USA Today Bestselling author Deborah Cooke writes paranormal romance and contemporary romance; she also writes medieval romance as New York Times bestselling author Claire Delacroix.
The Dragon Diaries omnibus is coming to Kickstarter, in ebook and hardcover. Here’s a peek at the new cover, with dust jacket and case laminate.
This huge chonky hardcover (it’s almost 800 pages) includes all three books in the series, along with some new illustrations and more. The campaign will include character cards, a pretty bookmark, and have a tier also with all the hardcover Dragonfire omnibus hardcover editions. I plan to launch the campaign in June.
Cast through time with his fellow Dragon Legion Warriors, Orion follows the spark of his firestorm, the sign of his destined mate’s presence. Only when he’s left behind, alone in a different time, does he discover the darkfire’s deception. His firestorm might be a feint, but the woman touched by its golden radiance is one who could capture Orion’s heart forever. When Slayers attack, Orion is determined to defend her and her secrets, no matter the price to himself.
Grad student Francesca is more interested in her career and research than in getting married. But then, she’s never met a man like Orion, a fierce protector whose presence ignites an undeniable desire within her—although the seductive power of his kiss isn’t the only thing Francesca can’t explain. Orion also creates a glow inside the vase said to contain the voice of the Cumaean Sibyl. When that light is released, Francesca hears the voice of the past and is revealed as Orion’s destined mate—making her the Slayers’ target.
On the run, Orion and Francesca join forces to solve the Sibyl’s last riddle. Will success provide the key to their shared future? Or will the unpredictable darkfire snatch Orion away as abruptly as he arrived—along with Francesca’s memories of the dragon shifter who has claimed her heart? How much will either of them sacrifice to save their their unborn son and defend their future together?
I’ve started to gather images at Pinterest for this story: they’re gathered in the Kiss of Enchantment album, but this Pinterest link will probably only take you to the Dragonfire album. It doesn’t seem to support sub-directories. You’ll see all of the subordinate albums, so just scroll down to 16 – Kiss of Enchantment.
Kiss of Enchantment is a new book featuring the Pyr that will be published in November. I’ve added an excerpt to the landing page here on the site for the book – you can see the spark of the firestorm! – but there’s a longer one available to followers of my page at Ream.
At Ream, you can read the first two chapters of Kiss of Enchantment if you follow my page. This gives you a glimpse of Magnus Montmorency in action again, who plays a role in this story of the Pyr.
The Dragon Diaries is a paranormal YA trilogy and a spin-off from Dragonfire, that was originally published in 2011 and 2012. The series follows the coming-of-age of Zoë, the daughter of Erik and Eileen, who is anticipated to be the new Wyvern of the Pyr.
Since the rights reverted to me from Penguin, I’ve only made ebooks of the series available. There are still some of the remaindered Penguin paperbacks available in the world, but to date, I haven’t created new print editions.
Since Dragonfire is set in real time, Zoë was conceived in Kiss of Fate and born in 2008, so she turns 16 in 2024. The Dragon Diaries is set in 2024, although I had to guess what the world would be like twelve years in the future. I failed to anticipate Covid-19 🙂 and hadn’t yet written the big finish of the Dragonfire Novels. I did anticipate smartphones, although in the books, they’re called “messengers.”
In 2024, there will be new editions of The Dragon Diaries. I’ll update the story to reflect what has actually happened in the last twelve years – this will be pretty minor, so don’t worry about huge changes to the story you know and love – and there will be new print editions. There will be new individual trade paperbacks, and a new illustrated hardcover omnibus, too. I’ll be launching those new print editions with a Kickstarter campaign early in 2024, along with the revised ebooks.
In August, I’ll be unpublishing the current ebooks from the retail portals, so if you’re in the middle of reading the series, finish it up now!
Last winter, I offered a new Dragonfire story as one of the rewards in my first Kickstarter campaign. That book, coming to retailers in November, is Kiss of Enchantment. I thought I’d talk a bit today about the challenge of inserting a new story into the world of Dragonfire. There’s a lot of published content about my dragon shifters and a lot of interlocking stories, as well as an established chronology. I had a lot of reading and reviewing to do!
One of the groups of characters in the Dragonfire series is the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors. One hundred dragon shifter warriors from the ancient world, they were enchanted, each trapped in the form of a dragon’s tooth. The first one – Nikolas – appears in Kiss of Fury, while the rest of the dragon’s teeth are the treasure that Erik and Magnus battle to possess in Kiss of Fate. The spell is broken by Rafferty in Kiss of Fate and the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors – along with Nikolas and Sophie the Wyvern – aid in the destruction of the Academy where shadow dragons have been created.
The Dragon’s Tooth Warriors next appear in the short story, Harmonia’s Kiss, in which they return to the Middle East to stalk and eliminate the viper who cursed them. Their leader, Drake, meets Veronica in this story, the woman who will prove to be his destined mate in Firestorm Forever.
We next encounter the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors when they collect one of the darkfire crystals from Lorenzo in Flashfire. They vanish then, in thrall to the stone and the force of darkfire within it. In fact, they become time travellers, as we learn in Kiss of Danger, but their company is diminishing as warriors are left behind. Is this accident or design? By Kiss of Darkness, they have renamed themselves the Dragon Legion and suspect that the darkfire is casting them through time, leaving each warrior at the location of his mate and firestorm. As a result, by the end of Kiss of Destiny, when Drake returns to the present-day by himself, there are generations of new Pyr that didn’t exist before he departed. (Isn’t time travel fun?) These new warriors turn the tide of the Pyr battle against the Slayers and they appear in Firestorm Forever. Their stories are told in the DragonFate series, which continues the tales of the Pyr after the defeat of the Slayers.
