The Sugarspear Chronicles: The Complete Collection by Nicole Arlyn

Readers can now enjoy the entirety of author Nicole Arlyn’s dark fantasy saga in one complete book. This complete collection also includes a note from the author detailing the inspiration and events that led to The Sugarspear Chronicles.

Description:

Release Date: January 27th, 2016

The Sugarspear Chronicles, the incredible twenty-six-novella saga that started with a little girl and her willow tree, is finally available in one complete collection.

The Sugarspear Chronicles: The Complete Collection is the story of young Sadie Sugarspear, a girl who endures intolerable abuse by reading about a fantasy world filled with incredible sights and outlandish people—a place she’s only ever encountered through her real father’s storybook.

One day, when the cruelty becomes too much to bear, Sadie runs away and hides inside her beloved willow tree. To her surprise, the tree opens, sending Sadie down into the abyss, into a land she’s only ever read about—where she must being a long, terrifying, and heartbreaking journey home.

EXCERPT

The wind was ripping through the dandelion fields. The fence that stood alone shook but the blue flowers hanging off it stayed still. A pale girl walked on the dirt road through the fog and mud puddles towards the fence, her long brown hair slapping against her face, covering her green eyes that seemed blue when she turned them to the sky. She pushed her thin body through the wind, the black Rolling Stones t-shirt she wore as a dress blowing into her stomach. When she stood in front of the fence, the flowers finally swayed. Sprinkles of dew dying. Then she pulled them off, the crushed flowers in her hands, falling to earth. The wind never took them.

She sat on top of the fence watching the sky for rain. Instead she saw the faces that the clouds made morphing from evil to angel in one blink of her eyes. She ran her hands along the old brown wood, digging her fingertips hard in, crusted blood under her fingernails. She kicked her legs against the fence half wanting to knock it over and half wanting to fall with it, but it wouldn’t fall. She rubbed her thighs with the splinters until they burned and then made a fist with her right hand and bit down on it. She bit hard enough to stop her own tears. Only cry when the rain comes, she thought. That way the rain would wash away her tears and no one would know. She saw a caterpillar sitting beside her and picked it up.

“No one knows youʼre here but me,” she whispered. She laid the caterpillar where she found it. She opened her hands and kept waiting to catch the rain. She waited as the sky twisted around her, sealing her in a mist she wished only the sky could see through.

*****

It took three days to pass through the dead bodies. Three days she thought to tell him who she was, who she really was, but each time some words might come from her lips, they never made it out. She knew she was living outside of time, and she didn’t know time inside herself. She didn’t want him to throw her away again or hesitate to touch her if he thought she might still be a child... even though now, she was far from child. It was a journey through black rocks, dust mountains, burnt terrain, empty wells, valleys with dead horses, fields of stems. Some of the sights were familiar to Sadie but others made her become trancelike inside the sounds of wordless echoes, callings from the land. 

When she closed her eyes, he stared hard through the rest of her body—the way the skirt of her gown rode up to her knees and her legs spread and her hips hooked into his pelvis. She was scarred but soft, small but strong, and he was puzzled at how a woman could be full of so much strength and so much fragility at the same time. 

“You’re a precious jewel,” he said, “I hope to treat you as you are.” It was everything he needed. Woman. Who came like rain from clouds that could not.

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About the author: 

Nicole is a writer and an actress born in Brooklyn, New York. She has worked in films such as Clay Pigeons, opposite Joaquin Phoenix; The Wedding Planner; and Brooklyn Bound, among many others. She has performed, written and directed theater productions in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe. She has also read her poems in many poetry lounges in Europe and America, and is a song lyricist for musicians.

After living in Rome, Italy, for the past several years, Nicole has returned to New York City where she lives with her husband and son. She is at work on more novels.

Website ** Full Fathom Fives ** The Sugarpsear Chronicles  

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