I'm ecstatic to announce my completion of a YA fantasy novel entitled Slaves of the Bijou, roughly 83,000 words, book one of a three-part series entitled The Lore of Wind Drivers!

Slaves of the Bijou portrays a prospering and innocent society from another world, Elatia, on the brink of destruction, coinciding with the everyday life of a kid from Earth, Jordan, who's called to an action he feels is beyond his imagination.

Jordan is forbidden from entering caves. His father, a noted geologist, lost his life in one, leaving his mother to bar him from a school trip that may place him in a similar setting. Regardless, he finds a way there, anyway. Oversleeping, he goes alone and in a state of frenzy, getting stuck in a tunnel and manifesting his mother's fears. Like his father, he believes he'll perish, but in despair, a shiny rock distracts him momentarily, a bijou, glistening with a constellation within. A stone of its kind doesn't exist on Earth. Jordan would know, geology, as was with his father, is his forte.

Little he imagines from the power of the bijou. Was he meant to become trapped and find it? Is he destined for something beyond his doom in the cave? Will he boldly confront the truth and sorrow of his father's loss? Before being rescued, the power of the stone awakens him in an Edenic realm, Elatia, on the verge of destruction. Welcomed there by the alluring Kaylaira, Jordan discovers he has the power to control the zephyr, their wind, a power he learns burdens him with an immense responsibility, to save their world from the arrival of its apocalyptic aggressors, the MonTu.

Once rescued from the tunnel and returned to ordinary life, Jordan recruits the assistance of his incredulous friend, Nijal. Through the stone's power, both return nightly to Elatia, risking everything they've previously believed, the lives of friends and associates, all while succumbing to the madness of both realities. Is he close to discovering secrets that led to his father's vanquishing or has he simply lost his sense of reality? Can he master his new powers and save a world worthier than his own, a world he imagined existed in the secret volumes of his father's library, in the history of bijous? Or is he, in the end, delusional and still stuck in that cave?

JT Stadd