The Adventures of Hawkmoth and Luna
****
Coming in a matter of weeks, for instance, will be Dragonfly Woman, a full-fledged novel, in which we learn what really happened to aviator Amelia Earhart on her round-the-world flight in 1937:
Amelia clambered up the vine and gasped. A lionlike form lay stretched out on the
fuselage. Wings as long as the Electra’s
– or at least a Vega’s – rose from its back.
The monster lifted its eaglelike head, and its ears snapped erect in
interest.
She had never seen such a beast
before, yet she knew its name.
“A gryphon,” she gasped.
The gryphon studied her with
red-gold eyes. It made garbled noises
like a parrot, punctuated with an occasional clack of beak.
Something hit the mile-long lianas
above AE’s head. Tendrils snapped in her
hands. She grabbed a heart-shaped leaf,
which tore. She fell.
A second gryphon clung to the vines
like a cat up a telegraph pole. It
watched her drop with a disinterested expression then it sprang away.
Amelia’s foot hit a tendril. She spun in the air and grabbed at braided
creepers. They left the palms of her
hands tingling as if she had slapped a brick wall with all her might. She remembered a hundred pulp magazines in
which heroes jumped from buildings and deftly caught branches or flagpoles.
Note
to self: Cancel my subscription to
Argosy.
Feathers eclipsed the morning
light. Iron-hard shackles clamped around
her upper arms. Her descent stopped with
muscle-spraining suddenness.
Gray wings beat explosively to
either side. She touched one “shackle”
and felt bony bird claws.
Another eagle head twisted down to
look at her.
“My guardian angel,” gasped Amelia.
****
More works wait their turn in the queue. I'm staying up late every night now, editing, reviewing, proofreading, tweaking and then doing it all again. Well, that's pretty how much I envisioned my life would run, so . . . On we go!
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