If you guessed a warbling songbird attempting to impress his mate, you're most definitely right! But if you guessed something standard like my new dark fantasy romance novel, Numinous Fortune, then you're also right! 🥳

Paperbacks are ready.

EBooks are ready.

Now all we have to do is wait another day or two . . . .

OR DO WE?

✨ Smashwords Presale Happening Now ✨

If you're hiding an irresistible urge to snatch up the last book in Swanie's saga right now, slide on over to the presale I'm running at Smashwords! Both ePub and mobi files are available for purchase, and you can find instructions on how to get your book loaded directly to your Kindle here.

Ready to discover how Swanie achieves her long-awaited HEA? Buy now at the presale link! If you have any friends who would enjoy a fantasy novel loaded with mystical spirits, treacherous princes, demons, and an unusual take on the afterlife, feel free to share the link anywhere & everywhere. 😊

https://www.smashwords.com/books/presale/1140366/WGMGED

💖 Early Review - Thanks, Mystyc! 💖

My incredibly awesome ARC readers keep churning out feedback that makes my heart sing. 🎶 I'm so glad you enjoyed Swanie's story, Mystyc!

Going to paste a few "final" snippets from Numinous Fortune in the section below. If you're still unsure whether the story will resonate with you, take a peek at a couple noteworthy scenes. Friendship? ✔ Romance? ✔ Drama? ✔

Final Snippets

I studied Heinrich out of the corner of my eye as we waited for his wife to return. The war had aged him, but his back was as straight as ever, his hands still sturdy, although the pestilence had stolen some of his bulk. His hair retained no trace of its natural light brown; his gray eyes carried strains he might never express. I longed to ask after his experiences in battle, but I knew not how.

He spoke again after a time, his gaze upon the roses ornamenting the bushes that lined the porch. “The last time I saw Joel, he led a group of soldiers on a hunt outside of Bamberg. Supplies were running low, and the ground was still frozen. I heard later that he died. It’s peculiar sometimes, being friends with a time traveler.” Heinrich managed a wan smile and turned his face toward me.

His story sent me into February of 1061, to that morning when I awoke to find the scar from our Teutonic marriage gone forever. I had assumed Joel died in battle, but upon our return to the future . . . . “Did you get it too?” I heard myself asking the beaten warrior. “Dysentery?” I wrapped my arms around my torso.

“It ran through Count von Reuter’s regiment, not the Prince’s.”

So Heinrich had been spared the dehydration, the terrible death. Grateful though I was for this news, Muniche’s mournful spirit agitated my heart, unveiling a worse memory. Prince Otto and his knights poised upon the city wall as the Saxons and their inhuman allies ravaged her, casting their blood upon her stones, her avowed master abandoning his duty, cursing her to Wuotan.

“Did you . . . help the Prince . . . curse Muniche . . . with your blood?” I could not look at Heinrich as I asked the question. I tightened my arms around myself, trying to smother Muniche’s anguish, to reassert my willpower.

“I did not,” Heinrich answered, bitterness lacing his tone. When I met his eyes, I saw that his element had darkened them. “I could not betray my mother in such a way. On that night I questioned my loyalty to him, the Keyholder who dared relinquish his obligation to one of Satan’s minions. Treason.”

I could have hugged him, but instead I loosened my arms and smiled as a sense of validation washed over me. Heinrich knew the Prince had sinned, and he was brave enough to take a stand for our city’s honor. Before I decided how to thank him, he asked what brought Joel and me back to the eleventh century. And I replied without thinking, my discernment evaporated. “We came to die.”

A beat of silence, and then a bladed interjection. “What?”

***

When Joel and I retired to the spare bedroom that evening after dinner, his brow furrowed at the sight of our bags lying beside the single bed. “I’ll take the floor,” he said as I lit the candlestick upon the bedside table.

After a long day of bearing the weight of an unwanted destiny, his comment rubbed me the wrong way. Spinning toward him, I placed my hands on my hips and snapped, “If I repulse you that much, maybe you should slide into Lorraine’s bed tonight. She’s been giving you googly eyes at every meal.”

“What?” Joel scratched at his chin and stared at me.

“Clueless as always.” Dragging my bag to the head of the bed, I pawed through it in search of the camp blanket.

