Botulf's Stone Blog

Since around Christmas (2020), I’ve been posting illustrations of scenes pulled from each chapter of my novel along with the related text. I will be posting them together here. S o far, only chapters 1-11 are done, but I shall be adding more as I get them done until samples and illustrations for all 14 chapters are up.  Sketches for all chapters are uploaded. For fair warning, there are spoilers in some of the entries . I have tried to keep them minor and cryptic enough to not impact reading, but they are there. If you want a larger sample, chapters 1-3 can be read in their entirety on this blog, starting here . Enjoy, and if you like what you see/read, the full novel can be found on Amazon  here . : ) Last updated: November 2022 Chapter 1 Eibhlin lifted her face. Seeing the room, all evidence of that day’s cleaning gone, she felt a fresh set of tears forming and moved her gaze to the blanket on the floor, as if thinking to hide beneath it. Then she saw it, half-buried beneath...

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Little could be seen through the midnight shadows of the forest men called enchanted. She didn’t have a light, so Eibhlin set herself beneath a large beech tree just beyond the tree line, hugged herself in her cloak, and after a few minutes fell asleep. When she woke, her body was stiff in the chill air. Sunlight passing through leaves tinted the world in soft green and gold. After a few painful stretches, Eibhlin stood to her feet and took out a biscuit to eat while walking. She needed to find a fairy. Deeper into the forest she went. The ground foliage thickened, causing her to trip on hidden sticks, roots, branches, and stones. The thought already arose to abandon her search, but she clutched a gold coin and went deeper. Deer, rabbits, birds, insects, she saw plenty of wild life, but not a single sign of a fairy. As afternoon arrived, she heard the sound of water and followed it to the wide river Lúrin, the border of Enbár, a river quickened from the recent rain....

Chapter 1 Fear filled Eibhlin when the door finally opened. Soon after trading the hammer, weariness had sent her to bed, but when she woke that morning to everyday sounds and a sunlit house, dread invaded her mind. She knew that when her father returned she would need to tell him what she had done. Hiding a bag of infinite gold couldn’t last long. How to tell him, though, that was hard. As she cleaned the previous night’s wreckage and returned the spilt gold to the purse, she formed and reformed her explanation, but no matter how she reasoned it, something pricked at her mind. When her father entered that afternoon, a broad smile on his face, a chill settled in her chest and fingertips. “Good day, Eibhlin, dear!” said Lochlann, kissing her forehead. “You weren’t worried last night, I hope.” “Good afternoon, Papa,” she managed. Her father went on. “Whew! I tell you, Eve, that rain yesterday nearly got us. We were in the middle of putting down the thatch, three men on each side, when we...

I am a firm believer in the value of sizable samples to give a real taste for the full thing, so, I am here publishing the first three chapters of my novel,  Fairy Door . If you like what you see, please pick up a copy on Amazon. Enjoy! Midmorning sunlight, tinted with the heat of early summer, cast shadows between hills made green from the work of a storm-filled spring as Eibhlin made her way to the nearby town. Wind passed through her hair and danced between flowers that poked through the grass like drops of dye on a rumpled, green rug. Eibhlin herself lived in a cottage along the eastern edge of the hills, built there by her great-grandfather before famine drove her grandparents from that home, and before her father brought her mother away from the gray mountains in the north back to that green-clothed country and its little town. The same little town where, three months ago, a thunderbolt had set thatched roofs to fire. No one died, but trades and treasures were lost, and many ...