Check out my stop on the Einstein's Compass: A YA Time Traveler Adventure by Grace Blair & Laren Bright blog tour! Don't forget to enter to win an e-copy or audiobook before you go!
by Grace Blair & Laren Bright
Genre: YA Sci-fi/Time Travel
Release Date: January 2019
Summary:
How did Albert Einstein come up with his wondrous theories of light and time? In Einstein's Compass: A YA Time Traveler Adventure, a young Albert is given a supernatural compass that allows him to travel through time and space, and find wisdom in other dimensions, including the lost city of Atlantis. But evil forces seek the power of the compass, including a monstrous, shape-shifting dragon from a different age. Can the compass protect Albert from such villainy?
2019 Finalist National Indie Excellence Award Young Adult Fiction
2019 eLit Award-Winner in the Juvenile/YA Fiction Category
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Excerpt
Raka sat in his grotto on a battered wooden armchair that
had washed up on the shore of his hideaway cove. For the
last day or so he had done little but experiment with his
new form and new powers. He had begun to develop a
healthy respect for his strength and the seeming
indestructibility of his body. He had come to grips with
the realization that there was no going back.
Truth be told, he was beginning to think he wouldn’t
have wanted to go back even if it were possible. He had
not been appreciated. Neither his uncle Thoth nor his
twin, Arka, had ever recognized his promise. “If only Ar-
ka had let me practice the mystical arts with him, I would
have shown him what I could do. Fool! It’s his fault I am
here,” Raka muttered to himself.
The day before his meeting with the Council, reflect-
ing further, Raka remembered his quarrel with Arka.
Arka pointed to the container on the counter. “Where
were you today? You were supposed to take the ruby crys-
tals to the Temple of Healing. We had to cancel the
treatments when they did not arrive.”
Raka petulantly stared at the ground. “Something im-
portant came up.” Then he looked up at Arka defiantly.
“But I told Prensa to take the crystals to the temple. It’s his
fault the treatments were canceled, not mine.”
Arka frowned. “Prensa? He is our cook, not your servant.”
Arka shook his head as if to disperse Raka’s weak ex-
cuse, then changed course. “The temple guard said he saw
you walking with a female member of the Belial Brother-
hood near the gardens. What were you doing there with
her?”
“She wanted to know what we did in the Temple of
Healing,” Raka lied. “I showed her around the temple
grounds.” That wasn’t all I showed her, Raka thought to
himself with a lascivious smirk.
Arka could only shake his head in resignation.
The memory aroused Raka’s anger, which brought
him crashing back to the present. “I am meant to do im-
portant things, not just be an errand boy!” he shouted at
the rock walls of the cavern.
With thoughts of revenge seething in his mind, he
snatched at a rat that had the misfortune to scurry past. It
was the first sustenance he’d had since the transfor-
mation—he hadn’t really been hungry. He angrily tore a
leg off and took a bite, the first food he’d had since changing
form. As he swallowed, he felt something a transfor-
mation begins—short, gray hairs started to replace the
scales on his arm. Raka stopped chewing and watched the
shift. He was a changeling, he realized, but the transfor-
mation didn’t end with his dragon form. Tossing the still
squirming rat aside, he plucked a beetle off the cave wall
and bit down on it with a sickening crunch. A moment
later, his skin began hardening into a chitinous shell.
Concentrating, he found he was able to control, or even
halt, the changes to his structure.
The thought of changing into other forms intrigued
him. His mind flooded with information he had learned
in his healing energy classes. Raka felt something else as
he sorted through what was happening. It was a sort of
knowing, an intuition. Could be this be from the dragon
DNA he had ingested? He thought back over his
transformation.
He discovered that his eyes were now acutely sensi-
tive. He could see in total darkness and normal light. His
memory, too, had sharpened. He could repeat his entire
meeting with the council verbatim. His memories were
much more vivid. He recalled his rage at his uncle and
brother and felt it with new intensity. In fact, he could
muster no feelings of compassion or love at all. Glancing
at the writhing rat whose leg he had bitten off, he studied
its suffering. This excited his killing instinct. It took an
effort not to inflict further pain on the creature. He craved
more of the rat’s blood, and he speculated that human
blood and organs would be a delicacy. A burst of intuition
revealed that eating an entire human body and drinking
its blood would transform him into a doppelganger of
that person. He would have to test out how long this
would last, but he suspected it would hold until he decid-
ed to take on another form.
As he discovered more of the strengths his new form
provided, Raka reveled in the thought that he had nothing
to fear. Then, an ancestral memory—perhaps connected
to his dragon DNA—flared in his mind. He saw many of
his fellow reptiles trapped in a burning structure, writhing
in agony. Fear welled up in him at this vivid memory. He
had at least one vulnerability: fire. Raka tore himself away
from the vision and shakily drew in a deep breath to calm
his trembling body. “Enough wasting time on what I fear.
Now it’s time to plan for the future and my revenge on
Arka and his ilk.” That is the task worthy of my new,
transformed self, he thought.
Grace Allison Blair is an award-winning self-help and motivational author, and podcast host, who has assisted thousands to find their spiritual wisdom to solve everyday challenges.
Throughout her adult life, Grace became a serious student of the spiritual. She found that, often, psychological principles and practices were incomplete, but could be filled out by adding the missing spiritual component. Her approach was always to see practical applications for what she uncovered in the mystical. It was through immersing herself in this field of study and experience that she came up with her idea for her book, Einstein’s Compass.
Grace is a successful award-winning author, modern mystic, wellness consultant, business development advisor, marketing coach, and workshop facilitator. She has faced many life challenges, including life-threatening disease, and used what she encountered as a stimulus to gain greater happiness and fulfillment.
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