Terri DelCampo has brought many tales written by her to Blazing Owl Press. I'm sure readers have noticed we have many books here. Most of these are Terri's. I might catch up in time, but, for now, she is the champ. Parliament is one of those books, a frightening novel blending non-fiction with fiction. Sometimes that happens. This story is one of those. There is legend; there is lore; there is horror.
This is one of Terri's best works.
Enjoy.
Blaze McRob
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Book description:
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The battle for good and evil begins,
With Hildeberta and Peter, God knows who wins.
In the Abbey House the legacy starts.
Hexenprozesse broke millions of hearts.
Owl's Nest was waiting the witches knew,
Deep in their souls so away they flew.
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Terri has a generous free sample on Amazon you can read that will, most certainly, entice you to read the entire novel. I have included a portion of it below.
Happy reading!
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Samantha Liesel Bauer's in flight to do list only contained two items: Catch up on journal entries and sleep.
She rarely allowed her journal entries to lapse, but the last couple of days had been so hectic with her birthday, graduation, and passing-the-bar celebrations, she'd had precious little time for sleep, let alone writing. So she considered the eight hour flight to Germany a gift from the Sandman.
Before using it to write a word, Sam stared at the pen, half of a solid gold pen and pencil set she'd received from her parents to commemorate her graduation in May from Harvard Law, top of her class, Suma Cum Laude, with job offers out the wazoo including one full partnership, all of which she readily declined in favor of her own agenda.
That agenda had begun with immediately sitting for the Delaware Bar exam in July and passing it with flying colors, which is why her grad party had been held in late August along with her birthday celebration last week-end.
"Samantha Liesel Bauer Esquire, PhD" winked up at her from the barrel of the pen, and brought a smile to her lips as she congratulated herself for double-majoring and going for the PhD in comparative religion, which would come in handy considering the brand of law she planned on pursuing. Civil Rights Law, especially pertaining to the rights of women and children had been close to her heart since her birth eighteen years ago.
The smile also reflected her joyous memory of the blowout grad/18th birthday party that had lasted the entire three-day holiday week-end at her parents' modest home on Screech Owl Circle in Owl's Nest, Delaware.
She imagined pretty soon she would be able to buy them a mansion, once she finished her business in Germany. She also imagined that they would not accept. They loved their little house in Owl's Nest, their hometown, hell, the hometown of all of her ancestors since they'd immigrated to the New World from Germany in the late 1600's.
They might like a condo on Owl's Lookout, overlooking the Delaware, though, she wrote into her journal, then wrote her reconsideration: probably wouldn't be able to blast them out of the house in which they'd raised her. The only thing they loved almost as much as Sam was Owl's Nest and all the memories attached to the home they'd made for her.
Of course her childhood, in the traditional sense had been brief and unique. When she'd been bored out of her mind already in kindergarten, already reading and fully comprehending at a fourth grade level, her parents decided to home school her with excellent tutors, who were not intimidated by gifted pupils who were smarter than they.
Unlike her kindergarten teacher who flat out didn't know what to do with Sam's 'disruptive behavior.' Her parents had collected her and her things from the classroom after a conference in the principal's office one afternoon, only a month into the kindergarten year.
"Samantha is bright to say the least, extremely precocious. So bright that she heckles the teacher throughout the day, correcting her grammar, challenging the plots and morals of the stories she reads to the class, creating better endings for them, completing assignments within moments to sit bored waiting for the rest of her classmates to catch up. We could bump her up a grade, but the first grade curriculum isn't much more advanced than kindergarten's."
So the principal handed Sam and Claudia a piece of paper with a list of tutors and programs that might fit Samantha's needs a lot better than a kindergarten class that she was almost smart enough to teach herself.
At age ten Samantha had taken a walk through Owl's Nest to the elementary school, found Ms. Willow, the kindergarten teacher, and apologized for having been so rude. Ms. Willow smiled and laughed. "That's very nice of you, Samantha, and I guess in all fairness I should apologize right back to you for boring you to pieces."
"Maybe the writers of some of those lame, condescending stories you read should be the ones to apologize," Sam suggested, smiling and Ms. Willow laughed heartily and nodded in agreement.
"You have a good point; some of them are positively mind-numbing, aren't they? So any suggestions? War and Peace? Gatsby? The Shining?"
Sam's turn to laugh as she'd forged a friendship right then and there with Ms. Willow, who'd attended her graduation party last week-end, a mere eight years after that conversation in the kindergarten room of Owl's Nest Elementary School.
Sam smiled, scribbling furiously in her journal about that wild-ass party. All of Owl's Nest had been there in one form or another, the whole front and back yards of her parents' house had been full of people (not to mention Owls in the trees that dotted the yard, including those of her ancestral line all the way back to her great, great, great-grandparents Samuel and Liesel, after whom she'd been named.
She pulled Samuel's gold watch out of her pocket, that had been her birthday present from Sam and Liesel (who had presented it to her outside, beneath the elm tree where they perched in Owl form) the night before her party.
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Terri DelCampo is the founding editor and writer of Owl's Eye View Magazine, founding partner/writer/editor at Blazing Owl Press, author of 35+ novels, short story collections, children's collections, poetry collections, and multiple individual short stories available right here on Amazon. She pens Broken Old Broad Blogs, is a contributing writer for multiple horror anthologies, freelances poetry as well as non-fiction articles and essays. Terri is an ongoing competitor and winner of NaNoWriMo and Critters/Preditors & Editors Awards.
Terri is married to horror writer Blaze McRob and in 2015 they founded Blazing Owl Press where she is a very hands-on partner. Her duties at BOP include editing, producing book covers, and of course writing.
If you look up write-a-holic in the dictionary, Terri's picture is there.
