… I thought I had lost all my posts on this first page of my website. Luckily I just moved them accidentally. So now, everything is back to normal. Also, I updated the German part of the site because I published the first eBook available in German and English.
Amadi, the Phoenix, the Sphinx, and the Djinn is a trilogy available in individual volumes or as a whole from Amazon and Smashwords. More channels will follow as soon as they are approved.
Isn’t the cover art absolutely stunning?
Update on my writing: I’m very busy translating all my German backlist-novels into English. If all goes as planned, I’ll have 8-10 novels finished by the end of the year. I hope you will be around to check them out.
Filed under: Bookworm's Musings by Cat
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This is an end snippet for the “Choose Your Own Adventure Bloghop”. If you want to read the whole adventure (or at least a whole path of it, since there are more than one), please click on the start logo.
Free sensei and find out more about the mysterious dragon and relic?
It’s a hard decision but in the end you turn back to Sensei. As long as you had been training with him, he had never done anything without good reason, and he never lied to you either. You put your palms together and bow deeply.
“Sensei, please allow me to open your chains.” You kneel at his feet and start working on the first lock. Sensei sits on a stone, his face calm as always.
“I am in your debt,” he says when the first shackle opens. “My predecessors and I have been guardians for these dragon eggs for centuries. A witch whose biggest dream it was to become immortal killed their mother, one of the last Dragons of Wisdom. To protect her eggs, the dragon wove a cocoon of magic in front of their cave which stops them from hatching. The cocoon can only be entered with the relic. We, the dragon’s guardians, have been protecting the relic from the wicked witch ever since.”
“Surely she isn’t alive any more. You said you’ve been guarding the eggs for centuries.” The next lock opens, and another chain rattles to the floor.
“You are mistaken. The witch entered the dragon’s body. In it, she survived all these years. But to become truly immortal, and to get her original body back, she needs the blood of the newly hatched dragons. She has tried many times to cheat a new initiate into giving her the relic.”
The last shackle clanks to the ground, and Sensei is free. Together, you tiptoe through the dark until you reach the cave with the eggs. The dragon–witch is scratching at the ground below the protective mist without much success. She’s using swearwords that make you blush, and you are suddenly relived you listened to Sensei.
“You will have to defeat her. I’m too old,” Sensai says. “You are the thousandth guardian, and you’re special. I chose you myself. Go and give the eggs a chance to hatch. I’ll fetch the relic.” As he lifts off the ground to fly away, he pushes you forward, and you stumble into the dragon’s lair.
The witch-dragon turns and glares at you. What can you do now? It seems impossible to outmaneuver a witch in a dragon’s body. She rushes you. Luckily, the lair isn’t big enough for her to spread her wings. You slip past her foreleg, and her teeth dig into her own shin. She howls in pain. Before she can turn again, you climb her back looking for a weak point. Sensai had taught you that every creature had a weak point, but where could it be on a dragon?
The dragon twisted and turned on its back. In jumping off, you noticed a black shape stuck to its belly. What was that? You grab a boulder and hurl it at the dragon’s snout. The effort makes you gasp. But you are more successful then you had hoped for. The boulder bounces off the snout and hits the dragon’s left eye. It blacks out. Since you don’t know how fast it’ll recover, you hurry to its underside to look at the black thing. Could it be its weak spot?
Between the glittering scales, an old person with a crooked nose and yellow teeth stares at you, and you step back involuntarily. A soft, warm voice rumbles in your brain.
“Don’t leave me here. You’re the first person to see me.” It sounds much younger than the woman seems to be. Could it be the hag?
“Who are you?”
“I am the last Dragon of Wisdom. The witch banned me into her body and claimed mine. Help me.” She held out a hand.
You only hesitate a second when the dragon’s body begins to twitch. As fast as you can, you help the old woman untangle herself from the dragon’s scales and hobble over the belly to a save place in the cave.
“I need to touch my old body’s head,” the woman says in your mind. Although it seems crazy to get closer to the waking dragon, you lift her up and carry her toward the beast. You set her down beside the big head when the eye snaps open. Fire shoots from the nozzle, but the dragon cannot evade the old woman’s arm.
