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Just because I'm so jazzed about it, consider this the first in an irregular series of my favorite paragraph/excerpt from each chapter of The Mystic Marriage.

Chapter 1 - Antuniet [This is the opening paragraph of the book.]

Antuniet looked up from the ruined crucible on the workbench and swore softly. Dawn had come and gone while the delicate mixture cooled from a glowing slurry to a glassy charred lump. Another failure. She pulled out Vitali's zodiacal watch and checked the alignment. Twelve hours after the firing began and Virgo was just rising. The instrument was still accurate; the process had begun according to the instructions. Altmann should have been here to tend to the furnace, but she was too honest to lay the blame on her absent assistant. It was impurities in the materials; it had to be. In Prague she'd had reliable sources for the best, but here in Heidelberg it was buyer beware. She'd need to start refining her own and that would add weeks to every step of the process.