Description
Varon Cambeul has made it to the top: Royal Magician of the Kingdom of Lothia, at the right hand of the King, who is his lover. He has always kept the promise he made to his mother and his apprenticeship master: he has used his magic for good. This promise is tested when the King asks him to make a curse, a curse that will be cured by the King and so everyone will love him. Helping the King is using his magic for good, right? But, is Varon doing this because he has fallen in love with the King? What about those who will suffer from the curse and slowly transformed into ghosts, people like Theo and Russell in the town where the curse is released?
Can Varon undo this great wrong? Can he save Theo and Russell and the others as they turn invisible? How can he love someone who is not doing good?
Excerpt
…Varon held up a sparkling square of silvery-white weaving, just big enough to cover both his hands. Much bigger, and it would have been the start of a shadow cloak, woven of shadows and moonlight and starlight, of shining green, blue, yellow, and red yarn. He had woven in the last spell; the transformation curse was ready to be released. Varon glanced at the clock on the wall by the door, its golden pendulum catching the light from the wall sconces. He could see a few stars in the open skylight over his head. The King was due at midnight. No time to go back to his weaving room and the ring loom and the rhythm which always calmed him down.
The whole time Varon worked on it, he had told himself that what would make the King happy, was good for everyone. But now, as he remembered what Mary Fee had said, he was even less sure the curse would be good for everyone, or anyone, not even in the long or short term. It was to be scattered over the town the King had chosen as the testing ground, Ciara, a small college town in the Far North Province. According to Encyclopedia Lothiana, before the college’s founding, Ciara was the market town and government and business center for the North Central District of the Far North Province surrounded by the beautiful Blue Hills, the foothills of the Far Northern Mountains. Population, between 5000-6000, not counting the college. Train service twice weekly, bus and coach, three times weekly.
A pretty place, he had been told, enough upriver from the coast and the original West Rhuvan settlements for it to have wider, tree-lined streets, at least in some in the residential neighborhoods.
Varon had never made such a curse before. He prayed to the gods it would work, and that when the time came, reversing it would be easily done.
A knock. Pause, two more knocks.
“Enter.”
The king pushed the door open. Varon saw him standing for a moment in the doorway, looking for the source of the voice. He’s so beautiful, Varon thought. He sat at his table, surrounded by bottles and vials, and a box of flasks Above him, strings of dried herbs hanging from low beams. Behind him, he had left the cauldron hanging in the fireplace in the corner. Two bright-colored tapestries hung above the fireplace, one woven by his mother, and the other he had woven as a response to hers. Doves cooed sleepily somewhere in the ceiling beams. Candles and wall sconces were all lit. “Your Majesty, the counter curse, I haven’t finished that. I was thinking we should wait. I just need a little more time.”
The King stared him, his mouth in a thin line. “No. Release it now.”
Buylinks
Description
Gavin Booker, a school librarian at Cooper Road Elementary, Raleigh, Northern Carolina, leads an orderly, normal life. Work, jogging, friends from work, his son every other weekend. Gavin is also a secret. He is a hybrid, or part-fairy, and in the Columbian Empire, hybrids are under an automatic death sentence. Magic is illegal. So is loving another man, another capital crime. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi are kept in zoos. The others, the tree and water spirits, the talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding. This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is different: ministers preach against people like him constantly; hating the other is a part of every school’s curriculum.
But now, things are changing fast, and apparently, for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms are all frequent occurrences. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body’s glowing, isn’t working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead. Under threat, the Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the coming catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams all his life before it is too late? Can his scarred heart ever heal?
Excerpt
The name on the sign by the empty cage read Equus caballus malum. No government-authorized sign would ever have any reference to human for a centaur. His mother had taught him the other name that morning beneath the Big Trees.
A pair of golden gryphons, also with clipped wings, and as unhappy looking as the pegasi, were in the next cage.
“There are supposed to be two silver gryphons, too,” Gavin said, after he read the sign. “I guess they are hiding in that cave in the back. Maybe the female is sitting on her eggs, or nursing her cubs.”
Latisha just nodded and tightened her grip on his hand. God only knows what her parents told her before this field trip.
