Hello, Therians!!
Well, once again, I'm excited to be sharing news of the amazing,
The Dwellers Saga by David Estes.
A little while ago I was honored to be included in the cover reveal for
The Star Dwellers, the second book in this exciting dystopian series, and today I'm even more honored to be able to give you all a sneak peek into just how amazing this book is.
But first, just in case you've forgotten, here's the awesome cover and synopsis :)
After rescuing her father and younger
sister, Adele is forced to leave her family and Tristan behind to find her
mother in the cruel and dangerous realm of the star dwellers.
Amidst blossoming feelings for Adele, Tristan must cast his feelings aside and
let her find her own way amongst the star dwellers, while he accompanies
Adele's father to meet with the leaders of the moon dwellers and decide the
fate of the Tri-Realms.
Will Adele be able to rescue her mother and make it back to the Moon Realm
before the President and the sun dweller soldiers destroy her family?
Can Tristan convince the moon dweller puppets of the error of their ways?
Was Adele's lost kiss with Tristan her one and only chance at love?
In her world there's only one rule: Someone must die
Excerpt taken from Chapter One of The Star
Dwellers.
Chapter One
Adele
Tawni shrugs and keeps walking. Having no other choice, I do
the same. That’s when I hear it.
At first a soft tinkle, the noise becomes louder, a
swishing—and then a gurgle. Water, has to be. Tawni looks at me and we both
smile. The map was right!
For only the second time since we entered this godforsaken
tunnel, the monotony is broken as the passage opens up to our left. The right
wall remains straight and solid, but to the left there is an empty darkness. I
feel cool air waft against my face, ruffling my hair. At our feet is water,
lapping against the edge of the tunnel floor.
We go a little crazy. Or maybe just I do. Letting out a Whoop! I sling down my pack and thrust
my cupped hands into the cool liquid. First I throw a handful into my face. My
breath catches as the icy water splashes over my skin. But I don’t shiver—it
feels wonderful. It’s like the water is healing me, rejuvenating more than just
my skin: refreshing my soul. The wet drips off my chin and dribbles down my
neck and beneath the neckline of my tunic. It feels so good I can’t help
myself.
With no room in my mind left for embarrassment, or modesty,
I pull my tunic over my head and toss it aside, leaving just my undergarments.
Oh, and my shoes, too, which I pull off, along with my socks. I leave my
flashlight angled on a rock so I can see.
I splash into the knee-deep water, relishing the soft caress
of the cooling elixir. The lake bed is covered with long, smooth rocks that
massage my sore feet. As I scoop water onto my arms, stomach, and legs, I
remember a story my grandmother used to tell me about the Fountain of Youth, a
pool of water with life-extending power. The cool touch of this pool feels
equally potent, and I half-expect to see myself growing shorter, shrinking to
reveal a younger me, the size of my half-pint sister perhaps.
I don’t shrink, but I am cleansed. When I turn around, Tawni
is grinning. She tosses me a sliver of soap, which I manage to juggle and then
catch. As I use it to wash my body, she methodically uncaps each canteen and
fills them. She is the responsible one.
Seeing her with the canteens reminds me of the hungry thirst
in my throat. I finish with the soap and hand it to Tawni to use. She is
already undressed and daintily steps into the pool, looking as graceful as a
dancer, particularly when compared to my own clumsy entrance.
I turn around and splash some more water on my face.
“Where’d you get that scar on your back?” Tawni asks.
Looking over my shoulder, trying to gaze at my back, I say,
“What scar?”
She moves closer, places a hand on my back, and I shiver,
suddenly feeling cold. Her fingers linger somewhere near the center of my back,
where I can’t possibly see, just below my undergarments. “Curious,” she says
absently.
“What is it?”
“It’s a crescent-shaped scar, small, but slightly raised off
your skin. It looks like a recent scar…”
“Maybe I got it in the tunnels somewhere—or from Rivet,” I
say, but I know that’s not right—there would have been blood, and someone would
have noticed the wound seeping through my tunic.
“No, it’s not that fresh.
Just looks like it’s from something that happened in the last few years. If I
didn’t know better, I’d say it looks just like…”
I turn to face my friend, taking in her quizzical expression
in an instant. “Like what?” I ask when she doesn’t finish her statement.
“Nothing, I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says unconvincingly.
“You were going to say ‘Tristan’s scar’, weren’t you?” I
laugh. “You’re nuts, you know that?”
She laughs high and musical. “And you’re not?”
