Who Is Mistral Dawn?

Mistral Dawn is a thirty-something gal who has lived on both coasts of the US but somehow never in the middle. She currently resides in the Southeast US with her kitty cats (please spay or neuter! :-)) where she works as a hospital drudge and attends graduate school. Taken By The Huntsman is her first effort at writing fiction and if it is well received she has ideas for several more novels and short-stories in this series. Please feel free to visit her on FaceBook or drop her a line at mistralkdawn@gmail.com

Friday, July 29, 2016

A Little #Excitement For The #Weekend! :-)


Hey Everyone!! :-)

Looks like we all made it to another Friday, thank goodness! ;-)   I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a long, peaceful weekend.  If you're anything like me, you like your excitement safely contained in the pages of a book.  Speaking of excitement, it looks like Cassie is in for some...

Excerpt From Taken By The Huntsman:
Opening her eyes, Cassie discovered she was in a dimly lit room lying on a massive, four-poster, canopied bed. The posts, headboard, and footboard of the bed were dark, heavily carved wood. The light was too dim for her to make out all the details of the carvings, but they seemed to be fairytale creatures engaged in some type of battle. The canopy and drapes on the bed were a deep green velvet, which had been embroidered with gold thread. They matched the quilt she was lying on.

What little light was in the room was coming from a massive fireplace, in which a fire was happily crackling away. Cassie sat up and looked around. She noticed that the walls of the room were hung with tapestries that held images she was having a hard time processing. It seemed as if every creature from every nightmare tale ever told was somewhere on these walls.

The mantle over the huge fireplace was also carved with mythical monsters. She stood up and found that she felt great, full of energy. Trying the knob on the only obvious door in the room, she found it locked. After sorting through the fabric on the walls, she finally found the drapes around the windows. She pulled the curtains aside and found that the windows were massive affairs, running from floor to ceiling.

Looking outside, she discovered that it was daylight. But she didn’t know what time it was. When a quick search of the room failed to produce a clock, she went back to the windows and tried to find something outside that would tell her where she was. Or, at least, what time it was.

Cassie knew she felt too well rested for her to have any chance of not being late for her second job but, since she clearly wasn’t in her apartment, the status of her employment wasn’t her first concern. She couldn’t see anything outside the window to tell her what time it was, other than daytime. Or where she was, other than at the top of a cliff with a forest below. But she did discover that there was quite a bit of cold radiating through the window.

The last she knew, it had been 85 degrees at 3am, so the fact that it was cold during the middle of the day wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Also, she didn’t think there were as many trees as she was seeing in the valley below her window anywhere in the city. She was still trying to process these discrepancies when the door across the room opened.

A man with short, blue hair walked in and seemed disconcerted to see her standing by the window. His hair wasn’t a shade of blue she had ever seen anyone dye their hair before. It was a deep, dark blue, like a blueberry. He was wearing what looked like a costume from a renaissance fair. His shirt was a long, green tunic and he wore lighter green hose underneath. He also had a sword in a belt at his waist. The man was extremely tall and thin and walked as though he was dancing. His unusual grace distracted her until he was halfway across the room to her.

Shaking herself out of her preoccupation with the way the man moved, Cassie asked him, “Where am I? What’s going on?”

He stopped and looked at her; she thought he must be wearing those costume contact lenses because his eyes were a pale yellow.

She asked again, “Where am I? Why did you bring me here?”

He just continued to stare at her with his unnerving eyes and she felt herself start to panic. After a minute, he started towards her again.

“Stay back!” she yelled, and held up her hand as if to ward him off.

He stopped and looked around; seemingly concerned that someone might have heard her. He turned back to her and said in heavily accented English, “Do you want to go home?”

She answered, “Yes.”

“Then you must be silent and come with me quickly.”

She thought about that and asked, “How did I get here? Where is here?”

He gave her an angry look and said, “There is no time for questions; you must come with me! Now!” He started forward again.

Cassie backed away, looking for something she might be able to use as a weapon. “I don’t think so, not unless you tell me what’s going on first!”

He gave her a murderous look and then suddenly he was upon her. She hadn’t even seen him move when starbursts went off behind her eyes and everything went dark.


Whoo! Glad I'm not in her shoes! Want to find out what the mysterious stranger has in store for Cassie?  You can get your copy of Taken By The Huntsman here:


Taken by the Huntsman




Thank you all so much for stopping by.  Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and happy reading! :-)


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