Tag Archives: sentient creatures

Searching for Auntie Em in Dreadful Poetry

Wizard Kadmeion has just brought his Auntie Em over to say hello to us at the Dreadful Poetry book release party.

Previously: Welcome to the Dreadful Poetry Book Release Party

Auntie Em Wears Fine Fescue Today

Wizard Kadmeion’s aunt, Sorceress Emily (“Em”), is a renowned magical horticulture practitioner. Her specialty is growing root vegetables into human shapes. Magicians seek out her wares so they can animate the tubers with minor demons. These flora homunculi are popular as garden workers.

Lita: Em, we are so pleased you could join us today at Kadmeion’s affair.

Auntie Em: I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Who is this lovely person you’re with, Lita?

Lita: This is Gentle Reader.

Auntie Em: Enchanted to meet you. Did you two hear that Kadmeion searched for me during much of his Dreadful Poetry story? I was quite the star, and I wasn’t even there.

Lita: I know all about it, Em. Remember that I am Kadmeion’s scribe, and he natters at me using mind voice. The wizard and I have coffee together in the early morning, and I transcribe what he says while we chat. Gentle Reader will learn about your part in the story the normal way by reading the book.

As Daft as Sitting on Stilts While Knitting

Gentle Reader: [Methinks Auntie Em is as daft as sitting on stilts while doing some knitting. Ask her why she has grass for hair.]

Lita: Love your new hair style, darling. Usually, you wear mushrooms and leaves on your head. Is that Kentucky Bluegrass you have on today?

Auntie Em: This is Fine Fescue. [Auntie Em pats her head with a manicured hand. The elegant long fingernails are painted pine-tree green.] I don’t need as much water now when I shampoo, because the grass is drought resistant.

Kadmeion and his Auntie Em excuse themselves. They step away to talk with the other guests. Sir Bright comes over, and invites us to join him. We follow him across the room to the buffet table. Hungry? Time to eat something.

Next time: The Dreadful Poetry Cake

Welcome to the Dreadful Poetry Book Release Party

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Watch your step on the gangplank as you come aboard Wizard Kadmeion’s airship.

Disregard the Somewhat Frightful Face

Glad You Came

Love your beautiful hair and outfit, my dear. Is that big purple and white flower on your dress enchanted? Oh, it giggles, and smells like good luck. Yes then, it’s the perfect thing to wear today to the wizard’s affair.

See that homunculus with the three legs standing just inside the door? That is one of Sir Bright’s clockworks creations. Disregard Marty’s somewhat frightful face that looks like a metal triangle. Hand your cloak to him. Marty will remove the snow with a brush made of dragon eyelashes, and hold your garment in the atrium until it is time to go.

The rest of the guests are gathering in the forward lounge. Kadmeion, his elf assistant Bright, and the wizard’s cynanthrope familiar Furgo are here. The woodland fairies flit about, are always ready to perch on your hand, and talk about their naughty ways. Wizard Morton from the university arrived earlier, along with a few Magic Guild cronies.

Before you go inside, take a moment please, and step to the display table over here. This will take only a moment.

Spells Transport Your Copy to You

Get your very own copy of our wizard’s latest story, Dreadful Poetry. Today is release day!

Dreadful Poetry tells about the wee bit of trouble the boys had while at the university. Bright was not always a mage, and Kadmeion had quite the time of it with his field study. For a while, it seemed that both of them would land in magician’s prison.

Thank you for the small amount it takes for the wizards at Amazon to fuel the transport spells that whisk an eBook immediately to you. Their clever enchantments will deliver your book to these magical locations around the world: US, UK, CA, AU, and IN.

Look Who Just Arrived

Kadmeion’s Auntie Em just stepped in. Let’s give her a few minutes to greet her favorite nephew. Oh, look. The wizard is bringing her over to say hello to us.

Next post: Searching for Auntie Em in Dreadful Poetry

30,000 Curious Came to See the Show

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What a mad, grand day for Lita Burke’s blog. 30,000 views. Smiles from Lita for all of you lovely and curious Gentle Readers who visited.

Suppose there is a most interesting street where the houses look like books. Inside these houses are places where fey-folk fairies play, wizards sing their magic, and Enchanters give kisses. Anyone can walk down this street, and glimpse at these fantasy worlds through the windows. Lita’s blog is that street. 30,000 Gentle Readers have already walked its twisty cobblestone ways. Here are a few of the wonders in the windows.

