Tara Maya's Tales

  Shadow, his unhorse, galloped across the field of blood and snow, into the forest, where rain battled the fire that wanted to devour the trees. Any colder and the rain would have turned to sleet. The girl trembled in Umbral’s arms. She felt good there, soft and tiny and clinging to him like a child. Her hair, brightly dyed red, held the fragrance of henna and dried flowers. She clutched at his chest as if she trusted him to protect her; though, more likely, she was just afraid that if she didn’t hang on, he would let her drop and break her neck. He sheltered her from the rain as best he could. As if a few drops of water were the main danger to her. Deep in the forest, he reached the Deathsworn menhir, large and looming, black and crowned with bones. Here he tapped his horse with his obsidian-beaded hoop, and the shadow beast halted. The forest fire had burnt out here, but it had done its damage. The skeletons of trees around the megalith stuck up from ash, raw black claws. At the...

  Damien had Riley drop him off about a block away from the Bellwether manor.  “What’s the point of trying to hide when you called ahead to say you were coming?” Riley asked. “It’s not to hide, I just want to walk to the house before I knock. It will help me clear my head.” Damien was hoping that the walk would give him time to calm down and gather his courage. It seemed like all it did was give him time to feed his fears and get more and more nervous. By the time he reached the manor, he wasn’t sure he could go through with it. The last time he had been here, he had stolen $2000 from his mother’s jewelry box, along with her jewelry... and then he had stolen his parents’ truck. Within three months of leaving the house, he had crashed the truck and run through the money. And the last time he had seen them before that was when he had to explain what he had done to Evangeline. The disappointment on their faces, the horror and recrimination had been too much for him. That was why...

  On sale today for $0.99! He had silver-black wings, which were not feathers, she realized on closer inspection, but feathery extensions of smokey light. And he glowed . Every part of him was bathed in glorious radiance. His hair looked like spun obsidian, his skin gleamed like polished teak, and his eyes were dark, yet warm and intelligent. There were crinkles around them that suggested wisdom although he was ageless, and she guessed he was much older than his youthful physique suggested. He looked exactly like a classic angel, although far, far too sexy. Sister McKinney in her third-grade Catholic school would have slapped Trudie’s hand with a ruler for suggesting an angel could look that sinfully delicious.  “Thank you for allowing me to come to this interview,” he said to her gravely. “I admit, I was surprised when you agreed to consider a Seraph as a tutor for your children, Queen Sabriel.” Even his voice was sexy. She was definitely going to hell just based on the dream...

  The Skull Stomper's tent was more like a large hut. A tall tree trunk for a central beam allowed for a large radius, and other, smaller posts held up the stretched hide so that there was enough room to walk upright inside the tent without ducking. Furs on one side of the tent provided ample bedding, which left the other side of the tent for a curious, shallow flat bowl filled with a finger depth of water. Beside it was a woman’s hair comb. “Do you know what that is?” he asked the Corn Maiden. She shook her head. He studied her again, searching for something. “It’s a looking bowl. You can brush your hair, admire your lovely complexion.” “Ah,” she said. She sat down on the furs, before the looking bowl, though she didn’t glance down at it. “You wish me to beautify myself before you sleep with me?” He seated himself on the bed furs, near enough to her that she could feel the heat from his body. “May I comb your hair?” he asked. She glanced at him contemptuously for this foolish ques...

  Excerpt from The Seastead Girl : My heart pounded in my chest as the three of us flapped our flippers toward the juvenile whale. Even though the juvenile was small for a humpback, it was still so huge that I felt like Thumbelina compared to the whale. I was surprised to see a number of fish swirling around the whale, as if they were paparazzi pursuing a celebrity. Then I recognized them as sucker fish, whale suckers. We had studied them earlier this week, in preparation for our whale watch. They were also called remora. They were not exactly parasites, but they were annoyances to whales. This baby was unable to defend itself against the little hitchhikers, and so dozens of them had started to follow it. About half of them were attached by their suckers, and the other half were swimming nearby. Although I had my oxygen tube hooked up I almost forgot to breathe. Kaplan swim within a foot of the whale’s head, meeting its gaze with his own. From where I was, I could see the intellige...

