Skies of Olympus
Eliza Raine
(Skies of Olympus, #1)
Publication date: May 11th 2019
Genres: Fantasy, Mythology, Young Adult

Twelve deadly Trials. A race for immortality. Her last chance for revenge.

Olympus is a beautiful but dangerous place, controlled by twelve Gods wielding unlimited power. Now they have devised the ultimate entertainment; a chance for their favourites to compete in twelve trials to win the ultimate prize – immortality.

Lyssa didn’t think the Gods knew who she was, until she was chosen to try out for the Trials with the crew of her old but beloved smugglers ship, the Alastor. For her the Trials are about much more than an eternal life. They’re about stopping the monster from her past gaining the one thing that would put her revenge out of reach forever. Can she face her murderous father and stop him from becoming immortal?

Join Lyssa and her crew alongside giants, centaurs, satyrs and Gods in the first of twelve episodes of this brand new YA Fantasy retelling. This is Greek mythology like you’ve never read before.

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Eliza Raine, First installment Skies of Olympus, in The Immortality Trials Series, is a creative, adventures retelling. Olympus comes to life in this richly detailed world building. The Author has created an an engaging new spin, where Olympus is controlled by twelve gods wielding unlimited power. Now they have devised a new kind of entertainment; a chance for their favourites to compete in twelve Trials to win the ultimate prize – immortality. Are main protagonist is Lyssa, who happens to be the daughter of the brutally violent Hercules. She has sworn vengeance against her father and the Gods have given her the just the opportunity our heroine needs.

Zeus and the other Gods, have set up 12 trails to find a hero and reward them and their crew with immortality. Chosen by Athena herself Lyssa is determined to beat Hercules at all cost. Raine has created a charismatic strong female lead, who captains her own ship, takes on the deadly trials alongside giants, centaurs, satyrs and gods in the first three of twelve episodes of this Greek mythology fantasy retelling This entertaining well paced read, has intriguing plot twist that lead you up to next installment.

I definitely recommend this book if you enjoy Greek mythology and Creative fantasy retelling.

Author Bio:

Eliza Raine lives near Reading in England with her husband, three cats and outrageously cute puppy. She has a BA Hons in History and has a deep-rooted passion for all types of mythology and stories about women who don’t need rescuing.
She can usually be found reading fairytale retellings, playing board games or binge-watching Netflix shows.

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Breakout
by A.M. Rose
Genre: YA Sci-fi
Release Date: June 3rd 2019
Entangled Teen

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🖤She’s Powerful Trouble

🖤Series: The Foul & Fair Series (book #1)

🖤Author: Taylor Hartley

🖤Publisher: Parliament House

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MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 2003

The two women dance cautiously around the dead.

“The lights.” Mother Mol grabs Dahlia’s arm as they creep further inside the hospital. “She

even blew out the lights.”

They inch through the darkness, clinging to each other out of necessity more than fear,

moving carefully around the bodies. The light from the full moon filters through the windows, casting long shadows along the walls. A man in a tweed jacket lies flat on his back in front of the double doors, the muscles in his face relaxed so he looks like he’s smiling. In the café nearby, the steam wand from the espresso machine screams. The outline of the barista drapes over the counter, and beneath her, another body lies curled like a sleeping child. Entire families slump against each other in the waiting rooms. The nurse behind the admit desk stares straight up at the ceiling, seeing nothing.

The women expected the usual two corpses. Nothing like this.

“We should leave, Sister,” Mol says. “The power to do something like this…the girl’s evil.” “What about ancient duty and dying breeds?” Dahlia tenses beside her. “If we don’t protect

her, who will?”

“She isn’t like us.” The grip on her arm tightens. “Look around you, child.”

“I’m not a child anymore, Mother Mol,” Dahlia hisses. “But when you found me all those

years ago, do you remember what you told me? You said I could fix the evil things I’d done. And this girl, she deserves that same chance, don’t you think?”

