Spell of Dark Castle, sequel

Finally, after so many years of waiting to get this one out, it's here. Sequel to Spell of the Black Unicorn. 

Spell of the Dark Castle. 

It's a romping fantasy that takes place on Zofia's planet, where anything goes, since my imagination knows no bounds. Where Zofia meets an alchemist from 18th century (really much older), Earth, named Saint Germain.

Here is description as it is on Amazon:

After Zofia and her family return to their world, everything should be fine... but is not.

Zofia's first assignment as a Knight is to go to Dark Castle under cover as an Ugwump - mortal - to spy on the owner, Saint Germain, who is believed to be a vampire.

On her trip to Dark Castle, Zofia meets Myron; a vampire with many secrets. After they encounter the handsome Saint Germain, Zofia uncovers truths about his past... and about their attraction for each other.

It's hardly enough description for a book that's over 600 pages long. Here is what I sent them to put into description, and reads almost like a book itself, but here is a more detailed description which does it justice.

Zofia and family return to their world. All should be happy, but is not. Although son, Eltony, is thrilled about going to a school where he can practice his sorcery, his sister, Blanch, is moody and depressed, mostly about missing her 16^th birthday, but finds that such a party is set up in her honor in a castle, and she suddenly has many suitors.

In the meantime, jealousy drives a wedge between Zofia and husband, Dorian, when Stephen has made sure of Zofia's nomination as a Knight (First woman Knight in ages). Her first assignment is to go to Dark Castle under cover as an Ugwump (mortal), librarian in order to spy on the owner, Saint Germain, who is believed to be a vampire. (But he is really an 18^th century Earth alchemist who has successfully made the Elixir of Life, which has kept him alive for centuries.)

During her travel to Dark Castle, Zofia meets Myron, who she realizes right away is a vampire. But she has a secret too, so they agree to keep one another's secrets. Myron helps with her trunks up the long stairs to Dark Castle. Although Myron was retained by St. Germain to help get her there safely, it's obvious Myron has different ideas. Fortunately, Zofia is above his vampire tricks.

The next day she meets Saint Germain. While he is practicing a dueling match with his servant Jacques, his is wounded, but the wound heals quickly, so suspicion grows for Zofia. But, no one is as they seem, and Jacques, in turn, becomes suspicious of Zofia. She learns his big secret in due time. What Zofia uncovers about the handsome Saint Germain is unexpected. So is their attraction for each other.

Zofia, who is pregnant, tries to keep this a secret for as long as she can, but St. Germain figures this out soon enough.

Dorian, meanwhile, is on the trail of a cult that is at work in the village. They have a fiendish plot to bring forth monsters who once ruled their planet. Zofia's and Dorian's paths cross as they make attempts to stop them, but these rogue wizards are using Dark Castle's powerful ley lines, and St. Germain's time-travel invention, to bring forth an alchemist from the past. It is later learned he and St. Germain were once mortal enemies.

Attempts on Zofia's life come from all directions—from cunning vampires, to a contriving waitress, to wicked wizards—and yet she manages to out maneuver them one way or another until they finally capture her for the wizards' final spell to bring back the monstrous (half-man and half-crocodile) Helsingas.

Will Saint Germain's use of the Philosopher's Stone help him save both Zofia and Dorian in the end, and can they stop the wizards' powerful spell before their world is taken over by these ten-foot beasts? Will Zofia and Dorian reconcile, or is it too late for them?

Zofia's Dream ~ "Spell of the Black Unicorn"

The book I am about to publish as an eBook "Spell of the Black Unicorn" took 5 years to write, create not only the characters, but their (fantasy) world, their individual coloquial words, belief systems, and yada yada. I wanted to have a story so solid that you BELIEVED in what you were reading.

The original paperback version (2008) had this dream smack dab in the very beginning--which is, as everyone knows, is a no-no. So this portion I'm sharing with you today is no longer part of the book (as an ebook).

Chill bumps shrouded Zofia Trickenbod. She wanted to Transvect the hell out of here. But where to?

Zofia peered down into a deep chasm of copper, ocher and bronze cliffs from a dizzying height. At the very bottom of a V-shaped valley, brownish-green mud bubbled thickly like soup, and smelled like rotten eggs. At least now she knew what that smell was. Jagged tips of rocky spires and stone needles jutted up from the fumarole. She couldn’t be more lost if she’d stepped through a Portal. Well, maybe she had, she just couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here, wherever the hell here was. A crisp, cerulean-blue sky canopied this canyon of wind-carved rock while the huge scarlet disk of Antares, their sun, rode the sky like an exalted stoplight from First World.

