Magic U
This is my series of erotic paranormal romances published in ebook form by Ravenous Romance, and in print book form by Red Silk Editions, an imprint of Red Wheel Weiser.
The original series is four books, with a fifth book of related short stories also published by Ravenous Romance.
- Books in the series
- Setting & Places
- Characters
- Courses of Study
Book One
The Siren and the Sword
First published in ebook form in July 2009
Trade paperbackpublished October 1st 2010 (ISBN: 9781590032084)
Kyle Wadsworth arrives at Harvard eager to start his new life as a college student away from the cold and distant great-aunt who has raised him. But he walks into a building that only magical people can see, confusing both himself and the administrators of Veritas, the secret magical university hidden inside Harvard. There he first sees a beautiful girl who seems magical to him in every way.
Soon Jess Torralva is tutoring Kyle in the ways of magic, sex, and love. But trouble is afoot at Veritas. Rumors abound that a siren is haunting the library, and when Kyle’s best friend is attacked, Kyle is determined to use his newly learned skills in erotic magic to catch the culprit. But which is more important, his quest for justice or his search for true love?
Read the prologue and chapter one free: here.
- Buy The Siren and the Sword:
- Download from Ravenous Romance
- Amazon: Kindle version or paperback
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- also available at many other online retailers…
The Tower and the Tears
First published in ebook form in February 2010
Trade paperback
published in December 2010 (ISBN 9781590032114)Kyle is a college sophomore worrying about the usual things students do, like what he’s going to major in and getting along with his dorm mates, but he attends a most unusual college. He’s a student at Veritas, the hidden magical university inside Harvard.
Before he got to Harvard, Kyle hadn’t even known he was magical. Now he finds he has a talent for sex magic and the erotic arts. Not only that, a girl in his sex magic class has a crush on him. Kyle looks forward to lots of “study sessions” together with Ciara and their friend Marjory, but when their professor is mysteriously attacked, Kyle finds himself embroiled in a mystery deeper than university department politics. Someone has been stealing magical artifacts and the dean suspects Ciara, sending Kyle on a quest to discover the real culprit.
Kyle decides to major in Esoteric Arts, the study of sex magic. He will learn sizzling sexual technique and unleash powerful magic on his incredible erotic journey, but is the study of sex really the route to true love? Perhaps what Kyle needs to learn about most is himself.
Read the first chapter free: here.
- Buy The Tower and the Tears:
- Download from Ravenous Romance
- Amazon Kindle Store & paperback edition
- All Romance eBooks
- B&N Nookstore & paperback
- Also available at many other online retailers…
The Incubus and the Angel
Now available ebook form from Ravenous Romance
Forthcoming in paperback December 2011.Even though he attends Veritas, the hidden magical university inside Harvard, Kyle Wadsworth is a typical college junior, spending too much time in the library and trying to balance classes with some semblance of a social life. After having loved and lost, Kyle is shy about striking up new relationships, but when his friendship with enchantment student Lindy Carmichael becomes “friends with benefits” he finds his heart ready to explore new avenues and blossom into love again.
But meanwhile his classes have drawn him into studying an ancient prophecy, and the more Kyle learns, the more the prophecy seems to be about Kyle himself, foretelling doom. Lindy and other students are experiencing gaps in their magic that could point to impending disaster… or is it just that they have been visited in their dreams by a demon-lover? Kyle, ever the hero, sets out to capture the demon and solve the mystery of the prophecy, but to do so he must unravel the mystery in his own heart.
- Buy or sample The Incubus and the Angel
- Download from Ravenous Romance
- Amazon Kindle Store
- All Romance eBooks
- B&N Nookstore
- Also available at many other online retailers…
Spellbinding: Tales from the Magic University
Now available in ebook from Ravenous Romance! Published June 2011.
You can also buy it on Amazon.
