Man, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. At long last, Torrid Tarot: Sword and Crown has released from Ellora’s Cave!

This is my fantasy novella based on the Queen of Swords card (and the title refers to the elements of the card not anything porny, LOL).

You can read an excerpt here at my website as well.

Here’s the Blurby Bit: Sword and Crown is a fantasy novella based on the Queen of Swords Tarot Card – The Queen of Swords has been through many trials, many conflicts in her life. She has weathered them with strength and courage. She’s lost loved ones and experienced pain but those experiences have made her stronger. She is realistic and pragmatic, she is a loyal friend and determined ally. She is also intelligent, rational and has a cutting wit. This card, this woman, is extraordinarily astute and forthright and does not play games or tolerate falsehoods. She looks beyond the face others present and sees deeply into their true natures. This makes many uncomfortable. Her blunt nature is often considered aloof or cold when really she is simply very discriminating about who she lets into her inner life.

The Queen of Swords is portrayed on her card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck as standing. Light glints off her sword and crown, showing the relationship between truth (light) her thoughts (crown) and her actions (sword) amongst the swirling air that governs her suit. Oftentimes she bears a third eye of intuition, a sixth sense of wisdom. Butterflies symbolizing change after incubation fly around her. She has been through hard times and has become stronger, she is able to cut through illusions with clarity.

Rhea is a Queen of Swords woman. She’s a woman who’s discovered strength and wisdom through the trials she’s been through in her life. In Sword and Crown she’s on the verge of a change. She must reconcile who she used to be as a young woman to the changed person she is today. Her world exists in peril and she must greet that as a woman with her past as not a burden, but armor.

For most of Rhea’s life, she used her Talent as a Practitioner of sex magic to keep her world safe from a powerful dark menace. But tragedy struck and she found herself exiled to Earth.

Fifteen years later, out of the blue, a face from her past appears on her doorstep. The Nameless is back and stronger than before. Her people need her and they’ve sent her first love, Jax, to petition for her help.

As the stakes get higher with the balance of the very existence of her universe in her hands, she’s also fighting the loss of her heart to a man who walked away from her once before. She knows her past has changed her in elemental ways but while she knows she can trust Jax at her back, she has to figure out if she can trust him with her heart.