ERNIE AND THE MAGE-KILLER by Jools Warner (COVER REVEAL & EXCERPT)
Today we’re thrilled to share with you the cover of ERNIE AND THE MAGE-KILLER, the debut novel from Jools Warner. Ernie and the Mage-Killer is out from Bellows Press on 15th April 2024.
Before we check out the cover and share an excerpt with you, here’s the official blurb:
Ernie buried her magical past – but now her friends need her to dig it up
Ernie just wants to have a solitary pint at her local pub and forget about her past as one of the most promising young mages in England. But when an old enemy returns, she must restore the memories she suppressed and reclaim her powers.
With the help of fiery Rennie, shapeshifting Vi, and an endearingly bureaucratic cat, Ernie comes to grips with her grief over the past and grapples bravely with the very mage who bested her before. The race is on to find him before he can bend the elements to his will and become an unstoppable tyrant.
As she fights to end the mage-killer before he ends life as we know it, Ernie the earth-mage resolves not to let herself be uprooted again.
Intrigued? Let’s check out the cover!
Cover artist details:
Matt Maguire, Candescent Press – website | twitter
Let’s hear from Jools…
I love this cover art so much! There’s such a sense of life about it: the tree whose colours and shape seem to shift and change as I look; the balance of light and darkness in the background; the hooded Mage whose posture hints at a long journey in progress.
It means a lot to me for it to be launched on the Spring Equinox, a moment in the year that heralds the new growth and movement to emerge from the depths of the dark soil and the stillness of winter. It fits so well with how the story explores the need for both light and darkness to maintain balance in the self and in the world.
Jools Warner is a writer, tarot card reader and yoga instructor with an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Death Studies. Ernie and the Mage-Killer is her first novel. Website
Ernie and the Mage-Killer is out from Bellows Press on 15th April 2024, you can pre-order your copy from:
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Waterstones | Goodreads
Excerpt
When I opened my eyes again, I felt hollow, sort of scoured out. And I was so thirsty I thought I’d go mad from it.
A stranger knelt down in front of me. Tall blond guy in a robe and pointy hat. Good looking. Nice tattoos on his forearms, which meant he probably had them elsewhere, too. This made me smile and go all tingly. His robe had little white bones stitched all over it in a loose herringbone pattern. Very, um, unique.
‘Is it just the drugs, or was this supposed to be the way it happens?’ he said. His voice was soft and kind.
I peered at this eccentric, charming person. I had a weird feeling I should know him from somewhere. I hate déjà-vu: always feels like my memory is laying a guilt trip on me for not remembering something I should. I looked around the room. A large black cat was in the process of disappearing through a cat flap in a beautifully carved wooden door across the room, and a floofy brown tabby was sniffing about the place, but there were no other humans there but me and the blond guy. We weren’t completely alone, though; I could hear sounds coming through the door to the kitchen, which I judged to be so because of the clink and clank of dishes and cutlery. Someone in there was humming tunelessly, and someone else sounded as though they were having a phone conversation. I smelled food. My stomach growled.
‘Who are you talking to?’ I said. The words came out funny. Was that what my voice sounded like? Come to think of it, what was my voice? Who or what was I?
I gave a start when the brown tabby cat jumped onto my lap. Then, since I was looking in that direction, I couldn’t help but notice that my arms, which rested on top of the green and brown satin robe that had been laid over me, were covered in scars. Long, deep ones. I waited a few seconds for myself to feel shocked or repulsed by them, but the feeling didn’t come. I held up my arms and looked at them and had a knowing that these scars were made in a time when the arms were lithe and muscular rather than soft and weakened. I decided to risk touching one and brought the tip of my right index finger to the bottom of the long fault line that ran from my left wrist all the way up. I shivered at the touch, at the difference in the textures of the scarred and unscarred skin, the weird smoothness of the scar like a valley scraped by glaciers over millennia. But I knew it had happened in an instant, and that I had escaped with my life by the narrowest margin.
‘It’s never that predictable what the short-term side effects will be. Or the medium- or long-term ones, actually, for that matter,’ said the cat. The cat. The cat had spoken. In an authoritative and elegant female voice. I must be imagining things. My day was getting very confusing all of a sudden. Come to think of it, I thought then, what was I even doing here, anyway? Then, as if to confirm my descent into rampant insanity, the cat spoke again.
‘In fact,’ she said breathily, ‘it’s quite exciting. This is actually the first time I’ve taken part in a Restoration of this magnitude since I took over at the Council’s helm. So I suppose we’d better prepare ourselves for anything. She was unconscious for a full three days, after all, and absolutely would not be moved from this spot. Fascinating!’ She looked at me as a vivisectionist would peer through cage bars at her next poor subject.
Oh, this was bloody great. Three days totally out of it, and no idea what had happened. At least this couch was comfy. My mind began to pick at the knot it had tied itself in, in a vain attempt to work out what was going on. As you would expect, with my world reduced to such a degree that the only thing I really knew for certain was that I was lying on cushions on a couch and was in a gorgeous but unfamiliar chamber filled with beautiful things, but with absolutely no memory of how I’d got there, I began to feel more than a little anxious.
The cat stood, trod a couple of tight circles on my lap, then arranged herself neatly, rested her head on her forepaws and closed her eyes. I could feel her purring, and it relaxed me a bit.
The handsome guy in the comedy wizard’s outfit, who was still kneeling beside me and looking very worried, placed a hand on my shoulder. With this gesture, something jolted, kind of jumped sideways in the back of my mind and then ran forward like a dog bounding after a ball in a park on a windy day.
‘Violet? Violet Goldbark?’ I said, as though the words had come not from me but through me, somehow. I did recognise the voice that spoke them as my own, though; here, finally, was a cornerstone I could build on.
He smiled at me. He had really sharp-looking teeth. Very clean and neat though, and they were framed by an open, friendly face.
‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘And you are Earthfield Rockwood, but you prefer Ernie, or Ern for short. Remember?’
‘I … I don’t know. Maybe.’ I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. I turned my gaze inward and began to search, but felt a bit like someone who’s lost their keys, turns the entire house upside-down, stops trying, decides to make a cuppa to see if that helps, then finds their keys in the fridge and cannot for the life of them explain how they got there.
Ernie and the Mage-Killer is out from Bellows Press on 15th April 2024, you can pre-order your copy from:
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Waterstones | Goodreads