Title:
Lost Long, Book I of The Road to Ragnarök
Author:
Rochelle L. Wilcox
Genre:
Romantic Fantasy
Book Blurb:
The Road to Ragnarök is ready!
Books II-IV will be released starting in September, with preorders for Book II, Enemies Eternal, available now, Book III, Alive Again, available on September 20, 2022, and Book IV, Heavy Heart, available on October 18, 2022.
The Norse God of Love Freyr doesn’t want to drag Lia into the strange world of Gods and giants hidden in humanity’s midst. But after Lia witnesses the impossible in the sky above her on a dark Los Angeles morning, he has no choice. Hoping to save her life from members of his family determined to end it, Freyr takes Lia to the other side of the world, into the realm of dragons and monsters far below, and finally to the mythical land of Asgard. Along the way, as Freyr discovers a love he couldn’t have anticipated and didn’t want, he must decide how far he will go to protect Lia from the fight that his brothers started, and he will end.
Excerpt:
Freyr gave Freyja a look full of remorse and sadness. He couldn’t help it. Lia didn’t love him, he feared. Even worse, he would never know whether she did or not. He wouldn’t be given the time to talk to her, to try and mend the bridge he had created between them. He would die unsure of her feelings for him.
“She doesn’t love me,” he said at last. It hurt to give his fear voice.
“You don’t know that, Freyr,” Freyja pleaded with him. “And if you go through with this, you’ll never know. Is that what you want? Do you want to leave this earth without knowing if the only woman you have ever loved feels the same way about you? How can you stand it?”
Freyja knew him so well. But he could stand it. What he wanted couldn’t get in the way of what Lia needed. She needed to leave Asgard alive. He didn’t have a chance to respond. They had reached the door. The time had come to leave the caves and take the short journey to the bridge.
Together, Freyr and Freyja reached out their hands and grasped the large rock barring their path. Slowly, almost as if it didn’t want to move, the rock shifted with a loud, grating noise. The door into Jötunheimr had made the same sound but that time they had been outside. Now, inside the small chamber that surrounded them, the sound had no place to escape. It surrounded them, deafening as it echoed through the chamber.
And then it was over. For the first time in weeks, they saw the sun. They couldn’t go immediately into the bright light. They stood there, outside of the direct sunlight, for nearly fifteen minutes while their eyes slowly adjusted to the world they had known for so long but so quickly forgotten. At last the time came for them to go.
They climbed up out of the caves and stretched in the sun, luxuriating in its warmth. Freyr looked around him at the land he had loved for so long. The river between Jötunheimr and Asgard raced past them just a few yards away, its strong current occasionally throwing large plumes of water to spray the emerald grass and deep red rocks on its shore. They would find Bifrost, the rainbow that bridged the gap between Asgard and the rest of the earth, less than a mile away. Freyr stopped to gather his thoughts. He stood without moving, without speaking, watching the river and the land beyond — the home he had yearned for during his many years on earth.
As he looked out over the river, its crystal peaks tumbling over each other in their haste to reach the vast ocean in which they finally would rest, he thought again about how much he had changed in just a few short weeks. He had fought this fight before — too many times — but never before had he let it get this far, threatening his very existence. He wouldn’t have believed it even a few days ago, but he knew now that he would make the sacrifice they demanded of him if he could protect her.
Before her he might have welcomed their vengeance. His life had been dry and colorless for so long as he simply existed, unable to see the splendor that surrounded him. It wasn’t always that way. In the early days he felt fierce joy as he walked the earth, pride in the family to which he belonged, love for the people that surrounded him. He was their god and he wallowed in their adoration. That changed when his self-imposed exile stripped him of the only life he had ever known. For centuries he had walked the earth alone, oblivious to her other inhabitants, hiding in their midst and pretending to be one of them. She introduced him again to the world he once knew and loved.
He looked up at the distant bridge, entrance to a land remembered only in ancient myth, and thought again about the woman who had wrought such a change in him. He only wished he could see her again before he faced them, that he could know if she felt the same way about him, even after the things he said. He wished she could know what he did for her, and why he did it.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
The e-book of Lost Long will be free for a short period starting August 25 and then $.99 until Enemies Eternal is released on October 1.
The prequel, Fickle Fate, is available to anyone who signs up for my newsletter at www.rochellewilcox.com . Fifty years before Freyr met Lia, launching The Road to Ragnarök, the Norse Goddess of love Freyja met Will. Before him, she had fallen in love only once in the millennia she has walked the earth. But if she tells her family’s secret to Will, the man who somehow captured her heart, her family will never forgive her. It will start a war she may not win.
Author Biography:
Rochelle Wilcox was born and raised in Las Vegas, where she learned at an early age the value of fantasy and escape. Raised by a single mom – one of the first women trained to deal poker in the early 70’s – Rochelle spent more time in casinos than most adults. She and her husband decided to leave the desert behind and raise their sons in Northern California, where they spend as much time on the water as they can.
Despite her lifelong passion for story-telling, Rochelle’s path took her to law school and then to a practice focused on media law and appeals. But her love of writing wasn’t sated with briefs bound by legal principles and a fealty to facts. And so she started to tell the story that had been playing in her mind for years, based on the Norse mythology she loved as a child and built around her favorite character, the Norse God of Love, Freyr.
Rochelle has been working for 13 years on her four-part series, The Road to Ragnarök. Book I (Lost Long) will be relaunched on September 3, followed by Book II (Enemies Eternal) on October 1, Book III (Alive Again) on November 5, and Book IV (Heavy Heart) on December 3. As this epic tale unfolds, Freyr will learn that Lia’s love and her unexpected powers will be the key to the fate of the Norse gods in the battles they’ll face in Ragnarök, and that his very survival will depend on her.
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