The werewolf was next, sitting hunched over a rock in its forest habitat. It was an eastern red werewolf, with intensely blue human-like eyes. Listed on the sign in front of the cage were instructions for identifying werewolves in human form, and ways to protect oneself from such monsters. Canis lupus malum, evil wolf.
The werewolf seemed even sadder than the rest of the Bestiary’s denizens. It hadn’t looked up, no matter how loud the kids ahead of Gavin and Latisha had been, or how many faces they had made. But it did look up just as Gavin got to the cage and stared at him with those very bright blue eyes. Human eyes. Homo sapiens lupus. Gavin froze.
“Mr. Booker?”
He didn’t answer Latisha at first. Instead, Gavin watched as the werewolf, shaking its big shaggy head, came slowly over to the corner of the cage where they stood. Its eyes were focused intently on Gavin. It jumped on its hind legs, its big paws only separated from Gavin’s face by the glass.
“Help me, please, fairy, help me. They won’t me let change. They make me take drugs,” it said in a rough voice. “I need to change. Get me out of here.”
“I’m not a fairy. Shut up,” Gavin snapped back.
“Mr. Booker? Look, the silver ones came out,” Latisha said. She was staring at the gryphon cage. She turned when the werewolf asked again for the fairy to get him out. “Mr. Booker? What’s it talking about? What fairy?” Latisha asked, looking back and forth between the silver gryphons and the werewolf. The silver gryphons ran back in their cave.
“Not a fairy? Look at your hands, fairy,” the werewolf hissed.
Gavin dropped Latisha’s hand and looked at his own. The tips of all his fingers glowed, a faint, faint yellow glow, as if he had dipped them in fluorescent paint. He quickly slid them into his pockets.
I took the pills this morning. This shouldn’t be happening. Suppress, suppress, suppress.
“I’m not a fucking fairy,” he yelled at the werewolf who only growled and snarled in return. He looked quickly around the Bestiary. Was there anybody who’d hear him yelling? What was he thinking? Thank God nobody but Latisha was anywhere near Gavin and the werewolf.
Latisha stared at Gavin and the werewolf. “You aren’t supposed to say that word; it’s not nice. Mama told me so. What fairy is it talking about?”
Gavin took a deep breath. Seeing the fear in the little girl’s face, he spoke slowly, in as even and as calm a tone as he could muster. “I don’t know what fairy it’s talking about. There’s just you and me and we’re certainly not fairies.” The glowing had stopped, he felt it. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I got upset—that thing upset me. Your mother is absolutely right; you shouldn’t say that.”
“Fairies are bad, too,” Latisha said. He could guess what she was thinking. Latisha was remembering what she had been taught in school, the same things he had been taught in kindergarten and first grade, in Sunday school, and all the way through high school and college. Never mind the ads on TV and that radio that played over and over. The government made sure the lesson got through, that it was repeated over and over so no one could ever miss it. Even the youngest knew what the warning signs were, what to look out for. And what to do if they saw glowing people.
For your country and your Emperor, for God, for your family and friends, and because Jesus loves you: call the police. Just hit the big blue star on the nearest Automatic Reporting Machine and start talking. If you don’t know how to use the phone or the ARM, or neither is nearby, find the nearest normal adult and tell them. Normal people, good people, do not glow.
“Fairy, please. Help me.”
Gavin ignored the werewolf. “It’s not supposed to talk to us. Let’s go find Mr. Phillips and the rest of the class.”
Latisha nodded and reached for his hand. They walked away quickly, not looking back.
The werewolf yelled. “Fairy, help me, please!” Then it howled. They walked faster, Latisha looking over her shoulder.
Want a copy?
This novel can be purchased in e-book editions from JMS Books (www.jms.books), and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Print edition also available from JMS Books and Amazon.
Buylinks
JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/warren-rochelle-c-224_470/in-lights-shadow-p-4448.html
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/in-light-s-shadow
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-lights-shadow-warren-rochelle/1142096826?ean=9781685502300
Description
Home, a place where we belong and are safe and loved. Home, the house in which we grew up, a neighborhood, a culture, even a country. Home is a state of mind, it is a place of the heart, and in the heart.
Finding home, coming home, and bringing home the one we love is a journey, a journey that can be a dangerous adventure. For the lovers in these stories, adventures can include quests and fighting dragons and demons, past and present, physical as well as mental and emotional. Rocket launchers need to be dodged, the Wild Hunt needs to be outrun. For some of the lovers here, home has been lost, or they have been forced to leave, as is too common for LGBT+ youth.
