New Covers: The Shadow Series Trilogy

With the release of Shadow's Fall, we decided to update the covers for the entire trilogy. The changes were minor, but the covers look better than before.

E-book cover

Print-on-Demand Cover

Large-print cover

E-book cover

Print-on-Demand cover

Large-print cover

Print-on-Demand cover

E-book cover

Large-print cover

First Chapter: Shadow Trap by C.M. Simpson

 Shadow Trap is the second novel in the Shadow series trilogy. The series started with Shadow’s Rise, which was released on January 1, 2013, Australian Eastern Standard Time, and will be completed by the forthcoming Shadow’s Fall.

Exchanged by the gods, so he can better suit their purpose, thargramorg priest Gilzereet Urkhrist must now travel to the distant realm of Thargood in order to discover the Old One’s prison and prevent his escape. Accompanied by Vorgren, Tara, Ailina and four apprentices, he flees the temple of his new god as the current pantheon faces down Beauwallin’s most savage attack yet. With the Old One gathering power more quickly than before, will the support of the gods be sufficient to give them a chance to contain him?

Shadow Trap is currently available from Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, DriveThruFiction, iTunes, and Nook.

 First Chapter:

The temple deeps were cool and quiet. Tara stalked them, hiding from the light cast by flickering lanterns, sliding from shadow to shadow in swift silence—focused on the game’s intent.

Ahead of her, round that wine cask and to the left, lay her target, chosen by the master of the game, a pre-adolescent child. She risked a swift glance beyond the corner. A man stood next to another cask of fine wine, his straw-gold hair gleaming. The blue streaks that marred its sheen glistened, declaring him to have been a servant of Berveragna, the goddess of darkness and night.

He was her master, and the one who had insisted they play the game, as training and something to keep their minds off their confinement. It was also part punishment for their refusal to acknowledge him as anything less than their master and superior.

The man’s dark-colored cape swished around fine, black boots as he stepped away from the cask, a glass filled with sparkling amber in one hand. His gaze swept over the casks behind which Tara hid and she froze in the cloak of their shadow.

There was a guard. In this game, her target had been teamed with a partner; it made the challenge harder. The guard was big, a tall man of barbarian descent, a Northlander—Vorgren.

She couldn’t see the guard; the straw-haired man appeared to be alone. Tara glanced behind her, along the row of casks, just as the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle. He was here, the big barbarian, for she knew he never strayed far from the side of his master and friend. Tara edged forward to the end of the casks. The man with the yellow hair had returned to his seat at the table, and picked up a piece of parchment. It gleamed like rich cream in the lantern light.

Tara slid back behind the casks and looked for the next patch of shadow to move to. There was none. She cursed inwardly at her lack of forethought. It was a mistake her first master would never have tolerated. She couldn’t reach another piece of shelter without being seen from the table. Memories of the last time she had stalked through another cellar flickered to life in her mind, but she forced herself to block them out. There had been another northlander then—Chariuk. And his partner had possessed hair the color of silvered snow, Sussurianakshan, a shapeshifting ice dragon.

Shaking her head to make the memories stay away, Tara retraced her steps. Her eyes darted along the row of casks opposite. They were stacked six casks high. A strange sense of déjà vu remained, Chariuk and Sussurianakshan…

Tara stopped. Six-casks high was almost enough to touch the beams supporting floor above. Almost... She smiled. Moving as lightly and as silently as she had when she had moved across the floor, Tara turned and climbed the casks at her back. She heard someone moving at the far end of the casks—the man with the straw-colored hair. Tara paused, another shadow amongst the racks of wine. She looked down the row of casks towards the oasis of lamplight. A figure, its hair a golden nimbus around its head, stood in the gap between the two rows of casks, his gaze searching the shadows.

The ex-priest paused, staring down the aisle for almost a minute. Tara froze. She was sure she’d made no noise. It was a duel of wits, his searching gaze against her ability to stay as still as the narrow shadow between the casks. By the time he had returned to the lamp’s light, her fingertips were aching with the effort of clinging to the side of her wine-barrel cliff. As the sound of his steps receded, Tara began to climb once more. She had only two feet more before the top of the casks. They were the longest two feet she had ever had to cover.

