Summer Wishes (Desire #1.5) (9 page)

*******

Kama, Liam, Torrid, Jocelyn, and Matthew’s story continues in Volume 2 of Desire.

Shattered (Volume 2, Desire)

November 11, 2011

SHATTERED

(Desire #2)

The sequel to DESIRE, about a dystopian society where at the age of 18, your life is planned out for you by a Committee. Kama made her choice, and now her world and everyone else's will change. The rebellion has begun.

Releases

November 11, 2011

A Note from the Author of DESIRE and Summer Wishes:

I wanted to thank you for picking up Summer Wishes and spending some time in the world of Arcadia, 3010 along with Jocelyn, Matthew and Sarah – Kama’s friends. In Summer Wishes, Jocelyn and Matthew’s story is told to give a better idea of what life is like in DESIRE. Like all my books, the story of Summer Wishes, the DESIRE Series and its characters are dear to me, and I appreciate you taking the time to read this new series. And I hope you enjoyed reading Summer Wishes, as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Authors can only pray and hope a story they spent hours, weeks, and months writing and honing into a book, would be one that resonate with other people, too.

Many authors write because they simply love to tell a story – that’s me!  And if you’ve enjoyed Summer Wishes, that’s sweet music to my ears. I write a lot, because it’s a passion for me. If you enjoyed Summer Wishes, and would like to keep in touch with me and keep up with what’s going on with me or even participate in DESIRE activities, I’ve included some links here to make it easy for you.

And if you would like to read the preview to one of my very favorite book series, the Frost Series, I’ve included a short excerpt here of Bitter Frost.  I hope you will get a chance to read this book, as the series gets more and more epic fantasy by the book.

And if you have any concerns or comments you want to let me know that has something to do with the format  or wanting to see more books of something, etc., you can also contact my publisher, theEDGEbooks.com

Thank you and have a Wonderful SUMMER full of Fulfilled happy WISHES!!

Sincerely,

Kailin Gow

LEARN MORE About DESIRE by:

Joining the Facebook Group Page at:

http://www.facebook.com/DESIREseries

Getting a Group or Your Book Club to Read DESIRE?

Get a FREE Group DESIRE Discussion Question Sheet at:

http://www.theEDGEbooks.com

Want to know about upcoming promotions, contests, giveaways, events, and new books from the author of DESIRE and Summer Wishes?

Follow Kailin Gow at:

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and

http://www.kailingow.wordpress.com

From Bestselling Author Kailin Gow

Bitter Frost (The Frost Series)

Award-winning Finalist, Multi-genre Fiction

Award-wining Finalist, Women’s Literature

2
^nd
Annual International Book Awards

All her life, Breena had always dreamed about fairies as though she lived among them...beautiful fairies living among mortals and living in Feyland. In her dreams, he was always there the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. When Breena turns sixteen, she begins seeing fairies and other creatures mortals don’t see. Her best friend Logan, suddenly acts very protective. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. That’s fine and all, but for the fact that humans rarely survive a trip to Feyland, a kiss from a fairy generally means death to the human unless that human has fairy blood in them or is very strong, and although Kian seemed to be her intended, he seems to hate her and wants her dead.

Excerpt from the Bestselling FROST SERIES™

Award-winning Finalist, Multi-genre Fiction, 2
^nd
Annual International Book Awards

Award-winning Finalist, Chick-Lit/Women’s Literature, 2
^nd
Annual International Book Awards

Bitter Frost

kailin gow

Prologue

T
he dream had come again, like the sun after a storm. It was the same dream that had come many times before, battering down the doors of my mind night after night since I was a child. It was the sort of dreams all girls dream, I suppose – a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of leaves that breathe and make music when they are rustled in the wind, and rivers that bubble and froth with secrets.
Dreams
, my mother always told me,
represent part of our unconsciousness – the place where we store the true parts of our soul, away from the rest of the world.
My mother was an artist; she always thought this way. If it was true, then my true soul was a denizen of this strange and fantastical world. I often felt, in waking hours, that I was in exile, somehow – somehow less myself, less
true
, than I had been in my enchanted slumber. The real world was only a dream, only an echo, and in silent moments throughout the day it would hit me:
I am not at home here
.

