Thursday, January 15, 2026

Sing a Graveyard Song ~ View the Trailer

At this link is the trailer for the epic Sing a Graveyard Song trailer https://youtu.be/zwWFb11GP1g

Find the trailer for the first three epic novels featuring Alstera, the Fae Mark'd Wizard, at this link: https://youtu.be/r-6cKcuyHI4

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Leute, wielder of twisted blood magic in Sing a Graveyard Song

Leute is a thwarted wielder

who turned to blood magic and twisted it for revenge.

Her decisions and actions create the conflict in Sing a Graveyard Song.

Here is a first glimpse of Leute and the opening scene of the epic dark fantasy.

First Night / Moones / 32^nd Night of Deep Winter

Leute climbed to the caves, praying the cold had delayed the decay of Harroth’s corpse.

Snowmelt slicked the path. Several times she slid backwards and saved her ascent only by clawing at the jagged rocks that bordered the path. She cared nothing for the mud, nothing for the scrapes and cuts on her hands. She cared only for the safety of the items in her scrip. She clutched it to her to prevent its knocking against rocks.

Deep caverns and shadowed crevasses pocked the mountain’s snow-smoothed face. In the caves lay death, ancient and new. Bones stacked upon bones filled the upper caves, disinterred for centuries from Alpage’s hallowed graveyard. The lower caves served the newly dead. When winter froze the church grounds and smothered the vale, the lower caves served as temporary resting places. She climbed to those caves and to a month-old corpse, tucked away for spring burial. In that place of death, she would evoke new life. Using Air and Water, Fire and Earth, she would call the dead Harroth back to life.

Leute gained the first ledges and headed for the cave which held Harroth’s shrouded body. He had died of a hidden infection one month ago. One month of the old calendar. Thirty-two days and thirty-two nights as the full moon waned to its death. Thirty-two days, and each day she induced Grisetta to drink a little tea to aid the delivery of her babe. Thirty-two nights, and each night she milked a newborn lamb of its rich blood. Thirty-two days and nights, while she distilled blood-based potions and practiced incantations to rouse the dead.

Today, with Dragon Moon the night before, Grisetta had delivered her son a month before his time, and Leute had sacrificed the weakening lamb for her spell. When Dragon again devoured the moon, thirty-two nights from now, her revenge would be complete.

Sheltered inside the cave, she lit a single candle. Snowmelt dripped off the lip of the entrance, trickled down the sides of the opening, and pooled on rock smoothed by centuries of passage. The cave smelled faintly of decay. Leute paused and looked down the steep slope. Twilight darkened the village far below. Lanterns bobbed along lanes and streets, like fireflies homing on a scent. In one of the houses with gleaming windows, Feldie and her apprentice Magretha helped Grisetta and her new baby. They wouldn’t look for her until long after her incantations were over, Harroth was re-born, and her revenge had begun.

She lifted her gaze to the snow-locked mountains on the far side of the valley. Alpenglow cast its pinkish taint on the white caps, while night already cloaked the western flanks. More than night would soon cloak Alpage.

The candle and her movement disturbed bats nesting in the cave’s maw. They swirled down. Instinctively she ducked, guarding the candle flame with a cupped hand as the bats swooped past. When the swarm had flooded out of the cave into the cold twilight, she straightened. Holding the flickering candle high, she ventured deeper, tracking the smell of old earth and slow decomposition. At a branching where the flame guttered in a wind, she bore right, toward the source. The walls verged closer. She followed the way into a cleft that funneled wind from the mountaintop. Three shrouded corpses lay one beside the other. Harroth’s would be the newest.

She put the candle in a niche then bent to tug the body away from the others. The waxed cerecloth slid easily across the slick rock. She sliced open the embroidered shroud then peeled back the protecting layers. White white skin, eyes closed, mouth bound shut, it was Harroth and not Harroth, a shell without a soul. The icy wind had kept his flesh from decaying.

Once she had the waxed bindings peeled away, she drug her scrip close and set out the essentials for her spell: her knife, the water distilled from the boiling of five herbs, a copper bowl with a stand, and the flask of lamb’s blood. She lit the candle beneath the stand and lay the knife in the bowl so the metals could heat. Last out of her scrip came the clay pot that contained the most crucial ingredient. She carefully placed it beside Harroth’s head. When she unsealed the lid, the blood-scent filled the cave. Afterbirth from Grisetta’s newborn. Called the second-birth. Blood-rich birth that contained new life.

