Publications by Patti Roberts.
Witchwood Estate
Witchwood Estate – Going Home – (book 1) 2013
Witchwood Estate – Ferntree Falls 2013
Witchwood Estate – Print Edition (book 1 and 2) 2013
Witchwood Estate – Cursed (book 3) 2013
Paradox Series
Paradox – The Angels Are Here (book 1) 2010
Paradox – Progeny Of Innocence (book 2) 2011
Paradox – Bound By Blood (book 3) 2012
Paradox – Equilibrium (book 4) 2013
Co-authored Novels.
About Three Authors (with Ella Medler) 2014
Due for release December 2014.
When Becky Jensen's mother died on Christmas Eve a year ago, Becky stopped believing in Christmas.
When Becky’s father remarried four weeks ago to a woman old enough to be her sister, Becky stopped believing in family. An hour ago, when Becky thought there was nothing left to lose, Becky caught her high school sweetheart snogging her best friend down at the local pub in the ladies loo. Standing alone in the park, staring up at the angel on top of the Christmas tree, Becky makes a wish that changes her life forever…
The very next day, Becky is boarding a plane at Heathrow airport and jetting her way across the ocean to Australia to interview three authors. Friends since their twenties, the women are all now in their fifties. Not only does Becky learn about the lives of three incredible women, she also learns a lot about herself.
Fan Page.
You may also enjoy the following book by Tabitha Ormiston-Smith.
PART I – THE YOUNG PRINCE LORN AND THE DRAGON’S HOARD.
Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived an old king who had three sons. The two older sons were fine young men: handsome and courageous. All the maidens would sigh as they passed through the village on their way to and from the hunt, their mighty sinews rippling in the sunlight.
But the young prince Lorn was a dreamer of dreams, a singer of songs and a teller of tales. He inhabited another world, different from that of his brothers, a world of clouds and rainbows, of dreams, legends and ideas.
Needless to say, this did not greatly endear Lorn to his father. He was unskilled in the hunt, useless at Harvest time, and generally absent in time of battle. Although Lorn did not lack courage, he was small and slight, unable to compete with his brothers in the fields of arms or the hunt, and frequently beaten up by them for having been too clever after dinner.
On the day that the young Prince Lorn turned twenty-one, he reached a momentous decision. He decided that he would leave the family castle and venture into the world to seek his fortune. He packed his lute and found a nice, quiet horse in the stables, and without further ado rode off into the sunset.
The young Prince Lorn rode for several days without incident, camping by streams and playing madrigals to the horse, who didn’t seem to mind even when Lorn explored new musical forms. Since he had had the forethought to leave a note, he was not followed, and as one calm, peaceful day succeeded another, and the bruises with which he had lived all his life healed, he began to experience a deep sense of well-being. Riding through dim ghostly woods, he took to shouting a sudden challenge to ogres. “Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa,” he would cry. “Wimpy little ogres, come out and fight.”
But there were no ogres in the forest, nor in the blasted heath on the other side of it.
The young Prince Lorn travelled for many days and nights. From time to time he would stop at a village inn, or a lonely farmhouse, where he would pay for his night’s lodging with an evening of song and stories. Most of the small and isolated communities would welcome a minstrel, glad to enliven their dull and brutish lives with music and tales of far-off places. As he moved towards the mountains bordering the great desert, though, human habitations became fewer and more widely separated, and being at best an indifferent hunter, Lorn was often hungry.
He had been travelling for some weeks, and was beginning to wonder, at least in the more dismal moments when the sun wasn’t shining, whether he would ever encounter any real adventure, when he heard the maiden screaming.
In the course of his travels Lorn had come, without realising it, nearly to the foot of the great mountain range that shut out the sandstorms of the impassable Western Desert, and as he looked about him for the source of the maiden’s cry, he was surprised to notice a great, grey, granite cliff; about halfway up there was a narrowish cleft in the rock, from which the screams, and also some wisps of smoke, seemed to be issuing. Lorn sighed, and wished he had paid more attention to his Physical Training with the Sergeant at Arms.
He took the time, before starting up the mountain, to remove the saddle and bridle from his horse; just in case. Slinging his lute over his shoulder, he spat for luck (a common habit picked up from the stable boys), and started to climb.
