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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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Read a few
chapters |
Scrying Glass is a dark
and humorous story about Brad Anderson, a
30-year-old writer who finds a portal in his
basement on New Year's Day, 2005. Although he
realizes that it could lead anywhere (possibly
even the vacuum of space), Brad decides to venture
through it because whatever life offers on the
other side, it’s probably better than the life
he’s got. Brad is a man who is haunted by the
memory of Julia, a high school outcast that he
could've helped, but didn't. And she died. The
portal gives him a second chance because
once he emerges on the
other side, he finds himself back in his
15-year-old body as a freshman in high school in
the year 1989. With this new opportunity to set
things right, Brad unwittingly disrupts a very
important Universal law. Because of it, the
Universe itself is threatened. To stop him,
a supernatural assassin is dispatched and Brad
must find a way to survive, correct his mistake,
and save the Universe with just the help of Julia;
his trusted friend, Wesley; and a disgraced angel,
Enoch. (Brad’s clever. He’ll be fine.) And, in
saving the Universe, he learns of the value
that every person holds, and of a remarkable power
within himself.
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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The Archangel Passage: Book
1:
Samantha Bradshaw, a shy
and bookish recent art grad, suddenly finds
herself thrust into supernatural peril following a
strange occurrence at a Halloween party where
magic was used as a party-favor.
Sariel is a banished
angel who was inadvertently freed from his prison
by a Jewish mystic beneath the Warsaw Ghetto on
April 23, 1943.
Although the mystic
sought to conjure an angel to enlist its aid, he
had no idea he would summon one of the Watchers, the Grigori, who once taught
mankind the secrets of magic, took human wives,
and populated the world with
giants.
Meanwhile, beneath the
streets of modern-day Moscow, in the vast network
of underground tunnels lost to time, the most
powerful being on the planet, the Archangel
Michael, watches Samantha from a
Scrying pool with cold eyes that glimmer with eons
of suppressed madness – and in her future, he sees
his own end.
Sariel knows that the only
way to ensure Samantha’s safety is to procure the
Durandal, the
legendary sword of Roland, which, as the legend
goes, was once owned by Hector of
Troy.
To
find it, Sariel hires archeologist David
Weiseman, who discovers a journal that leads
him to believe the sword was found centuries
earlier and presented to Ivan the Terrible.
Together
with Samantha and David, Sariel heads to Moscow to
find the sword, and though they know danger lurks
around the bend of every dark corridor beneath the
ancient city, even Sariel doesn’t expect Michael
to be lying in wait for them. |
Read a few
chapter
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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Reviews:
"SCRYING GLASS is a fun book that
can be read in a sitting or two. Not because it's short,
but because it draws a reader in and won't let go. It's
kind of Stephen King by way
of Douglas Adams: a lot of
horror that goes really weird. Brad is an Everyman
kind of hero that a reader can easily identify with who
ends up taking a second trip through high school (a hell
that really shouldn't be repeated). Once he's back there
with the teachers and fellow students, still with his
30-year old faculties (see? a pun!), things really start
to go awry. A fun, fast-paced book by a first-time
writer."
-- Reviewed by Mel
Odom on Amazon.
***
"I generally avoid reading
science fiction; so when J.D. Stiver's SCRYING GLASS was
recommended to me by a dear friend, I characteristically
hesitated. This work, which I understand is Stiver's
first, may have changed my mind about the value of the
sci-fi genre. I found the novel to be an easy and
comfortable read; yet, it was exciting, entertaining,
and thought provoking as was the hero of this piece,
Brad Anderson. Brad, a 30 year old writer, unwittingly
enters into another dimension where he is forced to
relive part of his adolescence. Here, with the
experience of an adult, he is able to thoughtfully
change the course of events, correct moral errors of his
youth, and make peace with his past. The supernatural
forces and characters that work for and against him (the
stuff I try to avoid) create confusion, turmoil, and
violence, that draw the reader in to anticipate the
action. The author intermittently explains enough to get
the reader to the next juncture, using both physics and
metaphysics, sometimes with a dry humor, and in a way
that makes the sequence of events almost plausible.
Through Brad's philosophical comments and musings we're
given insight into his character, his perceptions, and
his motivation as he tries to understand and manage the
remarkable situations that unfold around him. The story
essentially tells how one individual might come to
affect the scheme of the
universe."
-- Reviewed by Jo Ann Yano on Amazon. | |
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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J. D. Stiver is a former journalist for The Norman Transcript, a daily
newspaper in Norman, Okla., and has also worked for
various other community newspapers in the Oklahoma City area.
His style of story-telling
blends humor with dark subject matter, but Stiver
emphasizes that the very first rule of writing is this:
It HAS TO BE READABLE, and in fiction, it has to
entertain. SCRYING GLASS is his first novel, and
he was offered a contract with the first publishing
company that he submitted it to, Publish America, a
company that caters specifically to new writers. In
their annual report, Publish America stated that it
receives approximately 30,000 manuscripts a year and
chooses to publish only 6,000 (one in six). Scrying
Glass was among them.
Stiver has also won
various awards for both fiction and journalism,
including the Sam Slade Memorial Journalism Writing
Competition and the James Axley Merit Award for Fiction
through Rose State College. He has also won awards
through the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Media Association,
the Oklahoma Intercollegiate Press Association and the
Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association. He has been a
resident of California, Pennsylvania, and
Oklahoma.
While attending high
school in Pennsylvania, he met local artist, Steve
Klinger, and the two became fast friends. They vowed to
work together someday, and Scrying Glass provided the
first real opportunity when Klinger designed the
"Scrying Glass portal," which was used in the book
cover's
design. | |
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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Wednesday, August 10,
2005 | |