With everything ready, Leute closed her eyes and breathed deeply to calm her jangling excitement. When her heart rate slowed, she concentrated on the candle flame and sank into meditation. Her voice no louder than her breath, she chanted a gathering spell. Here, surrounded by solid rock that didn’t drain energy from soil and air, she would gather the power needed for the five spells of the incantation. One spell for each element and the last for chaos, the chaos she would unloose on the village of Alpage.

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Tuesday, January 13, 2026

The Song and its Singer in Sing a Graveyard Song

The Song and Its Singer

Meet Magretha, the only wielder of power that Alstera can trust in the village of Alpage, deep in the snow-covered mountains of Sing a Graveyard Song

The Song to Seal the Dead

Earth, water, air and fire.

Blood, breath, flesh and bones.

Sun and shadow, soil and stone.

Earth to sifting dust, of which `twas shaped.

Water of brief life, to the stream belong.

Air to rushing winds, no breath to `scape.

Fire of bright spirit, the flame ever strong.

Return to the ether, no more to know strife.

Return to the gods, their gift of thy life.

Empty the vessel, out thy life pours.

Cross the great chasm, seal the last door.

Spirit to Neothera, to live nevermore.

Earth, water, air and fire.

Blood, breath, flesh and bones.

Sun and shadow, soil and stone.

Meet Magretha in this excerpt from the Prologue.

Wrapped well against the evening’s cold, Magretha watched the first stars peeking out in the moonless
Dragon night. Soon the bowl of sky would glitter with stars, twinkling jewels on a grand lady’s velvet gown, the way she imagined the gown her father had once described. A sight she would never see unless she ventured to the lowlands as he’d once done. No grand stranger would ever come to Alpage, and she had no desire to leave her mountains.

She sighed and massaged her back, aching from the day’s physical toil. Today, last day of Deep Winter, she and Feldie and Leute had fought for the lives of a mother and her too-early babe, fighting to snatch life from grasping death. She was awed anew by the tenuous chain that linked a soul to a fragile body. An apprentice only, this day she had wielded power that a year ago she would not have dreamed of wielding. For the past hour, exhilaration had fueled her. They had won their battle to save both mother and babe. The elation had now ebbed, leaving exhaustion in its wake. Feldie had sapped more than power from her in the battle against death. Magretha massaged the small of her back and wished for a steaming bath to ease her muscles.

“Tired, my almost-daughter?”

The older woman had shed her stained apron, but splotches of birth-blood flecked her sweat-damp blouse. Her tousled hair gleamed silver in the dying light. She came to Magretha and rested an arm around her waist.

“A good omen, this babe of Grisetta’s. Last child of Deep Winter. You did well tonight.”

“I was so afraid I would hurt Grisetta or the baby.”

“Yet you did not. `Tis glad I am that I took you to apprentice. This day’s work was proof of my choice. You did well with as a difficult a birth as you’ll ever encounter. A month early and the babe not turned; the mother exhausted long before the babe crowned. Without your younger power and stronger arms to do the work, I doubt that either would have lived.”

“Leute could have done as well, Feldie. Or Kortie.”

“Leute has not your gentle touch nor your power’s depth. She will never make the wise woman that you will. And Kortie is mewed up with grief for her husband Harroth. Besides, already you surpass both of my erstwhile apprentices. I fear you will soon surpass me.”

“Never, Feldie. You know so much.”

“Not as much as I should, almost-daughter.” She hugged the younger woman. “Come, Grisetta cuddles her new son close, and her family gather to celebrate. `Tis time we were on our way. You have your scrip?”

“Here. And yours.” She hoisted both packs onto her shoulder. “Thereiss said she would have hot soup and cold ale waiting for us when we finished.”

“I look forward to the ale.” Feldie looked back into the house. “Where is Leute?”

“She left quite a while ago. She said the after-birth must be buried within an hour of the babe’s birth.”