I would shake the thought off, of course, dismiss it as stupid, try and apply my mother's armchair psychoanalysis to the situation. But then, before bed, the thought would come to me, trickle through the mire of worries (boys, school, whether or not I'd remembered to charge my IPod before getting into bed, whether or not my banner would be torn down yet again from the homeroom message board) –
will I have the dream tonight?
And then, another thought would come to me alongside it.
Will I be going home again
?

And the night before my sixteenth birthday, the dream came again – stronger and more vivid than it had ever come before, as if the gauzy wisp of a curtain between reality and dream-land had at last been torn open, and I looked upon my fantasy with new eyes.

I was a fairy princess. (When waking, I would chide myself for this fantasy – sixteen-year-old girls should want to start a fruitful career in environmental activism, not twirl around in silk dresses). But I was a fairy princess, and I was a child. I dreamed myself into a palace – with spires reaching up into the sun, so that the rays seemed to pour gold down onto the turrets. The floors were marble; vines bursting with flowers were wrapped around all the colonnades. The halls were covered in mirrors – gold-framed glass after gold-framed glass – and in these hundred kaleidoscopic images I could see my reflection refracted a hundred times.

I was a toddler – perhaps four, maybe five years old, decked out in elaborate jewels, swaddled in lavender silk, yards and yards of the fabric – the color of my eyes. I hated the color of my eyes in real life – their pale color seemed to make me alien and strange – but here, they were beautiful. Here, I was beautiful. Here, I was home.

The music grew louder, and I could hear its melody. It was not like human music – no, not even the most beautiful concertos, most elaborate sonatas. This was the music that humans try to make and fail – the language of the stars as they twinkle, the rhythm of the human heart as it beats, the glimmering harmony of all the planets and all the moons and all the secret melodies of nature. It was a music that haunted me always, whenever I woke up.

Beside me there was a boy – a few years older than I was. I knew his name; somehow my heart had whispered it to my brain.
Kian
. All the palace around me was golden – with peach hues and warm, pulsating life – but Kian was pale, pale like snow. His eyes were icy blue, with just a hint of silver flecked around the irises; his hair was so black that ink itself would drown in it. He seemed out of place in the vernal palace that was my home – out of season with the baskets of ripe fruit that hung down from the ceiling, with the sweet, honey-strong smell of the flowers. But he was beautiful, and all the more beautiful for his strangeness.

We were dancing to the music, our bodies echoing the sounds we heard – or perhaps the sounds were echoing us. We were learning the Equinox Dance. It was the dance that we would dance on our wedding day.

It was a custom in this fairy kingdom that royal children would learn this dance – the most complicated and mysterious of all dances – for their wedding days. And so we all practiced, day after day (night after dream-rich night), for the day that we would come of age, and dance the dance truly, our feet moving in smooth unison, echoing the commingling of our souls.

My father was the fairy king of the Summer Kingdom – a place where everything tasted like honey and felt like the morning sun on your forehead. Kian's mother was the Winter Queen of the Winter Kingdom, a place beyond the mountains where cool breezes turned into arctic chill, where a castle made of amethyst stood upon a rocky peak, and evergreens dotted the horizon. And it was only fitting that our two kingdoms should meet, should join together; we were the chosen ones.

“You will be my Queen,” the boy whispered to me. His voice was confident, strong.

The dance was still difficult for us. I got tangled in my waves of lavender satin, tripping over his silver shoes. He in turn kept fumbling with his hands, trying to spin me around the waist and instead, elbowing me in the side – but somehow it didn't hurt.

“Silly,” cried the other girl watching us. She, like Kian, was stunning – her hair was as long and lustrous as a starless night; her eyes were silver, like the pelt of a wolf. She was called Shasta, I knew. “Silly – that's not how you dance.” She giggled, and her eyes glittered with her laugh.