‘Ciarrah’s Light’ (The Sun Child Chronicles: Book 3) by Lou Hoffmann #LGBT #ReleaseDay #YA #Spotlight #ReleaseBlitz #RafflecopterGiveaway #EpicFantasy #Dragons #GuestPost #Excerpt

Rainbow Gold Reviews is excited to be a host for Lou Hoffmann’s release of ‘Ciarrah’s Light’ (The Sun Child Chronicles: Book 3). Published by Harmony Ink October 16, 2018, approx 120k words.

*** Giveaway***

Make sure to check out the Rafflecopter giveaway at the bottom of this post!

Luccan, future Suth Chiell of the Ethran Sunlands, also known as Lucky, has just completed a harrowing quest, but his adventures and hardships are only beginning. There’s little time to rest before his ghostly mother’s specter attacks, drowning Lucky in horrible nightmares that drain his life and nearly kill him. Only through the power of his enchanted obsidian blade, Ciarrah, can Lucky claw his way out of the shadowy visions and back to daylight. But further horrors await him when he wakes up, and his country needs him—their Sun Child—more than ever.

Unstoppable wraiths—products of an advanced but dying alien world called Terrathia—are attacking, and swords and arrows cannot stop them. Fortunately Ciarrah’s magical light can, and with his dragon-kin uncle Han, his winged horse, a horde of shifters from Earth, and the wizard Thurlock at his back, Lucky faces the enemy, determined to put an end to his mother’s destructive evil once and for all. But will stopping her end the horrors facing his world?

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Ciarrah~

Naht’kah and Nahk’tesh do not age, but Niamh and I were not immortal, and we aged and aged until we were but frail, wrinkled versions of our human selves. Still, the stones that had become part of us on that first flight with Naht’kah remained bound in our hides, shadows and lights under our human skins.

A day came when Nahk’tesh dove deep into his pool and came back up with a vision to share, a vision of evil sailing in on a distant horizon of human time. Naht’kah determined that the Drakha would not be defenseless when that time came, and she undertook to change them. They had been wanderers, but now she bound them to the Ol’Karrigh and their country—now called the Sunlands—that they would always have a home for which to fight. It was good, but it wasn’t enough, and she made up her mind to give them a secret power.

To do this, she asked a gift from Niamh and myself.

“I would bind you in stone, and you will serve the Drakha,” she said, rather cheerfully.

She bid us farewell on the night we would have breathed our last mortal breath, laid us in beds of mother of pearl and sang through the night, weaving shells around us. The egg that held Niamh she then ripened in her fire, that his brilliance could stand like the sun against cold darkness. My egg she handed to Nahk’tesh and bid him hold me deep in the depths of his pool where his liquid magenta flames perpetually burned, that I would be the living mirror to the empty lifelessness of Naught.

In time she took from our eggs a perfect smooth oval of amber and a jagged shard of obsidian and placed them in the keeping of a stone carver, Nat’Kori, a dragon of the Drakhonic line. Nat’Kori grew quite old before he worked us into our present forms. Every day for more than a hundred years he viewed us, held us, spoke to us, until one day he knew that if he was ever to complete our making before he died, he must begin. Day by day he chipped here and there, carving us into daggers, grinding our blades sharp. He slept one night and woke with a vision and, knowing he would be finished after this last task, he adorned our hilts with the twelve-rayed sun.

We came alive for him, and he smiled as he breathed his last.

Niamh is silent now, and lost perhaps.

But I am found and will be bonded, blood to light. I still sing, and my dark light shines.

___________________________

Lucky~

The path from the valley floor up to the top of the ridge wasn’t at all horse-friendly, so he left Zef to graze at the bottom. He enjoyed the physical exertion of climbing. It pushed worries further toward the back of his mind, and by the time he got to the top he was feeling more lighthearted than he had at any time since leaving Morrow’s farm—which had been either weeks or months ago, depending on whose time you counted by.

Lucky walked along the ridge toward the northern end. The ridge was bare of tall trees there except for the single oak that gave it its name. Probably the upthrust granite that formed most of the upland on this end, coupled with constant crosswinds sluicing down from the hills on all sides, kept all but the strongest of trees to a low, aromatic scrub. Once there had been more tall, broad trees, though, or at least one more. A long-ago fallen log made a perfect bench for someone who wanted to enjoy those breezes, take in the panoramic view, and be alone with his thoughts.

Lucky settled onto the log and looked out over the Behlvale, which stretched miles across, and many more miles long in both directions. It seemed vast, and the solitude of it peaceful. But after a few minutes of gratefully breathing air he didn’t have to share with anyone, he admitted that honestly, he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to be with Rio.

Rio, the youngest of Stable Master Morrow’s seven sons, was the only real boyfriend Lucky had ever had, and he hoped it would stay that way. He was young, and who could know what would happen? He could have lots of boyfriends before it was all over. But he loved Rio—loved for real—and Rio loved him back, and Lucky didn’t want to move on. If keeping what he and Rio had meant missing him and being lonely, he was willing to do it.

That didn’t mean he had to like it, though. He remembered running his hands through Rio’s thick black curls, caressing his cheek with its maturing black beard, kissing him. He thought about looking into Rio’s eyes, putting an I love you into real words, walking with him and holding hands. When he imagined these things, he thought he felt an echoing ping against his heart, and he decided to believe Rio was thinking of him too.

