Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Mage-y Question

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements.

This week's what if comes to us from CD Coffelt...

If given the chance to do magic, what would it be?
No gift is “all good”. So what would be the bad, unintended consequences of wielding that magic?

Mage Revealed

Book Two of The Magic Withheld series

Struck with enough malevolent Spirit to turn him into a raving beast of a man, Bert Reese fights to remain human. Alone, he walks a slender path between sanity and madness. Then, an unlikely source enters his life to help—one of the now-hated mages.

But Ashleigh is different and calms his butchered senses. Her fierce nature is the only rock that stands between him and the crevasse that is beast. In all ways, she walks beside him toward a new beginning. But at the end of their journey lies the one who used Spirit against him. Questions arise; did Tiarra, head of the Imperium, lose her magic, die, or simply give way to the new order? Or, like a spider, does she wait for a mage to blunder into her web?

Forced on him without a care for his humanity, Bert is the mage who should not exist, born with a different kind of magic. 

And the gates of Hell are no match for the magic he wields.

Author C.D. Coffelt’s world of magic started in Wilder Mage with the words “The earthquake wasn't his fault. Not this time.” It continues in Mage Revealed, the second book of the three-part series. Watch the book trailer on YouTube.

Excerpt from Mage Revealed

Energy slithered around him, encased him and…

Bonded.

All the elements slammed into him at once filling him like a bursting dam, sloshing into a maelstrom of Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Spirit. Magic filled him, cascaded into every pore of his skin until there was nothing left that was of his essence.

He raised his arms. “I am a wizard,” he said.

His words echoed, like the roll of a bass drum in an empty coliseum.

From his fingertips, fluid lightning forked and shot into the empty sky. A violent whirlwind as tall as he wanted it to be caught up a whorl of leaves. A roar of Fire sprang from the palms of his hands, crowned his head. And Spirit, the silvery element waited for his command, to charge into any foray he so chose.

He turned to the panting woman, frozen in the grip of panic and fright.

“I am a wizard,” he said again.

C.D. Coffelt lives outside Skidmore, Missouri with a bemused husband and way too many cats. She is a member of the Missouri Writers Guild. But despite that bit of conventionality, she adores all things fantasy with a special love for urban and epic.

With a passion for good writing and Doritos as companions, locating Middle-Earth on a dusty road in rural Missouri wasn’t difficult. All it took was a little Magic, hours of reading, and an overactive imagination.

She blogs as Huntress on www.spiritcalled.blogspot.com, Facebook, Twitter, and her writer’s critique site, www.unicornbell.blogspot.com.

Find her books at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

19 comments:

  1. Seems like an interesting book for those that like that line of a story. I think if I was to do magic, I would do magic to get everyone to love each other.

    betty

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    1. Okay I'll play 'what if': What if filling everyone with love left no room for any other emotions? If love was all, what about anger, ambition, regret. How can we judge what love is without seeing the opposite?
      (i do 'love' what ifs, *grin*)

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  2. Congrats to CD!!! I just read Wilder Mage - and it's a great book! I'm looking forward to Mage Revealed!

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    1. Because your entry won in Tara Tyler's Shelfies Blog Hop, Mage Revealed is winging its way to you right now!
      Enjoy.

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  3. Sounds like a great book indeed. What would I do with magic? Put everybody to sleep for sometimes, so we do away with the complaining, the panic, the traffic. :)

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    1. "What if" a fire broke out in a building where they were sleeping? What if they couldn't wake up due to the magic? How would the mage feel after learning he/she was the cause of many deaths?

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  4. Congratulations to CD. Mage Revealed sound an intriguing read!

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    1. Thank you! Looking forward to writing the third and last in the series.

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  5. Ooh, love that excerpt! Congratulations to CD!!

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    1. Bert took over the storyline. He was the "Bob" character in Wilder, the one who helps with revealing the backstory. A prop, if you like. But he wasn't going for staying in the background.
      And just because I talk (and answer) my characters, I. Am. Not. Crazy.

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  6. Hmmm.... I think if I were given the chance to do magic, I'd use it to clean my house!!! Sounds like a great book.

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    1. That's a good one. I'd like a bit of that magic myself.

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    2. What if using magic to clean your house caused jealousy. What if people discovered your talent and pulled you away from your family "for your own good" so they could use you to 'clean' other areas. LIke waste dumps, (er, actually that's my house), oil spills, enemy tanks?
      What if they used you for their own purposes?

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  7. Yeah, I'd like to be like Mrs. Weasely, with that clock and utensils that cook for you.

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  8. If I were given a chance to do magic I think I'd have to go with the magical house cleaning too. We pulled everything out from the under the stairs storage and I'm completely overwhelmed!

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  9. If I could do magic I would make Justin Bieber and the Khardassians disappear. The negative side to this?....um......thinking......nothing really:)

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I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.