Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!!


Spend this Halloween in Oz!
Gilroy, Calif. -- Oct. 21, 2007 -- In time for this Halloween, Whitfield & Dodd Publications announces the availability of BOOK ONE in its Alpimar Series of Oz books -- Halloween in Oz: Dorothy Returns, and the free download of Chapter 1.

Entitled “Oz and Aftermath,” Chapter 1 introduces the new series, telling of Dorothy’s problems in the wake of her mysterious trip to the Land of Oz. The download is at http://www.halloweeninoz.com/files/HIO_Chap1r.pdf

Harry’s gone -- but Dorothy returns! With 553 pages, Halloween in Oz is written in the fuller style of twentieth-first century fantasy. However it keeps the spirit of, and remains in the era of, L. Frank Baum’s classic: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written in 1899.

Those who miss Harry Potter and grieve for Hermione will welcome Dorothy Gale back. And Dorothy is as feisty as Hermione ever was. Some of the boys at school in rural Kansas call her a spitfire when they tease her about her tale of Oz. But Dorothy is right. Oz was not simply a dream, as portrayed in the famous movie, but a real place -- as it was for Baum. And in Halloween in Oz, it is revealed that the Land of Oz is part of a larger alternate Earth, a world called Alpimar -- where magic reigns, not science and technology.

It’s a few months after the tornado, and Dorothy wants to visit Oz for many reasons: to prove to herself that Oz does exist, to escape the Kansas of 1900, where only boys are expected to do so many things, and to find an old tintype that was lost in Oz -- the only picture she had of her parents. (She had been orphaned only a year before, when her home near Bowling Green, KY, burned.)

Then, suddenly, the ghostly voices of her parents in a Halloween-night dream summon her back to Oz. Dorothy discovers that the opportunity for evil witchcraft is at its peak during Ozian Halloween -- which lasts for a "witch-week" of thirteen days! She finds old friends, like Scarecrow, Tin-man, Lion, the Munchkins, and new friends, like a mysterious boy with purple hair, a flight of bats, and her Kansas pumpkin-head magically brought to life.

The book can be obtained at Amazon.com -- or expeditiously via the web site: http://www.halloweeninoz.com/ Contact alpimaroz@gmail.com ISBN 9780979856204
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