When she reached the top of the casks she crouched, looking along the row to make sure she was alone. Vorgren was well-known for his ability to climb. Indeed, the northlander possessed an elegance and grace that made even the most accomplished of cat-burglars grow green with envy. With a careful look around, Tara reached upwards to the nearest beam. Her fingers found purchase on the edge of the beam and gripped. Easing her weight onto her arms, Tara hauled herself up onto the beam’s wooden surface.

The barbarian grinned into her face, his green eyes twinkling with malicious delight. Chariuk! Tara gasped and pushed backwards, off the beam. Quick as she was, the barbarian was almost as fast. Tara felt his fingertips brush the back of her wrist as she dropped towards the casks.

And now he was not the only danger. As she landed, she heard the soft rustle of cloth on the casks ahead of her. She knew, before she turned her head to look, who it was that was coming towards her. The master had the ears of a cat!

The man’s hair had become dull creamy blur in the unlit heights between the beams and casks. Tara took a swift step backwards. The beam above her creaked, and Tara ducked. The man with yellow hair swept towards her across the top of the casks and the grace of his movements reminded her, again, of a wild-cat.

Tara dropped into a crouch on top of the casks, preparing to roll over the edge. The beam above gave another creak and the barbarian’s feet touched the edge of the cask behind her. Now she stood between them. She rolled anyway, using the lightest touch of her fingertips on the edge of the cask to guide her as she dropped to the floor. Again the barbarian moved, trying to intercept her. This time he was faster than she. His hand closed around her wrist and jerked her to a halt.

Someone dropped past her, the master, all of him a blur now, and not just his hair. Tara tucked her legs up, out of the reach of his grasping hands. The barbarian began to swing her out from the casks. Tara flailed vainly with her free hand as he released his hold on her and let her fall. The yellow-haired one was waiting to catch her before she landed.

“Game over,” he said as his arms closed around her.

“Game over,” Tara agreed, letting the tension drain from her limbs.

“My turn,” a small voice demanded, from the shadows of the rack of casks.

They turned and Tara sensed the barbarian pause at the top of the casks. The shadows parted and a young elf stood before them. Child didn’t do her justice. She was past what humans termed ‘childhood’, having seen more summers than Tara’s seventeen.

“Wraither!” the man snapped in annoyance.

“Yes, Master?” the child replied, her face a mask of solemn attentiveness.

The man glared at her but Tara could see the quiet smile that hid behind his lips. The child could see it as well but no hint of an answering smile touched her face.

“My turn, Master?”

The man ducked his head and Tara was reminded how much of him was not a man. The pointed tips of his ears and the angular features of his face shouted elf! to the world and the green and brown hue of his skin shrieked thargramorg!

Thargramorg—a race of elves with skin the blotched color of night-struck trees. Something that should frighten her more than Chariuk and his master, the thargramorg were rumored to dwell in the darkest centers of forests, in the deepest chasms of the mountains and even in the mountains themselves. They were also rumored to be worshippers of the dark gods and of demons. They were said to be shapeshifters and, worse, butchers when it came to their raids on human settlements.

Tara was not afraid. This was one thargramorg, or beast-elf, which she could not fear. She had seen him in the depths of despair, drunk and full of pain—and she had seen him loyal to friends, placing himself mortal danger to free them from an old power that sought to use their lives to fuel its freedom. Those friends were safe now, traveling with them to fulfil a requirement of the gods.

Since their arrival at the temple, Gilzereet no longer tried to drink the pain of his goddess’s rejection into wine-soaked numbness. He still felt that pain and he kept it well-hidden although, Tara knew, it bubbled to the surface when he thought his companions were asleep.

A thud on the flagstone floor of the cellar broke into her reflection and the barbarian landed beside her. Tara jumped in startlement and the big man chuckled.

“Gotcha,” he whispered, nudging her in the ribs.

“Gotcha, yourself,” she grinned back.

“Your turn,” the thargramorg agreed, speaking to the child.

The child, almost as much elf as the thargramorg and bearing the same splotched skin and amber-colored eyes as her master, gave a skip of delight.

“Now what game shall we play?” the thargramorg pretended to ponder, rubbing his chin with his forefinger.

“Why don’t you ask young Wraith what she wants to play?” the barbarian suggested.