  She's a witch with weak powers but a big heart. She accidentally binds an Elf Prince, turned killer mercenary, to her side ...  Read the book . The Tarot Reader's New Year Promise (Except) The sitting room felt much smaller with the tall mercenary sitting there, sipping tea. He was excruciatingly polite and when he saw the Tarot cards, he bowed to her grandmother. “I had heard that you have the Sight.” “My granddaughter was about to do a reading for the new year,” said Grandma Bella. Behind the Elf mercenary’s back, Tia waved her hands to nix that. She was embarrassed enough trying to do a reading in front of Grandma Bella. Tia  definitely  wasn’t up to a public reading in front of a genuine magical warrior, especially one so gorgeous that she kept forgetting to breathe. “You haven’t told us your name,” Tia said. “You’ve heard of my grandmother, Bella, and my name is Tia. You are?” “Delson,” he said. Grandma Bella set up straight in her chair and looked at him shar...

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Bethany asked, moving to sit next to Kyrah on the tiny little bench in the tiny, little dressing room. Kyrah automatically scooted out of the way so that Bethany could not touch her. “Right. No touching. No hugs.” Bethany recited Kyrah’s rules. “Not even when you’re crying?” Kyrah shook her head, staring at her lap. She was struggling not to cry in front of her friend. “Just tell me what’s wrong,” urged Bethany. “Also, I need to check your body for gaping wounds.” Kyrah inadvertently let out a snort of laughter. “Bethany please. I can’t deal with anything tonight...not even for you.” “Well, if you don’t tell me what’s going on immediately, I’m going to sit here telling dirty jokes until you either laugh or we both get fired.” Kyrah buried her face in her hands and no words of any sort emerged. Only another muffled grunt of a woman desperately trying not to cry. The worst crying of all was the crying that you tried not to do... it just sounded awful. “Okay...

Fia and Annie are as close as two sisters can be. They look out for each other. Protect each other. And most importantly, they keep each other's secrets, even the most dangerous ones: Annie is blind, but can see visions of the future; Fia was born with flawless intuition—her first impulse is always exactly right. When the sisters are offered a place at an elite boarding school, Fia realizes that something is wrong . . . but she doesn't grasp just how wrong. The Keane Institute is no ordinary school, and Fia is soon used for everything from picking stocks to planting bombs. If she tries to refuse, they threaten her with Annie's life. Now Fia's falling in love with a boy who has dark secrets of his own. And with his help, she's ready to fight back. They stole her past. They control her present. But she won't let them take her future. Excerpt: FIA Seven Years Ago My dress is black and itchy and I hate it. I want to peel it off and I want to kick Aunt Ellen f...

In a far distant land, where magic flows and legends bloom, three races face their troubles together. A TROUBLED COMMUNITY The insect-like aemets built new homes under mountain maples, and they wished for luck. But the years brought them much work and meagre reward. After poor harvests and a brush with forest fire, now wolves are striking down aemets who venture into the forest. Wolves have never menaced peoplekind in any of the teaching legends. Always a non-violent people, all the aemets know to do is work harder and pray. A GIRL CALLED LUCKY Rue is a young aemet coming of age in this strained village. Named after the fortuitous rue plant, she has never cared much for the idea of luck. She believed from the start that it was folly to live in this place — and when fellow aemets turn up dead, Rue is through waiting for the winds to change. With her aemet skill of sensing air movement, her chemistry training and a guard dog at her side, Rue promises herself that she'...

