Starting Over by Helen Henderson

Fire and Amulet by Helen Henderson
Click the cover for purchase information

Spring is traditionally a time for renewal and starting over. Gardens are turned over. Seedlings are  lovingly cared for until the ground warms enough for planting. Even the trees shed the last of the puff balls that stubbornly clung to the branches through ice and snow storm. In a way, this post represents a transition much as the warming temperatures of spring replace the more frigid ones of winter. The fantasy series, the Windmaster Novels, is now complete and a new tale is begun. The parting of ways with Ellspeth, Dal, and the other mages is replaced by the welcoming of new friends, Deneas and Trelleir.

Fire and Amulet is a twist on a dragon shifter tale. Trelleir is the last dragon. Desperate for companionship, he uses his magic to take on human form. Deneas is his best friend. There is just one problem. She is a slayer, sworn to kill all dragons.

New projects can take on different forms. Some reveal themselves in a sequence of scenes, rolling through your mind like a movie. Others fight every step of the way, refusing to divulge what comes next.Then just when you think you're done, the characters refuse to leave. Whether there will be more adventures of slayer and dragon remains to be seen. Until the decision is made, learn about her world as Deneas explores it.

To help celebrate the release of Fire and Amulet, my participation in the 2022 AtoZ Challenge is dedicated to the people, land and creatures that inhabit the world of Fire and Amulet. Hope you'll visit my blog to check it out.  

What might be the best part of having a new release is the cover. I love it. If you look closely, you can see the dragon's tear. Having a slayer as a friend is dangerous when you’re a dragon

To purchase Fire and Amulet: BWL

~Until next month, stay safe and read.

Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination.
Follow me online at Facebook, Goodreads or Twitter.

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who have adopted her as one the pack. 

Checking Resources by S. L. Carlson

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/carlson-s-l-ya-fantasy/

This week I read something which made me laugh out loud. On FaceBook was a quote from C. S. Lewis about politics, along with the reference. In the comments was something like, “He never wrote this. Check out (this Internet source) for what he actually wrote.”

What I found amusing was, why not send people to the original source? Pointing people to a secondary source certainly isn’t as accurate as reading it as it was originally printed, you know, like in that thing called a book. The quote was allegedly from The Screwtape Letters—a hysterical book on its own.

To me, sending people to a secondary source reminded me of the old game of Telephone, where kids sit in a circle. One person whispers a phrase in the next person’s ear. They keep whispering the phrase around the circle. The outcome is usually nothing like the original, and everyone falls over laughing. Why do the children burst into laughter? Because even if they didn’t know the original phrase or sentence, they know the words spoken out loud by the end of the circle could not have been anything like what the starter had said.

Would that we were as wise as children. And doesn’t this make you want to sit down with friends and play a whispering game ending in laughter?

Writers, as much as you can, instead of clicking for information on Google, please check out the original sources. Also, go find things to laugh about.

I unashamedly admit I checked online for research of the research for children laughing an average of three hundred times a day while adults laugh an average of 10 to find two interesting facts. 1) “Both adults and children laugh primarily during social interactions with others.”¹  So, go interact. And, 2) the 300 times a day for children vs 10 for adults is an urban myth, although that may have come after a game of Telephone.

Lewis, C. S., The Screwtape Letters, HarperSanFrancisco, 1942

¹  https://www.aath.org/do-children-laugh-much-more-often-than-adults-do