Tara smiled; she had seen this word game before, albeit between brothers and sisters of a far-distant court. Gilzereet had been right to insist they pass the time in training. She began to glide quietly back into the shadows, but the barbarian’s hand on her shoulder made her stop. He drew her back into the dim light of the walkway and shook his head at her. Tara shrugged her shoulders and sighed.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said, just as the thargramorg asked the child what she wanted to play.

“Stalkers!” the child shrieked in delight.

The thargramorg smiled.

“And who are you going to stalk?”

“You,” the child answered, managing a sinister grin.

“Really?” the thargramorg asked, “and what about Tara?”

“Ah,” said the child, wagging a finger in front of his face, “that would be telling. Off you go.”

As the thargramorg walked down the aisle of casks, the child approached Tara.

“No listening,” she admonished the barbarian, as he bent down to hear what she whispered in Tara’s ear.

Tara smiled at the child’s choosing of her target and stepped back into the shadow of the casks. She watched as the child whispered a name into the barbarian’s ear, but did not hear whom he was to pursue, and then she waited until he had walked away.

With the child scampering after the thargramorg to tell him his target, Tara began to climb the casks. Up there, in the dust-covered shadows, she began to stalk the temple deeps once more.

END CHAPTER 1

 

If you would read more, Shadow Trap is currently available from Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, DriveThruFiction, iTunes, and Nook.

New Release: Shadow Trap by C.M. Simpson

Released three months earlier than anticipated.
 
Shadow Trap is the second novel in the Shadow series trilogy. The series started with Shadow’s Rise, which was released on January 1, 2013, Australian Eastern Standard Time, and will be completed by the forthcoming Shadow’s Fall.

Exchanged by the gods, so he can better suit their purpose, thargramorg priest Gilzereet Urkhrist must now travel to the distant realm of Thargood in order to discover the Old One’s prison and prevent his escape. Accompanied by Vorgren, Tara, Ailina and four apprentices, he flees the temple of his new god as the current pantheon faces down Beauwallin’s most savage attack yet. With the Old One gathering power more quickly than before, will the support of the gods be sufficient to give them a chance to contain him?

Shadow Trap is currently available from Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, DriveThruFiction, iTunes, and Nook.

First Chapters: Shadow's Rise by C.M. Simpson

While Fisherpriest was C.M. Simpson's first full-length published novel, Shadow's Rise was her first novel, taking almost ten years to complete and undergoing several rewrites before being allowed out in public. It is a slightly different story to what it used to be, but the main tale remains the same.

When the gods discover an ancient power has suborned a king, and now menaces their domains, they must find agents to act on their behalf. Will a goddess’s temper over losing a favorite to the cause stand in their way? Or the capture of one of their chosen mean the attempt is doomed to fail before it has begun?

Shadow’s Rise is the first in a dark fantasy trilogy, containing strong elements of horror. It describes the rise of a group of heroes, chosen by the gods to bring down an emerging dark power.

Shadow's Rise is available from Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, CreateSpace and DriveThruFiction. 

Chapter 1: Freedom's Price

Gilzereet caught the carriage just after it left the Graglecrock city mansion. He tipped the driver, paying him for his silence and the risk he took, and easing the man’s terror with a single golden coin. Skill and secrecy was what he paid for, loyalty was what he inadvertently bought. The coachman gave him all three.

The carriage slowed as it turned from the estate, hesitated long enough for Gilzereet to swing aboard, and sped up before anyone noticed it had collected a passenger. Despite the gathering dusk, Gilzereet wore the hood of his cloak pulled low, and long gloves to hide the skin of his hands. The coachman knew him only as an important member of the thieves’ guild. The man didn’t realize he was also its head or that he was of a different race.

Tonight Gilzereet intended to meet more of his kind, and buy his freedom from them with the life and freedom of another. He lounged back in the padded velvet and leather comfort of the duke’s coach and wondered what the Duke Gareth Aster would say if he knew exactly who was using it that night. He might not be amused that it was used by the guildmaster of Escarlion’s most powerful thieves’ guild, and a cat burglar convicted of breaching the kingdom’s security by breaking into the Harbor Master’s office.

The coach wheel’s rumbled over cobbles, the steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves barely breaking until the coachman approached the city gates. Outside the coach, rough voices asked the coachman his business in leaving the city so close to night. Inside the coach, Gilzereet tensed, ready to react should the guardsmen decide to search his chosen transport.

