Autumn Glimmer - Halloween Adventure in Ireland

Autumn Glimmer, Book Two in my Young Adult Glimmer Series, brings readers to County Wicklow's scenic woods and a fairy castle beneath an ancient Irish lake.

The Glimmer Books, which feature Ireland's mischievous fairies, are paranormal prequels to the Band of Roses Trilogy, whose "what if" premise supposes that High King Brian Boru survived the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 A.D. and established a royal dynasty still in existence. As head of state, the current King Brian upholds ancient traditions, as do his children, Princess Talty and Prince Liam. Teenager Liam stars in the Glimmer Books, along with his American friend, Janet Gleason, who can’t seem to stay away from the fairies.

In Glancing Through the Glimmer, Janet’s grandfather becomes the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. Janet lives in Dublin and attends an upscale boarding school. She still misses Boston, especially in autumn, when New England’s trees are so gorgeous and vibrant. But she’s settled into her new life well and landed the lead in the next school play. In Autumn Glimmer, King Brian invites the Gleasons to his country estate to celebrate Halloween, Janet is happy: she’ll be with Liam again. She should know Ireland better by now…

Blurb for Autumn Glimmer: Janet and Liam meet again for a Halloween weekend they’ll never forget… Fairies living beneath the lake on the King of Ireland’s country estate? Janet Gleason isn’t surprised. The American teen and her royal friend, Prince Liam Boru, have met the Good People before. Just before Halloween, three of the fairies, Blinn, Mell, and Lewy, leave their watery home to fill a magical bag with the flowers their queen requires to keep a hungry monster asleep. Blinn decides she’d like to see the mortal king’s house. Lewy wants to taste oatcakes again, and Mell goes along on a tragic ride that leaves poor Lewy lost and alone. Can Liam and Janet help him find the flower bag before the monster awakens? Or will Lewy’s misguided glimmer trap the young mortals forever in the palace beneath the lake?

Excerpt: Below the bubble, the water brightened to lustrous cobalt blue. Stars seemed to shimmer deep in the lake. A forest of vegetation waved on the lake bed. The impossible sight of crystal towers emerged beyond the greenery, and Liam wanted to dance.

Janet raised a hand to her face. “It’s lovely, but why does it smell so bad?”

She was right. A nasty whiff of something vile had seeped into the bubble.

Becula raised her arms. “Hasten!"

The bubble’s downward speed increased. The stench intensified. Trying to pinpoint its source, Liam scanned the ghostly lake. An amber mist glowed in the inky water beyond the light and seemed to be pursuing them.

“What is it?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“The Crogall Cú,” said Becula, her nonchalant tone at odds with the stiffened sags and bags on her face. “When it hunts, its nostrils blow foul vapors to confuse its prey. Fear not, young prince. It shall not harm us.”

A terrible roar tore through the bubble. Janet yipped and clung to Liam. Squashing his lips to keep from yipping himself, he hugged her to him.

The mist billowed into to a putrid fog that poured like custard to sully the water. Another roar, much closer this time, jolted the bubble.

Janet screamed. Liam’s heart leapt into his throat. A blood-red eye as big as an autumn moon stared in at them from the water. How could such a behemoth exist in the little pond? Liam tightened his hold on Janet and hoped the Invincible Orb lived up to its name.

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The Glimmer Books / Available in Print and eBook

Book One: Glancing Through the Glimmer
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.

Book Two: Autumn Glimmer
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.

Book Three: A Pot of Glimmer
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.

Glimmering on Carpinello's Writing Pages

Young Adult Adventure with Ireland's Fairies! Award Winning author Cheryl Carpinello is graciously hosting me and the Glimmer Books today on her lovely blog, Carpinello's Writing Pages.



I thoroughly enjoyed Cheryl's interview about writing Young Adult fantasy for teens. Stop by. You'll enjoy it too, and the Fairies would love to see you!

New Release! A Pot of Glimmer

A Pot of Glimmer, Book Three in the Glimmer Series, is now available in both Print and eBook. As with the first two books in the series, Glancing Through the Glimmer and Autumn Glimmer, the story is set in Ireland and features Ireland's mischievous fairies. Adventure for Young Adults of All Ages!

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A leprechaun’s feud with a Viking ghoul puts Janet and Liam in deadly danger…

 Ireland, January 1014 - Fledgling leprechaun Awley O'Hay leads a raid on a Dublin mint. The mission: steal a shipment of coins to aid the High King, Brian Boru, in his war against the Vikings. Awley and his team plan the heist with commando precision, but they hit a glitch and only escape a bloodthirsty mob with the help of Hazel, the uncommon sister of one of the leprechauns. Yet the money master's vengeful ghost troubles Awley for centuries. So do Awley's forbidden feelings for Hazel.

