by Bob Dattolo
As always, if you’re still reading, drop me an email? I mean it when I say I’d love to hear from you. What’d you like about the story? What’d you hate? I’m seriously about that, too. Reach out to me at [email protected].
If you like what you read, please consider leaving a review. Ratings are a solo writer’s world and can help get more stories written. If you hate what you read? Drop me an email and let me know? I’m open to people’s thoughts and, who knows, changes or edits are always possible.
OTHER WORKS
I have a number of other worlds that I am working on getting published, so feel free to stop and check out the other titles available below:
Other books by Bob Dattolo
Barriers Series
Breaking Barriers
New Beginnings
Forging Family
Coming Home
Birth and Rebirth
Goddess Exposed
Family Bonds
Tainted Series
Unwilling Sacrifice
Finding Center
Keeping Balance
Bringing Balance
Shades of Gray
Still Waters – A complete trilogy (although more stories are likely)
Still Waters
Dark Waters
Rushing Waters
Learning My Place
Learning My Place
Clarion Call
Silver Linings
Dual Lessons
Penny for Your Thoughts
Ragged Edge
Wild Ride
The Scars Make the Woman
Black Dogs and Destiny
Dance with the Devil
Sorrowfeld Academy
Survival
Betrayal – Coming Soon
Billie’s Story
Second Chance – Coming Soon
Pack Dammerung – Coming Soon
Book two in the Sorrowfeld Academy series, Betrayal, will be released in April 2021.
Second year at the North American Magics Academy. Or, as almost everyone calls it, Sorrowfeld Academy. Where allies and enemies change and shift, and being stabbed in the back and murdered is way too close to the norm.
What do you do when you survive the first year, much to the shock of far too many people? If you’re me, you go on vacation to drive around the country with my former roommate, a former ally, and a former enemy.
Just four young dragon shifters looking to relax and take on the world before we’re thrown into the woodchipper that is the academy. Where everyone around you plans your death, all to drain you of magic to add to their own.
Except summer passes quickly. Inexorably. Leading us towards the second year before any of us are ready for it. Second year…and changes.
When you go here, changes aren’t good. They tend to lead to deaths.
Except we don’t have a choice.
I may be a freak of a dragon shifter, with magic that doesn’t fit into the known affinities, white hair stripes and eyes, and a human hybrid shifting form, but even I have my limits. And this second year may be hitting them.
Classes. Classmates. Rumors. The trial. They’re my world as I struggle to get by as a former stricken. A former boogieman to the magical community. It’s not bad enough that our world teaches us that we have to be out for ourselves above everyone else, but then I get the added pressure of automatically being considered prey by everyone around me due to what my parents did to me.
I’ve faced betrayal since I was nine and my parents pounded bladed eye patches called mortmagi into my skull and took away my eyes and my power. Yet I’m free, healed, and I have my magic again. Which means I have a fighting chance.
Except here? Betrayal is a way of life and I’m just a sippy cup of power to too many of my classmates.
My name is Maddie Stricken, and Sorrowfeld Academy won’t be the death of me. Not if I have anything to say about it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
For my mother, who believed in me until the end.
For my father, who taught me to love reading from an early age.
To authors that have given up their time to speak to a hesitant author and provide guidance: Christine Dougherty, P.S. Power, R.J. Ross, and Alison L. Perry - thank you all for the many hours of fun and entertainment and for your words of wisdom.
To everyone that takes the time to reach out and those that leave reviews when the book is good enough to warrant it – thank you. It’s a fantastic feeling to think that others enjoy these people that live in my head as much as I do.
Last but not least - Thank you to my wonderful family for your support and allowing me to squirrel myself away in my office for hour after hour. Christine, Ross, Dominic, Bennet, Bella, Tino, and Leo – without you all, this wouldn’t even be worth it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Dattolo is a husband, father, and part-time author that dedicates his free time to family, reading, and writing paranormal/urban fantasy. He is new to self-publishing but has been writing for years and is working on sharing his eBook babies with the world.
Reach out to him at: [email protected]
Visit him at www.bobdattolo.com
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BACK PAGE SUMMARY
I live in a world where magic exists. Dragon shifters exist. The normal humans know about us. We’re part of the same world, with powerful mages and dragons being treated like A-list celebrities and money flows like water to those of us with power.
I also live in a world where mages and dragon shifters send their kids to the North American Magics Academy. Or, as every student and family calls it; Sorrowfeld Academy.
Where plotting and treachery and murder are a way of life and each of the three years ends in a trial. Part maze. Part test of your magic skill. Part riddle.
All violent.
You have to watch everything in the trial, including your fellow students.
Our world runs on power, and you can drain magic from others to add to your own. We’re walking batteries to those that are more vicious. More aggressive. More cunning.
This is my world now. Can I survive? I’m a modern magical miracle, being a stricken that has magic again. I’m the boogieman to the magical community. That puts a target on my back for every student to hit. I’m not like them. I’m other. I’m stricken.
And I will never fit in. They won’t let me.
