Rain Music
- Now available
- Cover art by Nikki Rossignol
- Original watercolor painted with actual “magic” rainwater from the Olympic Rainforest!
- 1st 100 hardcover copies (sold through Fairwood Press) will be signed and numbered.
There’s magic in the forest and it sings . . .
Truman Starkey heard it once, there in the ancient rain forest. A song that could raise the dead, a song that could bend time to its will. A song that might finally solve the puzzle of what Truman has lost—his ability to compose music.
But every magic needs fuel, and this magic, this song, demands a soul, a heart, or the most dangerous drug ever invented: Moss.
Kat Gregory is a bar singer who hopes there’s no such thing as destiny, because if she can’t change hers, someone’s going to die. She knows. It’s happened before. Kat must risk her mind and soul on Moss, and on a man she’s never met.
Joel Hines knows he can thwart his destiny if he can just bring his mother back from the dead. To do it, he needs more of the Moss that has warped him into a mage of terrifying power. That means hunting down Kat. He’ll torture and kill anyone who gets in his way.
What Truman doesn’t know is that the mysterious song in the rain found him for a reason. His true destiny is to compose the music that will defeat the mage.
If only Kat can find him.
If only Hines doesn’t find them first.
If only Truman trusts in destiny . . .
…
“I loved the story, the characters, and the overall structure. Swenson gives a good sense of setting and great details. The musical pieces are the strongest parts, weaving the whole thing together. Strong, emotional content.” —J.A. Pitts, author of BLACK BLADE BLUES
“The protagonist of this contemporary fantasy is a composer who has suddenly lost his muse. He and a few other well drawn characters are all affected in one way or another by a mystical forest, and also by a dangerous new drug that appears linked to the magic of that place. One of the others has arcane knowledge and wants to restore his dead mother to life. When the protagonist regains his creative faculties and creates a new symphony, it becomes the focal point for a struggle on both physical and metaphysical grounds. This is a nicely sophisticated and mostly understated story, and I really like well written contemporary fantasy a lot more than dragons and barbarian hordes and such, so this was a very pleasant companion for a couple of nights.” —Critical Mass