Today I'm hosting Shawn Martin who is here talking about the mystique of magic that is best left undefined. Be sure to check out his new release, Forget Me Not, as well as the great contest at the bottom of this post.
Behind the Curtain
by
Shawn Martin
Do
you remember when you found out Santa wasn't real? When you discovered someone other than the
Easter Bunny hid the eggs? When the
money stopped appearing under your pillow because the tooth fairy wasn't real? I remember them all vividly. The world became a little grayer and reality
weighed a little more.
It's
natural to want to look behind the curtain and uncover the secrets of
magic. We all do it—that's the curious
nature of us humans—and we all regret it. When we take that peek, the illusions melt
away like snowflakes under a heat lamp.
We're left with what the rational unimaginative members of society would
call "truth." I don't call it
truth, though. I call it disenchantment. The magic is gone. That is the saddest ending to any story I've
ever heard. I swore I'd never do that to
another human being.
When
I wrote my first two books, Shadowflesh
and Forget Me Not, I weaved magic
into the fabric of the story, blending the normal with the paranormal. And I made sure there were no curtains to
peek behind. A world exists where magic
is as normal as the leaves turning color in autumn.
That's
the magic of writing and reading. The
illusions are real and magic should never be dashed away. As a writer, I lose myself in the world I've
created. Spirits come to life, and when
the shadows move there is no logical explanation, only an ethereal one. And I never burden myself (or the reader)
with empiricism.
So,
for the magic that still exists within your life and the pages you read,
embrace it, let it enchant you. Reality
will weigh a little less and the grays will go away if you promise yourself to
never look behind the curtain.
Forget Me Not
Shadowflesh
Series
Book
2
Shawn
Martin
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Publisher: Vinspire
Publishing
Date of Publication: March 31, 2014
ISBN: 0989063232
ASIN: B00IKZTVUC
Number of pages: 308
Word Count: 73,500
Cover Artist: Elaina Lee
Book Description:
Fortune has smiled on seventeen
year old Aileen McCormick ever since Addison came back into her life, giving
her the love she has so desperately longed for.
That is, until a mysterious man slithers across her path and slips a
spellbinding cameo around her neck. The
cameo holds more than just the image of an enchantress who hungers for
souls. It possesses a curse that
strangles away every memory Aileen has of Addison.
Addison, a three hundred year old
fugitive from the netherworld, recognizes the wretched woman inside the cameo
and the curse she has cast on his unsuspecting love. The enchanted cameo has but one purpose: to torment Aileen with hints of love she can
no longer recall.
Aileen cannot escape the deadly
cameo. She runs for her life with the
curse only a breath away. If she truly
wants her memory back, the enchantress is all too willing to restore it. It will cost her, though. Cost her everything.
About
the Author:
Shawn Martin calls Springfield,
Missouri, home. After graduating from
Missouri State University with majors in Economics and Political Science, he
bounced around the Midwest only to end up right where he started.
His day (and night) job is being
a firefighter. Aside from rescuing cats
in trees and removing burnt pot roasts from ovens, he spends his time finding
the hardest way to do the simplest of things.
The rest of his time is spent weaving words into another installment in
the Shadowflesh Series. Visit www.shadowflesh.com
for a look into the author and his work.
web: www.shadowflesh.com
twitter: @martiniaff152
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shadowflesh
Excerpt:
from Chapter
1
I couldn’t remember
the last time I had been afraid of the dark.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, when shadows and demons consumed me at
night, when the end of the world was but a breath away. That was all before I met Addison.
From the very
moment I literally fell into his arms, I had fallen hopelessly in love with
him. Hopelessly, carelessly, eternally
in love with him. And he loved me back.
Addison Wake had
become my entire life, my reason for living.
I breathed in his love and exhaled his name. My heart beat a passionate rhythm to which
only he marched. He danced into my
dreams, stealing me away into the stars at the witching hour. Since he had come back to me we had been
inseparable.
The last amber
leaves of autumn waved goodbye to the worst and best year of my life. The year I lost my home, my friends,
everything I thought I needed to live.
The year I discovered a grandmother I hardly knew. The year I found new friends. The year I fell in love.
The calendar
gloated that Christmas was less than a month away, but who cared? I looked forward to the first day of
winter. Or rather the longest night of
the year. Ever since finding out Santa
was just a figment of my parents’ imagination, I didn’t have much use for the
yuletide. But I had always loved that
long and wonderful night. Addison had already set a date for that night, promising
to take me to an air show in the day and onto the rooftop at night to teach me
the constellations.
