Thank you for inviting us to the blog today. We know there’s
been a number of people asking if another story will be published and some want
the books in print too.
Thank you all for dropping by.
Tell us first what are you up to now
the Seven Spell stories series seems to have ended.
Oliver:
I’m still working on my business, computer stuff, I network
and administrate for small businesses, but I do a lot of web design now too. I
work with Bartholomew sometimes. (smiles)
Tristan:
I’m still helping to run the estate with Liz and Laura. Jack’s
retired completely. I do some work with animals too. You know how I love them. I
help out in the shop. I guess you remember we’re taking care of that since Eddie
went off with Dale to her kingdom. That sounds so weird, (smiles) but then it
is huh?
Chloe:
I’m still designing stained glass, I help in the shop, I run
healing workshops with Bartholomew. I help Liz with events. Same stuff.
You’re obviously not telling us
about any of the magical stuff. Is there still any?
Tristan: You mean
at the waterfall. I reckon so, but I don’t think the portal is open. We get
nothing from Dale. Well…not as far as I know. (Looks at the others)
Oliver: I don’t know
if I should say this, but…Bartholomew has some secretive stuff go on there. I
think the portal is open. I’ve not seen any sign of time travelers but… (grins
and looks at Chloe)
Chloe:
It wouldn’t surprise me to find Bartholomew is keeping a
secret. Not to be mean, but because we’d had enough of the portal by the time
it caved in, or whatever. There’s something going on though. You can feel it
down there. I was out walking with Liz and Charlie last week. You know how he
loves to wander into the water’s edge, well, he got onto the thick reeds there
and without Liz having to call him, he leapt off with his tail down and ran to us.
Tristan:
(Looks concerned and turns to her.)
You never told me that. Did she tell you, Oliver? (Oliver
shakes head)
Be careful. Don’t go there again until I’ve talked with
Bartholomew or McPherson. Please.
Have you felt anything, Oliver? I haven’t but then I’ve not
been down there much recently.
(Oliver shakes head again.)
Chloe: (grinning)
Stop fussing. Okay.
(Oliver gets up and walks around Tristan to sit closer to
Chloe.)
Where are you all living, because the
last time Chloe was here she said you might all three live in Hawthorns?
Oliver: We come
and go from the place. I still live in my place. Tristan lives In Hawthorns.
Tristan: I do.
Chloe: I have my
room at the hunting lodge, but I hang out with Oliver or Tristan lots of the
time. We don’t talk about that much. Mom is still wondering what happened to Oliver
and me being engaged. The thing is and you might as well know it, we’re all
adults, Tristan is hundreds of years old, Oliver should be twenty four, and I
should be twenty three, we’re not normal so how we live is no one’s business.
(looks fierce)
What happened to that idea of
opening a detective agency and using your powers to help people?
Tristan:
We do help people, but it’s covert.
Oliver:
Yes, because it has to be, although we have a website for
that side of things.
Chloe:
I’m opening a small office. We’ve been secretly doing
things. You must know we can’t draw attention to things.
Things?
Oliver:
Healing, finding things out etc.
So your lives are still on the weird
side then?
Tristan:
Chock full of magic, and weirdness. (laughs)
Can you tell us about the love story
angle?
Chloe:
No. It’s the same.
Do you think the author will find
that hard to write about if she writes more of your story?
Chloe:
I don’t know. Maybe. A few readers are a little scandalized
that I love both Oliver and Tristan. Maybe she’ll leave that side of the story
out. I'm in love with them both and we just get on with it. I'm not choosing,
we tried that in an alternative plot line and it was dangerous and horrible.
Oliver:
I bet she doesn’t, after all that’s been one of the major
story arcs and themes. What do you think Tristan?
Tristan:
It won’t be the same if she does leave it out.
Chloe, I notice you’re wearing the
ring Oliver gave you and the ring Tristan gave you.
Oliver: (holding up
his hand)
We all wear each other’s ring.
(Tristan holds up his hand to show me a ring)
So where did they come from guys?
They all three stare at me for a few
seconds, maybe I’ve grown another head, now they look at each other and shrug.
Oliver: (grinning)
The place under the house still exists. We still find stuff in
the water sometimes.
Tristan gives him a
shove.
Oliver, we still have loads of treasure from my father.
(Oliver grins)
So there’s still something going on
then? Portal wise. I thought that one was degraded by Aristide.
Chloe:
It is. Oliver’s just teasing aren’t you? (looks at him)
Oliver:
Yeah, sorry.
(They all look innocent. I’m not
fooled.) Will there be another story? The author said in a magazine interview a
few weeks ago that she thought there might be a year ago, but now thinks probably
not.
Tristan:
We’ve not met up with her recently. There might be another
story when we do all get together. She’s coming over to stay at Hawthorns in
April. You know what she’s like. She’ll get it out of us if there’s a story to
tell.
And is there? You three look very suspicious
right now.
Oliver: (sighs)
There’s a couple of things.
Tristan: Don’t ask.
Chloe: I’m not
saying anything. We should go now though. McPherson invited us to dinner.
Will you leave us with an excerpt from the last book?
Tristan:
I'll choose one, (grins) it's me talking.
Okay, but I just thought of a question I meant to ask the author.
Will the story telling change? Will the voices go away and the diary/report style change? Chloe and Tristan shrug. Oliver nods.
Oliver:
I know the answer. Yes it will. It'll be a narrative. No diary style at all so someone else will tell the story.
Thank you for chatting to me.
I can’t help feeling you three are still up to something. Bye for now.
They all smile, say bye and leave.
Oliver looks back at me and smiles again. They have secrets for sure.