Ninth-grader Jared Brooks is tortured by the shadows of his life. The shadows distract him during tests, they keep him up at night, they bring out the worst in him. And they give him so much power that he almost never loses in a fight. Sadie knows what Jared is and what he can do. When she invites him to join a group of high school students who carry out questionable tasks for the secretive Shadowcouncil, Jared begins to hope he can use the darkness inside himself for something better. After discovering he’s a Shadowhero, Jared thinks there’s nothing he can’t do. When his brother offers him a chance to go boxing, he can’t say no. But one bad choice leads to another as Jared’s shadow takes him down a dark path. When Sadie gets hurt, Jared must choose between the darkness offered by his shadow, or the new life that Sadie has shown him. Every Shade does something they regret... Shadowhero Parts 1-3 is available on  Amazon . If you purchase Shadowhero, read it and review ...

You've seen the draft of the cover art for STRAT , but the real cover art is now complete! Same design, a bit more detail. Ta-dah! You may find this already available on some sites ....If not, keep checking. It will be up soon! We're holding off on the official release announcement until it's live everywhere. The hero stands on Neraka, a hell-class planet. The atmosphere, lake, and ice that you see are all sulfur dioxide. (It is one of the few elements that can exist in all three states at a certain temperature range.) This is where Charlie Cooper was born and grew up. All his life, he's known the importance of wearing a kit'n'breather at all times, because even the smallest leak can result in sulfur dioxide parts per million rising inside your breather.... the result is pulmonary edema , pain and blindness, and eventually, death. As in this excerpt... EXCERPT: Thirteen helmed Lords escorted me out to the center of the caldera: twelve lords from the ...

It's tricky to find excerpts from Blood I can share with you that don't contain too many spoilers! This is a nice scene for October, since the autumn pixies show up to pester Dindi.... "The slender girls wore crunchy skirts of fall leaves..." (Art by Anne Stokes ) At night’s tail, just before dawn, pixies jumped up and down on Dindi’s head until she had a headache, and kept jumping, until she woke up to shoo them off. “You have got to be kidding me,” she groaned. “What is wrong with you fae? Have you never heard of sleep ?”   She rubbed her eyes, fighting déjà vu. Hadn’t she just been poked awake by pixies a few hours ago?  Once again finger-sized pixies thronged around her sleeping mat, but this time instead of flori, they were all foli, autumnal pixies, mostly Orange, Yellow and Red. The slender girls wore crunchy skirts of fall leaves, and the boys caps and shields made from acorn tops and walnut shells. Kinnaras, bird-winged sprites, feathere...

Wing is coming out in ten days; sign up for my newsletter if you want a chance at a free copy. I haven't done WiP (Work in Progress) Wednesday before, but I'm going to give it a try. Here's a scene from the next book after Wing, the book I'm working on now--Blood, Book 6 of The Unfinished Song. Not Umbral, but another villain, even more vile, sees Dindi: A new taste touched his tongue. He coiled the thread of light around his pinkie and licked his finger. The magic was… fresh. Whose? He did not move; only his eyes followed the thread backward from whence it had darted from the maze of dancers. The familiar bodies, the expected strands of light, in monochrome and polychrome, nothing out of place, nothing in excess of his plan…until his gaze came to rest on the human girl. The human girl had magic . How had he not seen it before? How had he looked her in the face and not seen her before? She was young, almost a child, and far too pretty ...

Wing, Book 5 of the Unfinished Song, is finished. I'll be announcing the release date next week. The manuscript is with the editor and the alpha readers. It's about 90,000 words. If anyone would like to be a Beta reader to proofread and help us hunt down typos, email me and let me know. Ideally, you'd receive a copy sometime be able to read it and get it back to me within a week.  I might not be able to take everyone who asks, but it's worth a try if you are interested. I already have a few people on the list. I can't post too long an excerpt from Blood, The Unfinished Song, Book 6, without giving away spoilers for both Wing and Blood, but here's a scene from the Prologue in which we see Vessia back in the days when she was War Leader of the Aelfae. For the first time, we meet some Aelfae and see things from their point of view during the last stages of the generations-long War with humans. Remember, there is still time to sign up for the Newsletter ...