Rise of Dresca (The Draemeir Chronicle Book 1) YA Dark Fantasy Horror by Tim McKay ➱ Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway
What evil intended to harm you... ... can become something far more terrible.
Rise of Dresca
The Draemeir Chronicle Book 1
by Tim McKay
Genre: YA Dark Fantasy Horror
From the pits of an ancient darkness, a new power is rising.
Ceremai has fallen.
After a decade of struggle for independence, a fledgling nation collapses under the unrelenting force of invasion.
Join an unlikely band of allies on a journey beset by shadow and intrigue, pulled by the strings of fate to the source of a new evil.
A lord’s daughter turns assassin. An orphan girl discovers her power. A captain plots in vain.
And the last soldier of Ceremai finds his destiny.
Witness the dawn of a new age, and learn if what evil intended for harm…
… can become something far more terrible.
Rise
of Dresca is the first book of the Draemeir Chronicle.
Enter a
world where evil parasitizes the meek and arrogant alike. Where
limitless power and knowledge can be yours for a price, not of your
soul, but of your mind, your will, and your resolve to be free.
In
the land of Naevoroth, a new power is rising.
And
it’s yours for the taking.
Action-packed
and filled with a healthy dose of magic, mayhem, and fantastical
lore, Rise of Dresca is a phenomenal start to what promises to be a
riveting epic fantasy series.
– Pikasho Deka from Readers’
Favorite
IF you are looking for a relentless, action,
rage-filled dark fantasy book, then look no further than “Rise of
Dresca”. WOW! This is bestselling material right here!
– Julio
Carlos at Scribble’s Worth Book Reviews
Rise
of Dresca by Tim McKay is a spellbinding journey into the heart of a
mesmerizing monster-filled fantasy realm. Seamlessly blending
captivating storytelling with vivid world-building, this teen and YA
monster fantasy will have readers utterly entranced from the very
first page.
– Demetria Head for A Look Inside Book Reviews
Rise of Dresca Excerpts
Excerpt 1 – Prologue
[can provide a different excerpt if the violence is too
intense – let me know 😊]
Elaryn pressed her back against the sharp cliff rocks,
panting as she sucked in the stale, toxic air. Her team, huddled together
around the corner, felt the fumes scraping their lungs as much as she did. They
wouldn’t have thought much of her forced, frantic breathing. They didn’t know.
They had to die.
She’d been planning these murders for months, but her
resolve was untested. She knew there’d be no going back, and once it started,
she’d have to be quick.
A crashing force shook the cliffside. Elaryn heard a few
stifled screams as she fell onto her hands and knees. Her ears were ringing and
her vision blurred, but she turned to take in the chaos. Four members of the
team were bloodied masses scattered around the small crater where her pack had
been. Good. There needed to be blood. Her heart raced, but the cold edge to her
inner voice was unnerving.
Vorsha, the Selvan envoy leading the mission, began to stir
and whimper a few paces away. Elaryn charged, covering the distance in seconds
and driving her knee into the woman’s face. Vorsha’s head snapped back and
cracked loudly against a rock. Shrapnel wounds peppered her abdomen and stained
her scarlet dress a deeper crimson. She wouldn’t be trouble. Five down.
One last kill. Elaryn knew this one would be the hardest.
She stepped over the corpse by her feet, boots dripping blood that pooled in
charcoal sand. She left the woman’s eyes open, her face already pale with
death. Evil like this didn’t deserve peace.
But Paltess was different. The boy was seventeen, just five
years her junior. And she couldn’t be sure he was compromised. Unlike the
others.
Paltess stood a dozen paces away, trapped between narrow
obsidian cliffs. He stumbled backward and turned as Elaryn drew a crescent
knife from her belt. He ran, then seemed to remember his pistol between
strides. He faltered while grabbing it from his holster and turned halfway
around before a spinning blade slashed his throat.
The boy toppled and the pistol went off with a hissing snap.
The lead ball hit the rocks and small shards of black glass shattered down the
cliffside with crystal pings.
Elaryn stepped closer. She cleared her mind and tried not to
look away as the boy twitched in the sand. She was learning that people can
bleed out far longer than she imagined. The stories always made death sound
quick.
Now for the hard part. Elaryn scanned the rocks for a way up
before spotting a narrow gap between the obsidian spikes. The rocks looked
sharp, and for a moment she rubbed her palms together. Her black leather gloves
were made for style and were ready to tear in a few spots. She’d have to risk
it.
A loud shriek from behind settled the matter. She scooped up
her knife and scrambled to the cliff, wiping Paltess’s blood onto a spare cloth
she tossed aside once the blade was clean. She put her back to the wall and
checked the rear passage. Nothing. But if the raptors had found the first
bodies, they’d be here soon enough.
