Tyranny of the Fey
by Terry Bartley
Date of Publication: August 15th 2023
Publisher: Starlight King Press
Genre: Fantasy
ISBN: 979-8-9877958-1-1
ASIN: B0BV77GJCJ
Number of pages: 242
Word Count: 50,334
Cover Artist: Deryl Arrazaq
BLURB
A collection of short stories in a connected fantasy world
A famed Elven researcher is worried about her home. When she discovers a new realm with massive magic potential, she believes she has found the answer. Will the Seasonal Fey Courts allow her to continue her research without interference, or do they have more nefarious plans?
An Elven princess runs away from her arranged marriage to a parallel world. Will she be able to find the adventure she seeks? While she is in search of battles with dragons and quests to obtain sacred artifacts, she finds that what she was looking for may have been a true connection with someone that understands her.
Two childhood friends, an Orc and a Goblin, have long dreamed of adventure. When a magic school dropout stumbles into their lives, they jump at the chance to realize their ambitions. This found family realizes the world of Galevyn is a much bigger place than the jungle they grew up in.
Excerpt
“Nice moves,” Aunt Poppy said. Sweat was beginning to gather on her brow. Her sandy short-cropped hair glistened in the sunlight. “You must have been practicing while I was away.”
She raised her short sword to guard her face and torso and backed away from me. She certainly looked less intimidating in her formal pantsuit, but the shirt still strained from her hulking arm muscles.
“Something like that,” I replied. I didn’t exactly have fighting clothes, as my mother didn’t approve of this hobby. But my old, beat up riding clothes worked well enough. “Or you’re just getting old.”
I took a deep breath and flung my head to toss my dark black ponytail around to my back. I rushed towards her and she swiped her blade in my direction. At the last moment, I dropped into a crouch and swung my leg around to trip her. She jumped before I could make contact and flipped forward, over my head. She lowered the edge of her short sword to my throat as autumn leaves fell around us.
“Got me again,” I laughed as she pulled her sword away and offered me her hand. I happily took it and pulled myself up. The garden of the Autumn Maiden’s estate wasn’t meant for this sort of training, but it was always my favorite use of the grounds.
“You truly are getting better,” she repeated.
I pushed some loose hairs behind my ear and smirked. “Still not good enough to beat you.”
“Please girl, I have been adventuring for over a century now. You are barely within your second decade,” Aunt Poppy reassured.
“I just really wanted to beat you before . . . . Well, you know,” I admitted.
“Asha,” she began sympathetically, “just because you’re getting married doesn’t mean you need to stop sparring with me.”
“The future Autumn Maiden doesn’t concern herself with the martial arts,” I said, pointing a crooked finger at her, mimicking my grandmother. I pushed my nose out and opened my eyes a bit wider.
Aunt Poppy laughed. “You better not let her catch you doing that. That woman never forgets. You can trust me on that.”
That made a chill run down my back, remembering all the times I’d been scolded by my grandmother. It’s not what she says so much as how she says it. That tone will stick with you.
“But it's more than that, Aunt Poppy. I don’t want sparring to just be a womanly dalliance for me. I want to be an adventurer. I want to be like you!” I exclaimed. I meant it. The princess life never seemed to fit for me.
“I know,” she said in a consolatory tone. “But sometimes we just don’t get to choose our path in life.”
I liked to believe she truly felt things could be different. Why else would she send me such detailed letters of her adventures all the time? I hoped she might know about a loophole to get me out of this.
“But you did!”
Aunt Poppy sighed. There were some things, it seemed, even great adventurers can’t do. “That’s the blessing of being the second born. I assure you, your father has made sacrifices because of his duty to the family. That is just something firstborns get saddled with.”
“It's not fair,” I whined. I sounded like a small child. I always made sure to take advantage of my time with my aunt to get in all my overly dramatic complaints that I couldn’t do in front of the rest of my family.
“That it is not, Asha. Life rarely is,” Poppy said solemnly, turning to look toward the Autumn Maiden’s expansive manor house.
“It's just,” I began, “The way you talk about the material realm makes it sound like there is so much more opportunity there.”
“It is that,” Aunt Poppy admitted, “but there are troubles there too. I’ll be heading back there after tonight’s dinner. Perhaps if you make a good impression your grandmother might let you tag along.”
I smiled at the thought, even though I knew it was a far-fetched fantasy.
“Asha! Sister! It is almost time!” My sister Tinsley called, running out of the large decorative glass double doors on the back of the manor house.
“Very well, Tinsley,” I relented and began following behind her.
“Eh, not so fast,” Aunt Poppy said.
I looked down and noticed the training sword still in my hand. I handed it over.
