I'm super excited for this release! I mean, who wouldn't be when the heroine is a snarky, badass, dragon riding street performer with a vendetta.
Check out chapter 1 SNIPPET:
Ever tried to get a permit to fly a dragon over Times Square?
Gives a whole new meaning to red tape …
I stood on the platform, my favorite bullwhip in my left hand. Around me, New York City spread like a glittery, overdrawn circus, all those tourists peeping at me like I was about to split their heads wide open.
And maybe I was.
You never knew what a street performer would do—that was the beauty of the art. The wildness. The thrill. The fear.
I snapped the whip, a simple circus crack on the platform. “I’m Tara Drake,” I called out. “And this here’s my dragon, Percival.”
Beside me, Percy let out a low, chest-rumbling growl, the kind of noise that sent shivers down a spine. If I didn’t hear him growl in his sleep every night, it might do the same for me.
He shook his blue-scaled head, yellow eyes surveying the crowd like he couldn’t decide on the tastiest morsel. Already they’d backed up a few steps, hands set to their fanny packs like he’d siphon out their cash as he reduced them to ash.
How many of them had seen a dragon? A real, bonafide, fire-breathing dragon?
I’d yet to encounter a tourist who had.
I smiled, set one hand between the spines sticking up from Percy’s long neck. “He’s not gonna bite unless you don’t leave a tip when we’re finished. And I know none of you kind folks would do such a thing.”
Soft laughter. I’d been hearing that kind of laughter all my life—usually nervous. But even nervous laughter still eased the nerves.
I fell into a languorous pacing around Percy, which took me on a radius of about twelve feet. He wasn’t as big as dragons in the books—yet—which suited me well enough. I could ride him and I could stable him. It’d be years before I had to worry about him growing big as a house.
The bullwhip’s thong trailed on the platform behind me, seven feet of potential with a pretty gold cracker on the end. “How many of you know how fast a whip can move?”
A few hands went up. As I came around Percy, I pointed to a man near the back. He looked harmless; nobody with a bald spot the size of an orange could be one of the Scarred, or so I told myself.
But I still kept watch for them, especially in this crowd. The Scarred were here. My intel was solid. They might not be in this crowd, but they were nearby.
And now that I’d taken down that ogre, they knew I was hunting them.
“Let’s hear it.” I delivered another crack as punctuation.
“Twenty miles an hour,” he called.
I shook my head with a close-lipped smile. “Sir, you drive that slow you’ll get pulled over. What makes you think this here whip’s got any less pep?” I dug into my native Kentuckian accent, hamming it up for the crowd. A cutesy girl in a tartan skirt, blowing bubblegum, cracking a whip and riding a dragon was one thing. But combine all that with a quirky, bubbly Southern accent, and it positively drove them over the edge. Twenty percent increase in tips, easy.
More laughter. I was winning them by quips and cracks before I’d even gotten to riding Percy.
More hands went up. More numbers were called out.
Finally, I raised my free hand for silence. And they obeyed, because I had them. I’d had them since the moment I’d ridden onto the platform atop a dragon.
There was nobody like me and Percy. Nobody in the world.
I adjusted my grip on the whip. “When the kinetic force leaves my shoulder, it travels down my arm right to the handle, speeds up through the thong and on down to the fall. By the time it hits this little cracker, you’ve got a sonic boom. Only thing faster than that is when the gods high-tailed it out of here.”
Raucous laughter. Don’t know why that joke always kills, but it does. Gods be damned.
I paused, stepped to the edge of the platform, lowered my voice so that they would all lean forward. “This little piece of cord and cable moves at nine hundred miles an hour.”
Gasps. Wide eyes. These were my bread and butter.
When I stepped back to Percy, he eyed me in anticipation. “That kind of force hits a regular person, it won’t just leave a scar. You might rupture an artery. If you’re real unlucky, you might find yourself without a hand.”
I turned back, my free hand returning to Percy’s neck. “But dragon scale? It’s the hardest material on Earth. Which is why me and Percy are the perfect pair.”
