Blind Speed Dating #11 (YA)

Title: Daughter of Light

Genre: YA alternate history

Word count: 70,000

The Second World War looms large as the Uberreich mobilizes in Europe under the command of Hitler’s right hand, the mad scientist Dr. Bosende. Whispers of Otto Hitler's zombie armies and deals with the Devil swirl through England and its sovereign nation across the Atlantic, New Britannia.

In Boston, Duna O'Malley could care less about the war in Europe. Or Hitler's monsters. She has lost her grandparents to a savage influenza and she's entirely alone. Until old fortune-teller appears at the wake and tells Duna there's more to her past than she knows.

It seems Duna is one of the last Lumenvoces, those who will come together to defend humanity against their dark counterparts, the Nox. If she can learn to wield her power – to cast her light body into battle – she will stop Hitler's horrific plan to enslave the world with his nightmare monsters.Duna doesn't have long to learn the path of light before Hitler and Dr. Bosende realize their plan to bring humanity to its knees, starting with the Jewish captives in the work camps.

This is my first novel and intended to be part of a trilogy, though it can stand on its own.

 First 250:

Boston, Massachusetts, New Britannia, 1938

A woman with mounds of curly red hair. A man with a rogue’s eyes and hair the color of a wet crow. They shine. Thy are light, sun and stars. They are warm like a good memory. They hang in the air, the shimmering air, salty shimmering air. “Duna,” they whisper, “it’s time.”

The sheets gripped Duna like dry tree roots. She flailed against them and her dream, pushing herself awake. Prying her eyes open, she inhaled hard and stared at the ceiling of the cottage. Against the whitewashed plaster, reflections of the moon still played on the waves of the Atlantic.

It was the sliver of a moment before she remembered.

Today was Nan and Grandda’s funeral.    

St. Patrick’s was decked out in flowers and ivy wreaths. Little shamrock plants dotted the ends of aisles. It seemed as though every fisherman and his wife from the entire Eastern New Britannian seaboard had come to pay their respects. They sat in their solemn blacks, dabbing their eyes with linen hankies. Duna sat in the first row, her own stiff black dress growing ever more constricting. Voices murmured and swished over her like dead leaves on a sidewalk. The priest’s bald head gleamed in the light.

“Stuff and nonsense,” Duna thought, in Nan’s voice. She knew Nan would have liked nothing more than to have been buried in the dooryard in a pine box, a bit of good Irish whiskey sloshed over the grave, and Grandda would have wanted to be tossed out to sea with a lobster pot around his neck. Duna stifled a laugh at the images. She hurriedly wiped her face with a handkerchief and sniffled loudly, pretending at tears. She knew her grandparents wouldn’t have minded her mirth in the least.