“I get it,” Aunt Poppy began, “I’ve had more than a few first dates I’d wished I’d brought a weapon along, but it may not offer a good first impression.”
“Probably not,” I laughed.
Author Info
Terry Bartley is a journalism, literature, and English teacher at Scott High School and writer of the upcoming collection of short stories, Tyranny of the Fey. Terry is the host of the podcast “Most Writers are Fans,” about the intersection between writing and fandom. Terry has professionally written for the Coal Valley News and Screenrant. He has won awards for writing and broadcasting from the West Virginia Associated Press, the National Broadcasting Society, and MarCom. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Phoenix and an M.A. in English Education from Western Governor’s University.He loves tabletop roleplaying games, social deduction games, reading comics, and watching musical television shows. He lives in rural West Virginia with his dog, Etsy.
The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams Interview with . . . Terry Bartley . . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work? First things first, I almost exclusively write from the first-person perspective. My favorite books are all written in the first-person; it just feels more personal. I always feel like a good friend is telling me a story about that time they fought a horde of vampires. I wanted to bring that to my readers. Secondly, my stories are always very character driven. I plot out what’s going to happen, but I ultimately let my characters decide where the story is going. Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character during story creation? I always have a pretty decent idea of who my character is whenever I start writing. But all of that is mostly superficial stuff. What is their name? Who are their family? What do they look like? Then I give them a pretty broad character trait, i.e. “This person is easily angered.” Then that’s mostly all I know about them when I start writing. Then as I write, the character sort of tells me who they are through their actions. I always have a hard time describing my characters because I think of them as well-rounded people, not the easily identifiable things I started with. I mean, if someone asked you to describe your best friend, what would you say? “They’re nice.” How do you summarize someone you know so well? Have you found yourself bonding with any particular character(s)? If so which one(s)? Throughout this blog tour, I’ve answered questions a lot about my big three main characters: Rowena, Asha, and Karuk. But I have really fallen in love with some of my supporting characters. Karuk’s best friend, Gin, is a Goblin that loves music. He plays the drum and lives for live performance. He’s easily excitable and quick to react. I relate to him so much because I absolutely love loving things. One of my favorite things about myself is how deeply I love fictional characters, like DC Comics’ Stephanie Brown or Penny Bunce from the Simon Snow books. I think that if Gin lived in our world, we’d get along really well. Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details? This is actually one of my favorite things to talk about because this book is the start of something much bigger. Tyranny of the Fey is a collection of short stories set in the world of Galevyn. I began writing this book after I finished writing a novel set in the same world. That book will be coming out next year. Sooner than that, I’m going to have a number of small releases I’m referring to as Light Novels. They are going to be focused on a single character and written similarly to this book, jumping across their life and giving a pretty complete snapshot of the character. The next original book I’m going to release is I'm an Expert Assassin, and I Don't Even Get a Name?!? It is going to focus on Agent 27 and their role in the secret society of changeling assassins. Have you ever felt that there was something inside of you that you couldn't control? If so what? If no what spurs you to reach for the unexperienced? If I’m being honest, I have always felt like there was something different about me. In some ways, that is absolutely true. I’m bisexual, and I grew up in a small, conservative town. I have ADHD, which wasn’t diagnosed until much later in life, which makes sense as something different about me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. However, I think that being a creative person that needs to create is something that has always made me feel separate from my peers. I’ve also been creating, whether it’s writing, singing, acting, podcasting, or any other thing I decided to pursue that week. It didn’t feel like a series of hobbies I enjoyed, but something I had to do. It’s like a spark inside of me that will burn me up if I don’t let it out. I know that sounds dramatic, but it is how I feel. If you could spend one-week with 5 fictional character, who would they be and where would you spend that time? Here’s the thing, I understand why writers have to give their characters a hard time. There has to be conflict for there to be an interesting narrative, and there have to be struggles to create character growth. But some of my favorite characters seem to have the absolute worst time. Those are the five characters I would pick: Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files, Elphaba from Wicked (the book), Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Zélie Adebola from Children of Blood and Bone, and Alizayd al Qahtani from the Devabad trilogy. I would just take them somewhere nice, like a quiet cabin next to a peaceful river somewhere, so they can have a nice time for one week. They deserve one calm week out of their entire fictional lives. Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere, money is not a concern? What would you do with this time? I’ve been saying I’m going to move to New York City for about ten-ish years now, so I think if money was not a concern, that’s the time to pull the trigger. I love the hustle and bustle, I’ve always worked at a much faster pace than those around me in my rural hometown. I have some very good friends that live there, and I would love the chance to watch their son grow up. I also have writer friends that live there. It would be great to be part of a much larger writing community than I ever could where I live now.
Webpage: http://www.terrybartley.com
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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22973304.Terry_Bartley
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Thanks for sharing!
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