“Who knows what passes through the master’s mind,” he heard the coachman reply in a brusque tone hinting at resentment. “I get paid to do as I’m told, when I’m told, and I don’t get paid to ask the master why.”

It was the right answer for the guards and, after hearing them deliver the traditional caution that the gates would close for the night and not open again until morning, Gilzereet felt the coach move forward once more. The coachman took it through the gates at a walk, as though hesitant to leave the protection of the city walls. For all Gilzereet knew, that might be exactly how the man was feeling, but it also matched his instructions.

Waiting until he heard the gates clunk shut behind him, Gilzereet opened the coach door and slipped out onto the verge. With the bulk of the vehicle shielding him from the gate, he looked back at the wall until he saw the man waiting at its base.

Mavlock. The thief had failed him, gotten caught stealing some papers from the Harbor Master’s office, and been sentenced to die on the gibbet at the crossroads a mile from the city gates. Now he stood, his arms crossed, rubbing his hands against his biceps as though he felt the coming cold of night.

Gilzereet felt a small smile curl his lips. The man should be feeling the cold. He should be feeling a cold worse than the dampness of the rising mist and the encroaching dark. Moving swiftly and silently, Gilzereet slipped from the shadow of the coach, toward the base of the wall. Behind him, the coachman drew his vehicle to a halt. Clucking his tongue and shaking his head, the man made a fuss of dismounting from the driver’s seat and moving to inspect the horses’ hooves and harness.

Glancing toward his target, Gilzereet saw that Mavlock had tucked himself closer to the base of the wall. The guildmaster’s smile widened just enough to show a little fang. Mavlock was competent, but he had signed the guild agreement when he joined, and knew there would be a reckoning for his release.

“A child to one such as me.”

Gilzereet made all of them swear it, and as a result, had never once failed to make the required payment for his own freedom. A small part of him felt guilty at the sacrifice he made, but another part of him reveled in the deceit. He never traded them for just one child. He traded them for life. Theirs for his. Sliding forward, he noted that Mavlock had fallen for the coachman’s routine. Gilzereet focused on blending with the rising mist and ghosted towards the soon-to-be-ex cat burglar.

Mavlock didn’t see his approach, startling when Gilzereet’s hand descended on his shoulder.

“Guildmaster Urkhrist,” Mavlock stuttered, his blue eyes wide. “I… I did not hear you come.”

Gilzereet did not reply, schooling his face to an impassive mask as he surveyed the man he’d chosen to pay his debt. Blue eyed and dark haired, Mavlock’s fair skin was pale against the grey stone wall.

“Come,” Gilzereet ordered, and, sliding past him, led him toward the coach standing a short distance from the city gates. “We have but little time.”

Gilzereet wound back through the mist, noting how the coachman had finished his round of the horses’ feet and was now making a show of checking the reins. The man would start on the wheels next, but that would be stretching it. The guildmaster snaked his way through the door and into the coach, noting when Mavlock followed. The burglar pushed a velvet cushion aside to settle in the corner farthest from his master.

When the man was seated, Gilzereet drew his dagger and used the hilt to rap on the front wall of the coach. He didn’t miss Mavlock’s flinch as his forearm brushed the man’s shoulder.

“The same carriage will bring you back,” Gilzereet said, causing Mavlock to startle once more. Gilzereet smiled, as though to reassure the man. “You shouldn’t believe all the stories you hear about the thargramorg,” he said. “There are clans, and not all of them are responsible for the deeds of which you’ve been told.”

“Mavlock nodded. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m not used to… not used to…”

“Not used to selling yourself for freedom?” Gilzereet asked, leaning back against the leather as the coach lurched forward. He watched as Mavlock licked his lips nervously, but the man only nodded once more, before wrapping his arms across his chest and closing his eyes.

Gilzereet watched as the thief settled into near-sleep. While the driver had been paid, and agreed to stop outside the city gates, he’d warned the guildmaster it wouldn’t be for long. It still seemed that an eternity passed before Gilzereet heard the driver clamber into his seat, and felt the coach lurch forward beneath him. Using a gloved hand, he tweaked the curtain aside and watched the dusk descend into darkness, and darkness grow to full-blown night. Letting the curtain fall back, he took an hour glass from his pocket, and turned it, watching as the sand began to fall.

