The Blurbs that Be

 Are you ready for book three? Mage King will be out soon. Check out the others so you'll be ready; you won't regret it.

What would happen to you if you lost your parents at 17?

And then... what if they weren't your parents at all?

When Sean loses his parents within a year of each other he can't see past the tragedy... until he finds out his father isn't really his father... and Sean isn't who he thinks he is. Follow Sean through his journey to a magical world where he is royalty and his powers are only beginning to bloom... and family is a relative concept - evil uncles and all.

Prince in Hiding by Anna Walls is the first in the Making of a Mage King series that follows young Sean from boy to Mage King!




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When the long dead kings gave Sean their approval for to wear the crown, they also gave him a mission.

…the thing is, they didn’t tell him what it was.

Feeling like a giant hand was pushing him between his shoulder blades and pulling all his nerves and muscles into a hard fist in the process, Sean was driven.

Accomplish what?

All he knew was that he had his dear uncle’s mess to clean up, and he only had until the snow flew to accomplish it all.


The sequel to the best selling Prince in Hiding!


~~~

As if the secret mission driving him to touch every section of the country wasn't enough, now he had another problem - a big one - and there was no let-up on the original mission.

Under his dear uncle's reign, things had started to deteriorate. Now Sean was left with no choice. With a heavy hand, he slapped back at the invaders, and then he had to rush on.

No more being Mr. Nice Guy. But such heavy-handedness has its own risks, especially when the mission comes to a head and all his questions are answered - as if the answers would do him any good.

Will he survive? Can he survive? Will he be what he was made to be if he does, or will he be a mere husk of himself? First he'll have to wake up.

The Making of a Mage King

How do the choices in out lives come about? Some children are subtly guided along the way until they start making their own decisions. Some of that guidance is not so subtle, as many choices are blatantly made, setting the child on a course firmly predetermined. In the most drastic cases, there is no subtly, only cold hard law. And sometimes a child is merely housed and clothed until such time as they take up the task on their own and move out.

Sean Moselle was gently guided through childhood in a certain direction by parents who half hoped the guidance would never be necessary, but they could not risk him not developing certain skills. He was encouraged to learn the art of fencing by stories of valiant knights, both read as well as simply recited as he sat on his father's knee. His desire to be just like King Arthur was more than indulged, but he didn't know the difference. His father was also in a position to instil in him the love and care of horses, as well as the skill to ride them.

In the first book, Prince in Hiding, Sean's happy childhood falls completely apart with the deaths of his parents under unusual circumstances. First, his mother seems to simply drop dead; no cause could ever be found. Roughly a year later, his father, a mounted police officer, was killed in the line of duty, Or was he?

Any other kid growing up in New York who lost their parents by the time they turned seventeen, would have been able to carve a place for themselves. It wouldn't be easy, but it would have been possible. 

In Sean's case, things were not so simple. You see, Sean really wasn't a native born New Yorker. Well, he was, but his parents weren't, and his parents also weren't the two people he had always called mom and dad. His real parents were the crown prince Deain Ruhin and his lady wife was Kassandra Barleduc. This left him with the unwieldy name of Seanad Éireann Barleduc-Ruhin, named by the custom of his people. His people, who were not here on this earth, nor were they even in this time. Where they were, no one has ever determined; they were just elsewhere.

There was no choice. With the deaths of both of his closest guardians, his other protectors had to take him back and teach him how to be the king he was born and bred to be.

You'd think that defeating his evil uncle and claiming the throne would be the end of the story, but in truth it was only the beginning.

Holding the throne does no good if no one knows. Sean's goal then was to go around and tell everyone. He also needed to set people in place who would be loyal to him and in general clean up his uncle's mess, but there was a deeper reason he needed to make this trek and time was wasting, and he had no idea why. For some reason he felt that he had only six months at best to complete his task. He told himself that it had to be finished by the time the snows came and locked down the mountain districts, but though that was the reason he gave, it wasn't quite right.

Once in motion, even the fastest pace his men could travel wasn't fast enough; he felt positively driven, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't cover the distance fast enough.

