Saturday, April 11, 2015

Guardians

My latest book - can you believe it? I mean, I had them all written already, years ago, but actually getting them published and out there is such a wondrous concept for me. I really can't explain it. I've devoured these kinds of books since I was a kid, but I never really thought I'd be writing any. And when my son gave me that old laptop way back when, I didn't really know what else to do with it. We didn't have any internet at the time, and what do you do with a glorified typewriter. Oh yeah, and it had Paint and I had an Encarta encyclopedia on it too. Couple that with the desire to read something I hadn't already read and this is what you get, I guess. Well now - I got four more to go and then I'm down to a large fistful of short stories. I guess we'll be talking about those somewhere along the line.

Anyway - I digress - my apologies

Guardians is my second (so far) science fiction story. Idea elements came from the video game, Final Fantasy VIII, which gave me my first soldier, Reed, the dark haired guy, and all his abilities. Like in the game, I needed an enemy, but the enemy in the game was too ambiguous, so I turned to my favorite movie for that idea. Starship Troopers had the perfect enemy for me, but I needed them to be just a little more believable so they aren't exact, and of course they had to be different in other ways too.

During the course of writing this book, the enemy evolved. Being space-faring, they had to be highly intelligent, but running up against humans proved to be more than they expected. I'm going to assume that somewhere in their distant past, roaches somewhere gave them fits so they took on the bug form and it served them quite well for a very long time, but against humans, it wasn't good enough; they were being pushed back, and they couldn't have that. The next logical step (I love logic) would be to create one of their own.

Enter my second character. Reed found him at the age of maybe two way down in the bug hive and named him Adam. He was human in every way except his DNA. Reed raised him like his own, right along with his family, and he was normal in every way right up until his magic developed.

Born with an ability that could not be genetically transmitted from parent to child in any way, he had to learn how to use it, and he had to keep it quiet - he wasn't entirely successful, but he never found himself under some dissection knife. He had too many friends in powerful places. He could, however, fly the pants off anything with wings, and was a well-known in all the simulator hangers. After he joined the Air Force, he became a force to be reckoned with in his own right.

I know that all sounds so peachy, but no journey through life is easy. It seems a family relative wanted him. She tried to get her claws on him when he was a kid, but that didn't succeed. By the time she found him again, he was essentially untouchable, but there were other ways. There's no knowing all of her reasoning, or if her reasoning was even rational, but they do eventually meet, much to her dismay.

Read it - leave a review.

I gotta go work on the document some before I can put it up as an eBook, because Kindle doesn't recognize the symbols I used to mark gaps - I need to turn them into pictures and see if that works. Sigh - Too bad pdf doesn't work for kindle publishing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2 comments:

William Kendall said...

Bravo!

Willow Drake said...

Review of Guardians
Strap on your helmet and fasten your seat belt, because Anna is about to take you on an intergalactic ride. Shortly, into reading this book, I discovered that the main nemesis are intelligent huge bug creatures. Being a sci-fi geek, I was instantly reminded of all the Robert A Heinlein books I had read in the past, specifically Starship Troopers. No, not the cheesy movies, but the classic stories Heinlein penned.
Well, if you have ever read one of Anna’s novels, you quickly learn that nothing is ever predictable or what it seems. This book is no exception. Prepare to travel across space and time as a voyeur of two generations of Guardians. What are Guardians, you ask? They are soldiers. Brave men and women who volunteer to go into battle with the enemy to protect mankind and the planets they colonize. But these aren’t just ordinary soldiers. These individuals are given magical abilities and those come with a cost. They must give up their memories and risk death to serve in a war, that makes our real war look like child plays.
Anna, expertly weaves in all the action a video game junkie would love with a very poignant human story. She will shock you and have you on the edge of your seat, then you’ll turn the page and sigh at the raw emotions her character emote. A few pages later you’ll be cheering on one character and then growling in dismay at another. She takes you to places you don’t expect to go and just when you think you know what will happen next, she throws in a twist. A must read for the summer!!