The following piece is an excerpt from my First full length Novel – “The Fourth World”  due to  be completed this year.   It is a Dark Urban Fantasy Teen Novel.  It’s  set in modern times surrounding three teens  all of whom are strangers to each other.  They will  come together whether they want to or not to just possibly save the world and learn something about themselves and their place in the world. This is chapter has been revised a few times but I am sure it will be revised again before its all done…:)

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 The Fourth World

by PhilipWardlow

Calvin had always believed in magic. He didn’t care what anyone else thought. They could doubt all they wanted. There was a hidden world which we could not see sitting right in front of our faces, most everyone was too busy, too blind, or too stupid to see it. Calvin saw it in the trees as the distant winds kissed the leaves which flew through its branches. He spied it dancing in the fire amidst the embers at night; little tiny sprites hopping from log to log amidst the flames playing a game of tag. He smelled it in a wild rose growing in a crowded field of jostling weeds flinging its pheromones to attract the butterflies to alight upon its silken petals. He heard it in the babbling brook as the water played upon the rocks behind his home whispering to the frogs as it traveled on downriver. He felt it in the rough stone he caressed in the palm of his hand; an ancient power from ages past unearthed from the deep bowels of the earth from the crumbling’s of a mighty stone titan long dead. It was everywhere if they only choose to see. The magic spoke to him because he chose to listen and he almost understood what it is was saying…

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Chapter 1 – Reality Sets In

Calvin tasted the blood that trickled down to his upper lip which flowed from his nose. It had a sweet metallic taste. He liked the taste of his own blood. Calvin wasn’t a weird person don’t get him wrong, he wasn’t into to that kind of stuff.  He just liked to sometimes pretend that he was Conan the Barbarian backed up against a wall, fighting an angry horde of ghoulish creatures hell bent on gutting him like a fish, and slowly eating his entrails as he watched. With sword in hand he would hack and slash, limbs would fly. He would be scratched all to hell and bleeding from a dozen different wounds and smiling insanely because this could be his last day alive so why not go out smiling like a true warrior would upon meeting his death well met in battle. Yeah, he liked to have his mind go to places like that rather than be anywhere than where he was right now. Continue reading The Fourth World – Chapter 1 – an Excerpt →