Ride on a Wizard’s Airship

Ride on a Wizard’s Airship

All aboard now for a trip to a plate-shaped ocean world, where islands float far above the sea. Dragons fly the sky, and clockworks creations inhabited by minor demons join human and elf-kind magicians in absurd adventures.

A proper wizard uses an airship to visit these floating lands. Others of more modest means use Ornithopters designed by Leonardo’s Airborne Contraptions.

Join in the sometime fun, sometimes scary, but always delightful adventures of Wizard Kadmeion, his half-elf assistant Sir Bright, and their friends in the fantasy world of Clockpunk Wizard. Get your first ride on Kadmeion’s airship, and meet a special dog that digs deadly mandrake roots in Forever Boy.

Unicorn Herd

Unicorn Island

There is a floating island in the royal elf-kind archipelago that has a herd of unicorns. They run in the steppe lands, and gather in the border forests.

The unicorns shed the husks of their alicorns, and the elf-kind collect these precious magical artifacts. An illness has stricken the herd. Lady Luck’s young daughter, with her favorite wizard in tow, visits the unicorns. She learns how to talk to the birds to get to the bottom of the unicorn illness in Glitter Ponies.

Enchanters’ Luscious Magic

Fire and a Hidden Spell Book

Lanith, a magical curios merchant, loses her shop and home to a mysterious fire. Her magician husband Tredan has gone missing.

The morally strict Church magicians, and the Enchanters with their luscious magic that they distribute with kisses, are in constant battle to do whatever is necessary to gain the upper hand in their world of Sye. She learns that her husband wrote a powerful spell book that will subjugate the Enchanters’ magic. His book sits in the middle of the decades-old conflict between the Church and the Enchanters.

With only her dragonette and the clothes on her back, she enlists the help of the Enchanters, and unravels her husband’s life-long secrets. His kidnapping tale starts in Wrath, and Lanith’s story continues in Tredan’s Bane.

Also see:

Glitter Ponies: All Aboard the Airship for Chapter 1

Glitter Ponies by Lita Burke

Chapter One
Peach Pits, Wuddlekins Island

A flaming peach pit whistled past Wizard Kadmeion’s ear. The projectile bounced on the gangplank, rolled to his feet, and disappeared in a pop of fruit-flavored smoke. He spun toward the source. The aerodrome dock was empty.

“I see them.” Bright had paused at the top of the gangplank. His assistant’s voice was soft. “Brownies.”

Kadmeion stepped down onto the dock, and whisper-sang a vision acuity spell. The wizard squinted, and tried to get a glimpse of his attackers. Bright came down the gangplank, and stopped at Kadmeion’s right side.

“I can’t see them, Bright.”

“Then it is true.” More…

Bestiarum Vocabulum: Mink

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The Bestiarum Vocabulum is the wizard’s encyclopedia of faerie beasties and mundane crossovers living in the lake and forest near Lita’s castle.

Mink

mink [mĭngk] noun, c.1425; ME mink; also magic kit/kitten.

Denizen of the Clockpunk Wizard world.
A small land creature the size of a fox, with a luxurious coat ranging from silver white to black. This sentient magical creature is capable of vocalized speech enabled with a wizard’s (or sorceress’s) magic, and also uses mind voice. It enjoys cold weather and aquatic environments. Its enchantments include spells for warmth, agility, and skill with fishing.
Personages: Vixen-shay, the Winter Wizard’s mink familiar in Glitter Ponies.
See “Bestiarum Vocabulum: Familiar”

Cover Reveal Party for Glitter Ponies: Welcome

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Welcome aboard the AS Patsy Nottle for the Glitter Ponies cover reveal party. Before we head into the forward parlor for refreshments, Copernicus, the airship’s navigator, explains the specifications of Wizard Kadmeion’s airborne home.

About the Good and True AS Patsy Nottle

An Airship Operating in Its Water-Surface Mode

The Airship (“AS”) Patsy Nottle is a carrack class wooden and stone airship invented in the 16th century. The carrack airship comes with six sails: a bowsprit, foresail, mizzen, spritsail, and two topsails. The hull is fashioned from floating rock to give the ship neutral buoyancy in airborne operations. The sails provide wind propulsion and steerage. Perpetual enchantments see to basic operations, defense, and personal comfort of the crew and guests.

