A warm love bytes welcome to author Kim Fielding joining us today to talk about her newest release “Stasis”.
No such thing as a free lunch. Everything has its price. Most of us assume these things to be true. But here’s one of my pet peeves: in many fantasy stories, magic is a limitless resource that can be wielded without cost. Not so in my Ennek trilogy.
The first book in the trilogy, Stasis, releases today from DSP Publications. It features two main characters: Ennek, the son of a tyrant, and Miner, the prisoner he saves from a terrible punishment. As it turns out, Ennek is also a wizard powerful enough to destroy a city.
But what happens when he uses that magic? Well, it exhausts him, like running a marathon unprepared. Using a lot magic drains him and makes him ill. Its use also carries a moral and ethical price. For most of his life, Ennek has been overlooked, underappreciated, and unable to express his true self. Given the possibility of immense power, he finds himself tempted to use it—maybe even abuse it. Struggling with that temptation creates a huge burden. And when the life and fate of another man are also in his hands, Ennek is bound to have a difficult journey.
Stasis is about a lot of things. One of those things is the price of power—and the costs of the decisions we make.
Excerpt from Stasis:
The dream started as it always did. He was very small, and he was descending an endless stairway that circled and twisted like an insane snake. He didn’t want to go, but his feet wouldn’t stop, and he knew that if he didn’t walk, he’d tumble down the stairs instead. At the bottom of the stairway was a long corridor in which pale spiders lurked in enormous webs. He was frightened of the spiders and tried to hurry past them. And then there was a door, tall and so narrow he could barely slip inside.
The wizard was in the shadows at the edge of the room. He was gray—gray hair, gray shirt and trousers, a long gray coat, gray skin. His face was as bloodless as death, and his lips were peeled back to expose long, yellowed teeth. His hands had too many fingers, each multijointed and much too long. One of the hands rested on the shoulder of the boy beside him, a youth with hair like tasseled silk and a face that might have been smirking or caught in a rictus of fear. The boy’s mouth was smeared with sticky scarlet, and more of the stuff coated his outstretched palm. “Sleeping potion,” he whispered. “Just what a restless sleeper needs.”
At the center of the floor was a hole. If he looked into it—and Ennek always did; he couldn’t help it—he saw empty space and, beneath that, the sea. The waves boiled and tumbled, and Ennek could tell they were rising and would soon enter the room, filling it.
At this point in the dream, Ennek would whirl around and try to find the door, but it would be gone. The shape of the room itself would shift, like lungs moving in and out, and Ennek would realize he was actually inside the Chief, and the Chief was the keep. Thelius and the boy would watch silently as Ennek ran around, trying desperately to find his way out, until he began screaming. He’d awake hopelessly tangled in the bedsheets, sweaty and feverish. If he tried to speak, his voice would be hoarse.
Tonight, though, there was a difference.
He still looked down into the hole, and the waters were still getting nearer, but now he could see a hand—a pale human hand—sticking up through the waves. It was attached to a skinny arm. Another arm breached the surface, and then so did a head, bald as an egg. The head turned and looked upward. The man’s eyes were the exact color of the sea around him, as if the ocean was inside him too. He blinked with lashless lids and choked a little on a wave that washed into his mouth. “Help me,” he said, not a shout but a quiet plea. “Help me, please.”
Ennek woke up then. And when he did, he remembered.
Blurb:
Praesidium is the most prosperous city-state in the world, due not only to its location at the mouth of a great bay but also to its strict laws, stringently enforced. Ordinary criminals become bond-slaves, but the worst punishment—to be suspended in a dreamless frozen state known as Stasis—is doled out by the wizard and reserved for only the most serious of traitors.
Ennek is the youngest son of Praesidium’s strict Chief. Though now a successful portmaster, Ennek grew up without much of a purpose, unable to fulfill his true desires and always skating on the edge of the law. But he is also haunted by the plight of one man, Miner, a prisoner for whom Stasis appears to be a truly horrible fate. If Ennek is to save Miner, he must explore Praesidium’s deepest secrets as well as his own.
Stasis is available now from
and other booksellers.
Kim Fielding is very pleased every time someone calls her eclectic. Her books have won Rainbow Awards and span a variety of genres. She has migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States and currently lives in California, where she long ago ran out of bookshelf space. She’s a university professor who dreams of being able to travel and write full time. She also dreams of having two perfectly behaved children, a husband who isn’t obsessed with football, and a house that cleans itself. Some dreams are more easily obtained than others.
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Thank you so much for letting me visit!