Veronica: Today's guest author talks about her Lost Ancients series!
Marie: Hello and welcome to the mayhem! I am the author of
a six-book fantasy series called The Lost Ancients.
It all began with The Glass Gargoyle:
Archeologist Taryn St. Giles has spent her life mining the ruins
of the elves who vanished from the Four Kingdoms a thousand years ago. But when
her patrons begin disappearing too—and then turning up dead—she finds herself
unemployed, restless, and desperate. So she goes looking for other missing
things: as a bounty hunter.
Tracking her first fugitive—the distractingly handsome and
strangely charming Alric—she unearths a dangerous underworld of warring crime
lords, demonic squirrels, and a long-lost elven artifact capable of unleashing
a hell on earth.
Chased, robbed, kidnapped, and distressingly low on rent money,
Taryn just wants one quiet beer and
to catch her fugitive. But there’s more to
Alric than his wicked grin—is he a wanted man or the city’s only hope? With
menacing mages in pursuit and her three alcoholic faery sidekicks always in her
hair, Taryn’s curiosity might finally solve the mystery of the elves… or be the
death of her and destroy her world.
Since then, two more
books have been born: The Obsidian Chimera and The Emerald Dragon. More drunken
faeries, hot elves, and beings bent on world destruction. You might think three
books would be enough. But those damn drunken faeries got really toasted one
night and pulled back the curtain on how huge this issue was, and their real
role in it. Now this is a closed series- aka the entire thing is ONE giant
story. Finding out that the faeries had been holding out on me, and doubled the
tale of what happened, was a bit of a shock!
But, you gotta do what the voices tell you to
do, so I dutifully sat down and began the next book, The Sapphire Manticore. The
rest of the story will nicely round out with two more big healthy books beyond
the Manticore. I SWEAR- this will be a hexalogy. Seriously, after what happens
in book six, not even an armada of drunken faeries could keep going!
With all the craziness going around writing a
trilogy, that was really a hexalogy, I thought this nice lovely blog might be a
great place to do a cover reveal for The Sapphire Manticore. The faeries love
this one—they finally bribed my cover artist to put them in—they’re the colored
streaks going by.
Here’s where it all starts (excerpt from Glass Gargoyle):
Damn and double
damn, Crusty Bucket was drunk again.
I looked around
as a snippet of song rang out over the noise of the pub. A song sung by only
one creature I knew—my faery, Crusty Bucket—and only when she was dangerously
drunk. I had no idea where she was in the pub. The Shimmering Dewdrop was deep
in a raging bar fight and, from the bodies littering the floor, it had started
long before I pushed open the door. Pretty much the norm for a Saturday night .
. . except this was Tuesday night and the mayhem seemed more focused than
usual. The smell of spilled booze and cheap tallow candles was far stronger
than it had been for a long time.
I took a deep
breath and shook off some of the rain that had hounded me the entire way here.
Maybe I was wrong, maybe I hadn’t heard her. But again the high pitched singing
flew over the noise of the fighting.
“Bring me the dancing minkies!”
I froze,
wondering if anyone else heard it. Faeries aren’t beloved by most
creatures—drunken ones are often hunted down and smashed. Not that they stay
smashed, mind you.
The last thing I
needed right now were my faeries out and about. And drunk. The main reason I’d
taken this bounty hunting job to find this Alric person was to make sure those
tiny hooligans and I stayed off the streets.
I’d been chasing him for the last two hours in the pouring rain, only to be
told that he’d gone to ground in my pub. No, I don’t own the Shimmering
Dewdrop, but I've spent plenty of time and cash here. The fact that the son of
a hag was holed up in my home away from home was enough to annoy any
self-respecting woman.
Crusty’s song
trailed off—most likely she’d jumped into another bottle of ale—and I let
myself ignore her for the moment. The thin whistling sound of a chair flying at
me suggested that ignoring the pub fight would be more difficult. I ducked,
then looked around to see that far more chairs were being used as weapons than
as seating.
I didn’t have
time to get involved in a fight right now. I needed to find Alric, deliver him
to the wizard, Cirocco, and then pay my landlady with the bounty money.
Otherwise, my faeries and I would be on the streets by tomorrow night. And it
wouldn’t be long before they did something to land us all in jail.
Marie is a fantasy and
science fiction reader with a serious writing addiction. If she wasn't writing
about all the people in her head, she'd be lurking about coffee shops annoying
total strangers with her stories. So really, writing is a way of saving the
masses.
When not saving the masses from coffee shop
shenanigans, Marie likes to visit the UK and keeps hoping someone will give her
a nice summer home in the Forest of Dean. She has out the first three books of
her humorous fantasy series—The Lost Ancients (mayhem, magic, and drunken
faeries!) and the first book (Warrior Wench) in her space opera-The AsarlaÃ
Wars.
To find out more about her books, and future
series, please visit her website--especially if you
happen to have a small cottage to give her.
Twitter: @MarieAndreas1
Thank you for having me here!
