Guardian's
Nightmare
The
Last Princess of Latura Book 1
by
Darren Simon
Genre:
Middle-Grade/New Adult Fantasy
Charlee
Smelton is an average thirteen-year-old girl struggling to adapt
after her family moves to San Francisco. She thinks her biggest
obstacle is facing the bullies who brand her a nerd and a dweeb.
She’s wrong. Her life is about to change—for the worse. First,
she receives a gift of the ugliest, most old fashioned bike she has
ever seen. Try as she might to ditch it in the city, she just can’t
seem to escape that very mysterious two-wheeler. Then come the
visions of a world across a dimensional divide, a princess in fear
for her life and a dark knight pursuing her. Are they just dreams or
something more? For Charlee, everything she ever thought she knew
about herself soon crumbles as she starts down a path to discover her
true self, and she will need that hunk-of-junk bike more than she
could ever imagine. Without it, she might not be able to find the
hero in herself—the hero she must become to save her friends,
family, her city—the world—from an evil only she can defeat. An
evil she allows into this world.
Guardian's Return
The Last Princess of
Latura Book 2
A
month has passed since fourteen-year-old Charlee Smelton discovered
her magical abilities and faced her great aunt, Theodora, in a life
or death struggle to protect Earth. A month has passed since she
tricked Theodora back across the dimensional gateway that brought
Theodora to Earth. Since then, Charlee—now fully aware that she is
part of a noble bloodline from another world…another dimension…has
grown stronger in her magic, aided by her protector, a shapeshifter
sent to Earth to protect her.
But
the terrible dreams won’t stop.
Theodora
lives, and if Charlee’s dreams of death and fields of spilled blood
are true, her great aunt has avenged herself on that world across the
dimensional divide.
Charlee
knows what she must do. The fight is not over. She must travel across
the gateway to the home of her ancestors and face Theodora one more
time. But doing so may cost Charlee more than her life. The same
medallion her great aunt desires so much—a medallion Charlee
possesses—could make her just as evil as her great aunt.
Can
Charlee stave off the twisted tendrils of the medallion long enough
to defeat Theodora—for good—or will evil consume her? Can she
even survive so far from home? Her only hope may rest in the Lord of
the Dragons, but that beast turned his back on her grandfather long
ago…
Darren
Simon resides in Southern California where he works as a college
English teacher after a career as a newspaper journalist. His love
for writing began with a love for reading when his grandmother gave
him a wonderful gift—a brown paper bag filled with comic books from
the 1960s and ’70s. From there, he moved on to Choose Your Own
Adventure books. Eventually he discovered the works of J.R.R.
Tolkien, which solidified his interest in writing epic fantasy and
science fiction tales.
So
far, he has focused his writing on middle grade and young adult
fiction to inspire young readers just as he was inspired to read and
write at a young age.
He
self-published his first novel though iUniverse and immediately went
on to write the second book in the series. Upon completing the second
book, he decided to seek more traditional publishing. After countless
rejection letters, a small independent publisher—Divertir
Publishing—decided to pick up the series, a fantasy about a
teen-aged girl who learns her family is actually from an alternate
dimension, and only she has the power to protect Earth from a
sorceress from her world—who just happens to be her great aunt.
Divertir republished the first book, titled, Guardian’s
Nightmare, in 2015. The second book in the series, Guardian’s
Return, was released in April.
Darren
has also written another series—a young adult historical pirate
fantasy set in the golden age of piracy, mixing historical pirates
and pirate hunters with his fictional characters in a time-traveling,
swashbuckling tale. The first book in that series, The Dangerous
Legacy, was published in 2016 by Tell-Tale Publishing. The second
book in the series, The Deadly Waters, is due out later this
year.
All
his books are available at Amazon.com and Barnes&noble.com.
Darren,
who lives with his wife, Sandra and two sons, Daniel and Jacob, and
two crazy dogs, in the Valley, is continuing to write and develop new
stories, including a young adult novel now in the hands of literary
agency.
Follow
the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts and a giveaway!
Congrats on the tour and thanks so much for the opportunity to win. I enjoy getting to hear about new books that my family would enjoy reading.
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