Ireland, July 2015 - Janet Gleason has had her fill of fairies. They've not only plagued the American teen since she arrived in Dublin, they've also damaged her romance with her gallant friend, Prince Liam Boru. When Janet's grandfather, the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, throws a Fourth of July celebration, Liam reluctantly attends with the rest of the royal family.

Also attending are several uninvited guests. A fairy witch named Becula arrives with Hazel, her clever and quirky protégée, to beg a favor of Janet. The unplanned appearance of Awley O'Hay and his leprechaun pals triggers a chilling visit from Awley's ancient enemy, now an undead monster hungry for human flesh.

Liam and Janet fall into a nightmare that tests their courage in ways they never imagined. Nor did they imagine that real leprechauns are nothing like the "little men" of Irish lore.

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The Fairy Thorn: Bad Advice!

Get up, our Anna dear,
from the weary spinning-wheel;
For your father's on the hill,
and your mother is asleep;
Come up above the crags,
and we'll dance a highland-reel
Around the fairy thorn on the steep.

* * * * *

Bad advice, this first verse of The Fairy Thorn by Sir Samuel Ferguson. Everyone knows if you dance around a fairy thorn, the fairies will steal you away. Especially in Galway, home of Finvarra, the King of the Connaught Fairies.

Finvarra is usually a decent sort. He likes human women, however, and often kidnaps them as dancing partners, as Janet, an American teenager living in Ireland, learns to her dismay. Janet and Finvarra costar in Glancing Through the Glimmer, the first of The Glimmer Books, my young adult adventure series.

Here's the Blurb:

In the modern Kingdom of Ireland, few mortals believe in the fairy folk. Without that belief, the fairies are dying. Finvarra, the King of the Fairies, would rather dance than worry—but he must have a mortal dancing partner.

When Janet Gleason’s grandfather becomes the new U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, the sixteen-year-old orphan must leave Boston and her friends behind. Janet is lonely in Dublin and unused to her grandparents’ stuffy social life. An invitation to a royal ball terrifies her. She can’t even waltz and dreads embarrassment. Finvarra’s fairy witch overhears her fervent wish to learn to dance.

Seventeen-year-old Prince Liam Boru loathes the idea of escorting another spoiled American girl to a ball. In fact, he detests most of his royal duties. He dresses down to move through Dublin unnoticed and finds himself on his royal backside when Janet crashes into him. Intrigued, he asks to see her again, and she willingly agrees. Unaware of each other’s identities, they arrange to meet. When they do, the fairies steal Janet away.

Liam’s attempts to find her trigger a series of frustrating misadventures. Can he and Janet outwit a treacherous fairy king who’s been hoodwinking mortals for centuries?

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Available in Print and eBook from

Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.

Available in Print from
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Ride the Fairy Wind!

The fairies of Ireland star in my young adult adventure novels, Glancing Through the Glimmer, and its sequel, Autumn Glimmer. I couldn’t have written these books without learning more about the Good Folk and their ways, and my research has led to bursting bookshelves. Most of these volumes are my own acquisitions, though some are on loan from my aunts’ incredible library of Irish lore and history, books so old the pages are falling apart. Among my favorites are the authoritative A History of Irish Fairies by Carolyn White, and Meeting the Other Crowd, a fascinating collection of eyewitness accounts of “Them” from Irish oral tradition.

Autumn Glimmer features the Fairy Wind, a supernatural phenomenon known in Irish as the Sí-gaoith (Shee-gwee-ha). According to those who understand such things, the Fairy Wind usually signals the passage of a fairy troop. In its more sinister forms, the wind delivers a grave warning to mortals trespassing on or interfering with fairy property—and it inflicts dire vengeance upon those who foolishly ignore the warning.

The Good Folk aren’t all bad, however. Sometimes the Fairy Wind serves as a gift to those who require assistance. A farmer struggling to harvest his hay might find it suddenly blown into a tidy pile, thank you very much.

Mortals have, of course, provided every account I’ve seen of the Sí-gaoith. In this brief excerpt from Autumn Glimmer, I offer the Good People’s take on the Fairy Wind. As “They” have clearly allowed me to do so, who knows? Perhaps this is how it really happens.

A breeze arose in Crooked Wood, a whistling gust that rapidly grew loud and powerful.