I grin at her and cup my hands, once more using them as a
scoop to lift a portion of water to my face. As I open my mouth to receive the
glorious liquid, I see Tawni’s face change from mirthful to one of confusion.
It looks like she’s playing with something in her mouth, moving her tongue
around, side to side. Her eyebrows are lowered. I plunge the water into my
mouth, delighting in the slick feel as it slips over my tongue, down my gullet.
“Ahh,” I murmur softly, just before Tawni grabs my arm. Her
eyes are wide—she is scared. “What?” I say.
“Spit it out!” Tawni shrieks. Now I am the confused one.
“Spit it out!” she says again, reaching around and thumping me on the back.
“I can’t,” I say over her shoulder. “I’ve already swallowed
it.”
Tawni releases me and says, “No, no, no, no…this is not
good.”
That’s when I taste it. Something’s not right about the
water. Like Tawni, I make a face, swish some spit around in my mouth. Overall,
the water was refreshing, delicious even, but the aftertaste is not good. The
water is…. “Contaminated?” I say.
Tawni nods slowly. “I think so.”
Not good.
As kids, all moon dwellers are taught to look for the signs
of contaminated water. Strange coloring, frothy film on the top, a unique odor,
strange taste: All are possible clues that the water is not good to drink. At
home we used a testing agent every four hours to check our water. If the water
turns blue when combined with the agent, it is okay. If it turns green or
brown, your water is bad. Even if we had the stuff we needed to test the water,
it is too late. We’ve drunk it.
I peer into the water. It looks okay. No film, no
discoloring, no malodor. The nasty aftertaste might just be a result of trace
metals in the water, picked up somewhere along its winding path through the depths.
I doubt we’re that lucky.
“What do you think it is?” I ask. There are a lot of dangers
associated with drinking bad water. In mild cases, you might just get a bad
case of diarrhea or perhaps light vomiting, but there are many worse diseases
and viruses that can be picked up, too. Like…
“Bat Flu,” Tawni says.
“What? No. I doubt it. Can’t be. Why do you think that?” Bat
Flu is the worst of the worst. Infected bats release their infected droppings
into a water source, which then becomes infected. The symptoms of Bat Flu are
numerous and awful: severe stomach cramps; cold sweats and hot flashes in
conjunction with high fever; mind-numbing headaches; relentless muscle aches;
hallucinations; and in many cases, death. There was a mild outbreak at my
school in Year Three. Four kids, a dog, and one of their parents got the Flu.
The only one that survived was the dog.
Tawni steps out of the water, leaving a trail of drips
behind her. She picks up the flashlight and shines it across the pool. I follow
the yellow light until it stops on the far wall, which is pockmarked with
dozens of small caves. Bat caves. “That’s why,” she says.
I feel a surge of bile in my throat as I see piles of dark
bat poo littered at the tunnel mouths. Each time the bats emerge from the caves,
they will knock the piles into the water with the flap of their wings.
Evidently, they’re sleeping now—the caves are silent.
I choke down the bitter, acidic taste in my mouth and say,
“But this is a key watering hole for an inter-Realm thoroughfare. It’s even on
the map.” My words don’t change anything. The water is likely contaminated. I
don’t want to be in denial. I just need to deal with what has happened as best
I can. My mother always told me to “face the truth with grim determination and
a smile on your face.” I’m not sure about the smile. “Okay, let’s assume it’s
contaminated. We need to vomit it out, Tawni. Now!”
Without watching to see what Tawni does, I stick two fingers
down my throat, gagging immediately, the stomach fire rising so fast I can
barely get my hand out of my mouth before I spew all over myself. I retch, gag,
cough twice, spit as much of the vile liquid from my mouth as possible. At my
feet, my own vomit is floating around my ankles. At my side, Tawni is throwing
up, too.
Clenching my abs, I say, “We’re both going to get very sick.
But we’ll get through it together.”
“What do we do?” Tawni asks, her voice rising precariously
high. Her lips are tight. I’m afraid she might lose it. Since I met her, Tawni
has always been strong, even when her best friend was viciously murdered. But
now she looks seriously freaked out. She must’ve seen firsthand what the Bat
Flu can do to someone.
“Who do you know that had the Flu?” I ask, stepping out of
the bile-choked water, Tawni flitting out next to me. We are still filthy, but
there’s not much we can do about it now.
Tawni’s eyes flick to mine and then back to the water, to
the bat droppings. “My cousin,” she says.
“What happened?”
“She passed.”
