Herald of Autumn

By J.M. Guillen

Stories live. They breathe. They walk the land, hiding among us. They appear to be human, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is the way it has always been. Tommy Maple is the Herald of Autumn, a being crafted entirely of whispered tales and subtle magic. As a new age dawns, he is one of the few of his kind that remains in our world. He is alone, and may go long years without seeing another like himself. Now the age of his people is at an end. Still, Tommy has a purpose. There are things unseen in the world of men, strange things that live in the secret cracks between places. Hungry monstrosities that the sons of man cannot fathom. It is Tommy's place to hunt them, protecting us from the darkness that we cannot see. Every year, with the death of summer, he awakens, to again wander the land. Wherever he goes, red and golden leaves follow him, and he hunts the twisted creatures in the darkness. This Autumn, however, is different from those in the past. Tommy awakens to the taunting of a depraved enemy, a mysterious and elusive shaman. Tommy is powerless before his strange, bent magics, and knows that the old man has slaughtered his kind in the past. He is the last person the Herald should trust. And yet, Tommy is forced to listen. Soon, a sinister tale unfolds- a story that spans centuries and the entire continent. A story made from the whispering of forgotten legends that ends with a dark revelation. A story that Tommy has always been part of, even though he didn't know it. Now the Herald faces an ancient abomination, unlike anything he has ever known before. For once, the hunter is the one that is hunted, chased through a misbegotten wood by a creature who seems to be little more than darkness and feckless hunger. The behemoth is pure horror, and can unmake everything Tommy is. As the Herald faces a foe unlike any other, will he fall to the darkness that haunts our world? Will the shadows of a lost age devour him, causing him to be reborn as one of the world's terrors? Or can he trust the shaman, a creature spun from little more than trickery, malevolence and deceit?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1490986138
• ISBN13: 9781490986135
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"