A Secret Sin, A Silent Sea

Maris Andlein is a widow trying to rebuild her life after the war that claimed her husband. But when strangers arrive demanding something called Virian's treasure, the peaceful life she has fought to preserve collapses in a single night. What the hunters believe she possesses-and what they are willing to become to claim it-will turn her lonely homestead into the birthplace of a legend.

Captain Islen is a pirate who has survived long enough to know that stories have power. Aboard the Sea Drake, he tells the tale of Maris and the night monsters came for her-never suspecting that the young wizard listening in is already tangled in the fate that story set in motion.

Azael is brilliant, reckless, and accused of a crime he did not commit. When he is dragged before a hostile court, he must place his fate in larger hands and set the mission ahead of his life. The sentence passed that day will echo for generations.

A Secret Sin, A Silent Sea is a mythic fantasy of hidden histories, rising legends, and the moment the wizard Azael the Slywas cast into history.

J. Patrick Lemarr, the firstborn son of a Southern Baptist minister and a teacher-turned-counselor, grew up in Texas and rural Oklahoma, escaping into comic books and children's fiction. After years of channeling both personal loss and wonder into poetry, he turned to his first love-genre fiction-building imaginative worlds through fantasy and horror. His works include Shadow Plays, All That Waits in the Night, The Christmas Cabin, and The Willing, The Wounded, and The Wizard, which introduces his recurring characters Dylan Drake, Darke, and Azael. Today, Lemarr lives in Indiana with his wife and children, crafting stories for Write Crowd Publishing and sharing exclusive content with his Patreon supporters.