The Heavener Runestone is set in a magical forest. Southeastern Oklahoma is home to the Ouachita Mountains and lore of Vikings that predate Columbus. The words “Glome’s Valley” is what some people think is carved into the sandstone monolith in the park and as a writer that sparked my imagination.  I call the Glome books Oklahoma fairytales because of the myth surrounding the area.

In the first book, Glome’s Valley, Ethan travels to the forest with his archeologist father for the summer.  Dad is engrossed in his work of translating the runes and Ethan is bored – so he hikes.  Climbing up one hill and down the next Ethan encounters a very abstract cottage and the inhabitants who live there and begins to play with them.  He soon finds out that the boy dressed in Viking garb is the ghost of a Viking who has been in the forest a long time.  Ethan is soon drawn into the magical world of Glome and the fairies that live there. He will meet the smelly trolls who rampage through the forest, the wood nymph held captive by them, and even Thor and his stepbrother, Loki.  It will take all Ethan’s skill, his father, and even the Highway Patrol to survive and get him home safely.     

A few years later I released the sequel, Return to Glome’s Valley that takes place fourteen years later. Ethan once more returns to the valley he left as a child and finds out nothing has changed – except him. Oh, and a dragon lives in the pond by the cottage.  Ethan has earned his PhD in archeology like his dad and returns once again.  Glome is not happy he’s been gone so long and calls him old.  While Ethan is trying to prove he’s as young as ever, Glome mentions knowing where the Vinland Maps are hidden and protected by the draugrs. Ethan is warned by the dragon, Trondelag, not to chase a piece of paper to be famous when Loki and other magical creatures want to keep it hidden.  Does he listen? As an adult he might if not for Mac, the young girl who much like him as a child, is wandering the forest and soon kidnapped by Loki to settle an old score.

Check out Glome’s Valley https://tinyurl.com/ycxychjm and Return to Glome’s Valley http://tinyurl.com/ybdsqr6w available on Amazon.  There are fairytales in Oklahoma too.

What are you reading this week?