It’s SPELLCASTER day! It’s SPELLCASTER day!
This means the book is finally out there in the world, sitting on bookshelves or curled up in code, waiting to be bought or downloaded. (A few readers have revealed that they found early copies out there — but this is still the official day.)
I think before I was published I thought book release day would be marked by some sort of glitzy party; the reality involved more time spent in airports and on planes, as I was traveling out to my present location of Provo, Utah, to relax a little before tomorrow night’s event. (Have you checked out all the Dark Days events, the days and times, whether or not we’re coming to you? If not, check the News & Events page on my website to get the scoop!)
Right now I long to sink into the welcoming hotel bed and sleep for many hours, but first I have to deliver the final character sketch of the people you’re going to get to know in the SPELLCASTER trilogy. Now it’s time to get to know Mateo —
Mateo Perez has lived in Captive’s Sound his whole life, but he still feels like an outsider. This isn’t because his dad is a relative newcomer who’s only been around for 20 years; no, it’s because of his mother’s family, which for generation after generation has lived in this same small town.
And generation after generation, they’ve all succumbed to insanity — a strange madness that no modern psychologist or drug seems able to help. It begins with nightmares, and then a deep, unshakable conviction that the dreamer has seen the future. Over time each person either succumbs to despair or gives way to violence. The last was Mateo’s mother herself, who took a boat out onto the ocean and never returned.
Mateo’s dad has always told him that the “family curse” is nothing but small-town gossip. Mateo has tried hard to believe him and leads a fairly ordinary life, helping out in the family restaurant and doing his best to fit in at Rodman High. But now the dreams have begun, and no one — not his best friend Elizabeth, or his dad, or even the beautiful girl he’s just met, Nadia — can keep him from realizing that he truly is seeing the future. That means he’s doomed … because even if Nadia thinks she can help him, he knows from his family’s tormented past that anyone who gets too close will just be doomed too.
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By the way, I’m loving the reviews some of you have linked to these posts — feel free to comment with more!