He took to expending vast amounts of magic, and striving to keep up the pressure on himself, but even powerful mages aren't indestructible. This is where friends proved to be invaluable. They kept him grounded and sane, and they made sure he didn't kill himself. They couldn't, however, protect him from his own dreams. As sleep turned difficult, dreams filled his nights with puzzles and premonitions, visions of possible futures, and possible pasts. Dreams that were just plain strange, and dreams of his first ancestor leading him to the fate he needed to meet, and yet still not telling him what that fate was.

Now we get to the interesting part. Pieces have been in motion since the first book. Cities have fallen and enemy forces have been helping themselves to the magical populous of Ruhin, seeking to use them for their own ends. Sean, needs to act. He needs to find the stolen and hold accountable those who took them. But that didn't relieve him of his original mission, so he had to act quickly, and brutally. He had no time to be nice, to be diplomatic, to hold court and judge war crimes.

With haste, he rounded up his armies and pointed them at their marks, and then he gathered up the closest of his uncle's nastiest warriors and led them against yet another target. War is never pretty, and Sean made no effort to try. And then he had to protect his borders, and more magic was the only answer.

The magic to protect his borders was a balm to his tortured soul after using so much magic to kill his enemies. But now that the war was over, his original task still loomed. Even though he was nearly finished, snows threatened, time was running out. He pushed on as hard as ever while still trying very hard to remain human, to stay that boy who grew up in New York, raised by a man named Moselle. It was a connection he never wanted to jeopardize, it was a memory that kept the overwhelming power of magic that coursed through his veins from turning him into something akin to his uncle.

Then at one point shortly before being able to make it to all of his districts, time ran out. Snow blanketed the landscape and Sean had to use all of the magic his land had to offer to save the world.

Yeah, I'm going to be mean and make you read the book to find out how he did that, and of course there's the bit after that - something to do with the birth of his son and dealing out a little overdue justice.

Book 3 will be available in June.

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White Star

Back of the book blurb:

When the long dead kings gave Sean their approval for to wear the crown, they also gave him a mission.

…the thing is, they didn’t tell him what it was.

Feeling like a giant hand was pushing him between his shoulder blades and pulling all his nerves and muscles into a hard fist in the process, Sean was driven.

Accomplish what?

All he knew was that he had his dear uncle’s mess to clean up, and he only had until the snow flew to accomplish it all.

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Woohoo!!! It's almost time!! Another book is nearly ready to hit the virtual shelves, can you believe it. Wow!!! I'm not too sure I do. Not too long ago, writing never entered my head, now I have four books already on Amazon, and soon a fifth. It still amazes me when I think of it. 

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(Here's the first day as a teaser)

Training Horses and Men

When Sean and Charles returned from the palace, Seth and his crew were already moving among the horses, slipping nooses over their heads and handing them off to one of the men waiting for them.

When all the horses had been handed off, Seth spread everyone out over the valley around the camp. The day was spent working with the horses. Fortunately, almost everyone had dealt with horses a good deal of their lives, so no one was utterly inexperienced. Thanks to the expertise of Seth and his men, the first day of lessons progressed with few hitches.

From now on someone would care for the horse in every tiny way as often as possible so the horse would quickly get used to the activity. The horses were touched everywhere, they were pushed and pulled. They were led around then lunged in first one direction, then another, then they were handled again. Their feet were picked up again and again. Seth and his men made their way through the throng and taught the men how to pull the horses to lie down on the ground where they were again handled and caressed, then they were let up only to do it all over again.

There were more men than horses in need of this training, and those men who didn’t have a horse to work pulled camp duty. Firewood was gathered and a stew was prepared. When it was ready, everyone filed past with their horse kept close, collected a bowl of stew and then moved off to eat where the horses could graze close by.

The afternoon was much the same as the morning, though the horses were all handed off to someone new. That night, the horses dozed next to their handlers.

