Sorcery Reborn by Steve McHugh BLOG TOUR @StevejMchugh #SorceryReborn #RandomThingsTours

 

He doesn’t need a weapon. He is the weapon.

After losing his powers in an epic battle between good and evil, former sorcerer Nate Garrett finds himself living as a humble human in Clockwork, Oregon. While the world thinks Nate is dead, his friends continue to fight against Avalon and the evil it’s intent on spreading.

Avalon’s forces turn up in Clockwork, and Nate’s frustration grows with every passing day his magic doesn’t return. He finds himself trying to stop Avalon’s plans while hiding from enemies who would destroy everything in their path to see him dead.

Avalon’s darkness begins to threaten the people Nate cares about, and an old nemesis returns; magic or no magic, he has no choice but to fight. But will Nate see his magical powers reborn before the entire town—and everyone he loves—is destroyed?

Sorcery Reborn by Steve McHugh is book one in the Rebellion Chronicles series and is published on 28 November 2019.

As part of the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour I'm delighted to share an extract from the book with you today.

Nate Garrett

Now

A year. I’d been told it would be a year. Gotta be honest: that hadn’t turned out so well, had it?

Clockwork was a town of just over seven thousand people, the majority of whom appeared to be quite nice. Acknowledging that being a solitary loner who never spoke to anyone was a pretty good way to screw up your mental health, I’d made sure to make a few friends in my time here. While the last two years had sucked on more than one occasion, having friends was one of the good parts.

I’d introduced myself to Clockwork as Nate Carpenter, Nate Garrett being, for all intents and purposes, officially dead. I’d used the surname of my best friend from my old life. Tommy was one of the people I missed seeing the most.

Duke’s Diner was one of three in town and the only one I visited with any frequency. This was partly due to the fact that the owner and chef, Antonio Flores, cooked the best damn food in town and partly because I liked several of the people who worked there.

I parked my blue Mercedes X-Class outside the diner, which was already busy with those who required an early-morning coffee and/or a Mexican breakfast. Antonio served more traditional American food, too, but no matter how good it was, no one came to Duke’s for the pancakes.

The snow was a few inches high and crunched under my booted feet. Despite wearing a thick green winter jacket, warm jeans, black boots, and black gloves with a matching hat, I was still cold. The heater in the pickup had spoiled me.

I pushed the glass door of the diner open and enjoyed the warmth and the sounds of eating and chatter that washed over me.

“Is that you, Nate?’” Antonio bellowed from the kitchen, sticking his head out of the serving hatch.

“No, it’s Commissioner Gordon. I’m looking for Batman,” I shouted back to Antonio.

Antonio smiled. “Are you coming tonight?”

“For the approximately one hundredth time, yes,” I said.

Antonio’s smile turned into a huge grin. Antonio had been a US Army Ranger. Having served two tours in Afghanistan without so much as a scratch, he’d gone back for a third time and hadn’t been so lucky. He’d lost the lower part of his left leg when an improvised explosive device had gone off near his team as they’d been sweeping a village that had been massacred by insurgents. That had been ten years ago, although the loss of a limb didn’t appear to have slowed Antonio down. He’d once told me he’d considered it a new challenge to overcome.

Apart from owning Duke’s—which, despite me asking, Antonio had never shown any interest in explaining the name of—he also ran the under-fifteen girls’ soccer team for the town, with the help of one of the sheriff’s deputies, Brooke Tobin.

“Football game tonight,” he shouted, using the correct name for the sport.

“I know,” I shouted back, gaining a few laughs from the three wait­resses and waiter who were working in the diner.

“You are coming, though, right?” Jessica Choi asked me as she led me over to a booth at the far end of the diner. Like all of the waiting staff, the only uniform she wore was a black T-shirt with Duke’s adorn­ing it in big red letters.

“Yes,” I promised.

“Because Ava has been talking about you coming to a game for weeks now,” Jessica said. “It’s the cup final.”

I sat down and sighed. “I promise I’ll be there.” The match had been postponed for several weeks because of bad weather. Matches were usually played on Thursday nights at the local high school, but the snow had been so bad that playing football in it would have been a special kind of torture. I’d missed a few of Ava’s games during the season and always felt bad for doing so, but I avoided traveling to other towns for away games, just in case I got spotted by the wrong person. I was in Clockwork to keep a low profile, so running around the state of Oregon would have been a risk.