The word “fire” carries many meanings in the English language. It can mean the mean the warmth of burning logs in a wood stove. It can mean criticism as in “they trained their fire on the administration.”

It can mean the discharge of a gun.

And it can also mean passion, energy, zeal, and ardor.

Using that last meaning, what are the consequences when you steal someone’s fire, their passion, their dreams?

Thieves of Fire, the second novel of Carding, Vermont, explores that question in two parallel stories about two women living in two different periods of time.

By the way, the photograph that I used on the novel’s new cover (shown above) was taken on a late September morning on Holland Pond (shown below). Holland Pond is a remote body of water in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

Folks have asked if I enhanced the color in the photograph but it’s never been touched. This is truly what it looked like.

Amazing, eh?

I hope you will stop by tomorrow to enjoy an excerpt from the beginning of Thieves of Fire. And if you’ve read and enjoyed by books, please review them on Amazon.com. You have no idea how much your opinion matters to other readers.