Once upon a time, there lived a little girl with a very big imagination. Long before she ever learned how to write, she would draw pictures as best she could to represent the stories and characters she concocted in her ever-curious, ever-creating head.

 

When she wasn’t drawing made-up people, she was pretending to interact with them, sometimes as herself, sometimes as a mermaid princess, an endearing Dickensian orphan, one of Alcott’s little women, even various superheroes from the X-Men franchise. She had an insatiable desire to share the experiences of some of her most beloved protagonists.

As soon as this little girl was taught to write and given her very own notebooks and arsenal of pens and colored pencils, she immersed herself in the world of storytelling, scribbling down poetry, short stories, plays, even recording her modest version of “audio books” at the tender age of eight.

All of us grow out of most childhood pleasures, such as flying kites, catching fireflies in jars, or flinging the Frisbee for hours at a time. But there are a few pastimes that turn into passions, and we carry those with us forever. That’s how writing was for this little girl, for this writer whose words you read now.

As you probably know, I’ve written several works of non-fiction on the subjects of faith and fitness. Last year, however, I completed what has by far been the most challenging, yet most rewarding literary endeavor of my life: penning a novel. Its story is loosely based on a screenplay I wrote in college, the themes of which I’ve never forgotten; I knew I had to explore them further within the pages of a full-fledged book.

Below is the summary of my first fiction work, Moonbow. If it appeals to you, I encourage you to please sign up for my newsletter to receive updates on when and where it will be available to purchase. Also, check out my Pinterest board to get a glimpse of what inspired me as I wrote!

Thank you for reading, and as always,

 

 

 

A teenaged girl with an ageless power.

A rebellion that begs her to use it for vengeance.

A follower in the sky that she cannot outrun.

And a choice that will change her life.

Set in Petros, an ancient Greece-like land of mesmerizing myths and monsters, MOONBOW follows Iris, a despairing young woman who has spent three agonizing years as a slave to Acheron, the sadistic officer responsible for burning her brother alive. But when Iris’s own life is threatened at the bronze tip of an outlaw’s blade, she receives an astonishing, long-awaited power, and with it, the confidence and weapon she needs to fulfill her greatest desire: avenge her brother, or die trying. If only the Moonbow, that unavoidable symbol of redemption shining in the sky, would let her be…

Armed with a warrior’s dagger and an explosive new power, Iris finds herself at Ēlektōr, headquarters of the zealots who call themselves the Soukinoi after the sacred amber scrolls they house inside their temple. Their leader is Diokles, a charismatic, godlike man who captivates Iris with his passion and vision to liberate all of Petros from its oppressors, and most importantly, train her skill and lead her to Acheron.
Overcome by her obsession, Iris now calls herself Hunter, and will stop at nothing, not even the killing of innocents, to reach her goal. But on the day she reunites with Tycho, a mysterious former Soukinoi who has been taken prisoner by Diokles and sentenced to death, Iris can’t fight the urge to speak up for his life. Now, both she and Tycho are on Diokles’s blacklist, and only a single misstep stands between them and a fatal encounter with the Gryphon, the gigantic, flesh-eating bird Iris thought existed only in myth.
After Tycho’s escape from Ēlektōr, Iris knows her time is short. While being escorted back to Diokles, she receives alarming information about her brother’s death and finds out that Diokles’s plans are far more sinister than they seem. Wrestling with strong feelings of guilt and disillusionment, and unable to dispute the supernatural happenings around and within her, Iris must decide whether the Moonbow truly does hold the answers she’s searching for…