Authorpreneur Dashboard – Darcy Conroy
The War of Wind & Moon
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Seventeen-year-old Mia trusts no-one. When your survival depends on the acute awareness of every whim and mood swing of your narcissistic, rage-filled mother, anxiety becomes a default state. Expert at reading body language, facial expressions, vocal fluctuation, Mia is permanently prepared to fight, flee or freeze at the slightest hint of aggression or even just disapproval. Mia’s learned it’s easier to be alone.
But Mia’s not alone. Too many children, abused by the people they’re supposed to be safest with abuse them, develop this defensive state. Doctors have a name for it: hyper-vigilance. At Japan’s Kazemoto Security (Supernatural Division) the recruitment scouts have a word for it, too: potential.
The War of Wind and Moon is a contemporary fantasy serial fiction in text and podcast with new chapters posted weekly. Initially available free online on various platforms, each Season will be released as a single book for purchase as it concludes.
Season One begins March 31st, 2016 on Wordpress, Wattpad, and various podcast platforms - click the website link for this book to find your favourite!
Rough-Cut Book Bubbles from The War of Wind & Moon
The Beasts of Wind and Moon
The Gossips are the first of the otherworldly creatures we meet in The War of Wind and Moon. To explain exactly what they are would be a spoiler but Kazemoto Security Corp.'s Supernatural Division would struggle to function without them. Fans of anime and Japanes culture - ancient and modern - will likely recognize their influence on The War of Wind and Moon long before the story takes us from Australia to Japan - oops! No spoilers!
As Long As She Lives
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Never underestimate a woman who survived.
After 4 years teaching in central Africa, Caitlyn Lancaster returns to her family in Australia, telling them she’s been sent home because of looming political unrest. But Cait is more fragile than she and her Federal police handler anticipated. She’s forced to accept that childhood family friend, now police detective, Riley Duncan must be told the brutal truth if she is to keep herself and her family safe.
With Riley’s support, Cait begins to recover her strength but civil war erupts around her friends in Umoja and her harrowing secret becomes the key to that nation’s future.
Putting her faith in her handler, Cait takes the ultimate risk only to discover that Agent Koffa has failed to take into account one vital detail…he’s not as good at his job as he thinks he is.
Book Bubbles from As Long As She Lives
When keeping a secret, control the gossip!
When As Long As She Lives opens, Cait Lancaster returns to her family in Melbourne, Australia, with a harrowing secret about her time teaching in central Africa. Keeping a secret from those who love you is difficult - not just because of the guilt of a lie by omission but because they are bound to be curious and ask lots of questions. In my research on undercover work (for that's what this is, with a twist) I came across the piece of advice Steve gives Cait several times, in one form or another: If people are curious, give them snippets of the story you need them to believe but not everything, that way, when they ask each other what they know, they won't have an entire story to compare but bits and pieces that will slot together and make them feel like they've put it together themselves!
The Number Plate Game
This is one of the lighter moments in As Long As She Lives, when Riley and Cait attempt to find out whether they are being followed. The technique Riley uses to make sure he drives unpredictably is one my husband and I made up to help us get to know new cities, when we were expats moving to new cities every 18 months or so. On our first move we discovered the seemingly anti-intuitive fact that getting lost helps you to get to know a city... because you have to find your way home! When we moved next, this time to Nagoya, Japan, we decided to try to emulate that by getting ourselves 'lost' but that was difficult when you have a Navi on board that live updates to a satellite! My husband came up with the idea of choosing a random number and letter and then following cars we saw with that combination in their number plate. By doing that, we were soon in areas of the city we would never have discovered by ourselves and then linked it to our new home by finding our way back - having the Navi made it easy but it worked nevertheless!
