COMING SOON! Okay, I have been holding off long enough. The third book of Selador is written! Currently editing and reviewing the hard copy proof, and I am just too excited to hold it close to myself any longer. I wanted to share a small tidbit passage for you, if you read the first two books (Selador: The Book of Time and Selador: The Secret Paths) you might be interested in continuing the story in my third book - Selador: Forbidden Realms.
By the way, the first two books are available on Amazon, and they were on sale when I last checked!
Click Here for The Book of Time
Click Here for The Secret Paths
Writing this third book has been a totally enjoyable immersive experience for me, so full of intrigue and mystery, in which I have been able to explore a variety of long overdue playing with the imaginative creation. It invokes the richness of what J.R.R. Tolkien liked so much about the words "cellar door", or "selador" in that it opens up your imagination to other worlds. It was a doorway to another place, but you didn't quite know where. That's exactly what this book does. You will see when you read it. I will be sure to post the release date soon. But in case you cannot wait, here is a little preview:
A preview chapter from - Selador: Forbidden Realms
Something in the air felt different. Stepping out onto her balcony wrapped in a shawl on an early morning before sunrise, Nella got the sense that the realm was waking up to something new. Buds were emerging with a fresh-toned green popping up as birds chirped a cheery tune. She caught glimpses of the tiny birds as they fluttered to and fro on their morning chores which ranged from branch to branch. The shift of the seasons was among them, as winter gave way to spring, a little more each day the re-awakening of nature was pushing through the frozen sleep of winter.
Nella took a deep breath and sweet scents of growth and earth reached her nose and filled her with delightful notions of running through a field of flowers, which she had never done, of course. But one can dream, and the beginning of spring awakened an essence of a dream in her. Beauty was emerging from the seeming deadness of branches, reminding her that deep roots are not touched by the frost, as the fire of spring awakens them, and they know it is time to grow.
A glimpse of blooms from a tree nearby caught her eye. Pink had burst forth overnight creating a visual representation of the coming season. It was still quite cold, though, and she was grateful for her warm shawl.
She was up earlier than usual as she could not sleep. Her thinking came best in the mornings anyway, and after an hour or so at her desk writing, she came out to the balcony to get a pre-dawn refreshment from nature.
Being high up in the trees, the sun rose early, so it was cresting now on the horizon casting warm rays of glowing light scattered across the forest. That morning dawn was so welcoming to Nella, as it awakened everyone in the realm with the same light.
Many days had gone by since she lost her father to the portalis, a doorway leading (as many believed) into another unknown realm. Was it only days ago? It almost felt like months to her. Her days have been consumed by trying to figure out how to get him back, but she was having trouble finding much information in the history books. Granted, she had a lot of books to go through (a few hundred or so) and she had occasional help from Master Nolan, but it was a bit like trying to sort through an ocean of words to find a piece of eligible seaweed.
The problem with history books is that they may not hold fully accurate information, depending on who was writing, so it really needed to be discovered in the previous Books of Time as well. If that aligns with what is written in the history book, then there is a good chance it would be accurate to work off.
After several late evenings at the library buried in research Nella almost felt tempted to just follow her father into the portalis to try to get to him, to make sure he is okay and to ask all the questions she didn’t get to ask yet, but she knew it would be fruitless and thoughtless. The problem of getting back through a one-way doorway needed to be solved from here.
Nella’s mother was due to bring her father’s papers and journals to her that day at the library. She could not wait to dive into her father’s handwritten notes and findings. There, she knew she had a great chance of finding a clue.
As to the village itself, things began to go back to a quasi-normal after the attack on the village and a day of mourning, but then a couple days of clean-up and assisting those who had losses turned into a longer task.
Not everything could be done so quickly. Repairs were being done in some areas whilst many more waited for attention, but losses of villagers would not be so easily repaired. Master Louver and Lady Cora were mostly attending to the people and the safety of the village, overseeing those things were being taken care of in the aftermath of the attack.
Nella’s mother Edith was also involved with the restoration and oversight, which is why she had barely seen Nella nor been able to give her Soren’s papers yet. She had many keen ideas for better gates and protective measures for the village to implement. Nella had offered to assist with the projects as well, but Master Louver dismissed her, telling her to work in her research instead. There were plenty of others available who were craftsmen to re-build and those with prior knowledge like her mother who could help with making improvements.
Rather than feeling dismissed Nella was relieved, as her specialty was not in building or restoring projects, but by writing by hand the changes needed. Some changes were discussed and asked of her, which Nella implemented in The Book of Time as requested by Master Louver.
While Master Nolan was pulled in many directions across the village, he was spending very little time in the library researching with Nella. He would set aside time in the morning to drop in whilst Nella was digging into the pages, but he was always called away a short time later, which lasted until late into the evening. Nella knew this would slow down eventually, but she feared that his duties to the village would be so much that his collaboration time forever limited.
She said nothing, though. She knew that he was too kind to say no to the village needs, which on the whole, were probably far greater than her own.
So she tucked herself away with a path of convoluted historical entries when she could find them, and the subsequent trial to find any pairing in the Books of Time. She felt fully contented in the work, for as she dug, she was learning more about the ways of past Ages from a historical viewpoint as well as the corresponding entries. She hoped that some of this information would store itself in her memory and she could pull from it in the future.
Things were very different in past Ages. As she began her journey into the writings, she noticed there to be a focus on the development of knowing what was beyond the realm and exploring that whole concept, hence the portalis usage, which clearly became misused. But before that, there were schools of students who studied space and time, and the mysterious elements that connect living things. What happened to that? Why was it no longer even talked about?
Most of the information was from the First Age, which is the time period when she knew the portalis was used often and taught in schools according to the histories. This is where she felt she would find information she needed to break the dormant elements of their current days. The suppression of using the magical elements of the portalis and The Book of Time became evident in the Second Age.
Was she the first to break its dormancy, in the creation of a portalis? If so, she knew her knowledge at this time of how they worked was so limited, and that needed to change. She knew they were one-way doorways, but where did they lead? Was she just the vessel by which their realm could be linked to somewhere else?
Nearby rustling branches indicated birds were close by and their chirps confirmed it. Bright leaves reflecting the new sunlight brought her back to her balcony as she felt suddenly that more was going to change than she even knew, and she was not sure she was ready for all of it.
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