We Walk in Darkness

Spell Weaver #5

by Bill Hiatt

Lucas Santos has been worried for months that he is some kind of freak. He can move too fast, and he sometimes gets flashes of the near future. He does what a lot of teenagers would do under the circumstances; he keeps his special abilities secret, even from his family and his closest friends.

But secrets have a way of being revealed, and when a shadow takes on a life of its own and starts pursuing Lucas, he has the feeling he won't be able to conceal his true nature much longer. Unexpectedly, the shadow's sudden intervention uncovers a much larger secret that his family has been keeping, a secret that may save him from the shadows--but at the cost of destroying his current life completely.

116 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 29, 2015

About the author

Bill Hiatt has been teaching English at Beverly Hills High School since 1981--long enough for some of his current students to be children of his former students. (It's a good thing that doesn't make him feel old--much!) Bill also sponsored the high school's literary magazine from 1992 until June of 2012, which gave him the opportunity to work with a number of young aspiring writers.

Although teaching has been and remains Bill's first love, he has also been drawn to creative writing of various sorts. From high school on, he wrote short stories, a little poetry, and an earlier novel, finished in 1982. By that point, the increasing demands of teaching kept him from pursuing writing as actively as he would have liked, but his impulse to write continued to poke him from somewhere in the back of his mind. A few years ago a particular group of students inspired him to create grammar tests in the form of short stories, with the students themselves as characters. In some cases he got so caught up in the writing that he stayed up all night to finish the material. His students enjoyed the stories so much that they actually looked forward to grammar tests--and they scored higher on the semester grammar final than any of his previous classes! Their response to his writing made Bill wonder if there was a way to find time to write and still be the kind of teacher he wanted to be.

Another force pulling Bill in the direction of writing has been (ironically) teaching, particularly his consistent advice to students to get outside their comfort zones and follow their dreams--advice he realized was somewhat hypocritical if he wasn't following it himself. After all, teaching, though certainly his most important dream, is well inside his comfort zone by now. Publishing, on the other hand, is a different kind of exposure, more scary in some ways and definitely outside his comfort zone. Authors, regardless of the genre in which they write, reveal much about themselves every time they publish; their work is a part of them, and maybe not a part that they have shared with other people before. Also, authors have to be willing to face rejection; regardless of the nature or quality of a book, not everyone is going to like it. Despite the risks involved, Bill eventually realized he needed to follow his own advice if he really wanted his students to follow it. After that, he squeezed in a little time to write each day, and eventually he finished another novel. He hopes his readers will enjoy reading his work as much as he enjoys creating it, and he hopes that his example may encourage more of his students to push themselves a little to get what they really want out of life.

Reviews

[Johnie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining read

I enjoyed reading this book very much and would recommend it highly to anyone that like mythology and lots of action.

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome Book! A must read for Fantasy Readers like me.

I get bored easily but not with "We Walk in Darkness" by Bill Hiatt. It is well written with jumps and surprises.

This was a great balance of reality and fantasy that was totally believable so I was totally into it. Maybe it was because he was so good at slowly bringing you into the fantasy and so I just believed it all by the end. Excellent writing.

The names of people are interesting but not too impossible to read.

I had trouble with picking one word to describe the mood in this book. I went back and forth between Dark and Suspenseful. I thought about Dark, but realized that there was always Hope throughout. So I think Suspenseful.

Lucas is the main character but if you like this author's writing, make sure you pay attention to Taliesin. I have read the intros to Bill Hiatt's other books and Tai (Taliesin) is the main character in several of them. I am looking forward to reading these books also.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank You, Bill Hiatt. Please keep writing. We need more Fantasy liturature.
Your fan, Alexa