He did not need light to see by. His eyes were those of a hunting cat, and he had enchanted the sand so it gave off a very faint glow. When the last grain had started its descent, he leant forward, rapping the end of his cane on the front of the carriage ceiling. Numerous dents in the wood paneling showed it was an action oft repeated.

Mavlock woke with a start, reaching for the dagger he no longer wore at his belt.

Gilzereet rested a hand against the man’s chest and shushed him gently.

“Peace. This is our stop.”

“Peace,” Mavlock repeated, and some of the fear left his eyes.

The coach slowed, and Gilzereet turned towards the door. Behind him, Mavlock rose to his feet and braced himself against the carriage ceiling. When they were going no faster than walking pace, Gilzereet unlatched the door and jumped lightly down onto the road. Pivoting, he walked beside the coach and offered Mavlock a hand to steady his descent. There was no point in delivering damaged goods to the hunters.

Hunters. Gilzereet shivered. He would be meeting more of them tonight. He wondered which of the clans had won the honor of collecting his tribute. Tree Cat, Tree Rat, Sky Falcon and Cavern Spider—all these clans produced the best Hunters. An elite force, the Hunters were charged with tracking down and returning any who tried to leave clan lands, be they thargramorg or slave.

Gilzereet had escaped them once, then twice more, before they caught up with him and struck the deal allowing his continued absence from the homelands—ten lives for every year he had spent in freedom against their wishes, and two for every year he continued to dwell away from the clans; ten unspent lives, they had reiterated, lives not bereft of their youth.

Given that he had evaded them for two years before finding sanctuary within the walls of a Berveragnan temple, and that he had stayed safely within those walls for ten years more, while he learned the goddess’s ways and a new trade, there had been one hundred and twenty lives owing to start with. Add the years he had spent travelling with Ailina and her companions, and he had accumulated a debt of around two hundred lives before the Hunters had successfully captured him.

They had taken him beyond the pursuit of his friends, and the protection of his goddess, and they had forced him to accept the pact of lives, or forfeit two hundred years of his own. They would, they assured him, make sure he survived to the end of his debt.

And not much longer, he had thought, reading the confirmation in their eyes.

The Lady Berveragna had a counterpart in the thargramorgan pantheon, called Shavreet. Some said that Shavreet was just another facet of herself, others that Berveragna was a facet of the beast elves’ goddess. Whatever the details of their relationship, Shavreet resented the human goddess, and did not agree with the way she governed her domain of night. It seemed that physical darkness was not enough. Where Berveragna delighted in the occasional deception, deceit was not tolerated by the goddess of thargramorg—at least, not when it was practiced by one thargramorg on another. It was a thing of pride to be able to deceive and disadvantage members of a race not their own.

Memories of those days of confinement flickered, unwanted, across Gilzereet’s mind, and he shivered, shaking his head to rid himself of them. His goddess felt his pain and grew ominously silent. His capture had embarrassed her greatly, counterpart or not, she had failed to keep her servant safe, and it had shamed her before two pantheons for the beast-elf goddess had not kept her failure a secret.

With a sharp rap on the side of the coach, Gilzereet draped an arm across Mavlock’s shoulders, and pointed towards a nearby stand of trees.

“They will meet us there,” he said. “Stay close.”

The failed cat burglar licked his lips and nodded. His eyes betrayed almost no feeling, but Gilzereet could scent the man’s nervousness, see the tremor of fear that ran across his muscles. He gave Mavlock no time to think, instead sliding his arm from the man’s shoulders, and hurrying quietly into the night. The burglar followed.

Within moments, the shadows in the copse had engulfed them, and Gilzereet could hear Mavlock breathing hard in the dark. He placed a hand on the man’s arm, feeling him startle.

“Not far now,” he said, soothing the man’s panic with his voice.

He felt the air shift in the shelter of the trees, a soft breeze, smelt a scent like the one that preceded the winter’s rain, heard something rustle through the leaves. Beside him, Mavlock drew another shaky breath and held it, as though fighting to stop his breathing sounding so harsh. Gilzereet pulled him further into the trees.

They crossed the boundary, the grove much larger on the inside than it was on the outside. It was more tangled and old than was possible for the little copse of trees they had entered. Gilzereet did not give the thief time to think about the grove’s age or impossible depth, but drew him further through the underbrush until they came to a clearing where the afternoon sun still shone.