It was kind of
embarrassing, but I had never really learned the stars. Sure, I could spot the Big Dipper and hardly
ever mistook the moon for a comet. But
that was the extent of my celestial knowledge.
Most of my time had been spent looking down rather than up, and I
regretted that. Just one more regret in
the long list I had been working on in my seventeen years. But all that was changing, and Addison was helping me one regret at a time.
To say I
appreciated everything he had done for me would be an understatement. He taught me how to drive a stick. He trusted me with his deepest, darkest
secrets. He saved my life. He fell in love with me, maybe even more than
I had fallen in love with him. If that
was possible.
Mere words could do
no justice for how I felt about Addison. But that didn’t stop me from trying to tell
him, or show him. I poured my heart out
into haiku almost daily. I swirled his
initials into the thighs of my worn jeans in three colors of permanent
ink. I learned to say “I love you” in
twenty-one languages.
My most recent
declaration of love cost me an entire paycheck.
I purchased a star. Not the Hollywood kind starlets walked across in stilettos. An actual star, in outer space, where no man
has boldly gone before.
Bonnie Fay and
Nicola had completely different reactions when I confessed what I had
done. Bonnie Fay wrinkled her nose and
squinted at me, forcing the kind of smile that told me I was lame. “Sounds kinda hokey,” she had said in her
southern drawl. “Sugar, if you’re gonna
tease him with something he can’t have, don’t let it be a star.”
Nicola, the polar
opposite to everything calm and conforming, had a completely different
reaction. She ached a sigh, crossed her
hands over her heart, and fell backwards onto my bed. “That is just so…” She took a breath and clicked the heals of
her combat boots. I prayed she’d say
something other than “hokey.” “So…
romantic.” Then she wiped away a hint of
her sentimentality before it had the chance to smear her dark eye make-up. She had spent too long applying deadly Goth
to have it ruined by a girly tear.
Yes, I bought my
boyfriend a star. It was a little star –
I didn’t make that much money – cleverly hidden in the Scorpius
constellation. The website informed me
the little speck could be seen near the horizon using a telescope the size of a
small skyscraper. But the heavenly body,
now and forever known as “Addison Wake,” was indeed there. It was my gift to him, a little piece of
eternity that would smile down upon us every night until the stars all went
out.
Okay, it was a
little hokey.
But what could I
have given to Addison Wake? He wasn’t
exactly like the other boys at Redcliff High.
To be perfectly clear, he was nothing at all like anyone on this mortal
world. Addison
was a phantom, a fugitive from the netherworld, casually walking among the
living as shadowflesh. He willed his
dark, mysterious ether into the tall, lean embodiment of perfection. An immortal soul, yet vulnerable shadowflesh.
And no, I didn’t
need my head examined… or maybe I did.
Addison was completely
wrong for me, completely wrong for any living, breathing girl who had a
fondness for staying alive. The more I
knew we shouldn’t be together, the more I was drawn to him. Like a knot, the harder a person tried to
pull it apart the tighter it got.
To show my love for
Addison, I had to think of something as
unique, something as ageless as he.
Haiku hadn’t cut it. And it
wasn’t like I could burn him a CD of my favorite music and expect it to mean
anything in a year, or a decade, or a century.
But a star, it would be forever.
And when that long
and wonderful night finally came and Addison
showed me the constellations, I would surprise him with his star, pointing to
the part of the sky where the tiny speck was supposed to be.
I had no idea how he
would react. Maybe he’d shrug or look at
me as if I had lost my mind. Or maybe
he’d arch one eyebrow higher than the other over his smoky blue eyes and kiss
me. It would be cold, December nights
get that way, so he would undoubtedly drape his leather flight jacket over my
shoulders and wrap me in his strong arms, and I would kiss him back like I had
never kissed him before, like I would never kiss him again. And perhaps that would be the night. The night.
I no longer feared
the darkness. As a matter of fact, I
looked forward it. The longest, darkest
night of the year waited for me, and that should have been my happily ever
after. But fate can be a funny, cruel
thing.
Tour
giveaway:
10 print or ebook copies of the
book – winner’s choice (Print US Shipping Only)
10 bookmarks (ebook marks
available, print bookmarks US Shipping Only)
*~*~*
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