That fact is written on Dahlia’s bones. Pushing past Mol, she closes her eyes and lets the magic wake inside her, lets it pulse and spiral through the air, searching.

“Where are you, lady?” The words come out of her mouth and surprise her.

Mother Mol huffs beside her. “Novices.”

“There.”

Dahlia feels the baby’s fear well up inside her own body: how dark everything is, and how

lonely. She’s close, on the second floor maybe. The elevator on the far wall doesn’t work; the girl’s short-circuited the entire building. Dahlia cocks her head at Mol, and together they head toward the staircase at the end of the hall. They tiptoe around the nurses and doctors who lie sprawled on the steps.

At the top of the stairs, Dahlia hears it: a loud, enchanting wail. Zigzagging around more corpses, she races toward the sound. She’s not sure what it is, only that she’s desperate to hold that little girl, see her and know that maybe the Coven’s not doomed after all.

The baby lies in the room at the end of the hall. With the curtains drawn closed, it’s impossible to see anything, so Dahlia flicks her wrist, and the fabric draws apart to let the moonlight in.

The child’s father lies draped over the foot of the bed, hugging his wife’s feet. There’s a look of joy on his ebony face and tears of blood in his eyes.

He never knew he was dying.

The mother’s eyes are closed, neck bent low toward the infant cradled in her arms. Dahlia feels the sob sitting in her chest and lets it go. She thought this part would be easy, she’d heard about it so many times. But this mother wanted so badly to kiss her beautiful daughter, who cries like she has four lungs instead of two, and it doesn’t make sense. Dahlia bends down slowly and touches her lips to the mother’s forehead.

“Rest well,” she says, pressing her forehead against the woman’s. Her skin is cold. “We’ll take care of her.”

She hears Mol moving behind her as she bends her knees and takes the child in her arms.

“Sister, we cannot take her with us,” Mol says. It’s the first time Dahlia’s ever heard her frightened. “I’ve never seen this kind of carnage before, and I’ve seen terrible things. This isn’t natural. This child is our end. I know it.”

“Why would nature give us something we don’t need?” Dahlia asks, eyes fixed on the girl. Her grey eyes spark in the light. “If we let her die, we violate every law we swear to live by, don’t we? I can’t do that again. I won’t.”

“She could kill us all,” Mol says. “There’s no way to know what she’s capable of…”

Dahlia looks into the girl’s face, and the baby hiccups and turns her face away. Dahlia steadies herself and looks back at Mol just as the sirens start to blare in the distance.

“Unless we take her with us.”

**

NORTH CAROLINA, 2019

Mother Mol started telling me the story of my birth when I was like four. I blew out my birthday candles, and then she just hit me with that little nugget of knowledge. She wanted to ensure I knew that I’m the dark, evil force that might just kill us all.

“There’s only ever been one other witch born with a power like yours, and she nearly destroyed the Coven,” she said. “So, you must remain vigilant.”

And that was it, the end of the story.

Then when I was seven, I met that witch face-to-face. I mean, not really, because she’s like super dead, but pretty much. We were in the Gathering Room, just me and Airi and Amana practicing with Mother Calista, trying to levitate books, when I suddenly felt a freaking pipe organ going off inside my chest, and then the entire room evaporated.

This darkness swallowed me, and I was falling, falling through total and complete nothing. Then, I slammed into the ground, and all I could see was a woman, red hair billowing around her like we were underwater or in some kind of fluid dimension or something. Her green eyes flashed, and her grey gown flowed behind her as she walked toward me. As she stooped down and brought her face to mine, her name bloomed in my mind: Eurydice.

And then she spoke, and her voice echoed through my head so loudly my ears rang for actual days. Her words sounded like smoke.

“The Earth shall shroud in shadow. The dead shall rise again. In Wicker Creek, two lovers meet, and the future shall begin.”

She looked at me with this smile on her face, and I felt my magic curdle. I felt it bubble in my veins, like she hadn’t just dropped a stupid nursery rhyme in my lap, but instead, set off a toxin that turned me into a nuclear weapon.