Mavlock did not pause, but walked on in wonderment, as though mesmerized by the play of the sun’s light across leaves he had never seen before. Gilzereet drew him to a halt when they reached the clearing’s centre.

“We are here,” he said, and his words were both warning to his guildsman and an announcement of the Hunters themselves.

Movement amongst the trees drew their attention.

A woman, whose gold skin was streaked with slashes of green, stepped through the hanging leaves and came to stand in front of them. Gilzereet’s hand tensed on Mavlock’s shoulder, preparing to stop the man from making a run for it. The woman smiled.

She was wearing a sheath of finely spun spider silk, split so that it revealed most of her thigh. Her gaze passed across Mavlock as though he didn’t exist, and she addressed Gilzereet in a tone as distant and cold as the southern mountains.

“What is the human doing here?” she asked.

“He pays a debt to me by providing the service,” Gilzereet replied, and he could see that the meaning underlying his words was not lost on the woman.

She laughed, a short bark of amusement that was quickly gone as she turned to look at Mavlock, tilting her head from one side to another as she inspected him. Slowly, she circled the thief, and only Gilzereet’s grip on his shoulder prevented Mavlock from turning to face her.

Another fine tremor shook the man, and Gilzereet knew Mavlock had come to recognize he had something to fear. The woman’s next words made the thief jump.

“He will do. Your terms remain the same?”

“Unless the Hunters have changed their price.” Gilzereet suppressed a smile as he replied.

The woman’s lips quirked as she responded.

“Hunters do not change the terms of their pacts.”

Mavlock turned his head to look at Gilzereet’s face, but before he could ask the question on his mind, the grass in the clearing swayed, and four more golden beings rose around them. The thief’s eyes widened and he started to shake as the serpentine forms thickened and grew limbs. Gilzereet tightened his grip, as he greeted the newcomers.

“Clan Viper,” he said, and could not keep the awe from his voice. “I am honored.”

“We fought for the honor,” the woman replied, her pupils upright keyholes as she met Gilzereet’s gaze and held it. A scale-like shimmer marred her skin and she flicked a surprisingly long tongue towards one of those who had risen from the grass to join them. Gilzereet saw the creature bow his head in reply as Mavlock turned to his guildmaster in horror.

“Master,” he said, and dropped to his knees, “you can’t leave me with these…”

Gilzereet let go of the man’s shoulder and stepped away. By the time Mavlock thought to reach for him, he was more than an arm’s length away and it was far too late.

“Master!” Mavlock cried as two of the golden-skinned men laid their hands on his arms.

Gilzereet met his bondsman’s terrified gaze and made his voice stern.

“I made a pact with the Hunters, Mavlock,” he said. “And you made a pact with me. My pact is fulfilled. Make sure you honor yours.”

With that, Gilzereet turned to the lady.

“He is yours until the first successful birth, and then he must be returned. Those were our terms.”

“Maste—” Mavlock cried, only to be cut short by the open-handed blow that struck his face, and a rough voice cut across his protest.

“You have no master. Bow before our Mistress of Venom, Tanizeth, Third Lady of Clan Denegrath Viper. It is her mark you will bear on your chest and her orders you will obey with your heart."

       Gilzereet did not look towards Mavlock as he bowed to Tanizeth and left the clearing. Behind him, on the other side of the distance bridged by Clan Viper’s magic, Mavlock raised his voice once more. The agony Gilzereet heard there made him wince, and he remembered that Denegrath Viper marked its slaves with a dilution of the poison possessed by the clan’s namesake and totem. Venom and acid, the scars remained for life.  

*END-EXCERPT*

Should you want to read more, Shadow's Rise is available from Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, CreateSpace and DriveThruFiction. 

New Release: C.M. Simpson - Shadow's Rise

Shadow's Rise was released on the 1st of January 2013.

When the gods discover an ancient power has suborned a king, and now menaces their domains, they must find agents to act on their behalf. Will a goddess’s temper over losing a favorite to the cause stand in their way? Or the capture of one of their chosen mean the attempt is doomed to fail before it has begun?

Shadow’s Rise is the first in a dark fantasy trilogy, containing strong elements of horror. It describes the rise of a group of heroes, chosen by the gods to bring down an emerging dark power.

Shadow's Rise is available on Smashwords, Kindle, iTunes, Kobo, and DriveThruFiction.