The News:

I've written a brand new short story for Halloween this year. You can find it here. It's called "The Hellhound," and it's from the Fallen series I've been planning (which I talk more about below). Zachariel and Archan make a bet that Archan can scare Zach. Zach says he's not afraid of anything. He says, "I've seen it all. Done it all. Had it all done to me. I'm still here, ain't I? Nothin' scares me anymore." Archan swears he can come up with something, and boy, does he ever! But is it enough to scare an angel who's spent nearly 13K years "down under?" You'll have to read it to find out! ;)

I wasn't really going for scary with this one. I just wanted to give you an entertaining read that fits the Halloween theme. Hopefully, I've done my job. If you read it and enjoy it, would let me know in the comments below? I love getting constructive feedback, and even a simple "I liked it" would help. And feel free to share the page's link with other people you think might enjoy it. It would help me a lot!

A New Series:

I've been planning a new series, but with characters I've played with before: Samandriel and Zachariel, the fallen angel brothers. I'll be writing the first novel during NaNoWriMo next month (November), and I can't wait!

Here's the gist of the idea:

Zachariel was sent to Sheforat (Illdirin's version of Hell) almost 13,000 years ago. Thanks to a black witch, who created a portal to free a demon, Zachariel escaped -- along with thousands of others. The Gods have Archan, the head celestial hunter, enlist Samandriel to stop his older brother from carrying out his plan of vengeance against the Gods for killing his fallen lover. Archan is Sam's ally in this task, but Archan doesn't believe Sam can do it. In fact, he's hoping that Sam will fail. The deal is: stop Zachariel from carrying out his plan of vengeance or go to Sheforat. Why would Sam go to Sheforat? Because he killed four mortal men who murdered a close friend and mentor of his. Killing a mortal is a serious offense, one of the most serious, punishable by eternity in Sheforat.

So far, there are five books planned for this series, but I'll be planning at least one more after November. The idea above is only for the first book. The series mainly focuses on Zachariel and his quest to earn his redemption once the events play out in this first novel. The working title for the first book is Fallen: Vendetta.

A word about the angels of the Agaean/Illdirin:

First of all, the Agaean Plane is Illdirin's equivalent of our Heaven. It's the highest plane of existence, and it's where the Creator Gods and the holiest of angels reside, as well as those who die who are good and have faith in the Gods. And just so you know, I'm not staying true to our God or our angels. This is a whole different world. The Gods are the gods of a specific region of the universe, and some of their angels (called Travelers) choose to live among the mortals of Illdirin. Some even intermarry with mortals (humans, elves, etc.).

An angel falls when they:

• forsake the gods
  
• kill a mortal
• consort/mate with evil beings
  

There are other grave sins, but these are three of the worst. When Zachariel fell in love with and impregnated a fallen angel many millennia ago, he became fallen.

In contrast, his brother, Samandriel, became fallen for a lesser crime, which I won't go into here. But I will say that he had a falling out with his best friend, another angelic warrior (of the chayalim, a class of which both Sam and Zach were counted). Sam and this other chayal went to war on opposite sides. The friend came after Sam on the battlefield, and the two fought each other, which is another one of those pesky sins I mentioned above. Sam merely defended himself, and though he's considered fallen, he never spent time in Sheforat. His former friend was considered the aggressor, and he was sent to Sheforat. He escaped when Zach did, and he'll feature prominently in the second book of the series.

What else have I been up to?

Over the past few months, I've played with some series ideas. I actually started writing two books during Camp NaNoWriMo, one in April and one in July. I've set those on a back burner for now in order to plan and write this new series.

I'm also still working on getting Relic Hunters: Kingsfall and Relic Hunters: The Fingali Key revised and ready for publication. I've been working on them alone, and it's taken longer than I would have liked.

I'm looking for readers:

I'm currently looking for alpha and beta readers to give me input on the plot and characters, as well as other aspects of my stories, so if you're interested, feel free to contact me at loiseighmy at gmail dot com, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Some last words:

So, have you read "The Hellhound?" Have you read any of the other short stories on my site? If you have, how did you like them? Or didn't you like them? Why or why not? What do you look for in a short story? What makes you want to pick up a story and read it? The characters? The setting? The description or genre? Let me know in the comments!

Cheers!

Lois

In less than a month, thousands of writers will attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I've done this several times. In fact, this will be my 13th attempt at National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo (if you don't count the few times I've tried Camp NaNoWriMo), and as always, I can't wait!

This year, I'm returning to a novel I started during CampN back in April of 2015. My goal was 40,000 words, and I won with 2,000+ on top of that. But as I wrote, I realized some things would need to change to make the story better. And in the years since I wrote those 42,000+ words, a lot has changed with the world of Illdirin and the characters involved in this story.

So I went back to the drawing board. I kept a lot of the material, but I've also changed a lot of things. I'll be starting fresh, and my privateers will not only have one other ship to contend with in the race to find the sunken treasure ship, Venture, but two. The first is a pirate ship, and the second is a naval ship from the country their nation is currently at war with -- and just so happens to be captained by Sahmi Zamada's former captain, Tobias Hancock, whom he and others mutinied against.

I'm having to go back and do a lot more research on ships and piracy, medieval life on land and sea, magical systems, geography, etc. Good thing I started getting ready last month!

Aside from my preparations for this year's NaNoWriMo, I'm also working on another Halloween short story to post to this website (I'll announce it when I publish it). If you need something to tide you over in the meantime, check out last year's Halloween story, The Cellar Dwellars: A Hawkins Short Story. (<-- warning for mild language.) Hopefully, you won't regret it. ;)

While last year's story involved paranormal hunters on my fantasy world, Illdirin, this year's story centers around two young teens here on earth. The town they live in exists, but I've changed other place names. It was fun to write, but anything more than that I won't say. I don't want to give away any important details, after all!

As you've probably noticed, I went on hiatus after my last blog entry. It was unintentional, and I'm not really sure what happened. I'd meant to post short stories every week until I finished posting the Of Blood & Magic series, but then I never did. If you've been waiting with bated breath, you can relax, take a deep breath, and go to the following two links to read the last short stories in Of Blood & Magic: Hunted (book I): SS11: The Rescue and SS12: Unlikely Allies.

I'll likely post one short story every week until this series is all posted. If you have any suggestions on how to make the stories better, feel free to comment in response to this blog entry, but please be polite. Otherwise, I'll just delete it. ;)

So, here's what you have to look forward to in the coming weeks:
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• A new Halloween story for 2018 (coming around the 15th-17th of this month)
• Of Blood & Magic: Contagion (Book II) short stories, one per week until done
• More freewriting, snippets, etc.

Until then, enjoy the stories linked to above and any other writing I've posted here.

Cheers!

Lois