This Week's Books

For the celebration this week, I am highlighting my books Wucaii and Coming from Nowhere.  One of them is fantasy and the other is sci fi, but they both have female characters who are struggling to find their place in a new world.  More info can be found below!

It has been 500 years since Aelana has been home, and a lot has changed in that time--including her. As a half-dragon, half-human hybrid, she has been traveling the universe destroying worlds. Both anxious and excited to return, she wonders what she will find. Her memories of home are filled with pain and loss, especially for her first and only love. She knows he won't be there, but will his memory? Will her anguish remain?

JD does not have a past—at least not one that she can remember—and that makes living life on Mars challenging.

With nowhere to go, she is sent to the local military academy where she is trained to become a member of the elite secret police. While there, she becomes a pawn in Roger’s struggle for military dominance and Chris’s rebellion to overthrow the military regime.

She supposedly holds a secret that will change the face of the soldier, but, unfortunately, she doesn’t know what that secret is. Her only desire is to find the truth of her existence, and finds herself thrust into a realm where the truth of her past and present is more horrific than she ever imagined.

DRAGONS!

The Hobbit:  The Desolation of Smaug came out on Friday.  I haven't seen it yet, and I don't plan on seeing it in the theater.  The films are too long for me to sit in those seats.  I like to watch them in my house so I can pause them and go to the bathroom.

The exciting thing about his film is the dragon.  I LOVE dragons.  LOVE them!  I love them in all forms--as destroyers or as helpers.  I remember the first dragon movie I watched, Dragonslayer.  Scared the hell out of me.  The scene with the baby dragons eating the princess was a little disturbing for my young mind.  But it also intrigued me.

In high school, I read some of the Dragonriders of Pern books.  I really enjoyed them, but I don't really what they're about.  It's been a loooong time.  Perhaps it's time to pick them up again.

Reign of Fire came out while I was working on my first draft of Wucaii.  I remember going to the theater to see it with my family.  It was a great film.  I remember hoping that dragons were going to become the next movie monster and there would be a high demand for them.  My hope was that my book would get picked up by a publisher, but dragons never really took off.  And, thankfully, I didn't actually finish the book at that time.  It still needed a lot of work!

There are numerous other examples of films and books that I read that involved dragons, but not all of them had the impression that these ones made.  I'm hoping with the next installment of The Hobbit films that dragons will make a comeback.

My book Wucaii was influenced by my love affair with the reptilian creatures, but I added my own twist to it.  Check it out if you get the chance and let me know what you think.

In celebration of the dragon, I'm going to have a giveaway.  The first three people who comment on this post with their favorite dragon book or movie will get an ecopy of Wucaii.  Don't forget to leave a way for me to contact you!

Hooray for dragons!