Author Spotlight- Virginia Carraway Stark

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Virginia Carraway Stark has a diverse portfolio and has many publications. Getting an early start on writing, Virginia has had a gift for communication, oration and storytelling from an early age. Over the years she has developed this into a wide range of products from screenplays to novels to articles to blogging to travel journalism. She has been published by many presses from grassroots to Simon and Schuster for her contribution to ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible’ as seen on ABC.  She has been an honorable mention at Cannes Film Festival for her screenplay, “Blind Eye” and was nominated for an Aurora Award.

Click here to purchase her books on: Amazon

(All of her stories are not provided in the link.Check her website for more of her stories published in other anthologies outside of Amazon.)

Click here to purchase: The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens

Click here to purchase: Blind Eye

These two movies were produced from her short stories and turned into screenplays.

Her upcoming novel “Shards of a Mirror” will be released in 2017 through Azoth Khem Publishing. Expanding from her short story “Dopple Maze” in Collective Ramblings Vol. 1, she is taking the horror world to new levels!

Queen Paula DuPrey rules her kingdom by the skin of her teeth. Every year, by law a clone is made of the Rightful Queen of Genick. The Clone is grown to adulthood within a month after the demise of the previous clone using technology that is used without any understanding. The Clone must not only grow properly in a short period of time but must also me mentally and physically fit enough to run an elaborate and deadly maze within the hour time limit.

Whether the Clone wins or loses they will either die in the maze or be executed by guillotine immediately after reaching the center of the maze. If they succeed the ruling queen will rule for another year. If the clone fails then the queen falls to the guillotine after the clone’s death.

The theory behind this brutal yearly practice is that it is proof that the Queen is still virile, strong and youthful enough to rule. The deck is constantly being stacked against the Dupreys as the rival noble family, the House of Dextroth has all the power over the maze and every year they make it more difficult to the point of impossibility.

Queen Paula knows her years on the throne are limited and is desperately stalling for time so that her daughter, the Princess Lena will be old enough to be successfully cloned when her time comes to be queen.

Paula’s daughter, Lena DuPrey is barely sixteen and too young to take the throne but when the next year Paula’s clone fails to complete the maze, Paula is executed for all to see and Lena is crowned Queen.

Now Lena must face the fact that she is the last of her line and if her clone fails the maze the Kingdom will be restored to the Dextroth’s ancient and cruel bloodline.

It is from the Dextroth’s that the wicked magic was accomplished to keep the Kingdom and it’s magic intact, but only through the sacrifice of the Queen each year. The Kingdom of Azeron is a mixture of technology and demonic magic that often intermingle with one another. If the maze is not fed the demons will not be constrained and chaos and horror will fill the land.

Will Lena be able to look at a girl who looks, act and feels just like her and execute her, assuming her DNA is stable enough at such a young age to successfully make a fully functional clone? The DuPrey line may end soon and without a daughter of her own to pass the crown to upon her own inevitable demise at the guillotine it will be sooner rather than later.

Can she accept a King to mate and rule with? Or will her stubborn will and desire to rule on her own  spell the end of the DuPrey’s for good and put the cruel family of Dextroth back on the throne along with their ideas for yet more cruelty and blood magic to rule the land.