The Amber Elixir is now in Paperback!

The Amber Elixir - an Arthurian tale of magic, shape-shifters, and the quest to win back a forbidden love - is now available in paperback on Amazon.

E-books release on October 3, 2017

Excerpt

In the time of King Arthur

Lake of Forgotten Memories

Far below the lake’s surface, in the cold dark depths where only blind armored fish venture, the water fairy Morainn stirred within her cave. Sensing dawn had spread its golden light, she swam past Roderick, curled upon their shared treasure. Once past the sleeping dragon, she frog kicked towards open water.

Morainn’s sleek sapphire body rippled through the water like the eels swimming overhead, stirring silt and small rocks. She angled upwards and broke into a fast kick, speeding her ascent to clearer water. Green, scarlet-finned perch darted out of her way. As she neared the top, her pondweed-like hair entrapped passing minnows. With a shake of her head, she freed them.

When Morainn breached the surface, a moss-green spell-sheen washed over her, spreading like a fleeting veil down her head and shoulders. She sniffed the cold spring air. The stench of charred pine, fear, and a lingering hint of Merlin’s musty aroma of ancient books and sulphur seared her nose and throat. Wincing, Morainn swirled to face what remained of the Lady of the Lake’s sanctuary.

Viviane is free!

Nine days ago, Merlin had seized the isle, conjured a towering castle of solid ice, and imprisoned Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, within it. Roderick had seen it all. He had watched as Merlin cast a curse upon the lake, a moss-green bloom that would turn to stone any of the Lady’s handmaidens or priestesses who attempted to cross the water to save her.

In the shallows on the far shore, Morainn spotted the two priestesses who had failed to heed Merlin’s warnings and were now statues captured mid motion.

A tiny plunk of ice falling into the water caused her to turn her gaze back to the sanctuary. Last night, after encountering a small boat carrying a handsome Halfling, a human girl, and two pixies, she had returned to her cave on the lake’s floor. Soon after, she had heard the crackling noises of battle being wrought by magic and the loud crumbling, thumping sounds of what she now saw must have been the destruction of Merlin’s ice prison.

For indeed, the better part of the ice castle lay in ruins. Chunks of ice, the debris from sheared-off spires, littered the shores and rocks surrounding the ruin. Mayhap their fall caused last night’s earth tremors. Morainn’s gaze swept the devastation. The core of the castle also had been destroyed, though here and there, waist-high opaque ice walls remained.

And where is the young Lady of the Lake? Morainn scanned the isle, but caught no sight of Viviane’s auburn hair or the indigo cloak she favored. Nor did she see the impetuous young wizard who had trapped her.

Did Merlin or Viviane leave behind any treasure? She scanned the ruins more closely. Nay. They left nothing bright and shiny.

Morainn swiveled in the water. Her hair, the dark green of water lily pads, swished about her shoulders as she turned her back to the isle and studied the distant shore. An empty coracle had beached not far from the two stone handmaidens.

She thought back to her encounter with the small round boat’s occupants. The Halfling’s cloak had been fastened with a gold Norse brooch. Alas, he had resisted her beguiling enchantments with complimentary charms of his own, which had made her forget about collecting treasure and instead bless him on his journey. No pretties had been visible on the flame-haired human, but who knew what the girl had hidden beneath her fairy cloak? Morainn contemplated the Halfling’s seasick pixies. No treasure there.

Mayhap the Halfling lost his brooch. Brightened by the prospect of adding Norse gold to her trove, Morainn dove beneath the waves and swam towards the coracle. She surfaced in the shallows. As the water lapped against her glistening body, she eyed the compact vessel. The foursome must have abandoned the craft in great haste, for they had not tethered it. Thank, Mab!

Idly, the tide licked the woven willow hull.

Come to me, she willed.

The little boat lifted in the water. With three receding waves, the craft floated within reach. Morainn tipped the side and peered in. Treasure! Not the Norse jewel she had coveted, but something equally rare—a gilt-edged sheet of parchment.

Her prize scooted away from her though no breeze stirred the air. Intrigued, Morainn whispered, “Are you enchanted, Little One?”

In answer, the page slid just beneath the plank seat.

Morainn crinkled her nose, for the parchment reeked of charred pine, magic-laced ice, and Merlin’s wretched scent. Its ragged edge suggested the page had been ripped from a book. The water sprite eyed the black marks written in a neat flourishing script.

As if it sensed she sought its secrets, the gilt-edged sheet shrank back.

A page from Merlin’s spell book! It has value far beyond its shiny edges. She pressed her glittery indigo lips together. Will the water lift away its words?

A shadow slithered over the coracle. Morainn shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare as she watched a white owl glide low overhead. An owl in daylight? How curious.

