Ms Buffy, for your talented and on-point editing, polishing my sometimes too wordy prose into something so much better!

Thank you my readers. I hope you enjoy revisiting the landscapes and towns I visited and that you find them as charming as I did.

Prologue ~ A Simple Life