GtPGKogPYT4p61R1biicqBXsUzo" /> Google+ Excerpt: Trials By Tides: A Zasra Press Anthology + giveaway | I Smell Sheep

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Saturday, April 30, 2022

Excerpt: Trials By Tides: A Zasra Press Anthology + giveaway

Trials By Tides: A Zasra Press Anthology
April 26th 2022
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
The strangers hadn’t come for just any story. They’d come for her—the memory I’d clearly failed to bury. The one story I’d never tell… from “The Storyteller”

Somewhere down in the depths of the ocean, deeper than any light could reach, something awoke… from “Cost of the Crown”

I cannot shake the call of the ocean. It consumes me, fills my dreams, crowds my mind, and in that moment I know…I will do anything to become a mermaid… from “The Calling”

As gentle and sweet as the ocean’s lullaby can be, its waters are dark, dangerous, and full of mystery….

Dive in and explore ten original stories centered around the ocean. You’ll find something for everyone, from benevolent mermaids to powerful levjatans; stolen secrets and forbidden stories. Meet pirates and thieves, sea dragons and gods in these tales of action, grief, romance, and mystery!

The Song Thieves – Eleanor Owen
A girl who steals secrets from the sea searches for her missing sister, following clues found in the sea’s strange songs.

EXCERPT
I’d been hearing the song for days. Its whispering voices had danced an aching beat in my mind as we’d pursued it across the waves. Though I should have known better, I still tried to make sense of it, to pick out a melody I could understand. It throbbed in my skull like a migraine.

Only when I was under the water did the song start to untangle. In the air, it was a distorted whisper scratching against my thoughts, but with the sea against my skin, I heard its voices clear. They spoke no language that had ever graced a human tongue, as much sound and feeling as it was word.

Through ink-dark water I kicked away from the shattered moonlight. Around me, streaked shadows and seaweed wove together into a darkness far thicker than the night above. All the while, I followed the song, deeper, deeper.

The strands of it, each voice within it that wove together to make something that was almost music, wrapped around me and pulled me down, yet I struggled to fall into the trance of their embrace. For as mesmerizing as this song was, I heard another, and amongst its voices, I heard my own. From distant depths it whispered a frantic litany, like a discordant thought had clambered from my head.

If you ever hear your own voice, get out of there. It was the first lesson Attarin had taught me about song hunting. He’d never cared to elaborate on why.

I gritted my teeth and focused on the song before me, the one I had been sent to salvage. I could see it now, a scrap of luminescence snagged between ribbons of seaweed. Lungs burning, I floated before it. Syllables pulsed through me with every swell of the sea.

Moments before my outstretched fingers touched it, I recognized a different voice within its chorus.
Manannan’s Daughter – Christiana Matthews
Mortals are all very well to use as playthings, but Cliohna’s decisions anger her father, with disastrous results.

Son of the Sea – Aisling Wilder
On an island in the West of Ireland, a lost soul rescues a dying man—or does the man rescue him?

The Delivery – Barend Nieuwstraten III
For a pair of hired hands, a simple task of escorting a coffin and its caretaker across the southern sea should make for a relaxing journey. However, as questionable things begin to happen, they find themselves more and more involved in the wild events to come.

The Storyteller – R. L. Davennor
An elderly storyteller is forced to recall the one tale she swore never to utter.

Cost of the Crown – Ine Gausel
Young prince Coral has always been told that the sea is a dark and dangerous place, but something he finds up on shore will change his life forever.

Heart of Amber РKida Lang̴s
After a storm brings two lost unlikely friends together after a decade apart, both of them have to make a choice: sneak away and rekindle their friendship, or risk losing each other a second time.

One More Time – A. M. Dilsaver
A young widower seeks solace from the ocean and its mysteries after his wife dies.

The Calling – A. M. Dilsaver
Torn between her true love and the ocean, Cordelia must make a choice that will change her life forever.

The Sparrow in the Ash Sea – S. K. Sayari
An unlikely hero must return the Goddess of the Sea to her temple before the ash sea overtakes all.

GIVEAWAY
Blitz-wide giveaway (INT)
$100 Amazon gift card
2x paperback copies of Trials By Tides

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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