Grounding Magic

After having a large family, a powerful mermaid's tail, and the magic of Mother Sea, life walking on land is, well, lonely and hard work. That's what Tamarind Wilkerson realizes after four years of marriage, a baby, and another on the way. When her husband, John, abandons her to work long hours alongside his ex-girlfriend for unscrupulous bosses, Tamarind wonders if she made the right choice to leave the waters around Culebra. Even as the new life growing in Tamarind shows signs of a grounding earth magic, the sea lures her. The question is, now that she has her happy-ever-after, can Tamarind change her mind?

Four years after putting off her tail to marry a human, former mermaid Tamarind Wilkerson finds her life anything but a fairy tale. Her husband, John, works long hours at a startup where his former girlfriend Zoë takes a job—and takes an interest in him. She’s pregnant and lonely, stuck caring for a two year old in a world very different from life underwater. Her only real friend is an elderly woman named Lucy, who has her own family dramas and unhealed wounds to deal with. On the island of Culebra, where Tamarind’s best friend Valerie still lives, lurks Ana, the witch who transformed her. Ana has plans for her young protégé, and she intends to bring her back any way she can. As Tamarind’s ordinary human life suffocates her, she begins to wonder "Is this what I gave my tail up for?" And Ana’s power begins to tempt her …. GROUNDING MAGIC was originally published as Volume Two in THE MERMAID'S PENDANT, a novel that The Midwest Book Review describes as a "beautifully crafted fantasy that shows much symbolism and wisdom." The tale begins in AN ORDINARY DROWNING: BOOK ONE OF THE MERMAID'S PENDANT.

LeAnn Neal Reilly graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a master's degree in professional writing. Along the way, she majored briefly in chemistry, served as opinion editor and then editor of her college newspaper, and interned for an international design firm. After graduate school, LeAnn worked first for a small multimedia startup and then a computer science research group. At the startup, she spent her time writing user manuals and scripts for multimedia software used to train railroad engineers. While writing among geeks, LeAnn became enamored and decided to take one home for herself. After getting married and starting a family, LeAnn returned to her adolescent daydreams of writing novels. She lives outside Boston with one husband, three children, a dog named Hobbes (after Calvin &), and a cat named Attila.