Okay, wait just a troll minute! When did she arrive back on her own world, Euphoria? And why was she standing on this rock ledge with no way down pulling in sulfur fumes?

As if this place couldn’t get more exotic, just across from her standing majestically on a high precipice, was a black unicorn. His long mane, beard and tasseled tail billowed in the breeze like ebony flags. A deadly pointed and spiraled horn sprouted from his forehead.

Wait a minute. Unicorns are usually white. Aren’t they?

At least that’s what the Immortal Paradeep had always told her.

The unicorn pawed the earth nervously, sending a spray of loose rock down the bronze and tangerine cliff side. A mist rose and undulated slowly on the rocks in front of him as he tossed his head. Black eyes roved crazily at the phenomenon. He whinnied as though sensing the force wavering beside him. The smoky mist darkened and coalesced into something solid. A tall, thin man with sallow skin and a sharply chiseled face finally appeared. He looked like a vulture in need of a ripe corpse. Long, greasy ebony hair was pulled back off his expansive brow, falling in uneven lengths over narrow shoulders.

“Zofia!” his voice issued across the chasm like a cracking whip smacking the air. Dagger-like brows slashed across his forehead. Coupled with an odd-looking, pencil-thin mustache, it gave him a formidable, somewhat mesmerizing look. But the eyes were his most prominent feature. Even though Zofia was not that close, she knew from past experience that the right eye was a glacially cool-blue, while the other was as black as a raven’s back. But both held a rapacious look in them as one brow plunged lower than the other, pinioning her. His deeply lined, age-spotted face betrayed his age. He was old, but not as old as many other wizards. She figured he could be around five hundred and fifty Euphoria years old, but no more than five hundred seventy-five, even though he was a third generation wizard. Unless she’d been drinking Merry Widow, she was pretty sure it was Vesselvod Blood standing right before her. In any case, she really didn’t want to be here now. But when she tried to use her Powers of Transvection to fly away, nothing happened. Dragon spit.

This wasn’t good. First the black unicorn, then Blood, and now her Powers had failed her. Could it get any worse? Of course Blood was the wizard who’d murdered her parents, and then came after her in search of the Stone of Irdisi when she was ten. Zofia had become the Stone’s Keeper after Blood had killed her mother, but she had not become the official Keeper until her seventeenth birthday. By that time, Blood’s Powers had been revoked by the Heathweian Council of Wizards and Immortals and sent into Hamparzum’s for the rest of his life. So, how could the ex-Dark Lord of Scyldings be out of Hamparzum’s and standing here?

Okay, Zofia take it easy, she told herself, the memory is first to go when you hit the forty mark. Blood had escaped Hamparzum’s Place of Darkness about five or so years ago. He had come looking for the Stone of Irdisi, which would give him unlimited powers.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Blood hissed maliciously.

“Me? Why?” she choked the words as though she’d swallowed dust from the parched earth.

“You know why,” he said, his sardonic smile in place, his chest filling with a deep breath. “The Stone!” His one blue eye seemed to glimmer maliciously in the strange orangy sunlight. He held a long, black scepter and wore the black robes of his clan, the Karballa Wizards of Scyldings from the northern most part of the Province. But Blood’s entire family was pretty cruel. Aside from torturing Ugwumps, he used their body parts in potions and incantations—Yuck!—which was against the Code of Ethics big time. She could think of no one more ruthless and more murderous—unless you counted the Frisian Warriors who ate their victims, or the monstrous Helsingas, who ate their victims.

Waving the black scepter high above his head, he said, “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” Zofia asked, but didn’t really want to know.

“Varro numa pythis!” his voice echoed off rock walls as though he had a bullhorn. He must have been showing off. No one used old incantations like that any more.

Zofia felt an electric tingle all around her—which always accompanied grand wizardry workings—and all at once the cliffs trembled. Brown, cinnamon, ocher and rust melted and fused together like wax under intense heat. Suddenly, she was standing on a flat stone surface. Well, at least she was down off the cliff.

“Are you ready to play?” Blood asked. “Oh—yes . . . we need the pieces.” He waved his scepter once again. “Et te invoco Salibatum!” he incanted.

An octet of angry Bloods now stood in a line in front of her, staring at her with that same wicked, imperious smile. Blood had multiplied his image several times.

Zofia shivered uncontrollably.

In the same moment, a leathery, wrinkled-faced woman with wild white-as-gossamer hair, and gray-blue eyes appeared to her left.

“Aunt Tillie?” Her full name was Ottillie Anubis. She was actually Zofia’s great aunt on her mother’s side.

