A Tale from the World of Harthis
A Ranger and a Paladin find love on the battlefield. This is the first in the Bowstring and Steel universe, set as a counterpoint to my sci-fi Solar Wind series. These are chapters 1 and 2 of an ongoing fantasy series.
Halloween 2024
On a band trip to New Orleans he stopped into a hole-in-the-wall shop, where an old woman offered to sell him a little bottle of Love Potion #9. He was a high school student who had a crush on his geometry teacher and, just for fun, at the Halloween dance, he spiked her punch. Except instead of only two drops, as the old woman had instructed him, his nervousness caused him to dump half the bottle. It was the best Halloween night of his life, and October 31st was never the same again.
The Bronze Medal winner in the Dulcinea Memorial Festival. They say that the hotest fires burn the brightest, and burn out the quickest, leaving only wisps of smoke and an unsatisfied feeling of regret for time lost. True? I doubt it.
The sudden death of his religiously zealous wife frees Dean from twenty years of a loveless marriage. Meanwhile, his daughter Julia is discovering a world outside the strictly dictated reality she's known all her life.