From the Back Cover
The stubborn, spoiled, favored granddaughter of the Devi goddess Astoreth, Moreva Tehi has failed to perform her sacred duty and now she must be punished for her transgression. Temporarily banished from Temple life, she is dispatched to Mjor—a backwater village in the Syren Perritory—to assume the roles of custodian of the landing beacon as well as the spiritual leader and commander of Astoreth's garrison stationed there. In this perilous place of wild beasts, outmoded technologies, and harsh seasonal change, a fragile peace exists between the distrustful hakoi and the hated Devi, held together by an iron-clad Protocol—whose laws, if broken, could lead to war.
She will discover an ally in the kindly village healer Hyme and a dangerous adversary in Kepten Yose, her subordinate. But the gravest threat to Tehi's future is the Mjoran chief, the charismatic, golden-haired Laerd Teger, whose elusiveness and cool disdain the Moreva finds both infuriating and fascinating. For it is he who will impel her to break her most sacred vows and seek out the dark secrets of her gods and her world, setting them both on a course that can only lead to damnation and death.
About the Author
If I had to describe myself in three words, I would say I'm a "fugitive from reality." I've always been drawn to the dark, the fantastic, and the just plain weird. As a child growing up in Washington, D.C., I was forever on the lookout for ways to divorce myself from the dreariness of living in a world where there were no dragons to play with. Lucky for me, there were many—and legal—ways to escape the banality, like reading (of course), imagining stories, listening to or playing music, and one of my favorites, wandering through the many museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution.
Little has changed since I was a child—I escape reality every chance I get. I've limited myself to the pen, though. No more wandering through the Smithsonian (too many tourists these days), so I now use the pen—or pixels, as the case may be. My stories cross several genres—science fiction, fantasy, romance, sometimes a little horror—or mashup. Why? Because when I began writing in earnest, I had only the vaguest notion of what genre meant. At that time, bookstores grouped science fiction and fantasy on the same shelf, and labeled the collection "sci-fi/fantasy." Naturally, I assumed sci-fi/fantasy was a single genre, and was surprised to learn they were not. I was also told that science fiction and fantasy did not, could not, and would not, ever mix. That surprised me too, since I'd already done it.
All these years later, I'm still hooked on writing mashup. They're the kinds of books I like to read, like throwing a monkey wrench into the banality of single-genre stories.
Writing mashup is immensely freeing because I'm not bound by the restrictions that define genre. And amazing things can happen when one colors outside the lines. This, for me, is what makes the joy and despair of writing so worthwhile.
