Media Kit: Sunbolt
This media kit includes:
 Book Info and Links
 Author Bio and Links
 Book Excerpts
Book Cover and Info
Title: Sunbolt
Series: The Sunbolt Chronicles, Book One
Series Type: Serial Novella
Author: Intisar Khanani (http://booksbyintisar.com)
Cover Designer: Jenny Zemanek
(http://supernaturalsnark.blogspot.com/)
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Release Date: June 17, 2013
Publisher: Purple Monkey Press
Price: US$1.99 (eBook), US$5.99 (paperback)
Synopsis:
The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is
one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical
aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in
the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful
and corrupt Archmage Wilhelm Blackflame.
When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a
leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are
more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When
Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can
summon to escape with her life.
Add to GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18075001-sunbolt
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Author Bio
Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. Born in
Wisconsin, she has lived in five different states as well as in
Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first remembers
seeing snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and
vaguely recollects having breakfast with the orangutans at
the Singapore Zoo when she was five.
Intisar currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her
husband and two young daughters. Until recently, she wrote
grants and developed projects to address community health
and infant mortality with the Cincinnati Health
Department—which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her
time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy.
Intisar’s latest projects include a companion trilogy to her debut novel Thorn, featuring a
new heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife … and of course, she’s hard
at work on the remaining installments of The Sunbolt Chronicles.
Website: http://booksbyintisar.com
GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/intisar_Khanani
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/booksbyintisar
Twitter: @IntisarKhanani
Book Excerpts
The first excerpt is about 650 words. The second one is shorter, about 300.
Excerpt One
“Mgeni! Stay a moment; I have your future for you.”
I grin, turning towards the voice. Mama Ali sits beneath the cloth shade of her
market stall, her husband’s catch heaped on the wooden counter before her:
mounds of sardines, glinting silver bright in the sun. Today there’s also a
single little octopus that must have gotten tangled in his nets, it’s fleshy body
turned over to show the white of its tentacles.
With her wide smile and heavy girth, Mama Ali is a well-known fixture of the
fish market, her laughter booming across the crowded aisles and her penchant
for sharing people’s futures indulged in even by the locals. Her son, ten years
old and shrewder than a hundred year-old owl, perches beside her, watching
me.
“You can keep my future, Mama Ali,” I reply. “It will probably do you more
good than me.”
My words draw laughter from the women at the surrounding stalls. The
market stalls are packed tightly together, and every counter offers up the
bounty of the sea, scenting the air with salt and sea. Above the stalls flap
brightly-colored cloth shades, protecting both the women and the fish from
the sun’s heat.
I hear someone ask what she missed, and a woman replies, calling me mgeni
again. My smile slips a notch. I may have adopted the traditional, brightly
colored long skirt and tunic of the local women, as well as the tightly wound
head wrap, but my sand-gold skin and the slant of my eyes will always mark
me as someone else. Mama Ali may use the term as an endearment, but the
echoes I hear now brand me as an outsider.
Mama Ali holds out her hand imperiously, a queen demanding tribute from
the riffraff that forms her court. “Come, my friend, keeper of secrets, let us see
what we can.”
“What will you give me?” I ask, hoping ‘keeper of secrets’ is just a phrase she
uses on potential customers. Regardless, I don’t have the coin to pay her, so I
may as well be clear I won’t be giving anything.
“Give you? Your future, muddle-brain! And, because you are always admiring
my wares, I will give it to you for free.”
“Oh, very well.” I acquiesce none too gracefully, offering Mama Ali my hand.
Trying not to fidget, I wait, her palms clasped around my hand. I may be
running a little late, but there’s no reason to think the meeting will have
started on time. Besides, since I wasn’t invited in the first place, no one will
miss me. “Don’t tell me I’m going to meet someone new, dark of skin and—”
“Short,” Mama Ali agrees.
I nearly choke. “Short?”
She drops her voice. “Well, if I want to be sure it happens, short is so much
more likely than tall, isn’t it? At least,” she nods her head to suggest the
market, not to mention the rest the island, “here.”
I laugh. I think this must be why Mama Ali and I get along so well. “Right. Short
and dark.”
“No.” She pulls a frown. “For you, something different.”
I glance towards the sky, gauging the angle of the late morning sun. Magic is
one thing, but divining the future? Not so much. “I really have to—”
“You are going somewhere,” Mama Ali intones, closing her eyes. I glance at her
son in disbelief. Ali grins wide, his teeth showing pearly white against his
earth-brown skin.
“I was before you stopped me,” I agree.
Mama Ali heaves a theatrical sigh, squeezing my hand rather painfully.
“Somewhere important,” she clarifies. She tilts her head as if listening for
something. And Mama Ali hears a lot—she has her pulse on the happenings
of Karolene. Maybe there is something she knows. Has she heard something
about the League? Or the Ghost?
She drops my hand, sitting back with a gasp. “Run!”
Excerpt Two:
“Look what’s here,” the leader says, calling the other soldiers’ attention to me.
My steps falter as they veer towards me, quickly closing the distance between
us. “What do you think she is? A mutt or a half-breed?”
A half-breed they might not bother because those who are half-human and
half-something-else often have some strength or ability that could cause more
trouble than these men are looking for. Unfortunately for me, the secret I
guard is fully human. I glance sideways at the fish seller in the stall beside me,
wondering if I can count on her. She is young, no more than a handful of years
past my own fifteen, her eyes wide with panic. No help there. I swallow hard,
trying to ease the fear thrumming through my veins.
I begin to back away, offering a hesitant smile to the soldiers. A smile? What
am I doing? I should run—
But it’s already too late. Two of the soldiers have moved ahead of the others,
circling past me. I’m surrounded.
“Mutt,” says one of the soldiers, taking in my features. I feel myself flush
slightly. My parents may have been from different lands, but a good number of
islanders have other blood in them, even if it dates back a few generations.
How else did the noble women come by their sleek hair? Their problem isn’t
with my bloodline. It’s with the fact that I visibly don’t belong, and I’m an easy
target.
“Half-breed,” two others posit, their boots sounding unnaturally loud in the
quiet.
“Definitely a mutt,” a soldier behind me says. He’s come to a stop a couple
paces away, no doubt waiting for his leader to make the first move.
“Well, girl, what are you?” the leader asks.
I refuse to answer in the words they’ve afforded me. “Human,” I say. “Sir.”