Guest Post & Excerpt - Truthsight (Outcast Mage Book 1) by Miriam Greystone

Truthsight

Author: Miriam Greystone
Publisher: City Owl Press
Pages: 286
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Doctor Amy spends her nights running a secret clinic for supernatural creatures. When she is forced to use her magic to save the lives of a centaur infant and its mother, she vows never to regret her decision, no matter the consequences. Not even when the Mages capture her, beat her, and condemn her to die.

Before the sentence can be carried out, Amy is abducted by a mysterious being named Rowan, who demands she use her healing abilities to save his father. But when Amy fails to save the ailing man, her actions unintentionally force Rowan into an exile that will soon turn into a death sentence.

Now Rowan and Amy must join forces with the creatures who were once her patients and fight to uncover the one secret that may be powerful enough to save them all.

For More Information:

• Purchase information can be found at City Owl Press or Amazon

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Book Excerpt:

The pixie was very close to shooting me. 

I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm.

“If he moves while I'm working, the damage could get much worse.” I explained. “It can be you, or it can be Jason. But we need to do this fast, and someone is going to have to hold the boy down.”

 Not much taller than the length of my hand, Grenalda crouched on the exam table in front of her son's crumpled body. Her chest heaved from the effort it had taken to carry him here in her arms.  Blood smeared the colorful bits of woven bird feathers she wore as clothing and her eyes were wide and panic stricken. She kept her right hand up, poised over her shoulder, stretching her fingers towards the dart-blower strapped across her back. We were humans, and though she might have no choice but to come to us for help, she made it perfectly clear that she didn't fully trust us.

“Why can't you just bandage him up?”

“His head wound is simple—we'll wrap it and it will heal just fine. But his leg is broken. If we don't fix it correctly, the bone will heal crooked. He'll limp for the rest of his life.” 

My chest burned and I still wore my scrubs from my shift in the ER.  I hadn't eaten since breakfast, which I vaguely remembered choking down while driving to work at around 5:00am. Now dark had nearly fallen, and the chill early evening air streamed in through the thrown open doors of the converted barn that sat on the edge of my property. Usually, I had a break between a shift in the county ER and the arrival of the first patient to my night clinic. But Grenalda's boy couldn't wait for treatment. I blinked and tried to focus on the small creature glaring up at me.

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What Makes Urban Fantasy Heroines So Awesome?

I read urban fantasy all the time. There are lots of reason to love this genre. The books are generally filled with unusual creatures, lots of adventure, and amazing world-building. Urban fantasy books almost always contain an element of good -vs- evil, and waiting to see how the protagonist will overcome seemingly insurmountable odds is a thrill. But generally, these are not the reasons that keep me both reading, and writing, urban fantasy. The big pull for me, is the heroines.

(This is not to say that there aren’t many Urban Fantasy books that feature men. There are! Check the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher, or Frostbite by Jousha Bader if you don’t believe me! But the women of Urban Fantasy are awesome enough to have a blog post dedicated exclusively to them. We can feature the men in another blog post later!)

There is something special about the heroines that inhabit the pages of most urban fantasy books. To put it simply, they are badasses. Urban fantasy books are full of women who hunt vampires, track down demons, or on a permanent mission to rid the world of some overwhelming threat. They have amazing abilities, whether they are shapeshifters, telepaths, witches, or part-demon part-human hybrids. These women walk around the fictional world that they inhabit with tremendous abilities and, usually, a compelling sense that they have to use those abilities to come to the aid of their friends, solve mysteries or save the world.

When I started to work on my novel TRUTHSIGHT, I knew that my main character, Amy, would be an awesome, powerful, talented individual who fought to make things right in the world. But I also knew that she would do things in her own unique way. Amy is a Healer, and an unusually powerful one. But, as the story gets started, Amy cannot use her powers. And although Amy has a special ability to heal others, she suffers almost constantly from a pain she cannot cure herself of. And in addition to the magical abilities she has, Amy has another truly magical ability: she is a doctor. She is extremely intelligent, and fiercely committed to taking care of her patients no matter what, and she is perfectly willing to yell at them, or at anyone else, who makes it difficult for her to do that. Amy is the kind of protagonist that I love the most: she is fiercely passionate, intelligent, and gifted. She also has a past that troubles her, fears that plague her, and vulnerabilities that make her sympathetic and real.

As Truthsight hits the shelves this month, I hope that Amy will take her place in the long line of powerful, independent, and inspiring women that make urban fantasy such an amazing genre to read.

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About the Author:

Debut author Miriam Greystone writes urban fantasy stories filled with magic, romance and the occasional centaur. She fuels her creativity with an insatiable appetite for reading and frequent episodes of Doctor Who. She lives just outside of Washington DC with her husband and children, and when she isn’t hunched over her laptop, she can often be found baking or going on long hikes with her family.

Her latest book is the urban fantasy, Truthsight.

For More Information:

• Visit Miriam Greystone’s website.
• Connect with Miriam on Facebook and Twitter.
• Find out more about Miriam at Goodreads.