Blinn shouted over the racket, "Line up, boys. We’re going for a ride!"

Lewy scooted behind her; Mell took up the rear. Around them, fallen foliage whirled like tiny tornadoes, gaining in speed and number until they formed a wall of buzzing, spinning leaves.

"Whoa ho!" Mell cried as they rose in the air.

He grabbed Lewy’s waist, and Lewy grabbed Blinn’s. A sudden upward tilt forced them to sit on the firm bed of leaves. The wind took off, soaring like a magic carpet, whisking them up and over the treetops. Lewy whooped. Blinn shrieked with delight. Even Mell laughed.

Secure in Blinn’s glimmer, Lewy held tight to her willowy waist and gazed down at the water. The small oval lake glittered beneath the slanted rays of the rapidly tiring autumn sun. Shadows from the approaching storm clouds speckled the falls at the pond’s northern end.

Their bird’s-eye view revealed the remains of the crannog, submerged near the reedy eastern shore. Or was it submerged? From so high up, the ruins appeared to break through the pond’s glassy surface. An illusion, no doubt.

On the western shore, a small bog sloped from a knoll to the edge of the crystalline water. Boulders littered the southern shore, the passage by which the Daoine Linn accessed Crooked Wood every seven years. The woods glowed in the autumn light as if an invisible hand had slathered the treetops with honey and marmalade. Lewy’s mouth watered to think of such treats, but he had no time to admire the show: Blinn veered sharply east.

Thousands of years before, the mortals had cleared the land of the rubble the big ice had left behind. They built walls of stone, creating neat squares for pastures and farmland. The familiar squares still checkered the emerald landscape, and the road to the house unspooled through the patchwork. In the distance, the mist-wrapped Wicklow hills endured, standing like phantom sentinels, a bulwark between the sinister sea and the midland lakes the Daoine Linn called home.

The carpet of leaves abruptly dropped. A trapdoor opened in Lewy’s gut. He managed to keep from screaming, but Mell roared in horror.

"Hey! You could warn a guy!"

"Sorry," yelled Blinn. "It went down by itself, and I can’t get it to go back up."

"I knew it," Mell said. "You’re tired. Lewy, call up your glimmer and help her!"

Lewy scrunched his eyes and tried. Feathers of glimmer tickled him from his toes to his ears. He had to coax it, expand it fast, make it fill his chest and shoot to his fingertips, but he couldn’t remember how. Many wheels of time had spun since he’d last summoned glimmer.
The Fairy Wind bucked and plunged through the air.

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Glancing Through the Glimmer / Available in Print and eBook

Amazon U.S.

Amazon U.K. 

 Autumn Glimmer / Available in Print and eBook
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.

Storytelling for Actors and Monsters

Aspiring actress Janet Gleason, the teenage heroine of my young adult books, Glancing Through the Glimmer and Autumn Glimmer, has lived in Dublin since her grandfather became the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. At first, she hated Dublin. (She really hated being kidnapped by the King of the Fairies, but that’s the first book.)

In Autumn Glimmer, Janet has settled into her new Irish school. She loves the Drama Club, and she’s learned a lot about acting. She’ll soon pick up some fabulous new techniques.

To celebrate Halloween, Janet and her grandparents visit Ireland’s royal family (hint - she likes Prince Liam). Cousin Fintan, an elderly shanachie, is also visiting to entertain everyone.

A shanachie (from the Irish seanchaí) is a traditional Irish storyteller. The ancient Celts wrote nothing down. They entrusted their laws and legends to the minds of brehons, poets, and shanachies. The shanachies told hundreds of tales from memory. And, as Janet is going to learn, some of those tales were inspired by real events.

Janet’s theatrical eye noted the arrangement of chairs before the hearth. The rough half-circle they formed gave everyone an unobstructed view of Cousin Fintan, perched on a stool beside the fireplace. His right hand held his blackthorn stick like a pole in a subway train.

He laid the blackthorn across his knees. Like a safecracker coaxing a bank vault open, he ran the tips of his long white fingers over the knobby wood. Twisting the stick toward him, he deftly reeled his audience into the story world he summoned.

"I’ll tell ye a story to shorten the night. Ye’ll scarcely believe a word I say, for I’m going back on old times, to the days when the Good People made the rounds more than they do now."

Fintan had no idea that the Good People were making the rounds that night. In fact, two were outside the open window, listening. Janet listened too, fascinated by Fintan’s tales. He painted pictures in her head no stage set could ever match.