Sister Dahlia and Mother Calista (total space cadet, by the way, but she can definitely see the future), said I’d been “called,” said the whole freaky vision thing meant there was some kind of destiny waiting for me in this Wicker Creek place that could “change our world forever.”

But Mol wouldn’t let me go, even after Dahlia begged her.

“If a witch doesn’t fulfill her calling, nature makes the world pay for it,” she told her, amber eyes blazing. “Everything around Mariah will start to sour, you know that!”

“If it’s a message from Eurydice, it’s better not to listen,” Mol insisted. “Besides, we don’t even know what kind of beginning she means. It’s far too dangerous.”

Then I walked down for breakfast the next morning and nearly set the house on fire because I short-circuited everything. And later that week when I practiced levitating again, the books swirled around the room like they were caught up in this violent cyclone and whacked Airi straight across the face. Dahlia said it was magic lashing out, the universe ramping up to tip us right over the edge because we refused to listen to it.

Mol finally let me go to Wicker Creek when all the windows in the greenhouse shattered because I dared to open the freaking door. She made Dahlia come with me as my Keeper, to better train me on how to handle my magical shit…and to ensure I keep it hidden from humans, because there’s never been a good time to be an actual witch in this world.

In ten years, I’ve only lost control once. And if you knew everything about my magic…well, you’d be pretty impressed by that, actually.

Mol reminds me I’m dangerous every year when we go back to the Coven for Solstice Gatherings. She swears if I don’t fight like hell to find the light in my magic, I’ll swallow the world. She says power like mine’s way too unpredictable to stay hidden for long.

“If you can’t control yourself, I will come collect you.” Mol growled that at me in eighth grade…right after everything went down in the woods with Finn and Shelley. “And I will do whatever it takes to make sure you do not threaten this world.”

It’s why I don’t tell her about Eurydice’s voice and the way it creeps into my dreams sometimes. It’s why I don’t tell her about the way my magic tore through him and how I thought he’d die right there, right then, if I didn’t pull him back from the edge I felt him tumbling toward.

She acts like I enjoy being a threat to the living world. But my whole life, I’ve only ever wanted to be one thing: Good.

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The Lady Raven: A Dark Cinderella Tale
Rebecca Henry
Genres: Adult, Fantasy

The Lady Raven: A Dark Cinderella Tale
Rebecca Henry
Publication date: December 5th 2017
Genres: Adult, Fantasy

In The Lady Raven, Rebecca Henry tells the tale of Zezolla, a little princess abandoned by her father into the hands of her evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters. A familiar fairy tale you may think but all is not as it appears. The reader is soon drawn into a web of witchcraft, lies and deceit, and gradually realises that this is no typical fairy tale but a dark and macabre take on one. Zezolla is treated with the utmost cruelty, neglected and vilified, and left to live in the damp cellars of the castle. The only friends Zezolla has are her beloved raven and her pet wolf. Her only comfort lies in the loyalty of the creatures of the forest and her mother’s hazel tree. Will Zezolla have the power to escape her torment and ultimately save herself from the unscrupulous clutches of the king? The Lady Raven is a compelling tale and one that is not for the faint-hearted.

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—

EXCERPT:

Baldric bent down, whispering into his wife’s ear. “I am going to drown you in the river, my love. I want you to hear my words and know that it is I who will kill you. Do not think that I do not know what you did.” Before Avelina could protest, her face was plunged into the icy water. She tried pulling her head up, but Baldric was too strong. She began to buck her legs around like a mule, desperate to make contact with Baldric, anything to weaken his grip. Baldric climbed on top of her and pinned her body beneath his. “Die, Avelina.” he growled. Hands were flying all around him as he drowned his wife, the only woman he ever loved. Princess Avelina was a fighter and she determined to stay alive, but it was to no avail.

Baldric kept her head under the water well after her body stopped moving. Avelina’s betrayal caused Baldric’s love to turn to hate, just as water turns to ice in the frozen kiss of winter.

