The story is about a fourteen-year-old
dragon rider named Areli Roberts who earns a spot on the Abhi Hall column
racing team after having an undefeated season.
Meanwhile, the Empire is plunged into dark and horrific times as the
Emperor is tearing apart each sector of Areli’s homeland for a man named
Degendhard the Great. A man who the
Empire slanders as a ruthless criminal and immoral fiend, but in reality
Degendhard is a hero of the people, and now those people are paying the price
for Degendhard’s actions.
Once in Abhi, Areli is given two options
by the Emperor for the upcoming season.
She can ‘win and live’ or she can ‘lose and die.’ Areli finds support in her best friend Fides
and her new boyfriend Yats, whom she deeply loves and cares for even though she
struggles with unresolved feelings for a different boy back in her hometown, a
boy she truly thought was her soulmate.
As the upcoming season fast approaches,
Areli has a confrontation with the Emperor’s niece, who threatens to destroy
Areli’s season. This threat, along with
a deadly secret Areli soon learns regarding Degendhard the Great, pits her in a
race both inside and outside of the racing coliseum to protect her life and the
lives of everyone she cares about.
Why
I wrote the book?
I wrote the book for my soulmate. I actually plan to write a story for all my
immediate family members. She is the one
who helped me find my passion for writing, so I wanted the first book I
published to be for her.
So, I don’t exactly quite remember the
chronological order in which the idea was formed, but I can give you an insight
into how it happened. I know that I
wanted to write a story for the love of my life, and she just happens to be a
barrel racer. So, first I thought to
write a story about a barrel racer and her season in barrel racing, which
involves barrels and horses (it will be explained later). But I quickly scratched that idea. I am such a fan of Harry Potter that I wanted
the story to be fantastical. I wanted it
to big. So, I replaced the barrels with
columns and the horses with dragons. It’s
also very cool to point out that her Chinese Zodiac animal is actually a
dragon.
Then I remembered a specific instance
when we were out at the barn and doing the typical morning chores of cleaning
the stalls (which is very nasty business mind you), and there was this big junk
of excrement from this big horse, and I quickly thought of that scene from
Jurassic Park, where there is that Triceratops dropping and he is like “that is
one big pile of ‘you know what.’” And I
had this vision of a dragon, in a stall.
A little girl watching from distance.
She had blue eyes. She couldn’t
have been older than twelve. There was
dirt on her face, and she was clinging to an old and rotting wooden fence. The dragon was stubbornly fighting its owners
to leave the stall and blew flames out at them.
And then I could see people flying these dragons. I could see people doing a form of barrel
racing on these dragons. And then the
story just kept on building from there.
In the end, it is a story written with
all the love in my heart, for the love of my life.
Who
is Areli Roberts?
Areli Roberts is just a girl who has
always wanted to be a Professional Column Racer ever since she laid eyes on her
first dragon. She is aggressive and bold,
and extremely competitive. She is
honest, but likes to withhold her feelings from people. And column racing comes naturally to her, as
if she was born to do nothing else except race dragons.
What
is column racing?
Here is a video to help you understand
what barrel racing is. And after you are
done watching it, picture giant columns instead of barrels and dragons instead
of horses. And a coliseum made of
limestone, marble, and gold.
Look for The Column Racer on 11/6/2012 on Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook!
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