Guest post: Steve Vera, author of Drynn

We’re trying something different here on the blog. While I don’t have thousands upon thousands of minions…er, readers…yet, I want to do my part to help my fellow authors talk about their brilliant ideas and hard work. Since I’ve had others offer spots on their blogs to help promote The Daedalus Incident, I figured I could do the same here. I’d love to come up with a catchy name for the guest blog series, but all I got so far is, “What makes you so special?” Probably not awesome.

Today, I’m giving over some digital real estate to fellow scribe Steve Vera, author of the just-released novel Drynn, the first book in the soon-to-be wildly successful Last of the Shardyn series. Below, Steve talks about what makes his take on urban fantasy something to remember.

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Today’s topic:  Why should you give a flying rat’s furry butt about me or my novel?

Answer:  It could save your life.

Seems crazy, right?  If I may?  To start with, you never know when you might find yourself face to face with a Lord of the Underworld, and trust me; you’ll want to have read Drynn in such circumstances.  By having read it, you would instantly know that said Lord of the Underworld is probably gonna want to eat your brain and heart so he can molt and make more Drynn.   Any delusions you might have had about being able to talk your way out of becoming a midnight snack would be futile, and by knowing this, you’d immediately start screaming and running for your life.  Just that info right there shaved off a couple of seconds of your impending doom.

Steve Vera

Here’s the cool part.  Even though you’d be filled with napalm terror and watery bowels, you’d know that if Asmodeous the Pale is around (psst, he’s the Lord of the Underworld), then there’s a good chance that there might be a couple of Shardyn Knights around too, and frankly, you’d want that.  Think part Knight of the Round Table, part Shaolin Monk and part fireball/lightning-bolt spewing magi.  Swirl together and serve.  Garnish with swords that burn pale blue , glittering plate armor that could stop a harpoon and cloaks that thrash against incoming missiles.  At least when there’s magic around.

Lastly, it would once and for all explain to you why magic no longer exists on Earth even though every single society in the history of the world (at least a bunch of them) speak of not only magic, but of the mythological races that wielded it aaaaand why there have been mass disappearances throughout history.

See?  Your life just got saved.  You could get mass-disappeared and have no idea that you were headed to Earth’s magical twin Theia (named after the proto-planet that collided with Earth to form the moon 4.5 billion years ago according to NASA astronomers, just saying), and that kind of info could come in handy when dealing with the natives.

Ta-da!

All right, so I’m a bit dramatic, but it’s so much more fun that way.   In a nutshell, Drynn is a blend of my two favorite genres in the whole multiverse — Dragonlance-style fantasy and Stephen King-style horror.   Ratio: 3 parts fantasy, one part horror.

Audacious, I know, but why shoot for the moon when the Andromeda Galaxy is out there?  I might just land on Neptune, right?

As for the premise for Drynn, allow me to fill you in:  It’s about the heroes of two worlds, Earth and Earth’s magical twin Theia, reluctantly joining forces to fight the Lord of the Underworld.

Who are the heroes?  In this corner, representing Earth is Skip Walkins, former Philadelphia detective and Air Force Special Forces Commando and present police chief of Rolling Creek, Montana (mad cheering); and in this corner, representing Theia, five of the baddest warriors ever to walk either world—the Shardyn Knights (more mad cheering).   To make things a little more chaotic, throw in one reforming sociopath: Donovan Smith, the rogue demi-god who unwittingly opened the grave in the first place and released the Lord of the Underworld.  Donovan doesn’t much care for being used as a pawn.  Together, this triad of heroes must not only survive Asmodeous’s wrath, but they must stop him from returning home to Theia and enslaving his world to feed on.  Of course, our heroes will have to not kill each other first.

Here’s a couple of reviews I’ve gotten:  “Reads like vintage Dean Koontz—fast-paced and suspenseful.” –DD Barant, author of The Bloodhound Files series.

“A deep gripping story that tickles the reader with This. Just. Might. Someday. Happen…”—Linnea Sinclair, author of the Dock Five Universe series.

And there ya go.  No charge on the life-saving, just paying it forward. 😉 Thanks for the glance.

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If you’re an author interested in blogging on here, head on over to the Contact page and drop me a message in the medium of your choosing and we’ll see what we can do. Right now, I don’t have rules or anything, but with that said, the final say-so is mine, and I’m going to be discerning about it, especially if I get an huge rush of folks trying to take me up on it.