I cracked the whip a third time—this one an overhead swing against Percy’s side. The sonic boom echoed off the buildings around us, and Percy? He didn’t even blink. He didn’t move an inch.
“Now don’t call PETA on me, folks. Percy likes it—finds the whips tickle him a little. Don’t you, Perce?”
His head angled toward me, yellow eyes meeting my own. He’d been instructed never to talk during our performances—it scared the onlookers more than it thrilled them. And you never wanted to scare them more than you thrilled them.
Best way to lose that tip.
So he shook his head in assent, scales lifting and rippling like he was flexing his muscles.
Another wave of nervous laughter from the crowd.
I pointed out toward them, cracking the whip in a figure eight beside my body—pow-pow. “Who wants to step up onto the platform? We’ve got a trick to show you, and we need a volunteer with a steel bladder.”
When no hands went up—they never volunteered after I invoked the steel bladder—I set both hands together as though in prayer. “Nobody gets hurt, except maybe me. That’s a promise.”
This was the point where two or three brave palms would rise into the air. And they did, just on cue.
I pointed to a young man. “Come on up. Quickly, please—Percy gets ornery when he has to stand still too long. Ornery dragons are nature’s least favorite sight.”
I grabbed the two apples off the stool behind me, set both into his hands as he came up onto the stage. “Now balance this one on your head, and hold the other out before you. Face this way”—I positioned him toward the crowd—“and stay real still. Me and Percy are going to come back for … um …. one of them apples in a minute and would appreciate it waiting for us.” I touched the apple in his hand and gave him a wink.
One of my fingers pointed straight up toward the sky, and their faces followed the direction I was pointing. As though they could see me up there already. As though my finger bore the answers to the world’s questions, if they could just figure out exactly where I was pointing.
I hopped back on the stage and up onto Percy’s back, gripped his nearest spine with my free hand. When I clicked my tongue twice, he took two steps forward, claws scratching across the platform as he brought us to the edge. As his wings extended, the skin stretching almost transparently taut along the wingbones, that was when the shiver went through me.
There was something about a dragon lifting into the air. You never got over it.
He leapt off, wings fully extended to catch the air. As he did, I struck the bullwhip up over my head, the cracker flicking through the air to bite straight into the apple atop my volunteer’s head. I didn’t look back; I heard the gasp, followed by the splattering of apple guts hitting the platform.
We swung low a moment, to within a foot of the nearest terrified onlooker, before we ascended past the billboards and the noise of the city. From here you couldn’t get a good view of the roofs; it was only when you were up high you could see properly.
Which was where Percival came in.
We came alongside a skyscraper, and I sat low against Percy’s neck, the wind whipping my braid against my jacket. He already knew which direction to take us: straight on to the clouds. His reflection blackened floor after floor of windows as we rose, his wings cracking the air like ice.
When we crested the city, Percy’s wings extended, tenting in the air. We hovered there, just us looking down on eight million people. From up here, New York City might have been a miniature toy town; I could practically scoop up Central Park in my palm.
“I told you I’d show you the world, Perce,” I whispered to him.
His wings flapped once. “The GoneGod World, you mean.”
I patted his neck. “Even a world without gods has some beauty to it.”
We needed to swing back around toward the platform; the crowd was waiting. But first—
“Over there, Percy.” I pointed over at the cluster of properties, the tallest of which struck like a pointed finger into the sky. “Think you can swing us past those buildings on your way down?”
If my intel was right, the Scarred were up to something particularly nasty on one of these rooftops. Trouble was, I didn’t know which one.
The dragon snorted as he flapped once, the sound echoing over the city like a firecracker.
“Child’s play.”
I leaned close, grabbing his spine as he shot us forward a few blocks. He angled hard right, and we made an elegant circuit around the buildings in question.
I stared hard. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for—not until Percy saw it. And then it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Tara,” Percy said. “On your nine. Do you see what I see?”
As we came around the tallest building, there, piled in one innocuous corner of the roof, were six human-sized crosses.
“Bingo,” I whispered, shifting my weight to send us into a divebomb toward the waiting crowd. “Time to hunt us down some Scarred and save us a singer’s sweetheart.”