Sean’s supply wagons started arriving near midmorning and as soon as they stopped, Sean set to making packsaddles. Elias and Ferris must have stripped every place in the city of every available piece of leather they could find. He worked all day and managed to turn out one saddle about every two hours. Having never made a saddle before, he took one apart so he could copy the parts. Charles helped him keep track so he didn’t make too many of one part and not enough of some other part. Seth pulled him away when supper was ready, and Larry saw to it that he went to bed after, rather than go back to working on the saddles.

Hélène told him once that working magic was a lot like doing it with your own hands; it takes energy. It’s easier with magic, but it still takes energy. He could never have turned out a saddle every two hours with his hands even if he was the best saddle maker in the world, but he had still worked leather and shaped wood for ten hours almost nonstop. He was lucky he was making them from existing material; his turnout would have been somewhat less if he’d had to make them from nothing. He was wiped by the end of the day.

Elias had been able to scrape together thirty-two packsaddles and another dozen riding saddles. Sean was not sure why he sent riding saddles, but they would use them one way or another.

Seth immediately set aside two of those saying they were broken, then he held up one that was less bulky then the rest. Looking directly at Charles, he said, “Looks a little small. We’ll just have to find a horse that’ll fit it.”

Charles looked like he was about ready to burst with the intensity of his excitement, though he didn’t moved a muscle. Seth just smiled and waved his hand in a ‘come on’ gesture and they went looking for a horse that Charles could ride. They came up with a dainty footed little bay mare with long white socks. She pranced a bit, but it looked to Sean like she was willing to learn and willing to please.

They worked the horses with and without saddles every day for long hours while Sean made more saddles. More supply wagons came into camp every day. By the fourth day, the saddles were loaded with sandbags and extra tents or blankets, and even some pots and pans so the horses would get used to flopping material and noise. Sean hoped they would never pack so sloppily, but Seth didn’t want their supplies packed and have the horse bolt because something worked loose and spooked him.

Seth kept Charles and the horse he named Dancer close by his side. Both Charles and Dancer were just learning how to ride, and he didn’t want anything to go wrong.


When Seth was finally satisfied that the young horses were trained well enough, they packed up their gear and headed west; further training could continue on the trail. At first, the men wanted to form up in a military block, but the need to tend the remounts precluded that by a long shot. It wasn’t long before they were strung out in what looked like a loose herd. Larry thought it looked rather funny and chuckled every time he looked around to check their progress.

Their first night on the trail, they were making camp and Larry was pulling the saddle off his horse. In his best western drawl he turned to Sean. “Weel Hoss, this shore ain’t Noy Yok.”

“Naw, Festus,” Sean replied in kind. “It shore ain’t.” He hooked his thumbs in his sword belt with an exaggerated swagger and then hawked up a loud spit. Then both of them burst out laughing when the move didn’t turn out quite the way Sean planned and he had to wipe off his chin.

Those closest to them looked at them as if they had suddenly gone stark raving mad.

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I hope your wait for book 2 was not too long, but above all, I hope you enjoy it. Book 3 will be out next year at this time, and then you can have the whole set. Now that's a milestone too.

Making of a Mage-King

Have you ever had a series of dreams that simply dominated your life? This is the way Making of a Mage-King came about. As I wrote, my nights were rife with dreams of future scenes or events, and sometimes, though I knew they related, I had no idea how. You know how dreams can be? Twisted and nonsensical. Some say it's my muse. I've even heard it described as channeling, and it certainly felt that way from time to time.

I've posted about dreams before and how they fueled my writing most of the time. This story was by far the most loaded up with such dreams - actual dreams - with very little altering to fit the moment.

So here's the evil fun part: Though such dreams increase in book 2, White Star, and even more so in book 3, Mage-King, they are in all three books. I challenge you to find them. I'm not sure what I can offer you for doing so. I'd gladly sign your book but you'd have to send it to me. Course, I'd gladly do that anyway. I'm going to have to figure out how to sign eBooks too. Hmmm maybe I might be able to send you a copy of the next book if you find the dreams in the first book. I'd have to think on that. What do you think? Do you think you could find the dreams that fueled this story? Have fun looking.

White Star - Book 2 of Making of a Mage-King

Here's a teaser for you. This little sample is very near the beginning of the book. I'm going through this book right now in preparation for sending it off the the editor. It will be ready for you to enjoy early next year, but until then...

