Books in the Nine series

  She has died a million times…  Someone is stalking her. She knows this, knows it at the edge of her vision, where nothing really is seen, only dreamed. Her nightmares give her no peace. She turns and looks behind her. There is nothing there her eyes can see. But in the wind she can hear the wailing cry, the cry of Death. Sniffing that wind, she can smell the blood in her nostrils.  There is truth in flesh, they say… and there is truth in that. But there is also substance in what cannot be seen, cannot be touched. Claws and fangs cut ceaselessly through the night, looking for her. A silent cry is heard in the dark.  Someone… or something is stalking her.  She remembers a kind touch and a slap in the face, and hardly anything else.  Kathryn Caldwell is Afterglow, a woman of undetermined age, a strange creature wandering the dark corners of the world. Something happened to her once, something horrible, something she can never forget or put out of her mind. It is haunting her every second of her dark days, every moment of her pitiful sleep. She has become an empty shell, a pale imitation of the human being she once was. Long ago, as she measures time, she lost everything valuable in a human being, saw it fall through a crack, irreversible, never to be found again.  So she is wandering the darkened streets of the modern world, aimlessly, adrift, hardly ever seen, hardly ever there. People cannot see her, but she is there, present in their daily lives, an open wound that will never close.  No one is safe for Afterglow… 

She can not rid herself of it, the sense of falling. It is lurking in her dreams,every time she looks at the world from the edge of her vision. The old, cruel oracle at the fair did not tell her anything she did not know.Janet of the Blue Flame is born a sorcerer, one with powers of the mind andthe body far exceeding those of most others, one in a line reaching far backin antiquity. In this modern age she, like many others is virtually unaware of thepotential resting in the murky parts of her being. She may know, deep down,but she is not aware... not until the day Malone the Sorcerer comes for her.Malone is dark and powerful. His skills and might are unquestionable. Hispower speaks to her, to her murky depths, roaring in her consciousness like astorm. Janet is only Sweet Sixteen and is overwhelmed in Malone''s presence.When he offers to train her, for her to become his apprentice she consentswith an eagerness of a mule chasing the carrot. He is everything she is not,everything she has ever dreamed of being. She leaves her friends and family,leaves behind everything she knows and joins the mighty and enigmaticsorcerer on his quest. His harsh teaching takes her far away, into the ninerealms and beyond. He gives her her devoirs, gives her everything he promised and more,wishing her good luck, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her life.Janet of the Blue Flame is ready for the world.

She has died a million times…Someone or something is stalking her. Stalking her from one world to the next, from day to night, from night to day. Wherever she walks it is there. Turn one way and it is ahead. Turn another and there it is. In branches moving in the wind. In old houses where every step on the dusty floor brings a creak from the wood. Afterglow is haunted and hunted, no matter where she goes. Janet Kathryn Caldwell is traveling the nine realms, all the nine realms and even beyond, in search of meaning, of anything tangible that might make her life make sense. What she finds is more mystery, more dark corners waiting for her. One revelation opens up nine more closed boxes slapping her in the face, grinning to her like banshees in the night, in the mists and twilights of the world. The nine lands in the nine realms are different, they are the same. Afterglow brushes them like the wind, and sometimes like the storm, making a brief stop, before moving on, leaving ruins in its wake. The Storm is coming. She knows this, beyond knowing, beyond certainty. Dark blades are cutting air, cutting flesh. An army of them is awaiting Afterglow, and she finds revelations, horrors and terrors aplenty, out there, on her way to nowhere. She does not know where she is going, only that she is going there, no matter what it takes, no matter where it may take her. Lightning strikes deep below the ground in Afterglow's path.

  The name Forsaken has no religious connotations. It has far darker meanings than that…  Janet of the Blue Flame is truly forsaken, by everything and everyone she once held dear.  Her heart and her soul have been ripped out, her mind violated beyond repair. The cruel violet eyes are dry. There are no more tears left. She is hardly more than a shade, drifting through the dark corners of the realms.  In a tavern without doors she sets out to drink herself to death.  Weeks later, after already legendary binge drinking bouts to end all legendary binge drinking bouts a man comes to her with a proposal. He wants her on «his team» of sorcerers, one he wants to take him on a tour across the nine realms. She does not know why she agrees, whether or not it is because death has lost its appeal to her or because it has not, or because she just does not care.  There are maps, ancient lore describing the path they must take, and Janet has traveled parts of the Journey before, enough to know some of its perils, enough to scare her, if anything can scare her anymore.  Janet of the Blue Flame is set loose on this realm and all the next, like an attack dog that has broken its chains.