Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the changeover without too much damage to ye olde brain cells. We need all of those, you know, because we have a fresh year of story-crafting ahead of us. If you’re perusing the web in order to find your next favorite read, don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog hop at Weekend Writing Warriors, where you can sample from a wide-array of story snippets.

I’m sharing from my current work-in-progress, a reimagined fairy tale titled Snow. I’ll let you guess which fairy tale inspired it.

After an absence of three years, Prince Gabriel is returning home along a forest path when he’s startled by a large stag, and then by the hunting party pursuing it.  Last week, Gabriel challenged the head huntsman, questioning his right to hunt on the king’s land. The huntsman speaks first.

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“This is the king’s hunting party! Where’s the stag gone to?”

A baying in the woods seemed to answer his question. Gabriel shrugged, and didn’t move out of the way.

“I saw no stag. There was a rabbit earlier, is that what you’re after?”

“Who the hell are you to get in our way?” The man finally settled his horse. He looked more irritated than angry, and upon reflection, Gabriel thought he knew him. Black hair, brown eyes that flashed with the fire of the hunt, sharply aristocratic features, with a matching aristocratic attitude—By Grindle’s Beard, it’s Gavin Falkner.

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Blurb-in-progress:

Following the death of his mother the Queen, Prince Gabriel is called home by his brother, now King. Gabriel hopes for a reconciliation with his estranged brother, but all is not well at Castle Rosenthal. King Tristan has fallen under the sway of a scheming alchemist, the magical denizens of the bordering Black Forest are on the move, and Gabriel begins to fear for his life. Is the handsome huntsman in on a plot to assassinate him, or is there an even darker, more evil force afoot? A forced flight into the Black Forest may expose ancient powers at work, if only Gabriel can survive long enough to uncover them.

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Weekend Writing Warriors is a blog hop where writers from a wide variety of genres share from their work in excerpts of ten sentences or less.  Click the link to check out the other writers participating today.  It’s a great way to discover your next favorite book!

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May 2019 be peaceful, happy and wondrous.