I was born and raised in South Africa, where I still live with my husband, and two beautiful little girls.
I always
knew that I was going to be a writer but it only started to happen about four
years ago, now I can’t stop writing.
In my free time, If I get any because Moms
don’t really have free time, I love to spend time with friends, if it’s a girls
night out, or just a movie, I’m a very chilled person.
My writing career is starting with
Firebolt, book one with the Dragonian Series, there will be four books in total
and two to three books that is about the stories taking place inside The
Dragonian Series.
I do write in different Genres, I have a
woman’s fiction called the Pregnancy Diaries, but it would be published under
another name. And then I have a paranormal series, called the Watercress
series. There are about ten novels in that one.
So, plenty of novels to come out, so
little time.
I hope you are going to embrace the
Dragonian Series as much as I loved writing them.
A girl singing
her heart out about a miracle boomed inside my ear. A miracle would get me what
I needed: a chance at a semi-normal life.
The bedroom door
hitting the wall expelled the thought from my mind. With his hand tangled up in
his copper hair and with huge brown eyes, Dad's figure filled the entire
doorway. “Pack your bags.” He had that set to his jaw, the one that meant there
was no way out of this. He bolted out of the room just as suddenly as he had
appeared.
My teeth ground
hard against each other, and the sharp pain behind my eyes, I guessed from the
lack of sleep, grew stronger. Every fibre of my being wanted to explode.
Ever since I
could remember my name, Dad and I had been on the run. From what? Beats
me.
For the last two
weeks, I'd been pacing up and down through the house, struggling to fall asleep
at night, waiting for this day.
For the love of
blue berries, no sixteen-year old should live this way!
I climbed off my
bed, and the first step I took left my toe tangled in the wide leg of my
jeans. I tried to regain my balance as
the closet inched closer, but with wildly flailing arms, I came crashing down.
The thud reverberated across the wooden floor, and it sounded as if I'd broken
something.
Dad darted back
into my room. "Are you okay?" He lifted me back onto my feet as if I
weighed nothing.
Tears lurked in
the corners of my eyes, threatening to burst, as I stared up at him.
"Don't give me that look, Elena.
Please, we need to hurry.” He pulled my suitcase from the top shelf and chucked it haphazardly onto my bed. “We need to go. Now.”
"Dad…"
He started to
grab my clothes from the shelf and tossed them messily inside my small
suitcase. Then he paused, sighed, and looked up with soft eyes. He stroked the
side of my cheek with his hand gently. “This wasn't the right place, bear.
Please, you’ve got to trust me.”
His hand reached
back to pull everything off my shelf, while my hands curled up into balls of
fury. My heart pounded fast as those two words bounced inside my skull. “Trust
you, Dad?”
"Elena, we
don't have much time,” he yelled. “Pack your bags! You can ask questions
later." He left, and the hollow “doof” sound from his footsteps stomped
loudly as he made his way into the hall.
Ask questions?
Yeah right! I’ll only get answers that don’t reveal why we are on the run for
the gazillionth time.' “Trust me” and “I'll tell you when the time is right”
were the only two answers Dad gave. 'Guess time with him will never be right.’
It was no use
arguing with him anyway. The last time, he threw me over his shoulder and
carried me out without any of my things.
So I grabbed the stuff I needed: my mp3 player, a photo of
Mom that Dad didn't know I had, and my journal from underneath my bed. I tossed
them into my backpack. It wasn't much, but it was the stuff that made my
miserable life felt less pathetic. I zipped up my suitcase and took a deep
breath. Looking around my bedroom for the last time, I said goodbye to my
sixtieth-something room.
Dad almost ran me
over in the hall with his army bag slung over his shoulder. He grumbled, which
I assumed was an apology, took my suitcase, and ran down the stairs. He always
rented these huge old houses, pre-furnished and near the countryside, and we
always left after three months.
The pickup's horn
honked as I shut the front door. I closed my eyes and took another deep breath.
Just two more years, then I'll be eighteen and free from this freak show. Huge
raindrops fell hard onto the ground. The smell of wet dirt filled the air. It
was my favorite smell.
The water that
pooled on the ground covered all the gaps in the driveway, forcing me to
hopscotch around all of them. My shoe got caught in one of the gaps and I
smacked down hard in a huge puddle. By the time I reached the truck, my jeans
and shoes were soaking wet.
A feeling of
utter loneliness consumed my heart as I stared out the window. Homes with white
picket fences and the convenient store whizzed by in a flash. A tear rolled
down my cheek as I said goodbye, and my breath on the glass created a foggy
condensation. Reaching out my index finger, I drew a small heart. These were
the reasons why Mom had left. She couldn't handle his paranoia, but why she’d
left her daughter to deal with it was a mystery. Dad constantly reminded me of
the latter, and that was the only time he ever spoke of her. If he ever
discovered I had that picture, he would kill me. That was how much he hated her
for leaving us.
The lights of a vehicle in the upcoming
lane shone directly into my face. I shut my eyes, waiting for it to disappear.
As a little girl, I used to watch Dad as we drove away from yet another house.
He would glare into his rearview mirror every five seconds, every muscle in his
face clenched, and his knuckles white on the steering wheel. I hadn’t been able
to force myself to peek
out the window then, as it used to scare the living crap out
of me to consider the possible reasons he was fleeing from, or who might be
following us. Now, I didn't look at him or care much for what he was going
through. He created this problem. With me becoming the luggage. It was a ritual
I endured every three months, and nothing over the past sixteen years had ever
changed that.
The “Interstate
40” sign flew by in a whirl, and the pickup slowly moved onto the turnoff lane.
My eyes started
to burn as I stared at the rain running down my window. Each rivet resembled
another town, another place I would never again call home. Exhaustion consumed
me and my eyelids felt heavy. I laid my head against the window and struggled
to stay awake.
Suddenly, a dark
and huge figure flew past me. Dad swerved to the left, which made me crushed
into the side of the passenger’s door. My entire body pumped with adrenaline. I
jumped straight in my seat and wrenched the seatbelt over my shoulder to buckle
myself in. I tore out my earpieces as I tried to process what had just
happened.
“What was that?”
I looked at Dad.
He stared straight ahead with huge eyes. Beads of sweat
rolled from his hairline down to the side of his temple. He looked terrified,
something that conflicted with his personality. I'd never seen Dad look that
scared in my entire life.
“Dad!”
“Did you see
where it went?” he asked, attempting to inject calm into his voice, but I could
hear the fear lacing each syllable.
“See where what
went? Dad what was that!”
“You wouldn't
believe me if I told you.”
“For once in your
life, just tell me!” I screamed. Sixteen years of frustration exploded from my
lungs. I couldn't take the unknown anymore.
“Fine.” He mumbled
something else that I didn't catch. "Do you remember the stories I used to
tell you?"
“Stories? What
stories?”
“The ones about
Paegeia, Elena.” He looked in his rearview mirror again with huge, unblinking
eyes.
Vaguely, but I didn't
tell him that. "What does that have to do with this?"
“They're real.”
I froze and I
stared at him.
“All of it, it’s
real. The dragons, the magic, the wall, everything is real.”
No comments:
Post a Comment