It wasn’t more than seconds before the sweet joy of that thought turned into blue loneliness, but minutes passed before he realized that the darkness creeping into the corner of his vision to the northwest wasn’t the product of his sorrowful reverie. Peering into the distance, he saw several men moving about in a place where a series of tall, narrow stones stood in no discernible pattern. One man wore white robes, and magic disturbed the air around him like a vaguely purple heat mirage. Where the man faced and gestured, pillars and curtains of shadow were taking shape, anchored in or suspended from the stones, billowing and blossoming like fountains from the ground.

And they looked hauntingly, alarmingly familiar.

“Uncle Han? Can you hear me? It’s important!

______________________________

Congratulations, Lou on the release of ‘Ciarrah’s Light’!

Hello readers and fellow fans of Rainbow Gold Reviews! It’s release day for Ciarrah’s Light, a book I told you about more than a year ago in this post – HERE – right here on RGR. I was here then telling you about Wraith Queen’s Veil, the second book in The Sun Child Chronicles, a YA (for ages 11 to 99) fantasy series starring a gay teen named Luccan Elieth Perdhro (otherwise known as Lucky). When I told you what was coming up for Lucky, I didn’t lie, exactly. But it turns out I didn’t know the whole truth. The characters soon set me straight. I know that’s a curious thing to say, and I’m going to explain, but first, let me tell you about Ciarrah’s Light.

Where did I steer you wrong about the Sun Child Chronicles in my previous post?

In large part, what I said about the rest of he series was true-ish. What I didn’t realize was that there would be not three more books after Wraith Queen’s Veil, but four. The story I’d planned for Ciarrah’s Light proved (in the opinion of the pushy characters) to be too big for one book. Here’s where they gave me trouble:

Lucky made a lot of decisions about how involved he should be in politics and battles. He’s not always glad he insisted, but it always ended up with him doing things I hadn’t planned on, and it turned out okay… mostly.

Han ended up way more worried about his internal Dragon self (yes, he has one, really) than I expected him to be. In fact, he got kind of mopey, and somebody had to deal with it!

The Terrathian Aliens proved more crafty, high-tech, and persistent (or maybe desperate) than I ever would have expected. They aren’t done with their evil campaign at the end of Ciarrah’s Light, so the cast and crew of The Sun Child Chronicles decided they’d have to make another book out of the struggles, and I (as author) had not choice but to agree… especially since their reasoning was perfectly sound. Time takes time, after all, and wars aren’t won in a day.

So now, book four of The Sun Child Chronicles is called Dragon’s Rise. It’s written and scheduled for release in summer 2019. Then, yes, Kaynenh’s Triad—book 5, and Suth Chiell’s Conquest—book 6.

Thanks for stopping by the RGR blog today. RGR also hosts my release day launch party, featuring multiple authors of fantasy and YA fiction, on their Facebook event group https://www.facebook.com/events/482925622209965/?ti=icl.

My release celebration has barely begun. If you’d like to know about other blog stops and events, check out this post on my blog, Stories with Pride: http://queerlyya.rainbow-gate.com/ciarrahs-light-event-schedule-get-blog-tour-links-here/

Oh! and don’t let me forget to tell you, there are special deals available on all books (1-3) in The Sun Child Chronicles. Key of Behliseth is free (yes, free!), and Wraith Queen’s Veil and Ciarrah’s Light are 30% off, until the end of October. So, happy reading!

And don’t forget to enter the giveaway! Several prizes, enter multiple times/multiple ways (including taking the “I love fantasy because…” poll, just for fun.)

Click the Rafflecopter link to enter the giveaway. Good luck! ❤

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Ciarrah’s Light Release Events:

Blog tour: October 12 – 31, 2018, schedule at http://queerlyya.rainbow-gate.com/ciarrahs-light-event-schedule-get-blog-tour-links-here/

Podcast appearance: October 26th 9:30 AM on GAYBC News

Book Signing: Barnes and Noble, 1530 Black Lake Blvd, Olympia, WA 98502

Book Signing: Half-Price Books: 1520 Cooper Point Road, Olympia, WA 98502

Lou Hoffmann, a mother and grandmother now, has carried on her love affair with books for more than half a century, and she hasn’t even made a dent in the list of books she’d love to read—partly because the list keeps growing. She reads factual things—books about physics and history and fractal chaos, but when she wants truth, she looks for it in quality fiction. She loves all sorts of wonderful things: music and silence, laughter and tears, youth and age, sunshine and storms, forests and fields, flora and fauna, rivers and seas. Even good movies and popcorn! Those things help her breathe, and everyone she knows helps her write. (Special mention goes to (1) George the Lady Cat and (2) readers.) Proud to be a bisexual, biracial woman (of European and Native American descent), Lou considers every person a treasure not to be taken for granted. In her life, she’s seen the world’s willingness to embrace differences change, change back, and change again in dozens of ways, but she has great hope for the world the youth of today will create. She writes for readers who find themselves anywhere on the spectrums of age, sexuality, and gender, aiming to create characters that live not only in their stories, but always in your imagination and your heart.