Waves surged behind her, and Morainn glanced over her shoulder. A broad river coursing through gently rolling marshland separated her lake from Avalon’s mist-shrouded shore. A vessel glided through the water. Her barge! The Lady of the Lake and one of her priestesses approach the isle. The women stood at the front of the barge as they neared land, their long flowing garments pressed against their slender bodies by the gentle breeze.

The owl soared and disappeared into the clouds while the parchment scurried mouse-like up the side of the coracle. Morainn snatched it. The page writhed in an effort to escape. But Morainn tightened her grip and dipped one corner of the parchment beneath the lake’s surface. More words appeared. It is enchanted!

Clutching her tattered treasure, she frog kicked away from the shallows. By some foul magic, the wretched parchment burned her hand. Enraged, Morainn submerged the struggling page below her, half hoping to drown it.

Nay. I’ll hide it.

Memories of rumors arose in her mind, murmurings that Mab, the foreign-born, newly crowned Queen of Fairy, often spied upon her subjects. Unease crept across Morainn’s shoulders. Mayhap Mab watches me now.

A queen who spies upon her subjects is not worthy of her throne, Roderick would say.

Although Morainn could hardly disagree, Mab was queen, and likely to remain so for centuries. It would be dangerous to ignore her or challenge her power. So far, only Merlin had dared oppose her.

And I have a page from the great wizard’s spell book!

Fearing she had already drawn Mab’s attention, she decided on a new course, one best kept secret from Roderick, who would surely disapprove. I will give the page to the queen and earn her favor.

The gilt-edged scrap curled and cut Morainn’s fingers.

Eel’s teeth! With a wrathful kick and small splash, Morainn plunged to the dark depths with her furious prize.

Stay Tuned for Cover Reveal for The Viking Mist

I just had my first glimpse of the stunning, gorgeous, amazing cover Amanda Matthews designed for The Viking Mist, my upcoming sequel to The Beltane Escape. Stay tuned for the big cover reveal!

Meanwhile, since my mind is on Vikings, here are two photos of actual Viking shields I took during my research trip to Ireland.

Happy reading!

~Ariella Moon

Viking Shield and other artifacts, Kildare, Ireland
Photo credit: Ariella Moon 

Viking Shield, Kildare, Ireland
Photo credit: Ariella Moon

Writing Tips and a New Young Adult Novel From Brigid Amos

Author Brigid Amos talks about choosing the best point of view for her protagonist, Ruthie, in A Fence Around Her, a Young Adult Historical novel.  

One of the biggest decisions a writer makes when she begins a new story is choosing a point of view (POV). There are many ways to define POV, but I like to think of it as the means by which the writer guides the reader through the story and what she allows the reader to see, hear, and know. It is as if the reader arrives at a theater to watch a performance, and the writer is the usher who shows the reader to his seat. But the seat isn’t necessarily in the audience. Sometimes, it’s inside the head of one of the characters, sometimes, it is even inside the writer’s head. Where the reader sits will completely affect how he experiences the story. The usher can move the reader around during the performance, but must do so in such a way that he does not get confused and lose track of the story.

When I first started writing, I gravitated toward an omniscient point of view, or so I thought. I wanted to tell the reader what everyone was thinking and feeling, as if I were a camera floating about a scene, but one that could also dive in and out of characters’ heads at will and somehow record their thoughts. I think this tendency to the omniscient POV is very common among beginning writers. For me, it was probably an effect of being steeped in classic literature. But the problem was that I was not writing in a true omniscient POV. Instead, I was “head hopping,” that is, changing POV from one character to another and completely confusing the reader. I learned early on that if I were going to write in third person, I had to stick to one character for an entire chapter or at least an entire section. In this way, I could write in a close third person POV without getting into too much literary mischief.

When I started writing A Fence Around Her, I so strongly identified with my protagonist Ruthie Conoboy, that I naturally switched my usual close third person POV to first person POV. Ruthie tells her story directly to the reader, and when the reader comes to my theater, I seat her right there in Ruthie’s head so that she can look through Ruthie’s eyes and hear with Ruthie’s ears. When I was writing, I felt that I was Ruthie writing the story as if in a journal or diary. People always ask me if I journal. When I was studying for my Master's degree years ago, I bought myself one of those cute little fabric covered blank books and dutifully filled the pages every day. Then I stopped, because frankly, journaling wasn’t as fun for me as it is for others. The strange thing is that when I write in first person, it feels as if I am journaling, but I’m doing it in character. And when I’m journaling from the point of view of one of my characters, it is most certainly fun!

A Fence Around Her
By Brigid Amos

Can a girl break free from her mother’s past?