But what about all those firestorms experienced by the Dragon Legion in other times and places? I was intrigued when Orion left the company by choice to follow the spark of his firestorm in Kiss of Darkness. Drake believed that they were somewhere in Italy, perhaps near Rome, perhaps in the early 1970’s. That allowed sufficient time for Orion’s son, Balthasar, the result of that firestorm, to be among the company of Pyr that arrived at Erik’s home in Kiss of Destiny. Balthasar appears in the DragonFate series.
But Orion does not. So, my first challenge was to figure out how Orion could pursue his destined mate in 1972, but vanish after the firestorm was satisfied—but if that happened, how could he and his mate have a happy ending? And where was Orion?
Part of the answer was Francesca, a grad student and independent woman determined to put her academic career first, and one with no interest in having children or even a husband. Her experience is that men expect women to become staff, so she’ll do without a long-term relationship in order to pursue her own goals. It all sounds good until she meets Orion, who is a romantic with the firestorm on his side and very persuasive.
The second key is Francesca’s area of study. She’s interested in the agency of women in the classical world and is drawing conclusions from the stories that remain of the Cumaean Sibyl. The Cumaean Sibyl was one of twelve fortunetellers in the ancient world, mortal woman who offered answers (often cryptic ones) to the queries of seekers. Her grotto is west of Naples, but she came to Italy with Greek settlers. She is the one who led Aeneas into the underworld so that he could seek the advice of his deceased father. She is also the one who refused the advances of Apollo: asked what it would take for her to surrender to him, she seized a handful of sand and demanded as many years of life as grains of sand in her hand. Apollo fulfilled her wish, but she still refused him. He cursed her then, so that she aged over the thousand years she was reported to survive, saying that it was her own fault for failing to ask for eternal youth. Eventually, she was so reduced that she was trapped in a jar, fading so that ultimately only her voice remained, sealed in the jar.
There are many associations between chastity and prophetic gifts, though this isn’t mentioned in the sibyl’s story. The price of surrender might have been the loss of her foresight.
Or maybe…maybe the sibyl declined Apollo because she was waiting for her firestorm with her destined mate. Surrendering to the firestorm and satisfying her destiny might be worth the sacrifice of her prophetic gifts.
But what if her mate was a dragon shifter who had been enchanted and was thus lost to her? Orion, after all, is centures from his own time, and if he hadn’t been enchanted, he would have experienced all those intervening years. I envisioned the sibyl waiting for the future she had foreseen, but watching herself fade as her prophecy for herself did not come true. Maybe the darkfire could set all to rights, bringing that dragon shifter back to his mate to experience his firestorm before the sibyl and her voice were lost forever. Maybe the darkfire and the sibyl’s own powers could sort it all out.
Francesca and Orion soon realize that his firestorm is with the faded sibyl, trapped in the jar in Francesca’s custody. Francesca decides to help him, but falls in love on the way. I think you can guess that the darkfire and the sibyl’s own powers ensure that the firestorm conquers all.
The other interesting thing about writing a Dragonfire story that begins in 1972 is that the Slayers aren’t yet destroyed. The Pyr aren’t really tracking each other or gathering as yet. I had to figure out where each one of the players would be, and what they would be doing. Who knew each other? Who knew of each other? Could this firestorm provide a spark to inspire the ultimate gathering of the Pyr? Surely Erik would sense the sudden appearance of another Pyr, and all of the dragon shifters would feel the spark of the firestorm. How would they react? Why wouldn’t they remember this by the time of Kiss of Fire? I liked having Slayers back on the scene, frankly, and enjoyed the chance to explore a bit more of the history between Magnus and Sigmund, and the Dragon’s Blood Elixir. I also have a new respect for the power of the darkfire – and new questions about its history.
Do Orion and Francesca get their HEA? Of course, they do! But that’s enough of a spoiler – you’ll have to read the book to learn exactly how it all works out. 🙂
One kiss will unveil the secrets of the past…
Cast through time with his fellow Dragon Legion Warriors, Orion follows the spark of his firestorm, the sign of his destined mate’s presence. Only when he’s left behind, alone in a different time, does he discover the darkfire’s deception. His firestorm might be a feint, but the woman touched by its golden radiance is one who could capture Orion’s heart forever. When Slayers attack, Orion is determined to defend her and her secrets, no matter the price to himself.
Grad student Francesca is more interested in her career and research than in getting married. But then, she’s never met a man like Orion, a fierce protector whose presence ignites an undeniable desire within her—although the seductive power of his kiss isn’t the only thing Francesca can’t explain. Orion also creates a glow inside the vase said to contain the voice of the Cumaean Sibyl. When that light is released, Francesca hears the voice of the past and is revealed as Orion’s destined mate—making her the Slayers’ target.
On the run, Orion and Francesca join forces to solve the Sibyl’s last riddle. Will success provide the key to their shared future? Or will the unpredictable darkfire snatch Orion away as abruptly as he arrived—along with Francesca’s memories of the dragon shifter who has claimed her heart? How much will either of them sacrifice to save their their unborn son and defend their future together?
I’ve started to gather images at Pinterest for this story: they’re gathered in the Kiss of Enchantment album, but this Pinterest link will probably only take you to the Dragonfire album. It doesn’t seem to support sub-directories. You’ll see all of the subordinate albums, so just scroll down to 16 – Kiss of Enchantment.
Deborah Cooke & Her Books 