On her right side, as though he had just Evasserated, a tall, handsome man with collar-length, blue-black hair and savage sapphire eyes appeared.

Eyes going wide in surprise, she uttered, “Dorian?” on a bewildered breath.

Dorian Grandier was her husband. He was dressed in royal blue robes of the Brhynoth Wizards with a golden seal of the Knights of the Witenagemont over his heart. A black wand in his hand, Dorian stared down Blood. His six foot stature gave him a few inches over Blood. Broad of shoulder, steely eyes, and a bump in what would have been a straight nose, where it had been broken in a fight. This combination made him look all the meaner.

Wait another troll minute here. Was she hallucinating? Dorian had been dead for five First World years. What on Euphoria was going on?

“Are you ready, Zofia?” The repeated question echoed in her ears.

She looked over at the line of Bloods. “Now what, you ugly bastard?” Zofia growled. Hadn’t he done plenty already?

At the same exact time, each and every Blood drew back their scepter and thrust them forward—“Destructus malefica!”—from their tips flew red bolts of fire, so hot she could feel its searing heat. It slammed into Dorian, turning him instantly into ashes that fell in a pile at Zofia’s feet.

©2008 Lorelei Bell

"Spell of the Black Unicorn" scheduled to be out by May 15th 2013

WIP Wednesday

Hello, my pretties. I'm introducing this new thing to my blog. WIP WEDNESDAY because I basically have so many Works In Progress that it might be difficult for some of you to keep track.

While I'm currently writing the 6th book in the Sabrina Strong Series, and waiting for the 3rd one to be available to all of you wonderful fans out there, I'm also working on one book which is very close to my heart--Spell of the Black Unicorn.  This was my very first self-published book. I paid a "POD" Publisher to get it into print form and place it out there back in 2008.

Since it has not been selling as a print book in a few years, I've decided to work on it some, and present it as an ebook--which would have a much lower price on it, and I'll be in total control of the pricing and so forth. It will be absolutely a self-published book.

Today I wanted to tell you a little bit about the book and how it came about. I believe I began working on it in 2003 or 2004. I was inspired by J.K.Rowling's work Harry Potter Series. I fell in love with the idea of magic and all the great characters which came from that series. I also was inspired by the TV Show Bewitched--it was one of my very favorite shows on TV while growing up. And, not to forget my love of vampires and all things weird, and whatever my imagination might dream up.

Spell of the Black Unicorn is basically about a sorceress, Zofia Trickenbod, who has come to Earth to hide from an evil sorcerer who was so evil he was placed in Hamparzums--which is magically fortified to keep all evil wizards, and nasty things inside and other people out. But when the wizard became sick, the wards all fell and the evil sorcerer, Vesselvod Blood escaped and went looking for Zofia. She doesn't know this until things begin happening around a small, quiet town where she lives. When she and her family begin seeing the black unicorn, the know that the evil sorcerer has found her, because the black unicorn is known to follow Blood everywhere (it's thought that the poor creature merely wants his white coat back, since Blood was responsible for turning him black).

Zany characters include a very nosy neighbor who constantly calls the police on Zofia believing that "something strange is going on over there"--this is reminiscent of the nosy neighbor in Bewitched who always spied on the Stevens.

Zofia, as a sorceress, has an invisible servant called a ghogal, and two cats--which are not cats, really but deadly warrior women--who happen to also be cannibals of men (why they were turned into cats).

Also, Zofia's husband, Dorian, was believed to have died at the hands of Blood. But when she opens the door to him one morning, she learns he's not exactly dead, but un-dead, as in vampire.

I'd saved a few ideas from when I thought about writing a funny book where the husband comes back as a vampire, and the wife is magically endowed for decades. I wanted something for adults, and yet be zany enough to keep anyone entertained.

At the moment, I am going through this WIP, after my beta reader, Shelly Arkon, has read through it.

I don't recall how many copies of the book I sold, but it was more than enough to get back what I spent on the POD publisher's price. Now I simply want to make it available in e-book formating so that more people can enjoy it.

Also, this having been my very first book and had been so very lucky that I had a local BORDERS in my area, I look back upon this as my dream-come-true book. I got to see my name on the cover (the cover I drew), and held it in my hands after decades of being rejected by every agent I tried. I felt validated when people who read it came up to me and told me how wonderful the book was and when the next book would be out. I was offically an author the day Spell of the Black Unicorn came out in print.

So, I hope, my dear readers, fans, and friends alike, you'll be on board when I do release this ebook--I'm hopeful this spring.