So the response to my charming giveaway is underwhelming at best, but I shall plug faithfully on. I really want to give away my charmingly romantic perfume and my latest book in the Sleight of Hand series, so I invite you again to share a moment when you saw magic. And to kick it off, I’ll share my most recent experience with magic with you now.

I just got back from a trip to Germany, and on the last day as my tour group companions and I wearily boarded the bus for a trip through the Black Forest to our hotel beyond Heidelberg, magic (in spite of the whole Black Forest thing) was the last thing I expected.

In this respect, I was not, at first, disappointed. The Black Forest was beautiful with trees donning their fall colors and all, but there was nothing especially mysterious or fairytale-like about the home of the Grimm brothers. No magic. Lovely farms and plenty of gorgeous landscapes which I snapped pictures of through the windows of the bus, though.

The Black Forest was beautiful but prosaic. At first.

I’d stopped snapping pictures through my window, however, as we came around a curve, and was gazing dreamily (half asleep) through the window on the other side of the bus when I saw it. A beautiful valley straight out of a fairytale with little cottages clustered around a church—and a rainbow arching over the whole thing. I blinked. Was that really a rainbow? The morning mist had, I thought, long since burned away, so where could the rainbow be emanating from? Perhaps just enough of the mist had lingered a bit longer in the valley, though I couldn’t actually see it from above.

Regardless, it felt like magic, and its restorative influence revived me enough to continue watching the sights go by for another ten or fifteen minutes.

Are you still listening? Because this is where I realized the full significance of the magic I’d seen.

The tour director announced that we’d gone astray. The GPS had guided us wrong and we’d have to turn back, which unfortunately would put us off our schedule. My ears perked up. Did this mean we weren’t even supposed to have passed the fairytale rainbow valley? Could the old magic of the Black Forest have touched even the modern GPS to lead us down a path to show us magic still did exist there?

It had. We passed the valley I’d noticed before. There was no rainbow this time, but I hadn’t actually expected there to be one. That rainbow had been a magical moment in time, a good omen for our group, and omens, once seen, may fade.

Now it’s your turn. Our world needs to believe in magic more than ever. We all see it. Sometimes we capture it on film, sometimes just in our memories. But it’s out there, and the more we share it, the better off we all will be.

Leave a comment on any post on this blog telling me about a time you experienced magic for a chance to win a bottle of the magic-inspired perfume I created on Waft.com and a copy of Movie Magic. Contest ends October 28, 2017 and winner will be announced at 10 a.m. Eastern October 31, 2017 on this blog as part of my release day festivities for Movie Magic. Entrants should check this blog for details on how to provide me with a shipping address in case they win.