A Dream Within A Dream: Spells & Sorcery Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

Spells & Sorcery (Lexie Carrigan Chronicles #1)
Author: S. Usher Evans
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publication Date: October 4, 2016

Description:

You have magic.

One sentence, three words, four syllables. Enough to change my life forever. And I’m not talking about the whole spells and sorcery thing.

Lexie Carrigan thought the weirdest thing about her was she preferred watching documentaries and reading the newspaper to reality TV and Twitter. But on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, her aunt and sisters drop a bomb–she’s magical.

Now the girl who never made waves is blowing up her nightstand and trying to keep from wreaking havoc on her school. When a kind stranger shows up with all the answers, Lexie hopes he’ll be able to help her control her newfound powers. But Gavon may not be as kind as he seems, and soon Lexie finds out that being magical is the least weird thing about her.

Spells and Sorcery is the first YA fantasy from S. Usher Evans, author of the Razia series, the Madion War Trilogy and Empath.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

"You really can't be okay with me putting all of my classmates in danger?" I asked, for probably the fifth time since we'd left the house. "I set my bedroom on fire, Jeanie."

"Last night, you were taken off guard. Now, you're all right. Look," she reached across the car and took my hand, "no magic here."

I retracted my hand and stared at my fingertips. "Yeah, but what if—"

"Lexie, you're one of the most brilliant kids I know," Jeanie said, and I was too shocked at the rare praise to respond. "Magic is simply another part of you, and it always has been. Just like you can use that brain of yours to remember all those useless facts and quotes, you can use your mind to control your magic. If you want to control it, you will."

"Thanks," I said, although I didn't quite understand what she was saying. If I had no idea what I was supposed to control, or how to control it, I wasn't sure how effective my will was going to be.

Jeanie pulled up in front of the school and turned to me. "Before you go, I have two ground rules with your magic. The first is you are not allowed to use your magic on anyone. Not your sister, not students, anyone."

I nodded.

"Second, which should go without saying, is that you aren't allowed to do magic at school. And until you get a handle on it, you are not allowed to use it unsupervised."

Again, I nodded, although I wanted to argue that I hadn't actually willfully done any magic since I'd received it.

"Are you picking me up later?"

"Unfortunately, you'll have to ride with Marie this afternoon. I've got a few meetings I can't get out of. But later tonight, we'll go out to dinner for your birthday, all right?"

"Okay," I said, cracking open the door. My stomach was a mess of nerves, but I took some solace in Jeanie's lack of concern. If she thought I wasn't a disaster waiting to happen, then maybe I wasn't.

S. Usher Evans is an author, blogger, and witty banter aficionado. Born in Pensacola, Florida, she left the sleepy town behind for the fast-paced world of Washington, D.C.. There, she somehow landed jobs with BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Television before finally settling into a “real job” as an IT consultant. After a quarter life crisis at age 27, she decided consulting was for the birds and rekindled a childhood passion for writing novels. She sold everything she owned and moved back to Pensacola, where she currently resides with her two dogs, Zoe and Mr. Biscuit.

Evans is the author of the Razia series, Madion War Trilogy, and Empath, published by Sun’s Golden Ray Publishing.