“Swanie, I just spent the afternoon hearing how only reprobates like Judas Iscariot commit suicide,” Joel responded in a weary tone. “I don’t need you telling me I should mess around with a girl twenty years younger than me.”

Heinrich must have given him a hard time. “Lorraine’s twenty-seven and you’re forty,” I reminded Joel, tossing the rolled blanket his direction. “Time travel screwed up our ages compared to everyone else around here. Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that Wuotan wouldn’t have bothered to try to kill us on our way here if we weren’t fated to do something meaningful?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that all I want is to see my wife again?”

The tragedy in Joel’s voice cooled a portion of my irritation. I heaved a sigh and set my neck pillow atop the bed, then dropped my bag to the floor. “You can do whatever you want. It’s not like you’ve got an unbreakable bond crying out for a mad Prince.”

***

A radiant light caught my attention as my eyelids slid open of their own accord, granting me a view that I have no words to describe. Around me drifted clouds reflecting hues I had never seen before, even when my ice enhanced my vision, a gentle breeze shaping them into spectacular patterns, ever changing. In my peripheral vision, I noticed other souls converging in the same direction my feet carried me, some more distant than others. I sensed a unity with them, a grand relief of reaching the next plane in life’s journey—the great expanse before us.

Heaven’s landscape unfolded before my eyes, my vision perfect enough now to appreciate details that would normally have escaped me. The gates, which did not appear as if they could ever be shut, dazzled with a brilliance beyond anything I had experienced. There were no walls, the lush scenery summoning weary souls into everlasting peace. Winged beings clad in golden-flecked white reached out to each soul approaching from the clouds, guiding them into the realm beyond.

The earthly cares that once troubled me had fallen away into insignificance. When the soul who walked forward nearest to me paused to cast a knowing glance in my direction, warmth seemed to swell inside of me, assuring me that I belonged here. Grace alone had brought me to this place.

I saw Otto smile at me before he turned again for the gates, his countenance shimmering and flawless. And then I saw a woman sprinting toward him with her arms outstretched, forsaking heaven’s boundary to welcome her long lost love. Her eyes were a deep, earthy brown, her black hair flowing to her waist, her tawny skin glowing from within. She and Otto embraced, and they clung to each other without speaking a mere twenty steps from the open gateway. Husband and wife, together at last.

While I felt no jealousy at the sight of their reunion, something twisted in my heart in a manner hardly appropriate to the heavenly realm. Unhappiness had no place here . . . but my muses wandered back to earth . . . to where I had left my one true love behind.

I hesitated. My feet halted in place, the clouds undulating around me.

I don’t belong here without him.

The thought cropped up out of nowhere, assaulting the joy that had gripped me since I beheld heaven’s grandeur. All of my intentions surged back into my brain—die, break Muniche’s hold, return to earth to be with . . . .

Did Muniche still claim my heart? My eyebrows crimped as I tried to focus, tried to ascertain the truth.

Was my body too dead for me to return? Should I have pivoted my course long before I reached heaven’s threshold?

I can’t enter those gates without him.

***

✨ I Need Numinous Fortune ✨

✨ FREE Books for Fantasy Lovers! ✨

Need some extra short stories, novellas, and samples to add to your e-reader? You definitely need to browse this collection of 125 freebies! Wow! 🤩 Pretty sure most of these focus on the "fantasy" aspect rather than the "romance" aspect, but we all need to go on a quest sometimes, right? 🧙

✨ Show Me The Books ✨

Next week, I'm going to talk "numbers" for those who are curious about just how lucrative it is to be a relatively unknown indie author. 😉 [Newsflash: It's not lucrative at all. Yet. 👍] But with your help, I reached an amazing milestone with my HNWA Books 1-3 box set, and we're definitely going to celebrate that!

If you missed the Smashwords presale link, here it is again:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/presale/1140366/WGMGED

Hope you have a wonderfully weird week! I'm still planning out my Great Western Road Trip over here, and I've taken note of every suggested attraction to visit! Got any more to suggest? Reply to this email & let me know! 💜

Talk to you soon,

C.L. Carhart

Preorder Numinous Fortune here: https://books2read.com/hnwanf

Download Arcane Gateway for FREE here: https://books2read.com/hnwaag

Check out my other books here: https://books2read.com/clcarhart

Get Veiled Magic, a bonus story, here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/jp1vp51i52