"Long before the great ice came, giant creatures lived in Ireland. They foraged and fought and ate each other, and no man ever saw them. The ice killed all but the swimmers among them, monsters who slumbered in caves beneath the lakes until the glaciers disappeared.

"New animals came to Ireland. Men came too, and the hungry monsters leapt from the lakes and devoured them all. The heroes among the men fought back."

Fintan told the story of Gann of the Glen, a hero who helped the fairies in the lake get rid of a hungry monster.

"Gann drew his weapons. The battle fury rose in him." The blackthorn whooshed through the air as Fintan, shouting now, mimicked Gann’s swordsmanship. "With a mighty cry, he raised his sword and cut off the Crogall’s head. This he hurled away, spattering the shore with its blood. To this day, the rocks on the shores of the pond are red, and the Crogall’s bones became the jagged stones on the northern bank."

The fairies outside the window recalled a different version. The correct version. One that Janet is going to find out all about…

 

 

GLANCING THROUGH THE GLIMMER / Available in Print and eBook
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.
Barnes & Noble

AUTUMN GLIMMER / Available in Print and eBook
Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.
Barnes & Noble

*Storytelling for Actors and Monsters originally appeared on Jester Harley's Manuscript Page

Autumn Glimmer: Halloween Adventure!

Adventure for Young Adults of All Ages! Autumn Glimmer, the sequel to my young adult novel, Glancing Through the Glimmer, is set in Ireland on Halloween weekend, when the "veil" between the physical world and the Otherworld is thinnest—and it's always a little thin in Ireland. Here's the blurb and an excerpt!

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Janet and Liam meet again for a Halloween weekend they'll never forget . . .

Fairies living beneath the lake on the King of Ireland's country estate? Janet Gleason isn't surprised. The American teen and her royal friend, Prince Liam Boru, have met the Good People before. Just before Halloween, three of the fairies, Blinn, Mell, and Lewy, leave their watery home to fill a magical bag with the flowers their queen requires to keep a hungry monster asleep. Blinn decides she'd like to see the mortal king's house. Lewy wants to taste oatcakes again, and Mell goes along on a tragic ride that leaves poor Lewy lost and alone. Can Liam and Janet help him find the flower bag before the monster awakens? Or will Lewy's misguided glimmer trap the young mortals forever in the palace beneath the lake?

* * * * *

At a bend in the trail, Janet stopped. “Do you hear that bird? I heard it earlier. It sounds like a person crying. Do you know what it is?”

Amidst the rustle of autumn leaves and the trilling and whistling ...of flitting birds, Liam detected a whimpering noise. “That’s not a bird, Jan. I think someone is hurt.”

He released her hand and hurried up the trail, concerned when the weeping stopped, standing motionless until it resumed, moving quickly toward it when it did. A child, or perhaps a young teenager, he thought, touching the pocket that held his cell phone.

Janet was right behind him. She pointed to the right. “It’s coming from there.”

The sobbing had stopped again, but Liam spotted a patch of turquoise cloth. He shoved his way through the undergrowth. “It’s one of the boys who’ve been playing pranks. Looks like he’s caught in a thorn bush. Easy, lad. We’ll get you out of there in jig time.”

They knelt on either side of the boy. Uttering senseless but soothing words, Janet pulled branches from the child’s shirt and his mop of white hair.

Liam wondered why the wig didn’t come off. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Lewy,” the boy replied through chattering teeth. “I’m Lewy. Please don’t hurt me!”

The words sputtered out, his youthful voice so shrill with fear, he didn’t sound quite Irish. A regional thing, thought Liam. Yet something about the boy’s accent sounded familiar.

“Of course we won’t hurt you,” Janet said as if she were calming a frightened pet. “We’re going to help you.”

Liam untangled one last branch from the shirt of the boy’s costume. “There, that should do. Can you stand, Lewy? Here, grab hold of my hand.”

Lewy stared at Liam through eyes as round as bright blue lollipops. Liam had seen such eyes before. They tripped a silent alarm in his head.

As the boy reached his shaking hands toward Liam, Janet gasped and covered her mouth. At the same instant, Liam noticed the webbing between Lewy’s fingers. He took hold of the long thin arms and helped the boy to his feet.

Bare, web-toed feet.

No boy, this. At his full height, Lewy was as tall as Liam kneeling, and his tear-streaked face, while far from old, was hardly the face of a boy—or a human.

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Read more on my website's Autumn Glimmer Page

 

Autumn Glimmer - Available in eBook and Print from
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Amazon U.K.
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