Nocturne
Tricia D. Wagner
Publication date: April 14th 2026
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
In NOCTURNE, sixteen-year-old Livi learns the truth of who she is—a Siren, her people known only to legends. She must learn to master her powers of influence, strength, and destruction to stop a warmongering Admiral from drafting her best friends, capturing and killing her people, and decimating her homeland of Nocturne.
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EXCERPT:
Livi stood before the tavern’s bleak threshold, its heavy door cobbled of wrecked ships.
She peered through its ragged window, quieting the wiser part of her, an inner voice calling for her to turn back. And truly, she was stunned that she’d mustered the daring to try this.
There were dozens of men here—sailors all brooding over their flagons, many looking to be harboring grudges.
The tavern’s splintery walls were studded with trophies—toothy payaras, dry in their death throes, tacked beneath golden portraits of infamous Korps Mariner ships and their dread captains.
The men frequenting this sand-dusted, fish-pongy tavern—The Orphic, were the sun-beaten sailors and damaged soldiers of Merritaine, mercenaries and relieved fighters who’d reached the shore of old age still breathing.
No one dared step a toe in The Orphic unless he bore epic tales—bloody acts of acclaim on the baleful blue seas.
Many here had killed. Some for honorable causes in noble wars, yes. But they’d killed.
For all their savagery, though, they were brave.
Livi had heard enough stories to understand them as uniformly dauntless and skilled. If anyone could help her skip Merritaine’s coast and reach Nocturne, he’d be drinking here.
Through the brume of pipe smoke, she measured each face for hints of affability. Or at least for traces of good humor—signs that someone might consider her offer. If she could just single out one sailor more approachable than not, perhaps she could move to him unnoticed.
But that wouldn’t happen. Women scarcely set foot here, and sixteen-year-old girls certainly didn’t.
A few of the sailors came across as jovial—but even they harbored an undercurrent of trouble in their looks, their ease striking like a gusty southerly bathing the seaside, forecasting a typhoon’s assault.
The afternoon seemed all at once to grow late, a shaft of misted sunlight sluicing through the windows and casting the place in watery relief.
In fixing on that panorama of ocean, Livi could almost see Nocturne’s peaks in the deep west, its moonstone shores marbled with the shadowy ash given by its volcanic chain.
Those heights, she had to reach. For it was said that Nocturne’s high places were hived with sea caves—chambers shining with waters rumored to have healing properties.
Some believed those springs could stave off even death.
Livi eased from her jacket a small jar of pearls, each perfect, as plump as a blueberry—these a mere sampling of the trove she’d collected. They ought to be more than enough to buy passage to Nocturne from someone here bearing the skill, and the gall, and the ship, and the time to set sail for the Isles, along with some assurance that he could ferry her through storms, over waters where lurked sharks and killer whales and squids that tore up boats, and finally beyond the dread Maelstroms.
Livi had imagined this moment many times—making her bold approach in The Orphic, striking a deal. She’d imagined that arriving at this brink would feel like the onset of her escape.
But in finally standing here, readying to approach men alleged to be the most barbarous in Merritaine, the idea seemed beyond reckless.
Célian, her best friend—maybe more—would be sick at the thought of her here. And truly, in darkening this threshold, she felt she was skimming the rim of the Maelstroms, those great whirlpools unceasing in their churning, twisting what strayed near straight down in a tempest, claiming ships and seafarers alike as a part of themselves.
The bright Merrow Ocean glinting in, though, delivered some steadfastness. For at the sight of its rolling, Livi could gather a sense of what it might feel like, teaming with someone here, cruising on his scabrous ship to the treacherous west.
A man seated at the tavern’s back corner stood out a touch.
He looked a decade younger than the rest, and he had all his limbs, which was saying something. He seemed not resentful, or affable, or angry—just somber. His solemnity made it clear that he wanted to be left to himself.
But it also lent an impression of patience. Maybe he’d listen.
She edged open the tavern’s door and crept in. She eased behind a column in the entryway and held still.
She’d have to get to the somber man quick. If she drew too much attention, the barkeep—a tall man, his eyes sharp to check all the action, his manner busy and swift with his bottles—would cast her out before she could lay down one word of her offer.
Or worse—he’d let the men handle the disruption.
Livi stepped from the shade, into the amber light of the tavern.
Author Bio:
As a young reader, writers were like gods and goddesses to now author Tricia D. Wagner. She never could have imagined weaving tales like her favorite storytellers, until a fateful April dinner conversation with her husband about a lecture he attended got her mind whirling. By the end of that summer, she’d written 400,000 words: a speculative fiction trilogy. Wagner felt as if she’d emerged from a cocoon as some new sort of creature. She was hooked.
It was important to Tricia to sharpen her skills, and she immersed herself in workshops, guides, and writing communities, learning from editors how to hone her craft. She did this for years, and the result is her newly released novella The Strider and the Regulus, two independently published novelettes, four soon-to-be published novellas, and five as yet unpublished novels. She found writing to be a method for becoming the person she felt she was born to be. Wagner finds that writing inspires her to be a better person, truer to herself.
The ideas and substance of Tricia’s writing comes from a very deep place that is strongly stimulated by setting. Often, when she has completed a story, she feels as if she’s been to her story world, whether it’s on the map or not. She likes to believe all the places she writes about exist somewhere, somehow.
In writing her stories, Wagner was surprised and delighted to discover how real the characters become to an author; that for many writers, their characters end up as their most treasured friends. She loves to delve into them to mine their natures, secrets, and desires—to tell their stories with the legitimacy they deserve. In studying her characters, she finds she has the opportunity to shape herself, inching closer to the person she wants to become.
Wagner believes revision is magical in its power to make a good book great, and early drafts are only the beginning of a story’s journey. Any idea can wind up a good story, but with reflection and time and improvement, it can become art. Once Wagner completes a revision project, it feels miraculous how many fresh approaches have manifested and how much truer the story feels.
Wagner hopes her readers feel enchanted when they read her stories; that after completing one, it seems they’re drifting out from under a spell. This is exactly how she feels when she finishes writing a story. She hopes to that her writing might expand their minds, spirits, and worlds a bit, and she hope they fall in love with her characters and are moved by her artistry of language.
When she isn’t writing poignant works of literary fiction, Wagner is a Director of Adult Education – ESL Programs at a community college, a job and staff that she loves. In her spare time she enjoys refining her writing craft to discover new angles and landscapes that might enrich her writing palette. One such example is a recent course she took in learning to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, something that’s sure to end up in a story at some point. Wagner lives in Rockford, Illinois, with her husband and three darling cats.
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