In the Grove 

“Din”

Once twice and thrice, have I come
And the world hath shivered, when I hum
Hear the call, hear them all
And watch the stars fall

‘Tis that buzz you hear: the dark world’s din
The wind that whips, the chill ‘neath skin
Upward it ebbs, that bourn of blue
Upward it ebbs, that rill untrue

Am I life or am I death?
One can know with his last breath
As branches to the trunk, the souls accrue
I am Djinn, but so are You…

In the Rocky Mountains, an ancient evil rises, threatening to take with its cobalt eyes the light and life of the world. 

Something has taken a hundred couples in nearly as many years, leaving in each instance an orphaned child of five, plagued by dreams and visions of a dark endless grove of trees; and dancing amid them, a pair of pellucid blue eyes. Not many of these children survive for very long.  

These disappearances cease entirely in 1996, however, and for over two decades more, none are the wiser as to their connection. That is, until an eccentric conspiracy theorist seeks to write a true-crime book on the string of disappearances and suicides. He calls on a young, recently jobless reporter named Olivia Lorraine, as well as Roscoe Matthews, a private investigator, and they begin to unravel a mystery spun, it seems, by the world itself. 

Yet the past does not hold all of the entity's violence, nor its scheming. The investigator and the reporter, along with Rick Winslow, an alcoholic and middle-of-the-pack mathematician, Molly Drewitt, a fledgling author, and Seymour Marudas, a criminally insane man well over six feet tall, will find a case not so cold; and a being of extreme age with a grudge that is still alive and raging. 

Through dark dreams and forceful, almost conscious, memories, the ancient Djinn works its deadly magic, and none of the five beguiled by it could ever even dream of either the depth of its malice or the lengths to which it will go in order to complete its ritual.

Wolf and Robin, Raven and Tree
By the last are beseeched
In time out of time, Intention let free
Hear one and all, a Wendigo screech

Come from none, come from one is the quintet formed
All tied together, riding the storm

In the Grove is the first piece of fiction I ever begain to write, and to date it is the longest and hardest project to complete. The manuscript stands at just over 500,000 words and is in the process of major revisions, which may shrink it or grow it. I cannot say just when it will be out, but it is a very important story to me. It needs to be right.