Now available in England

Dear Merlin friends,
FINALLY all three Merlin Chronicle novels are available on amazon.co.uk - The Nature of Things (Volume 1), The Wrathful Traveller (Volume 2) and Protecting Cheesyfee (Volume 4). 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_5?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rhuddem+gwelin&sprefix=rhudd%2Caps%2C517&crid=2F519YWXWZKY

Please buy, share, review, inform, give away as gifts, request your local library to purchase them, ask your local bookshop to carry them. Please support an obscure fanatic Merlin author and keep the legend alive!

With many thanks and best wishes,
Rhuddem

Book launch of 'The Wrathful Traveller'

Dear Merlin friends,
At long last The Wrathful Traveller - the Merlin Chronicles Volume 2 has been published!

It is now available on Amazon, Bokus, Adlibris and directly from the publisher:

Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wrathful-Traveller-Merlin-Chronicles/dp/9188713369/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1509078166&sr=8-2&keywords=rhuddem+gwelin

Amazon global:
https://www.amazon.com/Wrathful-Traveller-Merlin-Chronicles/dp/9188713369/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1509078201&sr=8-3&keywords=rhuddem+gwelin

Bokus:
https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789188713360/the-wrathful-traveller-the-merlin-chronicles-volume-2/

Adlibris:
https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/the-wrathful-traveller---the-merlin-chronicles-volume-2-9789188713360

Publisher:
https://www.vulkanmedia.se/butik/bocker/the-wrathful-traveller-the-merlin-chronicles-volume-2-av-rhuddem-gwelin/

And for those of you who live or are planning to  visit the Stockholm area, you are most welcome to the book launch party at the English Bookshop, Södermannagatan 22, Thursday 9 November at 6.30 p.m. I would love to see you there. 
https://www.facebook.com/events/136085723784171/


All the best from Rhuddem

PS This book and the others would be brilliant holiday gifts, wouldn't they?

Coming soon - while waiting...

Dear Merlin friends,

The Wrathful Traveller - the Merlin Chronicles Volume 2 is soon to be published. We're in the final stages of proof reading (what a dreadful - but necessary - job!)

In the meantime, if you haven't yet read The Nature of Things - the Merlin Chronicles Volume 1 there's still time if you you order and read it now! 

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Things-Myrddin-Merlin-Chronicles/dp/9163906554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501904961&sr=1-1&keywords=rhuddem+gwelin

Or for those of you in Sweden: http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789163906558/the-nature-of-things-the-story-of-myrddin-emrys/

Tell your friends! Share on Facebook.

Thanks!
All the best from Rhuddem

The Wrathful Traveller Volume 2

Dear Merlin friends,
Though I have not been active on the blog I have been busy with writing The Wrathful Traveller - the Merlin Cronicles Volume 2'. The first draft is done . Just more revision, layout decisions, proofreading etc etc left. I'm hoping it will be published this autumn.
Until then, here's a sample from Part One The Cathedral Chapter One 'The Thief'.
All the best
Rhuddem

He wondered how long he had been gone. Overnight? A week? A year? Last time he had been in this cave, seventeen years had slipped by and he hadn’t even been asleep, or whatever it was called that Pacifa had done to him.

He sat until he felt steady and the ache subsided a bit then he rose stiffly, pulling his cloak round him.

The opening of the cave was blocked of course but he waved his hand in front of it and with a soft rumble a kind of gap appeared.

The light was blinding and he stood motionless until it had faded. It was actually quite dim and his eyes adjusted. It was, it seemed, late afternoon. He still didn’t step forward though, but listened. He heard the rustling of leaves, a trickle of water. Birds. The baaing of sheep. Human voices, very faint, far away. And the distant ringing of tools.

He stepped cautiously into the opening, steadying himself with a hand on the rock wall of the cave, and looked out.

After a moment of mental disorientation, he saw that the surrounding area was much like he remembered it. Trees, a brook, the hill sloping downward, grazing sheep. No shepherd in sight but probably one nearby.

Looking about outside the entrance he spotted a kind of shrine tucked in behind a rock, hidden by a thick juniper bush.

A Druid shrine. But very hidden. He saw another one, more visible. With a cross.  So, they’re still at it, he thought.

He heard an angry shout from down the hill to his right and he stepped away from the cave to look.

He grabbed at a tree for support as a wave of dizziness came over him.

His gaze locked on an enormous building across the valley. He had never seen such a huge building and it wasn’t finished. Throngs of workers laboured on the site. Carpenters. Stonemasons. Blacksmiths. Men and women and children pounding, climbing, sawing, carrying. It was an awesome sight.

Then he saw a cross at the top of the towering steeple.

It was a Christian church. A massive Christian church.  A Christian church this big.  How long had he been gone?  He, who was never afraid, felt fear at the sight.

The shout came again, the shout that had brought him from the cave. He saw two figures, both running, one small chased by one larger. The larger one was clearly very angry, and a priest. The smaller one seemed to be a girl of about ten or eleven. She was fast, but the priest was faster, and gaining on her.

The two runners were heading in his direction. He didn’t like seeing a child being pursued by an angry man twice her size, especially a priest. He lifted his hand and caused the priest’s feet to stumble over themselves. With a curse the priest fell, giving the girl the chance to increase her distance.

The girl ran up the hill towards him and stopped, panting beside him. She slipped something into his hand and without hesitating he put it inside his cloak.

They both watched the priest scramble to his feet and run, puffing, up the hill, the scattered sheep ignoring him and starting to graze again.

As he approached them the priest shouted, ‘She’s a thief! Don’t protect her!’

‘I didn’t steal anything,’ the girl said calmly and he admired her cheekiness.

He could hardly understand what they were saying. They were speaking the Saxon language, he thought, but not the one he recognised.  He thought a moment then spoke to the priest in Latin. ‘Soror mea est cognate. Egredimini de medio eius in pace.’ She is my kinswoman. Leave her in peace.

Both the priest and the girl stared up at him, the girl in incomprehension, the priest in shock.

The priest answered in bad Latin, ‘Are you a man of God?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You speak Latin, the language of the church.’ The priest’s Latin was so bad that Merlin could hardly understand that either so he switched to the Anglo Saxon he could manage. ‘I am a traveller,’ he said.

‘And this girl is your kinswoman?’

‘She is.’ He could feel the girl’s eyes looking at him sharply but he kept his own on the priest’s. ‘She is not a thief.’  He lied easily, partly because he disliked priests on principle and partly because he was curious about what would happen. And he had always been a good liar.

The priest regarded them both suspiciously. ‘I don’t recognise you. I’ve never seen you.’

‘His name is Creighton,’ the girl said as though she had never told a lie in her life. ‘He’s father’s cousin from the north.’

The priest looked startled, then sceptical. ‘So if she’s your young kinswoman, Creighton - ’ he spat the name out as though it was a curse ‘ – what’s her name?’

‘I’ve always called her Sparrow.’ The lie came as quickly as the others and he felt a sting of loss over the person who had always called him Sparrow.

‘And that’s because he thinks I’m more like a Sparrow than a Wilda. And I agree. Wilda is a stupid name.’

‘It suits you, girl,’ the priest muttered angrily, threw them both a sour look then stomped back down the hill. They both watched him retreat.

‘Creighton, eh? What made you give me that name?’

‘Oh I don’t know. I saw you come out of the woods over there by those rocks. Don’t you like it?’

‘It’ll do.’ Creighton. Anglo Saxon for ‘dweller by the rocks’. Yes. He could see himself as a Creighton.

‘So what is your name?’ She looked up at him. 

‘I think I’ll stay with Creighton. I like it.’