As a young boy camping in the foothills of the West Wall, Giem Kyler stumbles across a wonderfully bizarre creature

thought not to exist within the miles high confines of the Basin crater. Curiosity turns this first encounter bloody,

leaving the eleven year old with a scar and a lingering desire to know...

Seven years later this same curiosity lands him in a pinch of trouble with the kinds of people his Father

wouldn’t be real keen on, and he is persuaded into a trip back up those crumbling hills in search of answers.

With his best friend Satchel at his side - always dependable, ever the cynic - Giem returns. On the back of happenstance

and less-than-stellar decision making he, incredibly, uncovers the answer, discovers a truth.

And this truth is complicated. Dangerous, even. What he finds is far more than an ecological oddity:

the dragon hatchling's very existence here in the fringes of the Basin thrusts the trio center stage of an ideological struggle between

superpowers half a world away. Who she is threatens to turn a cold war very, very hot.

About the Author

As a kid I got called out for daydreaming a lot. Reading was (and remains) a favorite pastime, so of course I'd rather conjure up worlds of mighty dragons, dashing heroes, and conniving villains than, oh, say, diagram a sentence or explain why the author calling the curtains blue mattered. Some of these imaginary jaunts made it onto paper. Eventually those ideas were combined into a story. It stunk, and Mr. Bakker, the English teacher, was kind enough to not say it outright when I showed him, but there was promise. It took ten years, a graduate degree in Software Engineering, copious quantities of brainstorming, some gentle prodding, and more false starts than a twitchy offensive line, but here we are. Better late than never. In those rarified moments when I'm not spaced out in worlds of my building, I'm usually roving around in someone else's. Nose deep in a book, smooshing zombies, or rolling dice on a disadvantaged charisma check, so long as the imagination is alive, the fun does not stop.