From The Occult

Hattie Jacques was a middle aged woman living in a small town in New Mexico
One morning she came from her bed to find a strange man seated in her kitchen. 
Returning to the room she took  a gun and put it in the side pocket of  her dressing gown. When she came back to the kitchen, the fellow was still there. In spite of his appearance he projected no sense of threat. In fact he seemed more nervous of her than she was of him. That much was evident from the way his eyes flickered to the pocket holding the gun. She gave him a mug of coffee. Coffee, as everyone knows, is a natural remedy against Black Magic. She gave him a second mug. He seemed to enjoy it.He left soon after, without uttering a syllable. 
It was then she noticed he had left something. A book; a powerful book full of stories and secrets.

Dangerous characters started to show up. Men dressed in the kind of suits they used to wear in Humphrey Bogart movies. Her friend, Mary called them the "Grey Men". Apparently, this was not their first visit.
Hattie was a single woman living alone in a small town in Middle America. How difficult  would it be to persuade her to hand over the book?
If that was the best plan they could come up with they didn't know Hattie Jacques.

 This marks the beginning of The Hawkmoon Chronicles. Except for a brief appearance at the end Hawkmoon, ( formerly John Ryan,of County Cork , Ireland), is not seen in the first book.

Freud is rumoured to believe that the Irish are the only people on whom Psychoanalysis would be wasted and it is true that the Celt lies dormant in even the most rational urbanite. The countryside is dotted with the outlines of Fairy Rings that farmers will not go near.There are numerous accounts of  misfortune attending those who dared.
My grandmother's sister told me of how a ghost saved her life. 

The Irish don't do rules. 
As a writer I have broken several. There is Urban Fantasy and Epic Fantasy and according to the purists; never the twain shall meet.   Is it right to have Science and Magic  in the same book? Why not? Many believe that, at some point, it will be difficult to tell the difference.
 To the people of the Land, Magic is a curse.  When the Reivers invade no one sets forth in a quest for a mythical "Sword of Light".  Instead new weapons are deployed. Hawkmoon is infested by a demon known as Soulbiter.  To the peoples of  the Land he is  Deathwalker. His dream is to find the woman he loves and go somewhere he can live an ordinary life.
In the Ancient Days, a civilization rose, skilled in the arts of Technology. In their pride they built engines to cross to other worlds. Their experiments destabilized the sun.  Tidal waves destroyed their cities. . Deserts are spreading; millions are losing the means of growing food. Every twenty thousand  years the Dragon's Breath comes to incinerate the  Land.The foundations of war are being laid. 
 The Dragon's Breath is not fiction. It occurred in the Middle Ages; a  Solar storm, so powerful if it happened today, it would burn out every electrical circuit on the planet.It has been researched at the University of Tokyo.

There is a theory that the Earth was  simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was hit by a  solar flare that affected nothing else   If the flare had covered all of space it would have destabilized the sun to the point of making it go nova.(New Scientist Magazine)

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