Tired of all the violence occurring in today’s fantasies, I wrote a cozy fantasy involving a protagonist who cannot use violence of any kind. Heavy responsibility falls on the shoulders of a young girl as she faces an invasion of a spider like people from another planet who don’t follow the rules. An invisible black panther, a kindly dragon, two wise grandmothers, a wood sprite, and a gruff ranger serve as her mentors along the way, to help her learn what she needs to know to stop the invasion.
“Three thousand years of peace come to an end when nightmares of men made of metal disturb the quiet life of a young girl facing her coming-of-age ceremony.
It’s hard enough being a teenager, but when heavy responsibility lands on her shoulders, things get complicated. It all starts when Thistle, a tiny wood sprite and friend of our heroine, tells the girl to leave a path leading to The Eldest Grandmother’s house, where she was to deliver a package. Thistle insists something is waiting for her to find. Her world changes and she is never the same again.
The idea for this book came to me many years ago while watching my granddaughters take part in a ballet about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I enjoyed the dancing very much until it came to the part where a child was thrusting a sword into another child. I never noticed how violent that book is. Much of our popular literature and entertainment features violence, often extreme violence. I once read a book where the hero, using only a sword, killed over two hundred men in a single afternoon. To my way of thinking, that’s moving into the arena of being ridiculous. I got bored and never finished the book.
So, I decided to write a book where the heroine was not allowed to use violence to solve problems. It seemed a little silly to her when first told of this. Did her mentor think she was going to go round bopping people on the head?
It stopped being funny when the alien beings from another planet invade her world. They were a violent, spider-like race. Our heroine had to find solutions to stop the invasion without using violence herself. Help arrives in the form of an invisible black panther, two wise grandmothers, a gruff ranger, and, of course, Thistle. Along the way, she meets Gobha, a lovable possible descendant of Bigfoot, and Kanshisha, who, despite her size, is a gentle, loving dragon.
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