Tristan's choice of excerpt
Chapter Nineteen
Tristan and Bartholomew
I couldn’t sleep. I went over to the stables and saddled
Matin. It had been a month since I had ridden him. Brett one of the grooms had
taken a liking to the horse and usually rode him. Matin was pleased to see me
and we trotted out of the stable yard and over the field towards the abbey
ruins.
I let him run on the grass alongside the road until we
stopped and crossed over. The terrain around the abbey is grassy interspaced
with garden and ruined bits at ground level as well as the substantial ruins. I
let him set his own pace. A horse like Matin knows what he’s doing. We started
to walk peacefully through the wooded area and then past the ancient church and
the Norman ruins. Matin knows things and he knows that he used to live here
when they were not ruins. He always goes sort of quiet and treads softly. What
a great animal.
We picked our way over the more treacherous bits of
outcropped rock and down to the waterfall. Matin also knows this is where he
entered the future. He goes to look at the spot. Does he want to go back to the
past? I doubt it. Tonight we were softly approaching the waterfall pool, both
of us silent. I was thinking how happy I was to have things sorted out with
Dale. I’ll always think of her fondly and offer friendship but whatever had gripped
me to think I loved her has completely gone.
Matin stopped quite suddenly at the side of the pool, and I
looked up, and across it. The light is never that great and even when there is
a huge moon as there was right then the tree canopy shield keeps the place
quite dark. I could see a man and I knew him almost instantly. Bartholomew was
standing on the other side of the pool.
I urged Matin on and he walked around keeping a little way
from the soft bank edge.
Bartholomew looked up.
“Hi Bartholomew what are you doing down here in the dark?”
He smiled as I approached and answered as I dismounted.
“It’s the idea that there’s a portal behind the falls that’s
brought me here. There must be one Tristan. Esteban wouldn’t have been able to
create one. He was powerful but let’s not forget he came from a completely
different world. It would be impossible for him to create one without special
power. I didn’t create the portals I used. They existed in the water. I could
use water in different ways but not create a time or world travel portal. You
know how I am looked upon as a great wizard?” I nodded at his question thinking
of Dale’s description of him. He continued, “Well I am not great enough to
create a time travel portal.”
I took a deep breath. “You know of Aristide? Well he used
the waterfall pool here and some kind of affinity I have with it to create a
portal. I appear to be some kind of catalyst for magic spells.”
Bartholomew stared at me.
“I’d be surprised if we could open anything that would take
us to Dale’s kingdom, unless there is a portal already. It is her kingdom you
know Tristan. She was destined to be the queen.”
I could feel some emotion coming from him that I hadn’t felt
before.
“Bartholomew, would you like to go home, back there to
Dale’s kingdom?”
He sighed. “I want to be where Evangeline is and she is at
home here. Sometimes I think I would like to go back and then I realize the
place is not what I would want it to be. By that I mean it needs change, change
I honestly don’t have the energy for, but more importantly I don’t want to take
time away from being with Evangeline to do.”
I nodded in sympathy and understanding. Sometimes you just
want peace.
“So then why are you down here Bartholomew? You’re not
thinking of climbing in there?”
“Well I was actually, because the fact is Dale’s kingdom is
now without a ruler. You might think that would be a good thing, but it will
not be. Our world is simply magic, everything is magic, and it has to have a
king or queen who has magical abilities.”
I checked on Matin who had wandered a little way up the path
towards the ruins again. “I actually understand. If you are going to do it,
check on the waterfall portal, I must go with you.”
Bartholomew shook his head.
“No Tristan I can’t ask you to do it, people here rely on
you.”
I smiled. “You’re not asking Bartholomew. I’m telling you.”
He looked at me sadly. “I’m climbing in. Please don’t follow
me.”
I shook my head. It just isn’t in me to let anyone do
anything dangerous without I try to help. “I’m coming too,” I told him, but I
got out my cell phone and left an unsent text on the screen to say what I’d
done. I put that in the pocket of my jacket and tied it to Matin’s saddle. He’d
go home and it would be found sooner or later.
Bartholomew watched me and then started climbing the old
Norman steps, which are shored up and restored, until we could step onto the
rocks within the edge of the curtain of the waterfall. Then step again and down
into the area behind it. He did a good job considering he had never done it
before and I wondered if he had memorized what Gaston did earlier or had
actually asked her.
We stood together at the very edge of the area of vegetation
behind the falls. Ferns and some kind of curled leaf plant, which even I didn’t
know the name of, grew there in patches. It was eerie and yet spectacular. It
was also bizarrely as light as if we were on the bank of the pool.
I looked at Bartholomew and he grinned saying, “Nothing to
suggest a portal. No shimmering spatial deformity or anything.”
I laughed at that.
He had a handful of pebbles that he had taken out of his
pocket and he began throwing them around. I watched closely. There was nothing
going on. Not one of them seemed to disappear. He had a little penlight, which
he aimed at the trajectory of each pebble as it fell. The water behind us was
soothing and the moon seemed to shine through it as if it was a window. I felt
at home there for some reason.
Bartholomew had exhausted his cache of pebbles.
He shrugged. “I suppose if there was a portal it’s now closed.”
“Bartholomew, in my experience if there was a portal open in
the last few minutes the pebble thrown in it would have disappeared. It could
be it’s not open right now, we’ve had one that opened at intervals, and I can’t
tell you what a pain that was. The other thing is maybe it only comes one way,
from there to here. Sorry but the things are capricious, and I hoped we had
done with them for good when we got back with Gaston and Dale.”
We looked around again and Bartholomew shone his little beam
of white light around again. There really seemed to be nothing going on, and I
thought about Esteban being here in this space and then leaping through the
waterfall into the pool. He was lucky not to get sucked into the deep pothole
but then he did run out of luck later.
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