 ~~~~~~~~~~ 

That night Sean woke to the sound of Jenny crying. It might have been a dream, but it sounded so real. “Jenny, can you hear me,” he called softly in case she was sleeping.

He felt her startled surprise as soon as he spoke. “Sean, is that you?” she said. He could hear the tears in her voice.

“What’s the matter, Jenny? Why are you crying?”

“How did you know I was crying? I’m not crying.” Then she broke down again. “I’ll never see him again. I just know it. When I kissed him goodbye the other day, I knew it would be the last time I would see him.” 

“That’s nonsense, Jenny. You know I would never let anything happen to Larry.”

“I know that. And I know he won’t let anything happen to you either. I can say the words and I can believe them with the front of my brain, but in the dark, this cold hard dread wells up from the back of my brain and I’m afraid, Sean, I’m terrified.”

“Jenny, I’d let you come along, but this is going to be one long, brutal trip.”

“I did it before, when you took off on your wild ride. We all rode real hard trying to keep up with you. Mattie should come too; she was the one who was able to keep you in our sights.”

“Mattie’s there too, isn’t she,” he said, feeling the rug being pulled out from under him.

After a short hesitation, she said, “Yeah. So isn’t Armelle; she wants to come too.” Did he detect a little humor?

“No.” Sean sat up abruptly and Charles muttered in his sleep. He had taken to sneaking onto the foot of his cot. Fortunately, he hadn’t kicked him. “I need someone there with some authority.” He knew that Elias and Ferris would be running things, but the thought of putting his little Armelle through what he was considering letting Jenny and Mattie do, was just beyond him, but Jenny was giggling now.

“Armelle has absolutely no desire to put that much time in the saddle, besides – you’re going to be a father in nine months. She says that you better be back here by then.” 

Sean flopped back down. He was going to be a father. His Armelle was pregnant. He couldn’t think. His brides were all pregnant too, but this was just – different.

“Aren’t you even going to ask what it’s going to be?” 

“I don’t care,” he said, and meant it. His wife was having his baby; He was ecstatic. Then his euphoria was dampened by the echo of an old woman’s dying words, ‘Keep these two close to you. If you send them away from you…and there will be many reasons, good reasons to send them somewhere safe, somewhere you are not… But you must keep them close to you, for if you are separated, all will be lost. You will be lost. They will be lost. Everything will fail.’ “You’re not pregnant too, are you?” asked Sean, afraid that he already knew the answer.

“What? Do you really think I could keep something like that from you?” she said incredulously.

Yes, he did, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. For all he knew, Larry had been afraid to touch her since her miscarriage. Sean was reminded that there would be a reckoning when they reached Loire. He knew that Larry hadn’t forgotten either; he had seen him gazing off south a couple times when he thought no one was looking.

“All right, I’m going to regret this, but at least you know what you’re in for; pack up and have Mattie get the white stone from Elias; I suppose we should have some kind of healer along.” He broke the connection as he felt Jenny’s excitement. He was sorry for taking Armelle’s only friends, but he figured that he would call her often to make sure that his brides weren’t giving her any more hassles.

Sean’s night was shot, so he gave up and dressed as quietly as he could. Outside, he found Cordan stoking the watch fire; he was watch commander tonight. He waved to him and walked to the edge of camp to water a bush then he checked on the sentry posts. The cloud cover was thin enough for him to pick out the lights that were the moons, but they weren’t bright enough to cast any but the vaguest shadows.

Seth had the horses picketed all around and Cordan had a half dozen men riding casually among them and another dozen walking a foot patrol outside of that. The rest of the men were sleeping under small pup tents big enough for two bodies and little else.

Just as the sun was lighting the eastern horizon, he called Jenny again. By now, he was standing by Larry’s tent. Just as he completed the connection, he felt the turmoil.

