My Keys On: Writing, Illustrating, and more: Book Feature: Fury of the Storm Wizard

I am pleased to welcome Shauna E. Black to my blog today. She is celebrating the release of her new middle-grade fantasy: Fury of the Storm Wizard. This looks like a fun book I'll be adding to my summer reading list. Check it out!

Synopsis:

A Storm is Brewing

In Silver Valley, an unusual string of mining accidents has locals whispering of dark magic. When the marshal sent to investigate goes missing, his young assistant Boone turns to Jesse and Eliza for help. But Jesse is a new mage with raw magic, and Eliza is hiding a secret. The three must learn to trust each other before the valley is destroyed and they are ripped away from everything they hold dear.

Author Bio:

Shauna E. Black fell in love at an early age. Her first romances resided on the shelves of the mystery section in the library. She went through The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and Sherlock Holmes before someone introduced her to The Chronicles of Prydain. This sparked an enduring love for wizards, dragons, magic, and all things fantasy that Shauna still enjoys today. She always has her head in the clouds and her nose in a book.

Naturally, her love for reading evolved into a desire to create, and she became a writer. When she was a young teen, her English teacher made the mistake of offering extra credit for original short stories, and was suddenly swamped with Shauna's writing. Dutifully reading each story (at least, she wrote encouraging things in the margins), this teacher inspired Shauna to follow her dreams, leaving her with a warm spot in her heart for all English teachers.

Today, Shauna still keeps a box in the attic full of her early manuscripts, most written in pencil on lined paper. She lives in the high desert of the southwest with the other loves of her life: her husband and four children. She likes to drag them along on springtime hiking adventures to the many Anasazi ruins near her home, where she finds inspiration for her writing. She also likes to bake bread, do anything artsy, and travel to exotic locations to collect wind chimes.

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Excerpts from the book:

Jesse skidded to a stop, pulling away from Eliza. Squeezing his eyes shut, he spun around in one smooth motion, pulling the gun up to his shoulder and squeezing the trigger. He thought he heard a high-pitched squeal just before the gun’s report set his ears ringing.

Jesse risked cracking his eyes open to see if he’d hit anything. The basilisk wasn’t far away, rearing back with a bloody scratch along the side of its face. Jesse felt a crushing disappointment. He’d only grazed it. But then a rumbling began under his feet. There was a whoosh of air from the stope opening, and a wave of heat following it.

“Oh, no.”

A huge ball of crackling lightning formed and raced toward them.

“Run!” he screamed at his friends. “Run!”

Second excerpt:

Jesse started trembling. “Life ain’t better here,” he said. “I wish we’d never left Kansas. I wish we’d never come here.”

“There ain’t nothing left in Kansas for us but painful memories, son.”

Jesse glared at Pa. “How can you say that? How can you forget Ma so soon?” His words were punctuated by a crack of thunder.

“You watch your tongue, boy!” Pa took a step forward, hand going up as if he meant to strike Jesse.

The area around them suddenly froze, the ice growing as if winter had arrived in fast motion. Ice crusted the plants around them, the bushes, the trees. It pulled down the branches and leaves with its weight.

Pa stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the frost that glistened on the ground between him and Jesse. “How are you doing this?” he whispered.
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