THE ARKANA SERIES: Archaeological Thrillers That Defy History
Volume Three – The Dragon’s Wing Enigma
Think ”Medium meets Indiana Jones in The Lost Symbol.” (Kindle Nation Daily)
Runaway Bride
Cassie Forsythe’s checkered resume never included the job of babysitter. Former college freshman, yes. Amateur relic hunter, certainly. Seer for a secret organization, absolutely. But babysitter? Not likely! Cassie is packing for the next leg of a treasure hunt to recover a legendary artifact known as the Sage Stone when trouble comes knocking at her door. Trouble takes the form of fourteen year old runaway Hannah Curtis. Hannah isn’t your average teenager. She happens to be the youngest wife of aged polygamist Abraham Metcalf. Metcalf leads the religious cult known as the Blessed Nephilim and he covets the Sage Stone for himself.
Unwelcome Guest
Hannah’s untimely arrival creates a predicament for Cassie. The Nephilim isn’t supposed to know that anyone else is hunting the Sage Stone. More than that, the cult must never discover the existence of the Arkana – the secret society for which Cassie works. The Arkana has spent centuries recovering artifacts of ancient civilizations which predate patriarchy–advanced goddess-worshipping cultures on every continent. Their archaeological troves document the lost women’s history of the world and need to be protected at all costs. Unfortunately, Hannah could lead the cult straight to the Arkana’s underground cache of relics. Cassie contacts Faye, the Arkana’s elderly leader, for help. The old woman spirits the girl away to her farmhouse in the country. Faye promises to keep Hannah out of sight so that Cassie and her teammates can resume their quest.
Tricky Trinkets
Cassie, librarian Griffin, and bodyguard Erik face a daunting task. Five sequential artifacts reveal the hiding place of the Sage Stone. The treasure hunters must not only retrieve the relics before the Nephilim, they must also substitute forgeries in place of the real artifacts to keep the cult from discovering that it has competition. Luck has been on their side so far. They’ve recovered the first artifact with their foes none the wiser. The Arkana team flies to Malta, hoping to unearth the second artifact among the ruined temples of a long-dead civilization. After a fruitless search of the archipelago, their quest leads them northward into the Basque region of Europe. Meanwhile, Abraham’s son Daniel is combing the same terrain and narrowing the gap between them.
Dragon’s Wing Dilemma
In an isolated mountaintop cave, the treasure hunters learn that the next relic can only be discovered if they “keep true to the dragon’s wing.” The clue baffles them. What does it mean? Cassie and her friends are running out of time. With Nephilim operatives closing in, will they all survive this mission? Will the cult capture Hannah and breach the defenses of the Arkana itself? Follow the dragon’s wing to learn the answers.
GUEST POST:
How to Create a Great Work Area for Inspiration (Using Feline Accessories)
by NS Wikarski
“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” -Mark Twain
Writing, as everybody knows, is a solitary occupation. An individual sits alone in a room frowning intently at a blank screen while waiting for inspiration to strike. It stands to reason that if you can make your surroundings do the heavy lifting of inspiring you, it will cut down dramatically on the length of time you have to spend staring vacantly into space and muttering to yourself.
An inspiring work area is very much a matter of individual taste. Since I, myself, enjoy nature, I try to work in a room with a spectacular view. Eight months out of the year, I toil away in my sunroom which happily faces onto a woodsy paradise of cedar groves and cherry orchards. The other four months, when I’m forced to flee the arctic tundra that I call home, I rent a beach house on the Gulf of Mexico. My deck overlooks the ocean. As I once told a friend, “If a person can’t get inspired to write in an atmosphere like this, then that person can’t write period!”
However, I should add that these natural settings, stimulating as they are, still lack the one essential decorative element to beckon a writer’s inner muse. This decorative element is quite cheap (the cost of a can of tuna), portable (can be stuffed inside a carrier and taken anywhere) and tends to center the imagination in a way that nothing else can. I refer, of course, to Felis Catus or the not-so-humble house cat.
The affinity between cats and writers has been noted so often that it has become a cliché. I’ll rattle off a short list of authors, all of whom were uncommonly attached to their felines: Edward Gorey, T. S. Eliot, Jack Kerouac, Jean Cocteau, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Lessing, Patricia Highsmith, Ray Bradbury and, of course, Ernest Hemingway. The descendants of Hemingway’s six-toed cat lounge about the grounds of his museum in Key West to this day.
Lest any dog fanciers reading this post take umbrage, don’t get me wrong. I love animals on principle and dogs make wonderful companions. However, I feel about dogs the way most grandparents feel about their grandchildren. It’s great to play with them, pet them and spoil them all day long but come night fall, I feel compelled to hand them back to their primary caregivers and say, “Take them home. I’m exhausted.”
Cats do not drain one’s energy with their hyperactivity because they have spent millennia learning how to sleep twenty hours a day without excuse or apology. In contrast, most writers with any talent suffer from fevered brains. It’s a blessing to be able to spin a story out of nothing at all but it’s also a curse when imagination kicks into hyperdrive and the inside of one’s head feels like the large Hadron collider at Cern. That’s where cats make their contribution to the creative process. It can be highly therapeutic for a mentally overstimulated author simply to watch a cat sleep. As I write this, I raise my head from the keyboard long enough to regard my feline companions draped languidly over their favorite pieces of furniture. One of them blinks at me in lazy self-possession as if to say, “Chill. It’s all good.” That single gaze imparts an immediate sense of calm. He’s right. It is.
My sympathies to any writers out there who are allergic to pet dander. You simply can’t be any good as an author without a cat in your work space.
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Genre – Archaeology Thriller
Rating – PG13
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