Shannon Kendricks thought all she had to do was venture to a strange world and face a giant race of aliens to save her friend Roebor. Boy, was she wrong.
In this action-packed conclusion to the science fiction-fantasy trilogy, Power Rising, Shannon answers the call from the tiny Seladoran Salesti to travel to FireWorld to rescue her friend, the magnificent dragonpanther Roebor. She realizes that to save her friend, she must make a great sacrifice. To make matters worse, while she is on FireWorld, a terrible tragedy strikes, with consequences that will set Shannon on a mission fraught with danger.
Back on Earth, as she seeks a way to overcome a Power of untold magnitude, she learns that to save her planet and the entire solar system, she may be required to sacrifice her life.
Obstacles await her at every turn—dragonpanthers from FireWorld set on revenge, her Seladoran friend Essi trapped and in need of rescue, Homeland Security agents bent on discovering Shannon's secrets, and a FireWorld monster terrorizing whales in the Gulf of Alaska. With the help of her ever-loyal and beloved Luke, the indomitable attorney Tourmaline Kulkarney, and her cat Nascissus, Shannon attempts to fight through the obstacles and find a way to defeat the Power—and somehow stay alive.
Like her protagonist Shannon Kendricks, Cathy Parker is an attorney. She volunteered as a zoo keeper's aide for eight years and did have a very special beluga buddy, Mauyak. As to encounters with alien children, she is not saying. She was also a radio and print journalist and once was the 'Jill of all trades' for a small satellite paper in Wyoming. She did everything from taking to the photos to writing the articles and op-ed pieces to helping with layout and hauling the newspapers through blizzards once a week. As a result, she saw lambs being born and went on a cattle drive and ate her first (and last) Rocky Mountain Oyster. She has seen mountain gorillas in the wild in Rwanda and orangutans in Borneo and even rocked an orphaned baby orangutan to sleep on her chest. She has volunteered with a chimpanzee sanctuary for former research subjects. So you can see where her heart lies. Currently she is happy at home with her black brindle mastiff and her black cat. All similarities between her cat and Narcissus are purely and probably coincidental.
This is the opening paragraph of the current draft of the last book in my trilogy. I can't promise the opening paragraph of the final draft will look anything like it, though, because I am in the dreaded revision phase now. Although I love the redrafts in which I read through the entire text and lovingly hone and smooth and amplify, that's not the work I'm doing now, and this phase I am not loving. In these revision sessions, I am weeding out those words most authors use in the wonderful headlong dash to finish the first draft. Adverbs? Too weak---throw them out. Filler words? Find them, chuck them. Passive tense? Make it active. 'Very"? Rewrite. Overdo the word 'breath' or 'eyes' or hand' or a dozen other words? Off with their heads. Tomorrow I will do a cull for too often repeated words too close together. Oh joy. Then I can get back to word crafting. Thank goodness.
Book Excerpt
Power Stabilized
SHANNON KENDRICKS FELL with a thud and an “oof” from the wormhole onto smooth, hard, pink-gold rock. She rolled, jumped up, and checked in every direction for unfriendly dragonpanthers, as she rubbed the shin she banged when she landed. Since dragonpanthers grew as big as houses, sported brightly-colored metallic fur, and possessed wings longer than oak trees, she wouldn't miss one.
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