Carrack airships are square-rigged on the foremast and mainmast. The mizzenmast is lateen-rigged. They have a high rounded stern. The carrack airships have a large aftercastle, forecastle, and bowsprit. The carrack airship can also operate as a water-surface ship.

Specifications for the AS Patsy Nottle

Airship Class: Carrack

Origin: Agatha Island Aerodrome and Shipyard

Initial Year of Service: 1625

Commissioning Agency: Agatha Island Magic Guild, for operation by human wizards and sorceresses in good guild standing.

An Airship Weathering a Magical Storm

Captain: (Wizard) Haldemare Kadmeion Dorian Trentworthy sen Magica Vir

First Mate: (Honorable Mage) Wolverhampton Brighton M’Choakenchilde

Navigator: (Minor Demon Homunculus) Copernicus

Crew: 40 (mostly clockworks rig monkeys or demon-inhabited homunculi)

Length: 75 feet

Beam: 25 feet

Draught: 6 feet

Displacement: 223 long tons (minus floating rock displacement)

Machinery: Standard sailing magical clockworks. This vessel has typical below decks gearing and linkage to accommodate the sailing spells.

Speed: 6.7 knots (unaided by magic)

Range: Unlimited

A Fairy’s Point of View of the Oak Forest on Kadmeion’s Airship

The airship inside volume is much larger than the outside hull dimensions due to perpetual Inverse Magic spells. The AS Patsy Nottle has spacious crew quarters, private sitting rooms, parlors, galley, spell casting workrooms, and a quercetum for Sir Bright’s miniature oak tree forest. Kadmeion’s fey-folk fairies live in the quercetum.

Next: Refreshments and origin of the Glitter Ponies story

Visit the Mage’s Parlor

Bestiarum Vocabulum: Familiar

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The Bestiarum Vocabulum is the wizard’s encyclopedia of faerie beasties and mundane crossovers living in the lake and forest near Lita’s castle.

Sorceress’s Familiar

familiar [fə milyər] noun, c.1325; ME < L familiāris; replacing ME famulier < MF < L; also totem, animal spirit, mage’s critter

Denizen of the Clockpunk Wizard world.
A sentient magical animal that bonds to a human wizard or sorceress. Human mages can acquire many familiars, although one is the normal number. Depending on the quality of the magician, a familiar’s magical ability ranges from a few simple spells, to using mind voice and other advanced magic. Only the most talented mages acquire a familiar that is a magical hybrid, such as a cynanthrope, werecat, or faun.
Personages: Furgo, Wizard Kadmeion’s magical hybrid familiar in Forever Boy and Old Bony Blue Eyes. Also Vixen-shay, the Winter Wizard’s mink familiar in Glitter Ponies.
See “Dramatis Personæ: Furgo” and “Go Fer and Furgo”

Glitter Ponies Cover Reveal is August 22

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Get ready to attend the online cover reveal party for Lita Burke’s next novel, Glitter Ponies.

Lita invites Gentle Reader to a party on August 22nd, to view the cover of her next novel, Glitter Ponies.

The shindig is here on Lita’s blog. Wear what you wish. No need to R.S.V.P. Refreshments and delightful conversation will be provided.

Be sure to stop by on the party day. Take a look at the book cover, learn more about this newest Clockpunk Wizard story, and get the news about the book’s release date.

About Glitter Ponies

In Glitter Ponies, Lady Luck’s daughter helps a wizard discover the cause of a mysterious unicorn illness.

In Glitter Ponies, Lady Luck’s daughter helps a wizard discover the cause of a mysterious unicorn illness.

Wizard Kadmeion and his assistant Sir Bright go for a vacation on Wuddlekins. This wintry place is the highest floating island in the elf realm’s archipelago.

Bright’s brother is the island’s magical steward, and it hosts the largest unicorn herd in the entire plate-shaped, ocean world of Clockpunk Wizard. Their guest on this trip, Lady Luck’s daughter Miss Probability, is determined to meet the unicorns. She must convince Kadmeion to let the unicorns come home with her.

Our magic men face the most dangerous challenge of their budding wizardry-for-hire careers. Girlfriends. Probability discovers that yucky boy kisses aren’t all that bad. Plus, all three vacationers learn that when they mix wizardry, luck, and unicorns, love is magically unpredictable.

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