In this collection of queer positive speculative fiction stories, explore the idea of what and where home is in the lives of these lovers. Will they survive their quests, defeat their monsters? Will they find a place to call home?
Excerpt
He found his mother in her bathroom, lying on the bathmat by the tub, like a discarded hotel towel, white and crumpled. Fletcher knelt down and touched her bruised face, tenderly traced the hand prints on her skin. He then pressed his fingers against the veins in her neck. No pulse.
Wishing he could cry for hr, he put the same fingers under her nose. No breath. Dead. Emptied. He picked up her arm and it flopped, as if boneless. She was wearing her bathrobe. He pulled it close to hide her body.
Fletcher knew where to look, upstairs, behind the locked attic door. Through the door, he could hear what he had come to call Paul’s favorite music, soft, far away, with harps and wind chimes, and what sounded like the wind, and the rain, storms, and voices singing in a strange language he had never been able to identify. The music reminded him of the wind chimes on Sam’s porch.
He tried the knob. This time the door was unlocked.
Want a copy?
This story collection can be purchased in e-book editions from JMS Books (www.jms.books), and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Print edition also available from JMS Books and Amazon.
Buylinks
JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/warren-rochelle-c-224_470/to-bring-him-home-and-other-tales-p-3972.html
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/book/to-bring-him-home-and-other-tales
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-bring-him-home-and-other-tales-warren-rochelle/1140120440?ean=9781646568956
***
Description
Sometimes, we get second chances — at love, to make things right, to say good-bye the way it should have been said. Darian promised his dying husband Randy he would go through with the plan to teach summer school in Bath, England. Randy insisted; it was always Darian’s dream to live in England, go, do it. But once there, in Tintagel, on a street in Coverack, a small Cornish seaside village, Darian sees Randy. Grief can make us see things, right?
So Darian tells himself, until the man whom he buried, whose ashes he carried with him to England, sits down beside him on a bench in front of Bath Abbey, with screaming seagulls nearby. It seems the dead can come back. But why and how? Has Randy come to take Darian with him? Or is something else going?
Excerpt
So, this is grief. As I write this I realize that smiling and nodding and pretending to be present is what I have been doing since Randy died —
Darian slammed his journal shut, grabbed his wallet, and ran out of the flat. He had to get groceries after being gone all weekend in Cornwall; he would go to Sainsbury’s, the 7-Eleven-sized one. He needed some fruit. But more than that, he needed to move after all the hours on the bus. And, Darian thought, as he walked down North Parade, he needed to tell himself, over and over, that seeing Randy was just grief, plain, raw, old grief.
Randy was waiting for him when he walked out into the early twilight, burnt orange Sainsbury bag in hand. Darian froze a few feet outside the front door: so, this is what it is like to go crazy with grief and know it. A woman, a man with a little boy in tow, murmuring excuse me, sorry, excuse me, went around them — him — wait, do you see him, do you?
But they couldn’t. Randy wasn’t there.
Randy-who-wasn’t-there took a step back, then another, and gestured with his hand, waving Darian closer.
Want A Copy?
This stand-alone short story is free! Seagulls can be ordered in an e-book edition from JMS Books (www.jms.books), and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Order links are below. Seagulls can also be found in my story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories.
Order Links
JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/free-ebooks-c-4/seagulls-p-3961.html
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/seagulls
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seagulls-warren-rochelle/1140041463?ean=9781646569328
***
Description
Fairy tales. Prince Charming fights evil, wins the princess, lives happily ever after. Three sons, three wishes, witches, dragons, a quest, and happily ever after.
These stories are part of our cultural fabric. The stories change in retellings to reflect contemporary culture, such as Princess Charming, or heroes and heroines as people of color. In this collection, queer characters take center stage in stories that grew out of questions:
What if the prince falls in love with Cinderella’s gay stepbrother? What if Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t really want the Queen’s child but rather the King himself? What if Beauty and the Beast are two men?
These stories explore metaphors of magic and the magical, this time, with a gay perspective. What price must be paid for happily ever after? Duty or love? Is love worth great sacrifice? Once upon a time …
Excerpt
“Well. Lord Culver, are we done? Are there no more women to try on the shoe?” Aidan asked as he stood from where he had sat all morning, next to my grandfather’s great tome of a dictionary.