Elaryn took one last look at Paltess, eyes glazed over and
staring at her with blank accusation. It had to be done. She pushed back any
remaining hesitation, slipped her knife into its black crescent scabbard, and
reached up with her other hand for the nearest ledge. Sharp rock pressed into
her glove without piercing, and she risked more weight as she propped herself
up with one foot on the other side of the gap. A few quick maneuvers and she
was back on solid ground.
Dry heat and grey ash battered Elaryn from every direction.
Outside the shelter of the cliffs, the air was thick with sickly orange smog
painted by the sun’s glare. She could make out rolling mounds of black and grey
a few dozen paces ahead before the smog grew too thick to penetrate. She’d keep
the sun to her back and press on.
An ear-splitting shriek sounded above and Elaryn rolled aside.
She almost fell back down into the gap and braced herself in time to watch a
raptor swoop down through the spot she’d been. Its grey reptilian wing clipped
her cheek as it flew by, and the creature crashed into the rocks as it
attempted to change course. Sharp talons lashed out and its neck lunged up like
an eel before the monster fell over the edge, leaving a trail of black blood on
the rocks.
Excerpt 2 – Chapter 12: The Kossa Duel
[244 words]
“I’m not much of a teacher,” said Sevora. She unclipped her
scabbard and pulled the long blade free.
“I’ll bet,” said Datha with a snicker, just loud enough to
regret it when Sevora sent him her most withering look.
“I’ll do my best to keep up,” said Vald. As he pulled Seth’s
korossa from its worn scabbard, the blade seemed to ring. Sevora could have
sworn she saw a faint blue light glimmer along its edge. She’d have shrugged it
off if not for Seth’s wide eyes, which quickly turned serious.
Vald handed the scabbard to Seth, then twisted the sword in
a narrow flourish, gripping hard on the hilt and shifting down into a stance
Sevora recognized. Vald wasn’t showing off. She was about to be challenged.
She drew herself up. “Read… ahem… ready?”
Vald nodded.
Sevora shot forward, left arm straightened and her sword
piercing the air where Vald’s bulk had been. He’d stepped left, pivoting and
catching her blade with a stiff but powerful undercut. The force pulled her arm
up and around so she stumbled two steps over.
She’d left her side open and knew what was coming. Vald
closed in with a sweeping diagonal slash that her hasty defense barely caught.
He pressed his korossa on hers and it took all her strength to keep her own
blade from digging into her shoulder. Their eyes locked.
For the first time since the dragon swarms flew east, she
was afraid.
[great spot to end for shorter excerpt if needed]
Instead of resisting, Sevora pushed down and let Vald’s
momentum work for her. She tried to draw her blade over his but he read her
motion and followed, keeping the blades locked and directing the movement of
both swords, first right, then left, then up, then down. Their duel became a
dance, swords pivoting around the point where the blades touched as both
wielders twisted and turned. Sevora’s arms barely kept up, and her korossa
pulled her by the hilt like a child being pulled on a leash.
A Kosen blade-lock. She saw a chance and took it, stepping
into the tangle of blades and forcing Vald back with another failed stab. But
now her sword was free.
Vald resumed his attack with tenacity and endurance she
hadn’t expected. She was using every shred of her focus and it was barely
enough to hold him at bay.
Their swords collided overhead, three sharp clacks. When she
tried a wider swipe, he caught her blade in another lock and they fell back
into the dance. This time she followed his sweeping motion as much as he
followed hers, and when the swords came apart she jumped forward with her arms
high.
Another series of quick strikes above their heads, another
Kosen lock. When they came free, both Sevora and Vald instinctively flourished
their blades, Vald returning to his stiff opening stance and Sevora turning her
momentum into a spinning horizontal attack. Their blades met in the middle with
a clear ring.
Excerpt 3 – Chapter 21: Athamein Attempt
[232 words]
Elzar tried to draw his sword as a slamming force threw him
back against a wall.
“Luh’vein!” Ryn’s voice rang out like a melody, resonating
off the tavern walls. The long window next to the doorway exploded out into the
street and the Athamein monk flew out through the gap.
A second monk emerged from the stairway. He held his palm
out toward Elaryn and nothing happened. He stretched out his hand again, a look
of hate and panic filling his eyes.
Elaryn’s hand shot out and the monk yelled in pain. He
stepped back, clutching his wrist, but the Deldraean gave no quarter. She
planted a fierce kick in his chest that slammed his back to the wall, then
stepped forward with a black rod in both hands and jabbed him with the
cylinder’s flat end. She let go, the rod stuck in place and pinning the monk to
the wall, then landed a bone-crushing hook across his face that knocked him
out.
Elzar got back on his feet slowly, unsure how to respond.
Elaryn reached for the metal rod and red-blue sparks shot out from its end as
the monk fell dead to the floor, a streak of blood following him down the wall.
Mekkos entered the back room with a hand on Ryn’s shoulder.