A merry crew of ten writers and I explore the intriguing secondary characters, unanswered mysteries, and background stories of Veritas. Some stories introduce new characters, but most satisfy every reader’s craving for more of Kyle, Frost, Alex, Master Brandish, Dean Bell, and the rest of the cast. Most of the stories are male/male, with a smattering of gender-bending, het, and even one lesbian tale set at Collegium Sophia (the secret magic school at Smith College, of course!). I wrote four of the fifteen stories myself. In the tradition of fan fiction, some of the stories have pairings that are unseen in the original books, like Dean Bell and Timothy Frost, or Kyle and Alex. Others explore canonical couples who just don’t get much screen time in the book series. One of Tan’s stories reveals how Frost and Michael Candlin started dating and what their first sex was like. Learn more of the tangled history between Master Brandish and Dean Bell.
- Download a free sample or purchase from:
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- Kindle Store
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- Smashwords
The Poet and the Prophecy
Was released in ebook form in September 2011, paperback forthcoming Spring 2012.In this conclusion of the series, Kyle begins his senior year full of doubt. For his junior thesis, he made a new translation of an ancient prophecy he believed to be about himself and his true love. Now other people are starting to believe it, too, as the signs of the Burning Days seem to be everywhere: people losing their magic, odd storms and earthquakes. But although Kyle has many loving friends and eager acquaintances, he has no true love in sight. There’s only room for one person in Kyle’s heart right now, and the last time they laid eyes on each other, that person punched Kyle in the face and teleported him halfway across Cambridge.
Kyle never gives up hope, though. If the prophecy speaks true, the world will end if Kyle doesn’t find true love. And our hero will need love to save the world, his friends, and himself from losing magic forever.
Read a sample #1: Prologue
Read a sample #2: Excerpt from Chapter oneSome buy links for The Poet & the Prophecy:
The main action of the books takes place at Harvard University and the surrounding neighborhoods of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Most of the places mentioned are real places, and I originally mentioned the actual names of restaurants and stores, but my copyeditor cut them all out.
I posted a photo gallery of sights on the Harvard Campus that relate to the books, and also have a Picasa album with even more.
- Some Veritas Buildings:
- Elwyn Library
- Sassamon Ritual Arts Building
- Peyntree Hall (admin offices)
- Faiella House (healing arts)
- Mormallor Hall (alchemy labs)
- Pallando Hall (dept of prophetic studies)
- Lavode House (enchantment department annex)
A quick list of some of the real world off-campus places mentioned:
- Book One
- Iruna — Spanish restaurant where Kyle and Jess have their first date. Sadly, now gone.
- The Garment District — a real, warehouse-sized used clothing store, with “Dollar a Pound” on the first floor.
- Izzy’s — the Puerto Rican restaurant where Kyle and Alex eat after shopping at the gar
- CVS — Kyle buys his protein bars there after Master Brandish suggests it. You’re a real native if you ask me whether I mean the Mass Ave CVS or the JFK Street one!
- Mt. Auburn Hospital — where they go after the Thanksgiving siren attack
- Various coffee shops — although I must admit it was a Starbucks I had in mind when Kyle and Jess go into the restroom together… there are MANY other coffee (and tea!) places in the Square. As well as Au Bon Pain. Really one is as good as another… I picked the Starbucks because I know its bathroom is big enough (handicapped accessible) and the door sturdy enough for what goes on. (Actually, since the book was written, two more Starbucks have opened in the Square. You’ll have to guess which one I meant.)
- Book Two
- Onset — a real town just at the start of Cape Cod
- Herrell’s Ice Cream — sadly, this Harvard Square institution closed recently, but there are other gourmet ice cream shops to be found in the Square now, too, including Libby’s, and also the frozen yogurt place called BerryLine, and J. P. Licks took over where Toscanini’s was.
- More coffee shops — the place I had in mind that Ciara insists they go for coffee & hot chocolate at the start of chapter 11 was actually Toscanini’s, which operated an ice cream and espresso place at 1312 Mass. Ave. But it’s now closed and become a JP Licks, which is also quite good.
- Book Three
- Le’s — the Vietnamese restaurant in the Garage at Harvard Square, formerly called Pho Pasteur, but renamed for their founder in recent years
- L. A. Burdick — the gourmet chocolate shop that Lindy and Kyle go to really exists. Nom.