I was about to say no when my stable manager interrupted. “There’s one more, Elena. She’s in the kitchen, washing dishes. I saw her there when I came up.”
Before I could protest, Aidan ordered her brought to the library.
When Elena came in, her hair braided and pulled back to keep it out of the sink, I knew, with a sudden certainty, who had stared at me before running away. She had to have had magical help. She glanced at me before sitting down in the chair facing Aidan and his shoe. A quick flash of triumph.
I hated her.
Of course, the crystal slipper fit. Of course, she had its mate in her apron pocket.
“I have found her — my wife-to-be,” Aidan said as he stood, taking Elena’s hand, and gesturing to the room. Every woman still in line, all the male staff around me, my stable manager, the prince’s entourage, burst into applause. I clapped, too, even though I felt like I was going to throw up.
So much for my half-loaf.
Want A Copy?
This story collection can be purchased in both print and e-book editions from JMS Books (www.jms.books), and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
Buy Links
JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/paperbacks-c-86/the-wicked-stepbrother-and-other-stories-print-p-3953.html
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wicked-stepbrother-and-other-stories-warren-rochelle/1137714892?ean=9781646565573
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-wicked-stepbrother-and-other-stories
Description
Their leap of faith could unleash magic — or plunge them into darkness.
Henry Thorn has worked at Larkin’s since graduating high school. He likes it — especially when he can use his secret skill of hiding inside shadows so his boss can’t find them. Without that talent, he would never had survived growing up different.
When a hire enters the store, Henry’s other latent talent kicks in. He can smell an emotional response even before he lays eyes on the redhead.
Jamey Currey came out, and his conservative parents promptly kicked him out. He, too, is different — he senses Henry’s attraction the moment they met. The first time they kiss, torrential rains fall from skies split by lightning.
Their kiss also awakens the Watchers, diabolical hunters who will stop at nothing — even extermination — to keep magic suppressed. With the help of a friendly coven of friendly witches, the boys embark on a quest to discover an ancient key to restoring magic to the world, and to understand mysteries of their own hearts.
The question is, will this quest cost them their lives?
Excerpt
Jamey screamed. Henry’s heart turned over. Dr. Melloy grabbed a long, carved oaken staff from a corner and stood very still for a moment. “My books, almost all my books, are in this house, and some of these are my mother’s, my grandmother’s,” she whispered, clearly in pain. “Let’s go,” she said, sighing heavily as she threw the heavy zipped bag over her shoulder and ran for the door. Henry hugged his duffel and blanket to his chest and ran after her. He wanted to tell her thank you, thank you, for saving him and Jamey, and that she was one of the coolest — no, the coolest person he had ever met. She had been so nice to him ever since he had moved in and he wasn’t sure he really knew why. I’ll thank her. When things calm down I will definitely thank her. Up the stairs, down the hall, in and out of pools of light from this lamp, the other, the overhead, the front door, and down and Jamey stood holding onto the car door. They looked up. No stars. No moon. Shadows, winged, darker and blacker than any shadows around them. The lead one keened, high and sharp. “Watchers,” Dr. Melloy said. Behind the creatures were the beginnings of a storm. Lightning snapped and forked, striking the professor’s house and setting the roof ablaze. Fire came down the roof, down the gutter pipes, the brick wall, over the windows, into the bushes growing against the house and into the pine-straw-covered yard that crackled, snapped, into flame. “Jamey, Henry, get behind me, now,” Dr. Melloy shouted as the Watchers hovered just above the thicket of cedars that screened the house from the street. They screeched and keened, throwing themselves against some invisible wall between them and the witch and the two naked boys. Jamey hooked one arm around Henry’s neck, and then he hopped as Henry half-carried him to stand behind the witch. Thunder, loud, close. Lighting struck the house again. Muttering, Dr. Melloy thrust her staff upward and light poured out of it as she threw out a fine, gauzy, sparkling net that spread out and over and above them, shimmering against the darkness. Something shattered, and grey and white chunks of dying light fell into the cedars and the gravel and hard earth of the driveway. “Dammit! They broke the first ring of wards!” Dr. Melloy yelled over what now seemed like constant thunder and the roar of the fire. The wind tore at the flames, throwing bits and pieces into the air and the now-burning cedars. Flames and heat pushed against the net that glowed between them and the burning house and yard and trees.
