The Elf Queen, a Paranormal Urban Fantasy from Lyndi Alexander

Please help us give Lyndi Alexander a warm welcome today! Lyndi is here to share her Paranormal Urban Fantasy, The Elf Queen. Welcome, Lyndi! We are all excited to hear more about The Elf Queen.

Guest Post from Lyndi Alexander:

Elves walk among us—do you see them?

In our modern days of microwaves, social media, fax machines and everything moving so fast we hardly have time to absorb it, do you believe you see everything that goes on around you? Is it possible that others may co-exist in your world and you may not even have noticed them, because you’re so distracted with everything you’re juggling just to get through your day?

Even in a place like Missoula, Montana, a diverse city nestled among the Bitterroot Mountains, where outdoor activities bring people into the forests on a regular basis, they may not know that another, much older civilization lives there hidden among the trees: The Clan Elves of the Bitterroot.

The Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series is a modern-day fantasy set in northwestern Montana, where I lived as a young married woman back in the day. It is some of the most beautiful country in the United States, but I couldn’t live there for long. It snows from just about Labor Day through Memorial Day! Too cold for me.

The area inspires me, though, and my alter ego Alana Lorens has a romantic suspense novel set in the very same territory coming out March 18, 2020 from the Wild Rose Press. The story also involves contact with ecotagers, those who try to stop the destruction of the old forests by subversive means.

The story centers around barista Jelani Marsh, a college dropout with a sad childhood and a group of damaged-but-entertaining friends. Just when she’s convinced that her life is going nowhere, a very odd incident takes place:

Iris climbed off the bike, put down the kickstand. “What is that?” She bent down near the object. “Oh, sweet Gaia! It’s a glass slipper!”

            No kidding. It really appeared to be a shoe made out of glass. A large one. “Who would have left this here?” Jelani picked it up, looking around for a prankster camera team. But something kept her from tossing it.

            “Try it on,” Iris whispered. “If you’re not chicken, anyway.”

            “Don’t even go there.”

            “Chicken. Bawk BAWK.” Iris giggled.

            “Fine! If it means I can get to work.” She reached down with her right hand and unzipped her boot, kicked it off. “Ready? You want a picture?”

            Iris dug for her cellphone and raised it, ready to take a shot. “Just in case your prince shows up right then.”

            Unbelievable. “I don’t need a prince. I don’t need a man! I need a new life.” Jelani set the shoe on the ground and slipped her foot in. She gently stepped down, not sure what she expected. The slipper shattered, slicing into the sole of her foot.

            Nauseous, Jelani screamed and could only watch in disbelief as tiny men sprang from the blood trickling under the broken shoe. She lost track of how many. The biggest maybe two inches high, they scattered into the shadows around the building next to them and disappeared. She lifted her foot, shaking off the remnants, and examined her foot to see if glass remained buried in her skin.

            “Did you…see that?” Iris gasped, nearly breathless. She grabbed at the wall, eyes closed a moment.

            Jelani felt faint, too, suddenly washed out. “I—I don’t know.” There were no fragments in her foot, or anywhere– the shoe had vanished. The only trace of the whole incident was dark blood on the sidewalk, slowly drying in the sun. The cuts in her foot healed as she watched. What the hell?

            Iris knelt down to peer at Jelani’s foot. “There were little…people. Naked, hairless little people. They ran away. I swear they did.”

            “Did you get pictures?”

            “I almost forgot!” Iris got up and activated the screen on her cell, pressed the arrow. Jelani leaned close to watch the whole thing replay in living color. “Oh. Bless. My. God,” Iris said, in her shock reverting to the male deity.

            Jelani nodded. “And the horse He rode in on.”

Jelani goes on to discover that an elf clan lives in the very woods around the town, and that she has strange ties to the very heart of the clan. A rivalry develops among the elf clan for her affection, but she finally falls in love with Astan Hawk, an elf assigned to protect her. Astan himself has only recently learned the secrets his clan has long kept hidden, and they certainly complicate his growing love for Jelani.

The secondary characters in the story, especially the odd couple of Lane Donatelli and Ron “Crispy” Mendell, have always appealed to me and to other readers. The two men grew up as foster brothers, and have continued to live together in adult life, mostly because they can tolerate each others’ quirks and shortcomings. They add a definite note of humor and uniqueness to the love story.

The story of the young queen continues through THE ELF CHILD, as Astan and Jelani’s family grows, THE ELF MAGE, during the elven civil war (won with secrets from World of Warcraft and a magic computer!) and into THE ELF GUARDIAN, where a paranormal researcher down on her luck stumbles across the elf clan and tries to capitalize on it for her own fame and fortune.

About The Elf Queen:

Jelani Marsh finds a glass slipper on the city sidewalk and tries it on for laughs. The slipper shatters, slicing her foot, and dozens of tiny men scatter from the bloody remains. A moment later, her foot is miraculously healed and they’re gone.

This is the first in a series of meetings that will unravel everything she knows. In the following weeks, the sassy barista from Missoula, Montana learns she is no orphan, as she’d been taught to believe, and that her life story has been a deception, right down to the circumstances of her birth. A menace arises from her family’s past to threaten everything she holds dear, including her own life.

Two groups help untangle the mystery: her human friends—life skills coach Iris Pallaton, computer geek and gamer extraordinaire Lane Donatelli, and “Crispy” Mendell, an agoraphobic abuse survivor—and her new-found elf companions, Daven Talvi and Astan Hawk. Can she learn about her true roots and absorb the implications of her new life in time to save her friends, her family and herself?

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About Lyndi Alexander:

Lyndi Alexander dreamed for many years of being a spaceship captain, but settled instead for inspired excursions into fictional places with fascinating companions. She has been a published writer for over thirty years, including seven years as a news reporter and editor in Homestead, Florida. Now retired from her career as family law attorney, she lives as a post-modern hippie in Asheville, North Carolina, a single mother of her last child of seven, a daughter on the autism spectrum, finding that every day feels a lot like first contact with a new species.

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