Look for Tabitha Ormiston-Smith on online book stores.
NOT JULIET by Ella Medler.
Not juliet - Chapter 1.
The drive to the gypsy campsite wasn’t getting any easier. Riella gritted her teeth and swallowed her guilt at her disloyal thought. It would all be over sooner than she would have liked anyway. Her father would be lucky to see another Christmas, and once he was gone, she would take her mother back to civilization, back home, with her. Surely there would be nothing else left for her in camp anymore. Leaving the Romany settlement in which she grew up had been the hardest decision of her life, and Riella knew it would be just as hard for her mother to tear herself away from the familiar life she knew, but it would be worth it. She would make it worthy for her mother.
Over the narrow bridge and down the lane with forest on either side; twenty more minutes, at most. The last sunray skimmed over the crystals dangling from her rearview mirror, turning the quartz to diamond for a split second. Twilight was painting the sky in darker hues, and now that tall, ivy-swamped trees reached fingers of green over the road, the murky gloom of the thicket gave no further illusion of light.
Riella switched her lights to main beam and dropped her speed a notch. She would be careful, driving through the forest. Night-time belonged to the forest animals, the wild souls now finally free to search for food or play in peace for a few hours. She would make sure her passage through their territory would be uneventful and as quiet as possible.
One of the most cherished ideals of her gypsy upbringing was that she should respect all creatures of the universe and the way they fit within its order. Riella’s childhood had been filled with heart-warming stories of broadminded acceptance. By the time she’d hit puberty, her love-conditioned character had latched firmly onto the concept of affection for one another and her need to search for and find ‘the one’ had become paramount to her.
Riella believed firmly in the existence of a person that would match her perfectly, a second half that would complete her soul, as the stories playing out in her mind on a regular basis were hinting at. She just didn’t believe she would meet such a person on a gypsy trailer park, and as such she had moved away, to live among strangers and continue her search for true love.
She wondered what he would look like, the man who was meant for her. He would have to be tall and exude confidence. Imaginary arms wrapped around her shoulders and held her tight against a wide chest. “Mmmm,” she groaned in approval. A great kisser, so warm soft lips would be a must. Eyes to get lost in, deep and dark…
The blaring horn of a speeding fire truck pulled her out of her waking dream so abruptly, she almost lost control of the car. The truck’s driver flashed angry lights at her, forcing her to slow further and pull half-off the road, to get out of his way. She mumbled incoherent curses and empty threats at the rowdy beast which was now accelerating noisily, spoiling the quiet of the night, and pulled on the steering wheel to get back to the road, a tad too sharply.
Her car slid sideways for a beat, wheels spinning wildly in the squashy leaf mold, then something caught and she was propelled diagonally onto the road surface. Riel
la stomped on the brakes, which served to turn the car farther around, but stop it did. By the time her heart’s wild beats became bearable and she was brave enough to open her eyes again, the car was smack-dab in the middle of the road, straddling the white line, pointing in the wrong direction. Luckily, there were no other cars in sight.
Slowly and carefully, Riella executed a three-point turn and drove on, paying a lot more attention to the road.
The forest gave way to undulating hills, but by now the darkness was complete. Except for a slight glow in the sky, over to the right, just about the patch of heaven right above the caravan site. Must be the moon.
No. Not the moon.
Images and fragments of memories snapped together like puzzle pieces in Riella’s mind, faster than she could incorporate them into rational thought. She was driving north. Cloudy sky, crescent moon; no light coming from the skies. Fire truck. The warning her cousin Casper was talking about behind Dora’s caravan when she’d just happened to walk past, last time she’d visited her parents, a few weeks back.
Her foot rammed the accelerator as far as it would go even as her heart lurched and she began re-playing the scene in her memory. Casper’s words had fizzled out when he’d caught sight of her, and both he and his gossip mate, Mirin, had averted their eyes. At the time, she had thought it no more than the usual snobbish behavior the more blinkered of her cousins displayed toward her. The fact that she’d left the colony and settled in a gadjee lifestyle still rankled, and they treated her like a traitorous bitch. One more reason to go and stay gone, when the purpose of her return ceased to exist.