“Die, you lying witch. Die! You do not deserve the life you have. You do not deserve me. You have taken everything I’ve loved away and now I will take everything from you.” Baldric’s hands trembled with rage as he dismounted his wife’s limp body. Baldric arose, looking around the grounds to ensure that no witnesses could testify to his crime. Still, he would not suffer the consequence of murdering his wife. To seal his innocence, he gathered heavy rocks from the bank and shoved them in Avelina’s robes.

“They will think it a suicide and my hands will never be traced to her death.” He bent down to see her face one last time before kicking her corpse into the lake.

“I loved you mind, body, and soul. I would have loved you until my dying breath, but I will never think of you again. From this day forth, you no longer consume my heart. May you rest in hell, my love.” He watched her body sink; he was triumphant, sentencing her to the punishment that fitted the crime: death.

Before her body disappeared into the ultramarine water, he spat on her. One final act of defiance.

Excerpt

Zezolla entered the forest, twig in one hand, shattered glass in the other. She moved effortlessly through the night as if she herself had wings which carried her. She came to a clearing, a streak of moonlight shining on the frozen ground. “This is the spot, my love.” The raven flew into the sky circling Zezolla as she dug into the ground. “Remember the order, my princess. Plant the twig and then the glass.”

“I call upon the spirit of my mother. I command you to leave the grave in which my mother’s body rests. Awaken now and bring forth the tree of life!” Zezolla held her hands up to the moon invoking its powers. “I am the daughter of the witch Avelina. I invoke the powers of the night. Come to me, my mother’s spirit. I welcome you!” A silver mist traveled above. The raven flew down to his princess. “She is coming, princess.” Zezolla watched as a tiny branch came forth from the dirt. Slowly it grew, taller and taller. More branches came. Zezolla thought she saw the figure of a woman in the tree. Shards of glass formed together creating glass leaves, dangerous to anyone who touched it – anyone but Zezolla. The princess stood up amazed by the beautiful sight before her. “It is complete, my love. My mother is here and her spirit resides inside the tree.” A remarkable hazel tree stood before her, 15 feet tall with a small opening at the base big enough for Zezolla to fit through. She examined the leaves running her long fingers over the glass. “It cannot cut me my love.” She held out her arm for the raven to perch. “But it will be dangerous to anyone else who tries to touch it.”

The two men made it to the barrier, gasping in horror. “What entrance is this!?” cried out Jack. “This was never here. There has never been an entrance to the forest.” Jack backed away, terrified that Zezolla awakened a spirit inside the forest. “It’s just a narrow passage. It must have been caused by the cold ice.” concluded Edward logically.

Jack shook his head. “No, Hexe did this. She has opened the forest. Who knows what evil lurks inside? These grounds are now cursed.”

“If that is true then I will not venture in.” Edward turned to leave but Jack stopped him. “This might be valuable to me Edward. If Hexe possesses some magical entity inside the forest then I want it.” Jack grabbed Edward by the collar and moved him through the opening. Edward clung to his knife, jumping at the sounds around them. “There is a light coming from beyond the trees. Could be lightening. Let’s go see what Hexe is up to.” Edward tried to turn back, but Jack had a strong hold on him. “Courage man! You’re no better than a scared boy.” snarled Jack.

Zezolla, unaware of the servants approaching, entered the hazel tree. Edward ducked down behind a bush as he saw Zezolla disappear.

“We must leave now! I told you this would be our death! She is a witch! Did you just see how she

entered that glass tree?!”

Jack was too fascinated to leave. He had never witnessed true magic before. “I want to take a closer look.”

“What? Are you mad! If you go near that tree that will be the end of you!”

Jack did not listen to Edward and walked over to the magical tree which was shimmering in the moonlight. “I just want to see it. Stay where you are if you are afraid,” Jack snorted.

“To hell with curiosity. I don’t want to end up without my head like Princess Guinevere. Go on then, you fool! Go see your magical tree.”

