Welcome to the world of Chaos, nightmares and spiders

For all of you to whom I have promised a sequel to my scary giant spider novel, Gatekeeper. I’m three chapters from the end of Chaos–which are written, but need revision. Then I’ll do another draft and get it out to a few readers who’ll give me some feedback. It should be ready to publish by September. I’ll give away a few copies of Gatekeeper to those who would like to do a read-through of Chaos, just to let me know if the story hands together.

This is what has taken so long: what began as a 60K word novel is now almost 100K. It’s a darker story than Gatekeeper, because my villain, Nadra, has evolved in her quest for power, and has devolved into a hideous creature, devoured by the evil Magic. Revenge has consumed her thoughts since she was exiled to the Dark World.

Short Synopsis:

A wizard woman confronts a powerful entity bent on subjugating humanity–knowing she cannot emerge triumphant.

ARDEN McEWAN, a wizard, has spent almost four years in another world training to use Magic. She arrives on Earth to save friends from a deadly, supernatural threat. Arden averts one disaster only to find she has put her friends and their little girl in mortal danger—danger worse than death. She must face NADRA, a powerful wizard who is no longer human.

Nadra was once a Gatekeeper like Arden and her twin brother, Kerrick. Gatekeepers open the doorways between the worlds and shepherd travelers from place to place. But Nadra succumbed to the glamor of the Old Magic–the Magic of unmaking–evil magic that corrupts and destroys. Although Nadra was banished to the Dark World, she has mastered the evil Magic and is using it to rip through the Gates and take over all the worlds.

The Dark World is populated by creatures who prey on each other to survive. The most dangerous of these are large spider-like animals led by an Old One. They are masterful predators. Their only way to reproduce is to create an Old One. They inject hormones into a human’s brain. Then, encased in a cocoon, the human metamorphoses into an Old One, capable of mating with another Old One.

Tricked into becoming an Old One by Arden and Kerrick, Nadra retains her memories and her magic and is growing more powerful. She is breaking down the Gates, and they are releasing elemental magic into our world that causes a spate of random unmaking: the bones of deer dissolve; an aircraft with an engine deconstructed to its raw components crashes. And people turned to Old Ones are food for Nadra’s horde.

Nadra is focused on revenge against Arden for her duplicity in her banishment. As a creature of the Dark World, Nadra cannot live in sunlight. But if she can replicate herself in a human host, she can live again and accomplish her goal: ruling the worlds. She opens the Earth Gate, and, protected by her spider-creature army, implants her eggs in several women. Each attempt fails gruesomely, but Arden discovers Nadra is learning how to make her mad scheme work. Soon an egg–or a piece of Nadra–will grow and successfully become a duplicate of Nadra, able to live in sunlight, able to control the Dark World monsters.

Nadra’s lust for power drives her to rule all the worlds accessible by the Gates. Arden must remove the entrance to the Dark World, but knows that unmaking it will cause all the Gates to collapse, thus releasing Nadra and hordes of ravenous creatures that will destroy humankind. Arden must use the magic of making to lock the Gate, but something prevents her.

Time is running out. At the instant of the summer Solstice, when the energies of the universe are balanced, the Gates will be weakest. Nadra will tear them down and plunge all the worlds into chaos. Arden finds herself in a war with Nadra that will determine the fate of humanity.

Alone, without the power of her brother and his Key, Arden’s only allies are a man with untested powers and a child.