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
I'm super excited for this release! I mean, who wouldn't be when the heroine is a snarky, badass, dragon riding street performer with a vendetta.
Check out chapter 1 SNIPPET:
Ever tried to get a permit to fly a dragon over Times Square?
Gives a whole new meaning to red tape …
I stood on the platform, my favorite bullwhip in my left hand. Around me, New York City spread like a glittery, overdrawn circus, all those tourists peeping at me like I was about to split their heads wide open.
And maybe I was.
You never knew what a street performer would do—that was the beauty of the art. The wildness. The thrill. The fear.
I snapped the whip, a simple circus crack on the platform. “I’m Tara Drake,” I called out. “And this here’s my dragon, Percival.”
Beside me, Percy let out a low, chest-rumbling growl, the kind of noise that sent shivers down a spine. If I didn’t hear him growl in his sleep every night, it might do the same for me.
He shook his blue-scaled head, yellow eyes surveying the crowd like he couldn’t decide on the tastiest morsel. Already they’d backed up a few steps, hands set to their fanny packs like he’d siphon out their cash as he reduced them to ash.
How many of them had seen a dragon? A real, bonafide, fire-breathing dragon?
I’d yet to encounter a tourist who had.
I smiled, set one hand between the spines sticking up from Percy’s long neck. “He’s not gonna bite unless you don’t leave a tip when we’re finished. And I know none of you kind folks would do such a thing.”
Soft laughter. I’d been hearing that kind of laughter all my life—usually nervous. But even nervous laughter still eased the nerves.
I fell into a languorous pacing around Percy, which took me on a radius of about twelve feet. He wasn’t as big as dragons in the books—yet—which suited me well enough. I could ride him and I could stable him. It’d be years before I had to worry about him growing big as a house.
The bullwhip’s thong trailed on the platform behind me, seven feet of potential with a pretty gold cracker on the end. “How many of you know how fast a whip can move?”
A few hands went up. As I came around Percy, I pointed to a man near the back. He looked harmless; nobody with a bald spot the size of an orange could be one of the Scarred, or so I told myself.
But I still kept watch for them, especially in this crowd. The Scarred were here. My intel was solid. They might not be in this crowd, but they were nearby.
And now that I’d taken down that ogre, they knew I was hunting them.
“Let’s hear it.” I delivered another crack as punctuation.
“Twenty miles an hour,” he called.
I shook my head with a close-lipped smile. “Sir, you drive that slow you’ll get pulled over. What makes you think this here whip’s got any less pep?” I dug into my native Kentuckian accent, hamming it up for the crowd. A cutesy girl in a tartan skirt, blowing bubblegum, cracking a whip and riding a dragon was one thing. But combine all that with a quirky, bubbly Southern accent, and it positively drove them over the edge. Twenty percent increase in tips, easy.
More laughter. I was winning them by quips and cracks before I’d even gotten to riding Percy.
More hands went up. More numbers were called out.
Finally, I raised my free hand for silence. And they obeyed, because I had them. I’d had them since the moment I’d ridden onto the platform atop a dragon.
There was nobody like me and Percy. Nobody in the world.
I adjusted my grip on the whip. “When the kinetic force leaves my shoulder, it travels down my arm right to the handle, speeds up through the thong and on down to the fall. By the time it hits this little cracker, you’ve got a sonic boom. Only thing faster than that is when the gods high-tailed it out of here.”
Raucous laughter. Don’t know why that joke always kills, but it does. Gods be damned.
I paused, stepped to the edge of the platform, lowered my voice so that they would all lean forward. “This little piece of cord and cable moves at nine hundred miles an hour.”
Gasps. Wide eyes. These were my bread and butter.
When I stepped back to Percy, he eyed me in anticipation. “That kind of force hits a regular person, it won’t just leave a scar. You might rupture an artery. If you’re real unlucky, you might find yourself without a hand.”
I turned back, my free hand returning to Percy’s neck. “But dragon scale? It’s the hardest material on Earth. Which is why me and Percy are the perfect pair.”