The tree seemed to call to Jack, beckoning him forward. “It’s so beautiful. Look at the sparkling leaves.” He reached out to touch one. The branch moved slicing his finger off his hand. Jack screamed in pain, clenching his finger to his chest. He tried to run away, but the tree caught him in her branches.

Edward stayed hidden, watching in horror as Jack cried out for help. “Edward, help me!”

“Stupid fool. I told him not to get closer.” muttered Edward

The tree tightened its grip around Jack, cutting him as it squeezed. “Please! I am sorry! Please let me go!” The tree would not accept Jack’s pleas and brought down another branch lined with razor sharp leaves. “No! No! Please, I will do anything! I will protect the princess from her stepmother. I swear to protect her as long as I live! Please, spare me!” The branch came down, slicing Jack’s throat with a row of deadly leaves.

“She needs no protection. I am with her now.” said the tree.

Author Questions and Answers
 

-Write a letter to your teen self

Dear Teenage Me,

They say your teen years are your golden years. The best time of your life. For you, it’s a struggle. You see life with the eyes of an adult not a sixteen-year-old. You want to fast forward, jump into the future. You know the best part of your life is yet to come, waiting around the corner of time. I’m writing you to say, you’re exactly right. 

Keep believing, keep dreaming and reaching because you will have it all…

Love Always,

Your future self xx

-Handling negative reviews

This is such a great topic, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about it. Negative reviews are rejections against our soul. When an author writes, or a painter paints, or a musician plays her song…it is an extension of our inner self bleeding out onto our canvas. A piece of our soul gets transferred onto the page, preserving a bit of ourselves for all time. It’s too easy to inhale negative reviews like air, like oxygen. But they are not our oxygen they are just a passing whisper in the breeze. Nothing more. Negative reviews are opinions we hear louder than the positive ones. I choose to silence that noise and open my ears to the positives. I do, however listen to negative reviews as constructive criticism, hoping to always improve and better my writing. I’m an extremely sensitive person so this mind-set has taken me time to form and learn but once you do, you will be able to blink out the negative and focus on the positives. The reality is not everyone will like your work and that’s OK. Not everyone has to. Write for yourself and you cannot fail.   

-Behind the scenes (this can be anything to do with the writing process–habits, research process, inspiration, etc)

My behind the scenes takes place in my head. I see something that interests me. Maybe a bride trying on her wedding dress in a clothing store window, or a woman working behind a jewelry counter or a lonely old man walking out of his cottage door. Then something inside me clicks and I’m imagining what their life is like. What their day will be like and all–of–a–sudden, they are characters in a book I am going to create. From there I take picture of images, places anything that coordinates with those future characters. I usually take three weeks to write a book, once I have the idea it pours out of me like water from a tap. It just comes and the deeper I get into my writing the more alive the characters become. I enjoy writing with my computer facing my garden so I can see my cats and dog outside sunbathing as I type. My kids and husband are so wonderful when I write. They give me the quiet and space I need as I compose my story, but they always come up to take a peek at the progress, adding their comments.

Author Bio:

Rebecca Henry is a newly published author. Her debut novel is The Lady Raven, A Dark Cinderella Tale, which was published in 2017. The Lady Raven, is for those who have an affinity for fairy tales retold with a link to witches, magic and the macabre. Her second novel, Louisiana Latte, a chick lit comedy was released February 28th 2019. Louisiana Latte, is a feel good comedy that focuses on the bonds of sisters, and how audacious life can be when you have a diva for one! Both books are available on amazon as well as Barnes & Noble.

Rebecca Henry is a world traveler living abroad in England. Besides being an author of two published books, Rebecca is also a podcast talk host on the show The Latte Talk. The podcast was inspired by her latest novel, Louisiana Latte and her diva sister Deb. She is a serious vegan, gardener, crafter, wife and mom who practices yoga. She loves to laugh, her drug of choice and loves all things witchy with a hint of the macabre. Her favorite holiday is Halloween and her favorite movie of all time is Practical Magic.

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