An update on the launch party for Alchemy of Glass:
As some of you know, my official book launch party was to take place at Winnetka’s The Book Stall on April 26. When that was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to do a virtual Zoom/FB Live simulcast event. I am now pleased to announce that my Zoom/FB party will be in partnership with The Book Stall.
If you pre-order or order a copy of Alchemy of Glass from The Book Stall, and send me proof via email or Tweet (with a picture), I will send you a beautiful Victorian bookplate (autographed, of course).
I hope you can join us Sunday, April 26 from 2-3 P.M. (Central Time) either on Facebook Live or by RSVP-ing to the Zoom Live event by clicking here.
News and Buzz about Alchemy of Glass:
From Amazing Stories Magazine:
Alchemy of Glass, like the first book, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Apothecary’s Curse, is a genre-bending historical/urban fantasy with its heart in Victorian literature, brain in present-day Chicago, soul in mythological tales and ballads of the British Isles.
The hero of both novels, Gaelan Erceldoune is the descendant of a character out of British legend called Thomas the Rhymer (AKA True Thomas, AKA Lord Thomas Learmont de Ercildoune). Thomas has quite a story behind him. There’s the legend and ballad, and there is the real person who lived during the thirteenth century in the Borders area of Scotland. He was said to have been a confederate of William Wallace during the Scottish war against the English. Gaelan Erceldoune was born in the late sixteenth century, some three hundred years after Thomas lived. (Read more)
Interviews with Barbara in Rising Shadow and The Civilian Reader
I’ve written a bit about the work behind the scenes of crafting a sequel here at Lost in Storyland!
Read an Excerpt (Chapter 8) in DreamForge Magazine
| Scotland, Present Day Dernwode House. A place not in existence for centuries. Yet, inexplicably, there he was. But how? And how had it taken so long to realize it? The sconces should have given it away immediately had they not been completely out of context. But the stairway. That stairway. The entrance to the monastery cellarium, its network of caves. Gaelan remembered the morning he’d carved into the bottom stair his family’s sigil—the single red rose of House Learmont. And now, more than four hundred years later, there it was, exactly where he’d engraved it. Two hypotheses vied for dominance in Gaelan’s mind. Either he’d traveled the distance from the coast to the Scottish Borders completely unaware—or he was in the throes of full-on delusion. Neither one a welcome proposition. Three hundred miles through rough terrain from the northwest coast to Eildon. This particular place, so hidden within the jaw of two hills, had been near impossible to find before it was flattened centu- ries ago. He’d never have managed it, much less with no recollection? Had he walked? Driven? Hitchhiked? On foot it would have been days and days of travel. Dazed and injured? Much longer. More than improbable. He was less fond of the more likely scenario. Hallucinations and flashbacks were nothing new to Gaelan. The torture at Bedlam. His father’s execution. Visions of Mama. Eleanor. Caitrin and wee Iain? The healing goddess Airmid. She’d come to him too, time to time. |
Gaelan’s mind had always provided a fertile landscape for such horrors and delights to conjure from his unconscious at will. To terrify or soothe. Yet, his mind had never before ventured here, to this place, neither in dream nor vision.
Yet, why would it not, other than it hadn’t? And why not now, at long last, a dream of safety he’d not felt for hundreds of years? Why not this place? And who knew what havoc the poison had wrought?
Ah, the poison . . . Was this his death, and this his singular heaven?
For the moment, Gaelan was satisfied to avoid the question and go along for the ride—wherever it took him. Not that he had much choice. And that meant, for now, up the staircase and out of the stale air of the cellarium.
The narrow, steep stairs spiraled up toward ground level, and Gaelan stayed close to the retaining wall, a small lantern his meager guide up the pitted and cracked stones.
The hospice Dernwode House had been notorious in its day. A place of mystery, its black-hooded brethren but phantoms, the remnant few of a once-grand monastery at Soutra, most of whom had been exe- cuted long before Gaelan was born. Yet, a small band survived, said the legend, haunting the Borders in perpetuity. Gaelan believed it a tale perpetrated by the brethren themselves as means to an end—keep the secret and continue their practices of medicine and scholarship. Work and study.
Yet, Dernwode, even in its veil of secrecy, became welcome sanc- tuary for those in need of its generosity, and the skill of the monks, whose medical skills were far more advanced than any known in Britain. Skills gladly offered, but only on the promise of absolute dis- cretion beyond the hospice walls, well sequestered within the arms of the Eildon Hills.
For Gaelan, Dernwode House had been sanctuary and more.
A third of the way up the stairs, Gaelan was breathless, drenched in sweat. The trek up to the surface was more arduous than he recalled; his injuries must have been worse than he’d imagined. He needed to rest.
Sitting on a mud-caked stair, he raked filthy fingers through his equally filthy hair and closed his eyes, elbows on his knees. The voice of his tutor Brother Hugh echoed softly through the dark, reminding Gaelan of the first time he’d been down these stairs as a lad of twelve and only just arrived. Turn of a new century, 1600.
“We are a house of healing, a house of learning and work. A hospice to those who have need of us, who will find our door, no matter how hidden we are—or whom we shall find, as we did you, my lad.
“Your dear papa and grandfather we considered great friends and allies and could never forsake. We worried for your safety after the execution, lad, and grieved the loss of them, both bright lights in the darkness of ignorance, which flourishes yet upon these shores.” (Read More…)
