Amazon Category:  Fantasy Publisher: 1stbooks Library ISBN-10:  075961394X Type: Fiction Pages: 196 Copyright: Dec 10 2000 In Grimal's Spellbook words become pure power, friendship outlasts life itself, and magic hides beneath reality's thin fabric. Do you hear the serpent breathe behind death's own knocking door?... Excerpt Prologue A word on a wall. One scrawled word, scratched out in black ink at eye-level on the oatmeal-colored ceramic tile. Whoever's hand had written it, and what it had meant was now left unknown and presumably unknowable. The word: Grimal The wall, on which the unknown hand had scribed the unknown word, stood at an offset turn in a rarely used and mainly hidden passageway, a narrow and poorly-lit passage beneath the gymnasium and between the greater hallways of the men's locker-room and the music hall. Medlock High School stood in near silence, as summer bore down and ran out. There were no musical instruments sending their sounds through the cavernous pathways and around the turning subterranean burrows. It could only be remembered, the patter of tennis-shoed boys on the way to being men, and the boisterous chit-chat and banter that played about the underbelly of the school during the other 9 months and the daylight hours of the school's year. Just the word, the word itself, with no meaning but that applied it by those passing and taking notice. But none were there now to make it mindful. None were there to give it a curious glance or a sideswept focus. Not until next week would the word be seen by the straggling random students who would use the passage and register the meaning of the word on the wall.

John Patrick Schmitz, The Fantasy Grove, www.fictionforest.com
Grimal's Spellbook By mkgilbert [1st Books, March, 2001, ebook/paperback, ISBN: 0-75961-394-X] Darrel's normal teenage life in the small town of Medlock is shaken by the sudden tragic death of his best friend, Jason. Jason had spent the whole summer working on a story based upon the word "Grimal", mysteriously scrawled on a seldom used hallway in their high school. Jason's final request is for Darrel to finish the story for him and though he doesn't consider himself much of a writer, Darrel decides he must fulfill his friend's wish. What begins as the straight forward project of trying to piece together the notes contained in the files on Jason's laptop computer into a real story, soon turns into a terrifying conflict involving an ancient spellbook and an old vengeful witch. With the aid of three of his friends, Darrel must try to solve the mystery of the book and put the old evil to rest once and for all. Grimal's Spellbook is an absorbing modern day fantasy tale filled with the rich details of small town life and teenage tribulations, mixed with occultist elements. The author, mkgilbert, has a literary style reminiscent of an early Stephen King, but with a less rigid structure. The story is revealed through the different angles of Jason's notes, glimpses into the past and Darrel's own writings. Though none of the individual aspects of the story are particularly original, mkgilbert's unique blending of them certainly is, making Grimal's Spellbook a worthy read for any lover of fantasy. --John Patrick Schmitz, The Fantasy Grove, www.fictionforest.com The Fiction of John Patrick Schmitz www.fictionforest.com http://carolinanavy.com/navy/creativewriting/clipper/titan/titan.html http://www.schmitzgroup.com/jps/