“That’s not going to happen to us.”
“It was awful.”
“Tawni.”
Her eyes dart back to mine and stick this time.
“We’re going to be fine,” I say. “Stay with me.”
Tawni’s steel-blue eyes get steelier, and then, after
reaching a hardness level I’d never seen in them before, soften, returning to
their soft blue. “Right. We’ll be okay,” she says, almost to herself.
I take the soap from Tawni and chuck it, along with the two
canteens, across the pool. They clatter off the far wall and plunk beneath the
surface.
“We should dry off with our dirty tunics and then chuck them
away, too,” I say.
Although it’s kind of gross soaking up the water with our
filthy old clothes, we both do it because we have to. It’s the nature of things
in our world. Out of necessity you have to do a lot of things you don’t want to
do. I wonder if it was the same in the old world, before Armageddon, before
Year Zero.
When we are dry and our old clothes have been thrown into
the foul water, we each don one of the fresh tunics from our packs. It feels
good—the simple act of putting on clean clothes. It’s like a rebirth, a second
chance, a new beginning. At least usually. This time neither of us wants to
turn the page on our story. But like so many things in life, we have no choice.
“How far to the Star Realm?” I ask.
“We’re in the Star Realm now, technically.”
“But how far to the first subchapter? Subchapter 30, right?”
Tawni consults the map. “Yeah, first we’ll hit subchapter
30. I’d say at least a twelve-hour hike if we move fast.”
“We’ve got to make it in eight,” I say.
Exciting, right??!! Well, trust me when I say it just keeps getting better!
Don't hestitate, get your copy of The Star Dwellers today!
Haven't read, The Moon Dwellers? Get your copy here, and see where it all began!
Early praise for The Star Dwellers
“Estes´s
creative genius continues to shine in this installment. We get quite a few
questions answered and more are raised.”
Author Christie Rich
“This is
easily becoming one of the best dystopian books I've read.”
Lolita Goodreads
"The Star Dwellers surpassed
all of my expectations and more. I was just completely amazed and thrown back
into this fantastic world and left dying to know what will happen next."
Kayleigh
Goodread
Early praise for the author
“David Estes you are a genius! This book
kept me on the edge of my seat. I felt such intense emotion to the main
characters and their cause.”
Tina
Donelly Goodreads
“Another fantastic book by David Estes
that had me gripped straight away”
Adele
Goodreads
About the author
David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State
for college. Eventually moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife. A reader
all his life, he began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in
2010. He´s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no
one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, and prefers
writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table
Author of the Evolution Trilogy
http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Estes/130864990343920
https://twitter.com/#!/davidestesbooks
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3167424.David_Estes
Check out all the blogs on the Tour for more exciting news about
The Star Dwellers. You may even be the lucky winner of your very own copy of this amazing book!!
Blog Tour
Schedule!!
Author Info, Book Blurb, Cover & Giveaway
(The Star Dwellers paperback)
Oct 2nd
Excerpt from The Star Dwellers
Oct 3rd
Review & Giveaway
Oct 4th
Interview and Character Bio (Adele)
Oct 5th
Guest post by David Estes
Oct 6th
Review & Giveaway
Oct 7th
Excerpt from The Star Dwellers
Oct 8th
Character Bio (Tristan)
Oct 9th
Review
Oct 10th
Character Guest Post
Oct 11th
Review
Oct 12th
Character Bio (Tawni)
Oct 13th
Guest post by David Estes
Oct 14th
Review
Oct 15th
Excerpt from The Star Dwellers
Oct 16th
Interview & Review
Oct 17th
Character Guest Post
Oct 18th
Character Bio (Roc)
Oct 19th
Review and closing giveaway (paperback of The
Moon Dwellers and The Star Dwellers)
As President Borg Lecter threatens to annihilate the Country tribes in order to expand his glass-domed empire, Adele ventures into the belly of the beast. Her only hope of survival is the consolidation of Dwellers and Country power before it’s too late. Former demagogue President Nailin is eliminated, yet civil unrest infects every alliance. To save Adele, President Tristan faces his greatest challenge yet: unifying unfriendly Dwellers in the Tri-Realms to raise an army against Lecter. Meanwhile, Dazz must convince the Ice Country leaders to march with Siena and the Tri-Tribes on the gates of the Glass City. The world sits on the edge of a knife. Will Adele, Tristan, Dazz, and Siena defeat Lecter and his army of killers before the Glassies wipe them off the face of the Earth?