“Jenny? What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“You happened,” she said harshly. “I thought you weren’t going to get us. What took you so long?”

“Nothing, I was just giving you time to pack a bag. Are you ready?”

“Of course we’re ready. We’ve been ready for hours.” 

“It hasn’t been ‘hours’, not very many anyway.”

“Oh, just hurry up.” 

As soon as they appeared Sean put his finger to his lips and whispered, “This is Larry’s tent. I didn’t want to startle him.”

Jenny snickered quietly behind her fingers and peeked inside then she crawled the rest of the way out of sight while Sean glowered at Hélène who had come with them.

Sean led Mattie and Hélène back to the watch fire at the center of camp. Cordan watched their approach without recognizing them until they were quite close. When he identified Mattie, he did a stunned double take then said, “What are you doing here?”

“I brought them. They had an irrefutable argument for coming,” said Sean.

Cordan looked at Mattie for a moment longer then his eyes bore holes in Sean. “You sure make it hard for a man to have a family.”

Sean turned on Mattie; his frown was in high relief in the light of the campfire. “Are you pregnant too?” he asked.

She smiled sheepishly and nodded.

“Mattie…” Sean started, but she interrupted him. “My lord, riding a horse won’t hurt the baby; it’s not due for a long time. Besides, if I start to have problems, you can always send me back.”

“I’m going to send you back right now. We aren’t on a ‘ride’. What we will be doing can only be called a pounding.”

She stepped up to him and touched his lips with her fingertips. “I’ll be fine. I won’t slow you down.”

Sean looked at Cordan. “Your decision, man,” he said, and waited for the signal for him to send her back.

He just shrugged and shook his head then he pulled her to him and gave her the kind of hug that said he missed her a lot.

Sean stepped away and almost ran into Hélène. “What are you doing here? Who’s taking care of things back at the palace?” he asked. He was more than a little peeved that she was here. Though she didn’t quite fall into his definition of ‘old’, she was no spring chicken.

“Mattie said you thought you should have a healer along.”

“I intended that to be Mattie’s reason for being here, not yours,” said Sean.

“And if you get hurt again?”

“You said yourself that you weren’t strong enough to put me down, so what’s the point? I need you at the palace to help those people get well and go home.”

“Those people are in the hands of some of the finest healers in the land and I’m the only one I know who stands a chance of ‘putting you down’ as you say it.”

“I won’t wait for you; if you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind and you better stay out of my way; if you’re going to be the healer here, that’s what you’ll do, nothing else.”

She shrugged then pointed to his forehead. “Where’s your crown?”

“It’s the middle of the night. Everyone’s asleep.”

“Not everyone,” she said.

“Oh give it a rest. Next you’ll be checking to see if I wear it in my bed.”

It was fortunate that the sun was rising because their shouting match was rousing the rest of the camp just in time for a quick breakfast before they hit the trail again.

Sean strode past the fire on his way to his own tent giving Cordan a meaningful look as he passed. The slightest cramp, the smallest problem, and Mattie would go back to the palace. He didn’t have time for old women or pregnant girls. Even if one of the men fell ill, they would be left behind at the closest village or farmhouse, or sent back to the palace.

White Star - Book 2 of The Making of a Mage-King

A hundred and forty-eight mages had survived his coup. Most of them had been the sleepers he had shielded while they slept; a handful had been completely snuffed of their magic. There were also twenty-four non-magical survivors. They were the men who had fought Laon, or at least they would have, when they won through the door. Laon was responsible for an additional nineteen dead men at that door.

Laon had vouched that Sean likely wasn’t interested in taking prisoners, so the survivors were sent home, but home wasn’t an option for some of them. Like the one girl that had spoken to him, all these nearly twenty children either had no families, or their families refused to take them back. Shielded or not, their families and friends feared them. For that matter, Sean was sure the entire town feared them all.

Sean turned to his friends gathered at the table for ideas. All the ideas, few that there were, were unsatisfactory, so he went to talk to the kids.

