For a limited time only in Pittsburgh, you can find Maiden in Light and other Wapshott titles at Fleeting Pages bookstore.
Fleeting Pages Bookstore will be open from May 7 until June 7, 2011 at the former Borders in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Location: 5986 Penn Circle South, Pittsburgh, PA. Fleeting Pages Bookstore, FleetingPages, April 22, 2011
If you’ve ever wanted to find Wapshott titles in a bookstore and you’re in or near Pittsburgh, well, this is your chance from May 7 to June 7.
Please cross-post and spread the word. It’s one thing to have a bookstore; it’s another to have customers.
“From the top of the gate, Alys smiled down. There was no evidence of evil, yet Laurel felt it. That absence of living energy concealed something grotesque. She shuddered when she met those night eyes, repulsed as she might be by a dead mouse accidentally trod underfoot or a cold, scaly water-thing brushing against her body in a stream. Her nerves thrilled with danger. She’d seen this girl before, watching and smiling secretly. She’d sensed this presence months ago, though she hadn’t understood until now what it was. This was why she had come to New York…”
When Laurel Windswift enters an apprenticeship under her uncle, the great wizard Lord Redmantyl, she sees only the delights that her magic can bring. But her desire for more knowledge brings her too soon into the dark secrets that all magicians of power share, and forces her to take up a wizard’s duties of night vigils against monstrous and inhuman forces before she is ready. When Laurel returns to her home city to investigate a small magical anomaly for her uncle, this maiden of light meets a child of darkness, and must undertake a task too terrible to perform.
On an alternate earth filled with wonder and danger, the wizard’s niece must make a decision that will affect the rest of her life. As she struggles with the unbearable obligations of a magician, she also faces the ostracism of the merchant families who cast her out as a child, her aunt’s matchmaking efforts, and finding an unexpected love.
“About two years initially, then a few more months for rewrites. The story was originally all in chronological order, but in an effort to shorten it and get to the focus of the plot more quickly, I moved a lot of scenes involving Orlan’s childhood to later sections of the story and made them flashbacks.”
“‘His first vivid, visual impression was of Redmantyl standing over him in the morning sunlight, so tall and red and bright that the wizard had been burned into Orlan’s memory. Indeed, Orlan marked his life from that moment, when all the light and strength and wondrous magic of the world had stepped into his childish awareness. He believed he had known he belonged to that man, even before he knew who Lord Redmantyl was. Before that, there was nothing.
“‘That summer, he began to test the unyielding barrier which kept him from his childhood—his father’s spell, placed upon him years ago. Until now, he had accepted it: who would wish to look back on dirt and poverty and misery when he lived in an ivory castle of magic? Orlan had not tried to remember, but his visit to Storm Port made him attempt to recall a past which had been kept from him. He wanted to know about his mother and the life he had known with her at Lammouthe. Could the spell be broken? He was a magician of some skill himself. Surely he could undo this. He must know: what had he been before his father had brought him to Wizardes Cliff?’
“Orlan Lightesblood is the son of the world’s most powerful wizard and is training to become a wizard himself. But beyond his father’s castle, he is still an innocent youth, defenseless against the evil and temptations that threaten the future laid out for him. On an alternate earth filled with wonder and danger, the wizard’s son must overcome the demons of his own past and his father’s enemies to survive to manhood.”