“Finally free.” The voice in your mind vibrates with joy, and the dragon rears up. It twists, turns, and its open jaws speed toward you. Before you can move, it snaps up the old woman. Her last cry vanishes in the dragon’s belly.
The dragon smiles at you. “Thank you, dragonguard. Without your help, I would still be caught in that vile body.” She shivers.
Sensei steps forward and holds out the relic. The jade toothpick with the carved dragon curled around the head is longer than his arms. Sensei bows. “Welcome back, Grande Dame. Do you want to inspect your eggs?”
A thunder-like crack resounds in the cave. You turn at the same time as the dragon. The first egg has split, and a green-scaled head pokes up with the egg tooth still attached to the snout.
“Mheek?” it says.
Another crack sounds, and another one. You think, life surely will be interesting as the guardian of a dragon triplet.
The End
Go Back: Nod and Flee the Instant its back is turned
Go Back: Abandon Sensei to help the dragon
Start Over: Begin a new story
Filed under: Choose Your Own Adventure Bloghop, Sample Day by Cat
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I am taking part in Smashword’s Read a Book Week. This means for you, that my YA historical novel “Urchin King” will be available for half price until the 10th of March. If you are interested, click on the new, improved cover.
The blurb again:
Street-urchin Paul learns that his miserable existence keeps him safe from an ancient law that decrees the killing of all second born twins. He agrees to stand in for his twin brother, the mentally challenged Crown Prince, but finds that his skill of going unnoticed is now a liability. Can he defeat a vengeful sorcerer and a soul-devouring ghost without getting his friends and family killed?
I hope you will like it,
Filed under: promotion by Cat
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I took a course on marketing – yes, I’m that ingenuous – and the coach suggested giving away copies of our books for free in exchange for reviews. Well, I’ve been offering free copies of my eBooks to many book bloggers (yes, I did check they were taking eBooks) but only a few were interested. If it weren’t so stupid, it’d be funny how much rejection can hurt.
It’s not that my books are bad (at least according to my readers and my German agent), I just don’t seem able to phrase my offers in a way that makes the stories sound as interesting as (I think) they are. Sigh.
I know, I’ll get over it soon enough but for the moment, I feel like hanging in the air with a mile of nothing below – no parachute, no bungee. All that can stop me from falling is my imagination.
Being an author has been my dream ever since I learned my alphabet. Why should I give up only because it takes time to find those who love the same quirky things I like? (Oh, are that tiny wings sprouting from my shoulders?) Maybe, I should offer more free books, and not only to book bloggers but to everyone who is willing to leave reviews on amazon, smashwords, goodreads, and any other place? Meanwhile, I could write more books until more and more people discover they like the way I write.
Argh – this was supposed to be a Blues, and Blues Songs are sad. Now, look what I’ve done. I went and grew myself wings – pink ones. I hate pink. Why couldn’t they be green? Watch me flying off to translate the next chapter mumbling, “I guess it’s time to stop singing. I’m just not cut out for sad songs or stories. I should have known…”
Filed under: Bookworm's Musings by Cat
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Now available in print. Get your copy!
I “stumbled over” an eleven year old boy who taught me how much can be achieved by doing small steps every day persistently. His name was Harry Moseley, and he passed away peacefully in his mother’s arms on Saturday 8 October 2011 at 11.10pm. The most amazing thing about Harry (in case you haven’t heard yet) is that he single handedly raised over £85,000 (that’s roughly 137,000 USD) for brain cancer research and near to a million with the help of his friends by (more…)
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Yay! One of my stories was accepted for a cookbook collection by romance author Adelle Laudan . It’s a lovely, real book (paperback) to put on your counter as you try the many delicious recipes. There are recipes for cookies, cakes, pies, desserts, fudge and smoothies! Stories accompany many recipes and featured authors (including Yours Truly) remember one of their childhood memories (more…)
Filed under: Bookworm's Musings by Cat
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