- Harvard House of Pizza — the pizza joint around the corner from Professor Raburn’s house, where they spend winter break house-sitting (on Martin Street, if you must know)
- Starbucks — I admit it. When Alex slips Kyle the address, they’re in the same Starbucks where Jess and Kyle once spent far too long in the restroom together.
- Frost’s house — I walked past it on my way to dinner one night, but didn’t have my camera to take a picture with. I think it was on Craigie Street.
- Book Four
- L.A. Burdick — another scene takes place in the chocolate shop.
- The House on Linnaean Street — This infamous mansion was home to an ashram in the 1980s, in which a guru named Swami Chetitpratlanda–known locally as “Swami Chet”–lived with something like 40 of his followers. They had subdivided the bedrooms into bunks and put in extra toilets and double-headed showers. A friend of mine bought the house in the early 90s when Swami Chet had a vision that his cult needed to move to the West Coast and sold the place. My friend eventually moved to the country and sold it to a Harvard Professor, however the house still retains the central stained glass window of a rose that was Swami Chet’s symbol.
- Crema Cafe — Most of the coffee shop scenes in this book take place at Crema Cafe, which I prefer to Starbucks and which has windows situated in the proper positioning for the scenes that take place.
- Boston Eagle — this gay men’s leather bar is still standing in Boston’s South End, across Tremont Street from the Boston Center for the Arts.
- Store 24 — Kenmore Square has changed a lot in recent years, gentrifying and becoming quite yuppie, so I’m honestly not actually sure if this convenience store is still standing next to the Bank of America ATM lobby. But I think it is. There used to be several convenience stores around Kenmore Square including one owned by Boston University, so that would work, too. But I was picturing the one across Brookline Ave. from Uno’s.
- The New Age Bookstore — this shop is no longer there; high rents got them like so many other Harvard Square businesses. But it’s still there in my mind’s eye.
The Cams:
House Master: Madeleine Finch (Healing Arts)
Marjory Ransom, resident tutor, 3rd floor
Hansen, resident tutor 1st floor
Lindy Carmichael
Jeanie Kwan
Ciara McNamara
Becka
Jess Torralva
Monica
Alex Kimble
Yoshi Fujiwara
Randall Carter
Ash
Indra
BaileyThe Glads:
House Master: Callendra Brandish (Esoteric Arts)
Brandon Buckle, resident tutor
Talia Pisk, resident tutor
Esther Dearborn, resident advisor
Timothy Frost
Caitlyn Speyer
Persephon Cavendish
Zelda Garrett
Glendon Witt
Trina Woodlock
Vish Viswanathan
Nichols
Remy
Allan
Masterson
Herge
Megan
JoaquimThe Skips:
House Master: Harold Lester (Prophetic Studies)
Polly Kendrick
Michael Candlin
Kate
Marigold
LilaThe Nummies:
House Master: Karl Zoltan (Applied Enchantment/Tech Magic)
Viola Gladwell
PrestonFaculty:
Dean Archibald Dunster
(Assistant) Dean Quilian Bell
Professor Bengle — Poetry
Professor Hillman — Esoteric Arts
Professor Hart — Esoteric Arts
Professor Raburn — Applied Enchantment (Alex’s advisor)
Professor Lin — Poetry
Professor Felicia Hargreaves — Prophecy, Ancient languages (Kyle’s junior thesis advisor)A Few Poets Who Went to Harvard:
T. S. Eliot
Robert Frost
Ralph Waldo Emerson
ee cummings
Longfellow
Margaret Atwood
Ernest Lawrence Thayer
SantayanaAlchemy
Applied Enchantment (including tech magic)
Astronomy
Conjuration
Esoteric Arts
Healing Arts
History
Metaphysics
Poetry
Prophetic Studies (including soothsaying, numerology, astrology)
Ritual Arts(there is of course the ongoing effort on the part of the administration to merge the Applied Enchantment and Conjuration departments, which hasn’t yet succeeded by the end of book three…)
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