About the book:

Having a mother with a past is never easy. For Ruthie Conoboy it becomes the struggle of a lifetime in 1900, the year Tobias Mortlock arrives in the gold mining town of Bodie, California. Ruthie is suspicious of this stranger, but her trusting father gives him a job in the stamp mill. Soon, Ruthie suspects that her mother and Mortlock have become more than friends. Can Ruthie stop this man from destroying her family?

Excerpt:

When I left the house that day to go to the Sawdust Corner Saloon to fetch my father, the day we met Tobias Mortlock, my mother was still lying in bed moaning as if from a mortal wound and threatening to do herself harm. While I was gone, she had gotten up and tried to console herself by working on her latest landscape. But something had gone wrong, for when we came through the front door into the parlor, we found my mother slumped on the floor. Her silk dressing gown lay in folds around her and her blond curls stuck to her head in a multicolored array. Little pots of oil paint were scattered across the floor dribbling the last of sky blue, forest green, and yellow ochre onto the Persian rug.

“Lilly, what have you done?” My father reached down and lifted her to her feet, then walked over to where the easel lay collapsed on the floor and righted it also. He peeled the wet canvas from the rug and set it on the easel, then stepped back to have a look at it.

Somewhat distracted by the bits of red fuzz from the carpet embedded in the wet paint, I fixed my eyes on the canvas, trying to sort out the swirls of color into a cohesive image. My mother waited silently for our verdict. She seemed, in that moment, as fragile as a sparrow. I was relieved when my father broke the silence with his jovial critique.

“Why Lilly, it is the spitting image of Mono Lake. Yes, here are the islands in the center, and here the mountains rising up in the background. It is quite an impressive site, just as we saw it that day.” Two summers before, my father had taken us on a trip to the lake on the narrow gauge railroad that brought us firewood from the lumber mill on its southern shore. I remember how much my mother enjoyed that rare outing, saying over and over that the lake reminded her of the San Francisco Bay.

“It’s a fine painting, Mother,” I said. She moaned.

“What was that, Lilly?”

“No, Father, she didn’t say anything. She only made a sound.”

“Not good enough!” Mother wailed. Her sticky, colorful curls quivered like bunting in a light breeze.

“That’s not true, dear,” my father said. “You are a fine artist. It’s these fools in this town who don’t appreciate it. Look around at all the beauty in this parlor! Every day, I come home and think, who else has so many beautiful works of art on their walls? Maybe just Leland Stanford, Randal Hearst, and me.” He reached out to brush back her sticky hair. She slapped his arm away, smearing paint on the cuff of his sleeve.

“I’m not talking about the stupid painting," she said. “It’s me. I’ll never be good enough, not in Bodie.”

“Of course you are. I married you, didn’t I?”

At this she let out a wild scream and shook her head as if fending off a swarm of bees. Oil droplets sprayed in all directions, and I looked out the window to see if anyone could have heard. Mortlock had long moved on, and the street was deserted.

My mother stopped shaking and screaming, but she was still furious. “I am so sick of hearing about how you did me this grand favor by marrying me. If you’d wanted to do something for me, you would have taken me away from this awful place. You would have taken me somewhere people didn’t know me, where I could have been a regular woman.”

My father looked at the paint-spattered rug. “Ruthie, why don’t you go in the kitchen and start boiling water. I think your mother needs a bath.”

As I lit the stove and poured water into pots, I could hear their voices in the parlor, still going back and forth as they always did. Hers was like a mournful violin, his like a jolly French horn hopelessly out of step with the violin. Together they made a dissonant sound like musicians trying to play a duet, but each playing a different piece of music. And it never mattered what they were playing since it was always a variation on the same theme.

Buy the book:

Amazon:  getBook.at/AFenceAroundHer

iTunes:   https://itun.es/us/qzAQeb.l

Kobo:  https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/a-fence-around-her  

Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/664339 

About Brigid Amos:

Brigid Amos’ young adult historical fiction has appeared in The MacGuffin, The Storyteller, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Words of Wisdom. A produced playwright, she co-founded the Angels Playwriting Collective and serves on the board of the Angels Theatre Company. She is also an active member of Women Writing the West and the Nebraska Writers Guild. Although Brigid left a nugget of her heart behind in the California Gold Country, most of it is in Lincoln, Nebraska where she currently lives with her husband.

Connecting with Brigid:

Join Brigid’s mailing list:  http://www.brigidamos.com/mailing-list-signup.html

Like Brigid on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/brigidamoswriter/?fref=ts

Follow Brigid on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Brigid_Amos

Visit Brigid’s website:       http://www.brigidamos.com/