“Ah, that old superstition. The monstrous twin born with us all, buried before it saps life from the living.” Her raised eyebrows and creepy voice mocked the belief, a shocking reminder that she was an outlander. Feldie had been Alpage’s wise woman since before Magretha was born, but she had the non-native’s prejudice against certain village beliefs. “Leute is much for the superstitions, but it is as good a reason as any to dispose of the after-birth.” She wrapped her cloak tighter. “Lead on, almost-daughter. I would fill my belly before I sleep.”

Now Available at this Link.

Books 1, 2, and 3 of the Fae Mark'd Wizard by Remi Black

Monday, January 12, 2026

Twisted Blood Magic creates an Uncontrollable Monster ~ Sing a Graveyard Song

Dark Fantasy. Twisted Blood Magic. A Blood-Drinking Monster.

Sing a Graveyard Song

Harroth, recently dead, brought by to renewed life ~ but his renewed existence is foul and corrupted, all to work the will of a vengeful and thwarted wielder.

Here's an Excerpt from Chapter 1.

Dawn, Second Day

When he awoke, he knew he was dead.

He had dreamed a pleasant warmth, a light as brilliant as a summer sun, a free-ness of self, unhampered by bones and flesh, free as the wind, drifting like a leaf on water.

He woke to cold, dampness, and a light flickering against the pitmirk. His skin felt slick as a new-born babe’s. A rasping breath filled his ears. A woman, face haggard and hair wild, loomed over him.

She smiled when she saw his eyes open. She spoke, garbled words he didn’t understand, but when she pressed something to his lips, he recognized the offer to eat.

He opened his mouth. She pushed it past his teeth. He chewed. It was soft and slick. Liquid gushed from it into his mouth. He swallowed and felt the bite track its way to his stomach. More meat was offered. He took it, chewed, feeling strength return with the nourishment. He said nothing, asked nothing, not even how she had revived him. The last moments of his life had dragged him through pain and fever, unending heat as poison writhed through him and slowly killed him. That he remembered. He thought he knew her, but he couldn’t recall her name. He couldn’t remember how to form words. He could remember nothing but breathing and moving and ceaseless pain.

But he remembered his name. Harroth. That was who he was. What he was he no longer knew. Where he was he didn’t care.

She put her hands on both sides of his head. Her eyes closed, and she sang something. The wailing melody sucked his senses into a maelstrom of need and grief. Her hands felt like fire. The heat penetrated his skull, seeped into his veins, hardened his bones.

After more food, she levered him up and propped him against the wall. His eyes rolled back at the change of position, but gradually his awakened body steadied and he could look around without being swamped by dizziness. He saw a single candle, a shiny bowl made of a metal he had forgotten, a bottle on its side.

She lifted a flask to his lips. A thick liquid filled his mouth, tasting strange, tasting rich, tasting like life. He swallowed.

Twice more he drank. She offered more meat.

Harroth stared at the raw flesh, dripping with what he remembered was blood. He opened his mouth and ate.

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Sunday, January 11, 2026

Sing a Graveyard Song ~ # 3 in the Fae Mark'd Wizard

What is Sing a Graveyard Song?

Besides an epic dark fantasy, it's the 3rd novel in the Fae Mark'd Wizard series.

The icy mountains hold danger and death but not in the way that the Fae Mark’d wizard Alstera expects in Sing a Graveyard Song.

Suspicious villagers, justice-seeking pursuers, and foul sorcery are nothing compared to a blood-drinking monster.

With her powers still shackled for crimes against wizardry, Alstera reaches a snow-smothered village being attacked by a death walker. The re-animated corpse drinks blood to exist.

To fight the death-walker, Alstera must rely on the primitive and forbidden blood-magic.

How many lives will the death walker take before Alstera finds the way to destroy it?

Will wielding blood-magic against a blood-spelled creature force Alstera to cross the tenuous barrier that separates wizardry from foul sorcery?

The dark fantasy Sing a Graveyard Song continues the grim story of twisted magic and foul sorcery and Alstera, walking the silvery thread that separates them. Third in the Fae Mark’d Wizard series, Grave follows Weave a Wizardry Web and Dream a Deadly Dream. Although each novel is a complete story, readers will have a richer experience if they read all three in order.