The road straightened and she could see it clearly now – the plume of smoke twisting with the odd flare of orange flame. Right in the middle of the camp.
No, no, no, no, no!
The car screamed as she pushed it to do what only its race-track replicas ever did. A deeply hidden portion of her brain catalogued images and processed them in a logical fashion, urging her to stay calm, but her emotions were not buying it. She sped past the entrance, shifting from maximum acceleration to an emergency stop in a split second. Her hand grabbed for the handbrake and she was out and running to the scene of the fire, ducking under the ‘fire line do not cross’ yellow tape on the way.
The acrid smell left behind by the blaze choked her and made her eyes water. Where was everyone? She ducked through a grey cloud of smoke, tripped and fell over on her hands and knees.
“Get back!”
Riella heeded the shouted warning and backed away, to lean against the truck. She fought to get her bearings, and sucked in a hot lungful of air only half-saturated by floating ash. Trembling with anxiety, Riella forced herself to focus on only one detail at a time, and to do so in a calm and composed manner – as calm and composed as any person standing on the edge of an inferno looking in would ever be capable of remaining.
Smoke, lots of it, engulfed the whole of the space that had been the camp’s square, the meeting place where husbands settled their dealings, elders passed judgments, children played and wives traded secrets. The stench of destruction was strong enough to make her retch.
Right in the middle, out of a large pile of charred remains, tongues of fire lashed toward the skies, looking smaller and smaller all the time. Firemen were shooting jets of water at the last stronghold of fire, giving the impression of relaxed authority. They must have everything under control; probably got there just in time.
Straight ahead – devastation. Two of the trailers had been completely gutted and one more stood close enough to catch. Six men were pushing and tugging at a fourth, desperately trying to roll it out of the path of danger. All the tarpaulins that had been stretched between the trailers to provide some protection from the elements were now hanging from their hooks in charred shreds. One of the older women, Sara, held two small children to her bosom as she fled out of the swirling smoke’s way.
“This is all your fault!” Riella jumped at the sound of the hateful voice. “You brought us so much bad luck with your wayward ways, it’s a miracle we’re not all dead and with the spirits, simply for having known you. I don’t know how you can live with yourself. You’re so polluted, you must be black inside!”
The woman finished her tirade with a harsh noise, and next she knew, Riella felt a glob of slimy mucus stick on her right cheek. She didn’t dare move a muscle, even after the soft jangle of the woman’s bangles died off in the distance. Unnatural fear clenched her heart with a physical hurt that rooted her to the spot. She was afraid to turn or wipe the spit off, worried about the vile words as much as the ridiculous possibility she may have, indeed, caused something so dreadful to happen to her people. She may have moved out, got a job and a house of her own, but that didn’t mean she loved them any less. They were her people, her kin, and she was proud of them all, proud to have been born and raised in their midst.
Tears sprung forth from her eyes and she sniffed as quietly as possible, trembling in the wake of such devastation. A strong arm circled her shoulders and she jumped, then her brain processed the fact that it was a male arm, solid and well-muscled, and she relaxed slightly. She wiped her cheek on her sleeve as he tightened his arm and drew her to his chest.
“No one’s hurt, you know,” he said, and she sobbed louder.
“Kai,” she murmured.
“Hey there, sweetheart. Come, let’s take you to your father, so you can see for yourself.”
She sniffed again, wiped her nose on her sleeve and let him drag her away from the commotion. Outside the door to his caravan, she stopped him.
“I need to know, Kai. I need to know what’s going on, and I need to know right now.”
She was the king’s daughter, his only offspring, and she knew only too well what happened when a king grew weak in her world. She let her frustration at being shunned, resentment at her own inability to do more to protect her father from afar and self-hate at the scarcity of her own visits, mingle with the horror of the night, the very clear possibility that her father had been targeted, and then added to the mix a healthy dose of anger. Kai had known her all her life. He would understand. He would tell her.
Kai stared at her, unsmiling, for a long moment, deliberating. She gave him time. Eventually, his features tightened. A muscle in his jaw twitched, then he grabbed her by the arm and led her away, into the shadows.
“Come. I don’t like it, but you deserve to know.”
Look for Ella Medler on online book stores.
The Witchwood Estate Series.
Patti Roberts.
Timeless Page 16
