In five days’ time, Marina Fraser Mitchell will make her debut in the annals of fantasy novels when The Awakening, Book One of the Listen to the Stones Saga goes live for the first time. The book will be released in paperback and eBook on March 3, 2025, and will also be available in Kindle Unlimited.
This series is a leap for me, but one I felt I had to take. While I was writing a fantasy, instead of setting it in an imaginary world, I’ve set it in this one and in this timeline.
Marina, an all too human woman filled with self-doubts about herself and her future, is thirty years old, divorced, alone, and down on her luck. As she tries to find herself in a world filled with vicious nightmares, a phobia she doesn’t understand, and one bad luck episode after another, she has to weigh what’s happening to her against the possibility that she’s losing her mind. Discovering that she’s psychic comes as quite a shock, but is the ability real or just a sign of a deep-seated illness?When she discovers that everything she knew about herself was an elaborate lie to keep her from discovering the truth, she sets out to find it for herself. Help comes from the strangest places. The road is far bumpier than she expected, but the sooner she accepts that she’s more than she ever thought she could be, the closer she’ll be to discovering the truth and her destiny. The answer lies on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. Now that she’s accepting the truth, it’s time to go home.
Here is a scene from The Awakening
Marina sighed. According to the therapist, phobias had many different causes including anxiety, stress, or a traumatic personal experience as a child. Years ago, when she’d been trying to come to grips with her irrational fear, she’d asked her mother if anything had ever happened to her involving water, but her mother had said she couldn’t think of anything and had changed the subject.
The last possibility was that someone had planted a hypnotic suggestion deep in her subconscious. Every time she went near the water, the prompt reared its ugly head, and she panicked, but who would do such a thing to her and why? This wasn’t a joke like having someone cluck like a chicken when they saw an egg. The therapist had suggested hypnosis, but at two-hundred and fifty bucks a session, it was more than Marina could afford.
“I know how to fix what ails you,” Lenore interrupted her thoughts. “You need a little bump and grind. Nothing like great sex to clean out the pipes and put you on the right track again. You know what they say, all work and no play … if anyone ever needed to play and relax, it’s you, girl.”
Marina forced a laugh. “Lenore, I know you mean well, but believe it or not, for some of us, sex isn’t the answer.” Although imaginary sex with her phantom lover had worked well in the past, at least until last New Year’s Eve. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never been one to jump into bed at the drop of a hat, and I’m not going to change now and test your outrageous suggestion with a stranger. Even Bob had to wait a few months before I ‘loosened up’ as he put it.”
And the result hadn’t really been worth the effort, but she’d learned to fake it for a while—just not long enough. Maybe she was frigid as he’d claimed.
“Who said anything about a stranger? A lot of guys have been asking you out, but you keep saying no. You aren’t a nun, Marina, and you shouldn’t live like one. The world is full of decent guys looking for love and wanting a family. I’m not saying you should settle for the first one who asks—you’ve done that already—but as they say, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” She giggled. “The trying can be great fun with the right partner.”
Even if he exists only in my dreams.
Marina shook her head and pursed her lips. Her friend meant well, but some things weren’t up for debate, and her sex life or the lack of one was included in that.
“I’m sorry, Lenore, but honestly it’s too soon. I’m just not ready.”
“Too soon, my ass,” Lenore snarled. “It’s been four years. He’s moved on, remarried, and is starting a family.”
Marina raised her chin in defiance and glared at her friend. Leave it to Lenore to rip off the bandage and expose the wound.
“What Bob has done or not done isn’t the issue. I’m the one we’re discussing here, and I’m not ready.”
Lenore threw up her hands in surrender.
“Fine! I won’t push, but you have to do something about your health. You’re my closest friend, and I’m worried about you. You don’t sleep, you don’t go out, and you’ve lost weight. Maybe you need vitamins or iron supplements. You’ve always been pale, but fish-belly white isn’t a good look on anyone. Maybe you’ve got Long Covid or something. Not being able to sleep isn’t normal, just like that buzzing in your ears. I’m sure someone used sleep deprivation and constant noise as an instrument of torture.”
Marina shook her head. “Leave it to you to see the worst side of things. The buzzing as you call it isn’t constant. If it was, I would see an audiologist. I’m not a fool. If things don’t improve, I’ll see a doctor.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart. Are you still coming tomorrow to help me go through those boxes Bob brought over? The ones he found cleaning out the garage before they start showing the house to potential buyers?”
“Definitely. It’s hard to imagine how three boxes managed to hide all this time. I was sure we’d dragged everything out of there when I helped you move out four years ago.”
“So was I. Bob’s call surprised me, but it’s not just the boxes. The footlocker he brought over has to have been my father’s. His name was Hugh Fraser—that’s why Fraser is my middle name—and he was a soldier, killed on a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia. Mom never wanted to talk about him. It was just too painful for her. Whenever I mentioned him, we inevitably ended up in the kitchen cooking or baking.” She shook her head. “Come down around ten. That will give me time to clean the place and do a couple of loads of laundry before we start. I’ll have a fresh pot of coffee ready.”
“With cinnamon?”
Marina laughed, something she did rarely. Lenore loved cinnamon almost as much as she did.
“Of course. I might even still have a bag of those candy hearts you like.”
“Perfect. We can order lunch from that Greek restaurant you enjoy, too. My treat.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Marina smiled. “Now, I’d better check to make sure we have enough of everything for the last sitting. The new dishes seem to have been a big hit. I’ll have to consider adding some of them to the menu as regular Friday night features.”
“Your meals are always the best. I don’t know how you do it, but you can turn even the most basic food into something magical. It’s a gift. All that time in the kitchen with your mother really paid off.”
“Thanks, but I think the credit should go to Nana. After all, she’s the one who let me make stone soup.”
Lenore laughed. “Your grandmother was a good sport when we were younger.”
As a child, one of her favorite books had been Stone Soup, a folk story in which a man looking for something to eat convinced a selfish old woman who claimed she had nothing to give him to allow him to make soup using just a stone and a pot of water. Of course, as the story had gone on, he’d suggested the soup would be better with this or that, all ingredients the woman provided. In the end, when they ate the soup, the woman was amazed at how delicious it was considering it had been made from a simple stone. Marina had begged Nana to let her make a pot using the quartz stone she’d found in the back yard. She’d followed the recipe closely and even her mother had been amazed by its taste. From that day on, Marina had been the family’s number one soup maker.
She stood. “Time to get back to work.”
She went out into the kitchen with Lenore on her heels. She’d averted an argument about her health, but tomorrow was another day, and she just might not be as lucky. It was a good thing she hadn’t mentioned the watchers.
You can pre-order your copy here:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DX3665V4
Living the Dream 