She looked down at the body with glazed eyes.
“He wasn’t very nice,” she said.
Put Your Faith in Horror
I wrote a blog post last fall while completing a professional
writing program at Algonquin College here in Ottawa.
I think it tells you all you need to know about me and my
writing.
Rise of Dresca is first and foremost a fantasy book, but at
its heart, it's a book about good and evil.
And you can’t depict evil, true evil, without horror. Any good vs. evil fantasy
book without a little terror, to me, is exactly that: a fantasy.
I’ve always believed that fantasy is more than a dream to let
us escape our troubles — it’s a place to learn lessons about life and love and
struggle through the power of imagination, and (here’s the kicker) it’s a
reminder to strive for better than the worlds we’re born into.
So brace yourself for some terror here and there. And see if
it pushes you to strive harder for hope, healing, and strength when you wake
from the dream.
So on that note, here’s the blog I wrote about my religious
past and ongoing horror addiction.
Enjoy!
Put Your Faith in
Horror
Religion in horror almost made me return to faith. I wonder,
am I the only one?
I left religion behind in my twenties and swore I’d never
return. But horror movies almost brought me back into the fold. Why?
I blame the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story.
No horror movie or show has yet scared me more than when I
was a kid seeing Gmork for the first time. And at five years old I’d snuck my
aunt’s VHS of Species with Natasha Henstridge. How I managed to watch that
without getting caught I’ll never know. Species freaked me out, but my love of
horror began there. I watched it another four times. So when I say I was scared
of a creepy black wolf with terrible CGI, it’s not like I had nothing to
compare it to. But to this day a snarling black wolf is my vision of terror.
A few years ago I got into exorcism and antichrist-themed
horror. I felt a certain thrill in diving into the world that had been
forbidden when I was an evangelical pastor.
I had gone back to school, and like all students working on a
second, third, or fourth degree (yeah… I know), I was developing a nihilistic
streak. You know, that point in school where you wonder if this will ever
matter, ever get you a decent job, or ever make you feel as smart and
accomplished as you once did back at some arbitrary point in your life.
You know the one. We all have that one trophy, that one good
mark, that one framed painting. And if you can’t ever reach that high again, is
it really worth it?
I binged horror to stave off stress from procrastinating. I
was watching Fox’s The Exorcist series and A&E’s Damien at the time. A
friend from Bible college recommended I add the first two Conjuring films to my
list, and I watched both one night between papers.
I had terrible sleeping habits, and during a particularly bad
crunch week in my master’s I had gone something like three or four nights
without sleep. So there I was, typing away at my laptop, when something
startled the hell out of me (pun intended?). It was probably a bird flying by
the window, but I swear to you, what I saw in the shadows was Gmork. I saw the
big bad black wolf as clear as you see these letters.
I went back to church that Sunday.
Jesus didn’t take, but I did feel better and I’ve wondered
why ever since.
My working theory is that religious horror primes us to see
faith as the answer to evil. And sooner or later we all encounter evil.
One pattern in movies and shows like these is how cool the
religious protagonists are and how foolish or immature any atheists are made to
look. After I introduced her to The Conjuring, my ex joked that we should be
the next Ed and Lorraine Warren. They’re smart, funny, romantic, and they go
out of their way to comfort a family in need with grace and maturity. It’s hard
not to like them.
And the lead priests in The Exorcist show are some of the
most likable characters I’ve ever seen in horror.
Contrast these with Bradley James’s portrayal of the
antichrist in Damien.
The show really plays up the irony of Damien being an atheist
as a young adult, unaware of his true nature.
In one telling scene, he goes to a funeral where the priest
offers him a few words of comfort during the wake. Damien goes to town on the
poor sod, citing every classic atheist argument in the book and calling the
idea of a divine plan behind needless death and suffering a cruel joke. He
doesn’t realize until finishing his tirade that he’s raised his voice so
everyone in the room stops to listen, naturally offending almost everyone
there. He’s made to look cold and insensitive, however smart his arguments.
A lot of atheists are like that, embittered by painful
experiences in the church. But many are the kindest people you’ll ever meet,
and the trope of the insensitive, bullying atheist is a bit overplayed. But it
strikes home just enough to make even the most militant atheist wonder if
they’re missing something.
Maybe that’s what happened to me.
Tim McKay is a writer, editor, and marketer from Ottawa, Canada. He used to be a pastor, still cares about good and evil, and still strives to create meaningful experiences for others. He has degrees in history, theology, and public policy, along with a diploma in professional writing, but likes nothing more than hiking in the woods, running along the Rideau Canal, and connecting with the people he loves. Oh, and reading a good book.
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Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
$40 Amazon
Thanks so much for hosting!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the excerpts everyone, and good luck in the raffle!
I like the cover. Looks great. Sounds like a good story.
ReplyDeleteThanks Marcy!
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