The innkeeper had housed them in what he called the common room up in the attic. It was a room where guests could buy a bed for the night rather than a whole room. The innkeeper had insisted that their door was locked and guarded, or else they could go somewhere else. Sean had the guard unlock the door, and, followed by Cordan, Larry and Laon, he entered the room.

Sean’s entrance didn’t cause much of a stir. Only a few of the room’s occupants could bring themselves far enough out of their shells to raise their heads and see who had entered. The rest of them were in varying degrees of coil as they wallowed under Sean’s shield and struggled with the sudden lack of guild control.

Nineteen small bodies were here; all of them were dressed in the same plain gray shift the girl yesterday had worn. There had not been enough beds for all of them by half at least, but the room was warm, so they didn’t seem any worse for their confinement. Sean saw that more than one bed held two, three and even four children as they huddled together like lost puppies.

Sean had a guard remove the chamber pot from the corner and stepped farther into the room to sit down on the foot of the nearest cot.

The girl he had talked to yesterday seemed to be one of the few in the room capable of functioning; she might have been the oldest one in the room too. “You didn’t use any magic,” she said, as she watched the guard disappear with the chamber pot.

“I use quite a lot of magic during the normal course of events; I don’t need to use it for the little things too,” said Sean, when he noticed where her eyes had looked.

One of the youngest boys shuddered and started crying. The girl pulled him into her arms. “What are you going to do with us?” she asked, as she rocked the boy.

“What do you want me to do with you?” asked Sean.

She looked around at her companions. “We can’t stay here,” she said simply.

“Why can’t you go home?” asked Sean. “You said your father was afraid of you.”

“Yes, that’s the way it is for some of us. Some of us don’t have any family left. Some of us have the unfortunate memory of destroying our family.” She looked down at the boy in her arms. “Some of us… Our families fear for our safety if we try to stay.” She took a deep breath. “We didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t stop what was happening.”

“I know,” said Sean. “I’m sorry.”

“You could take us with you,” she said hopefully. “You’re a stranger here. You’re not staying – are you?”

Sean was afraid she was going to get to that. The alternative was to turn them into a cluster of street urchins forced to sell their bodies for food, or forced to steal, and if they were ever caught, their fate would be so very much worse than a common thief or whore might expect. Sean toyed with the idea of talking to their families; he might be able to decrease the numbers here by a few, but that still left the rest of them.

He looked at the little boy in the girl’s arms. Had he been instrumental in the destruction of his family? Sean saw a delicate red glow streaked with light blue. Had he been able to fan his flames wherever he wanted? It was likely, yet he hadn’t been able to protect them.

“You’re just kids,” Sean said, agonizing over the dilemma. “How old are you anyway, twelve, and I can’t afford to remove your shields, not yet anyway.”

Tears glittered in her eyes, but Sean could tell by the set of her shoulders that she would take whatever he dished out and cry later.

“We can still work,” said an older boy, as he pulled himself upright on his cot. His voice was horse and strained. “My…” he struggled with himself. “My ma… She used to insist…” Sean watched his jaw clench on a memory that was laced with pain. His face was thin and aged beyond his tender years. He might have been twelve – maybe thirteen.

Sean looked around at them. The youngest, the boy who was crying, looked to be about eight – maybe. He looked at Cordan. More than likely, he would be the one who had to deal with them most of the time.

Cordan shrugged. “We might be able to find them apprenticeships in other cities. We might need other mages too somewhere along the line.”

Sean looked back at the room full of kids. “Okay, we’ll leave in the morning.” He turned back to Cordan. “See to it that they are properly dressed and mounted.” Sean stood up and looked at the two who had spoken. “I have to cover a lot of distance in a very short amount of time and I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told others who wanted to follow me. If you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind.”

“We’ll keep up,” said the boy, as he sat up straighter.

Sean looked at him. “The shields stay.”

“Fine,” he said. Sean didn’t think he was too willing to take up the magic again, not for a while anyway. He’d want it soon enough, earth magic could be very useful if you were used to it.