I cracked the whip a third time—this one an overhead swing against Percy’s side. The sonic boom echoed off the buildings around us, and Percy? He didn’t even blink. He didn’t move an inch.
“Now don’t call PETA on me, folks. Percy likes it—finds the whips tickle him a little. Don’t you, Perce?”
His head angled toward me, yellow eyes meeting my own. He’d been instructed never to talk during our performances—it scared the onlookers more than it thrilled them. And you never wanted to scare them more than you thrilled them.
Best way to lose that tip.
So he shook his head in assent, scales lifting and rippling like he was flexing his muscles.
Another wave of nervous laughter from the crowd.
I pointed out toward them, cracking the whip in a figure eight beside my body—pow-pow. “Who wants to step up onto the platform? We’ve got a trick to show you, and we need a volunteer with a steel bladder.”
When no hands went up—they never volunteered after I invoked the steel bladder—I set both hands together as though in prayer. “Nobody gets hurt, except maybe me. That’s a promise.”
This was the point where two or three brave palms would rise into the air. And they did, just on cue.
I pointed to a young man. “Come on up. Quickly, please—Percy gets ornery when he has to stand still too long. Ornery dragons are nature’s least favorite sight.”
I grabbed the two apples off the stool behind me, set both into his hands as he came up onto the stage. “Now balance this one on your head, and hold the other out before you. Face this way”—I positioned him toward the crowd—“and stay real still. Me and Percy are going to come back for … um …. one of them apples in a minute and would appreciate it waiting for us.” I touched the apple in his hand and gave him a wink.
One of my fingers pointed straight up toward the sky, and their faces followed the direction I was pointing. As though they could see me up there already. As though my finger bore the answers to the world’s questions, if they could just figure out exactly where I was pointing.
I hopped back on the stage and up onto Percy’s back, gripped his nearest spine with my free hand. When I clicked my tongue twice, he took two steps forward, claws scratching across the platform as he brought us to the edge. As his wings extended, the skin stretching almost transparently taut along the wingbones, that was when the shiver went through me.
There was something about a dragon lifting into the air. You never got over it.
He leapt off, wings fully extended to catch the air. As he did, I struck the bullwhip up over my head, the cracker flicking through the air to bite straight into the apple atop my volunteer’s head. I didn’t look back; I heard the gasp, followed by the splattering of apple guts hitting the platform.
We swung low a moment, to within a foot of the nearest terrified onlooker, before we ascended past the billboards and the noise of the city. From here you couldn’t get a good view of the roofs; it was only when you were up high you could see properly.
Which was where Percival came in.
We came alongside a skyscraper, and I sat low against Percy’s neck, the wind whipping my braid against my jacket. He already knew which direction to take us: straight on to the clouds. His reflection blackened floor after floor of windows as we rose, his wings cracking the air like ice.
When we crested the city, Percy’s wings extended, tenting in the air. We hovered there, just us looking down on eight million people. From up here, New York City might have been a miniature toy town; I could practically scoop up Central Park in my palm.
“I told you I’d show you the world, Perce,” I whispered to him.
His wings flapped once. “The GoneGod World, you mean.”
I patted his neck. “Even a world without gods has some beauty to it.”
We needed to swing back around toward the platform; the crowd was waiting. But first—
“Over there, Percy.” I pointed over at the cluster of properties, the tallest of which struck like a pointed finger into the sky. “Think you can swing us past those buildings on your way down?”
If my intel was right, the Scarred were up to something particularly nasty on one of these rooftops. Trouble was, I didn’t know which one.
The dragon snorted as he flapped once, the sound echoing over the city like a firecracker.
“Child’s play.”
I leaned close, grabbing his spine as he shot us forward a few blocks. He angled hard right, and we made an elegant circuit around the buildings in question.
I stared hard. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for—not until Percy saw it. And then it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Tara,” Percy said. “On your nine. Do you see what I see?”
As we came around the tallest building, there, piled in one innocuous corner of the roof, were six human-sized crosses.
“Bingo,” I whispered, shifting my weight to send us into a divebomb toward the waiting crowd. “Time to hunt us down some Scarred and save us a singer’s sweetheart.”
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...