“The Dark Tides? Now that is something I haven’t heard in over a millennium,” the Goblin King surmised. “What exactly do you want with me and my goblins?”
“And will come a day, some fifty score seven;
“When an Outlander will return to fated Avalon;
“And the seas will run black and the moon will fall;
“Heralding the Dark Tides and with it, death to
us all.”
— Excerpt from The Dark Tides: Book Two of the Forever Avalon Series
You can now listen to the resurrection of Morgana le Fey and experience the war for Avalon in The Dark Tides: Book Two of the Forever Avalon Series, available on Audible, narrated by Daryl Gannon. The terror, death, and destruction are brought to life in this new audiobook. Daryl does a brilliant job of bringing the story to life through his unique vocal presentation.
The first 10 people to leave a comment in this post will get a code to download a FREE copy of the audiobook. Be the first to listen to the terror of The Dark Tides!
Lord Bryan MoonDrake, the Gil-Gamesh and Eternal Champion of Avalon, helps his wife and children build new lives on the magical island of Avalon. His daughter, Ashley, has returned to Avalon with her husband to experience the magic of this forgotten land. Bryan sees an opportunity to bring his family together, so they plan a grand Avalonian wedding for Ashley and Andrew. But all is not well in the kingdom. Dark forces arise to fulfill a prophecy to resurrect Morgana le Fay, the most powerful sorceress in the history of Avalon. If successful, she will unleash the Dark Tides to destroy the line of Pendragon once and for all. To save his family, his new home, and his king, the Gil-Gamesh fights to overcome incredible odds and powers beyond his comprehension to rid Avalon of Morgana’s evil forever.
Experience the magic of Avalon in a fantasy book called “a mixture of magic, fantasy and lots of imagination” on Amazon. Experience the war to reclaim Avalon in The Dark Tides: Book Two of the Forever Avalon Series on Audible!
Mark Piggott is an award-winning independent author of several fantasy/steampunk novels and short stories. A 23-year U.S. Navy veteran, his stories will take you from the shores of eternal Avalon to a dystopian steampunk future and other fantastic worlds as he weaves through a myriad of flights of fancy in his tales.
The Forever Avalon fantasy book series—including Forever Avalon, The Dark Tides, and The Outlander War—are available online at Amazon and other booksellers. His fantasy steampunk novel, The Last Magus: A Clockwork Heart, is available through Lulu and other booksellers.
Cross over The River of Souls in a fantasy novella, take flight in the steampunk historical fiction, Corsair and the Sky Pirates, the saga continues in The Last Magus: Dragonfire and Steel, his first YA fantasy, Gwen Iver and Pendragon’s Puzzle, and the epic fantasy The Prometheus Engine: Book Four of the Forever Avalon Series from Curious Corvid Publishing. A Dance of Darklings and Demons is coming in 2025 from Curious Corvid. Stay tuned for new fantastic stories from the imagination of Mark Piggott.
As a writer, its nostalgic to think about Halloween past. It’s the myths and legends that inspire me as a fantasy writer. The story of the Celtic festival of Samhain that became our modern Halloween is a part of the mythos we embrace every year when the kids put on masks and go trick or treating. Consider that the lowly Jack O’ Lantern has a story behind it, warding off evil spirts and the like. Even the “Day of the Dead” — el Día de los Muertos — celebrations are steeped in tradition and mythology. It’s these legends, the superstitions, that bring holidays like Halloween to life, but in a good way. Not the blood curdling, gore fest seen in haunted houses across the country.
Researching elements for your next novel can be as time consuming as writing it. Depending on the subject matter–whether its fantasy, science fiction, supernatural, or historical–any author worth their pen and paper want their stories to make sense. Accuracy is the key to all this research. But even then, you sometimes have to make concessions for the sake of storytelling.
There is a broad basis for research, but to me, some of the best research is in the stories I read. Other writers give me inspiration, tips on writing styles, and ideas behind the story itself. For example, I love alternate history novels. Harry Turtledove is one of my favorite writers of alternative history. That gave me pause when I started working on my own alternate history, a world where Nikola Tesla and Jules Verne met and created a “steampunk” future with Tesla’s inventions and Verne’s inspiration. To do that, I had to research their life story to see if they were every in proximity to meet. Fun fact: They were! Tesla worked for the Edison Company in France while Verne lived there. That gave me the track to create my story.
The Black Cauldron (1985) — This is a Disney film, but its one of the darkest Disney films they ever made. The plot is your basic boy becomes hero by defeating the evil sorcerer, your usual fantasy genre yarn, but the visuals of this film are stunning. Something I didn’t know was that it was loosely based on the first two books in The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, a series of five novels that are, in turn, based on Welsh mythology. Set in the mythical land of Prydain during the Early Middle Ages, the film centers on the evil Horned King who hopes to secure an ancient magical cauldron that will aid him in his desire to conquer the world. He is opposed by a young pigherder named Taran, the princess Eilonwy, a bard and a wild creature named Gurgi who seek to destroy the cauldron. This was Disney’s 25th animated feature, the first animated film to receive a PG rating, and it doesn’t get the props like Disney’s other animated films because of the dark storyline. No matter what, this is a great fantasy movie to see.
The Black Hole (1979) — Yet another Disney film that has been relegated to the void that is the Disney vault due to its dark and violent nature. Another great cast ( Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins and Ernest Borgnine) fills the screen with astounding visuals of a black hole in space, before Interstellar. The Palomino, nearing the end of its deep space mission, discovers a black hole in space with a large spaceship nearby, somehow defying the hole’s massive gravitational pull. The ship is identified as the long-lost USS Cygnus. Deciding to investigate, the Palomino encounters a mysterious null gravity field surrounding the Cygnus. What they find on board is far worse… Dr. Hans Reinhardt, a brilliant scientist, and what appears to be a crew of robots. They are not faceless drones, but are in fact the human crew who mutinied when Reinhardt refused to return to Earth and had been lobotomized and “reprogrammed” by Reinhardt to serve him and his floating murder-bot Maximilian. Again, a very dark movie for Disney that was not well received by critics but earned two Academy award nominations for cinematography and visual effects.
The first Star Wars book I ever read was “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and it was a gem. After seeing the original, I wanted more and couldn’t wait for more. This book have us fans more insight into the workings of the force, before we heard about midi-chlorians. It was also the first time we heard about a kaiburr crystals, which is weird because it’s not related to kyber crystals (i.e. lightsabers) but it’s close.
“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place. And men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the the Holy Cross.”~Sir Thomas Mallory, Le Morte d’Arthur
I first learned about the legend of King Arthur as a boy. Like any child of the 60’s and 70’s, it was taught to me through the magic of Disney. The Sword in the Stone (1967) is an animated classic, telling the story of Arthur and Merlin with a witch named Mim thrown in for good measure. It is a fun movie that taught this classic tale to kids like me. 
Most recently, you can find the enigmatic King Arthur, Mordred, Lancelot, and Merlin as “heroic spirits” in the Fate anime series. Arthur and Mordred are gender-swapped as powerful women, both of the “Saber-class” of heroic spirits. Although it was weird at first, they actually kept the legend intact through this twist. The conflict between these two is better explained in this anime than in any other story I’ve read or watched. It’s an amazing conflict that brings out the vulnerabilities in these characters.
But what happens when Avalon is forced back into the modern world of today? You’ll have to read 
Mark Piggott | Fantasy & Steampunk Author 