Want A Copy?
This novel can be purchased in both print and e-book editions from JMS Books (www.jms.books), and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
Buy Links
JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/paperbacks-c-86/the-werewolf-and-his-boy-print-p-3870.html
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-werewolf-and-his-boy-warren-rochelle/1123605685?ean=9781646565580
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-werewolf-and-his-boy-1
***
Older Publications
The publications listed below are out of print and only available as used books, except for Harvests of Changelings, which is available as an ebook.
Samhain Press
The Werewolf and His Boy, 2016 Edition
The Werewolf and His Boy was first published by Samhain Press in 2016, and re-released, with slight revisions, and a new cover, by JMS Books, in 2020. For a description and excerpt, please see the JMS edition. The 2016 Samhain edition is still available through Amazon, as a used book. Samhain has gone out of business.
Golden Gryphon Press
Golden Gryphon Press has gone out of business.
The Called, 2010
Description
Incorporating myths from Cherokee, Wiccan, and Celtic cultures, this complex sequel to Harvest of Changelings explores many facets of prejudice within an adventurous storyline. After their last battle, the four changelings have been living in Faerie, examining their newly discovered powers. Meanwhile, the defeated Fomorrii are quietly influencing human movements on Earth—organizing religious and governmental “antimagical” groups. Sensing this shift towards intolerance, Malachi and Hazel return to help the fae who need to cross over. When Malachi is kidnapped, Jeff and Russell come to Hazel’s aid. Gathering an army of noble allies from the magical beings that are currently reviled on Earth, they ready themselves for a deadly battle for control of the opening gateway between the universes.
The Called is available as a used book.
Harvest of Changelings, 2007 hardback, 2008, paperback, also available as an ebook.
Description
Although the familiar themes of fantasy are present in this novel, the characters are not princes or sorcerers but ordinary people with seemingly ordinary lives. Ben Tyson, a librarian, met and loved Valeria, a fairy woman; but her death left Ben to raise their child, Malachi, alone. The two of them lived a fairly ordinary life until Malachi turned 10 and began to manifest previously unknown powers. Now the lords of Fairy have called home the changelings they left in the universe generations ago, waking up long-dormant DNA and changeling blood. More than a straightforward fantasy novel, this tale’s underlining current deals with people that are different—physically, mentally, and in their choice of lifestyle. The fairy children are seen as outsiders to mainstream culture, and as they become aware of each other they must unite to overcome the apathy and prejudice of humans, as well as the evil Fomorii, before it is too late.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Rochelle (The Wild Boy) delivers an excellent traditional fantasy that draws on centuries-old Celtic fairy lore. Fairies, notably infertile among their own, have long interbred with humans, often leaving behind orphaned or abandoned children who never fit in and who develop magical powers and magical vulnerabilities, seeking self-knowledge as they evade their enemies, the evil Fomorii. A crisis is brewing. Librarian Ben Tyson, who lives in Garner, N.C., is concerned about his son, Malachi, whose late mother was fey. Like other half-fairy children, Malachi must heed a strange destiny. The book’s strength lies in the sensitive characterizations and the texture of its contemporary reality. Some Wiccans may be upset by depictions of black witchcraft (though Rochelle is clearly aware of white witchcraft), but otherwise this should be a book with wide appeal, as it touches so sensitively on basic emotions, recognizable by anyone who remembers childhood. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Wild Boy, 2001. Available as a used book.
Description
Humans have domesticated animals for thousands of years; in this novel, a spacefaring race descends on Earth to domesticate humankind. The Lindauzi came to Earth at the turn of the millennium with a mission to breed humans to become their emotional symbionts. Technically superior, within a generation the Lindauzi dominate the Earth, running a breeding program designed to produce humans capable of full emotional symbiosis. This is the story of Ilox, a human raised by the Lindauzi, his banishment and adoption by a tribe of wild humans, and his eventual reunion with his Lindauzi bond-mate, Phlarx. While alien invasion is a common plot in science fiction, this fresh voice breathes new life into such a story, focusing on the theme of what it means to be human.
Kingdom of Joria 