Welcome to the Authors’ Lounge, a blog hosted by ReadersMagnet! My name is Amanda Flieder. I’m a mostly self-published Author, and have been lucky in creating my work with the help of talented Editors both here in Canada and across the Atlantic in England. The novel I’d like to boast about in this Author’s Lounge blog post is titled Tracon, which is a soft Sci-Fi novel using a twist on our current world. The story idea burrowed into my brain after reading an article about an ancient, subsurface dwelling which provided shelter to possibly a few dozen people and showed conclusive evidence of being a man-made tunnel dug from soft stone. The dwelling described in the article wasn’t anything as expansive as Chinese temples or Middle Eastern cities, but it had been a refuge and home for families and (from what we can decipher from historical study) was likely in use for at least a few generations.

Being a writer, the creative idea of the man-made cave being dug by something not entirely Human is where my variation of Dragons emerged. Suddenly an entire world combining our known history with a fantastic one grew into existence. Tracon is a modern take on the ‘what if’ question of Dragons having been a key part of our history, including having their Human-hybrid descendants – known as Tracons – surviving here in our normal world today after the Dragons themselves became extinct. I also wondered who would hate them? There had to be a reason that these descendants needed underground homes for protection… that they needed places to hide. There also had to be a reason for a world as we know it still being the world that the Tracons live in, rather than whatever existence would have occurred if something hadn’t stopped it.

Once I started writing, the answer was clear: an uprising. Reality has a multitude of history lying around of territorial battles, power uprisings, and religious wars. So, as a Fiction writer, why not usurp existing history? The decline of Dragons into extinction makes sense against a backdrop of Human population increases and development, mixed up with some of the overthrown empires having been Dragon-controlled and a believable Fictional world was born. The story that Tracon narrates happens in our modern day, and looks at their world through the eyes of Detective Margaret Freeman. She’s someone who faced a near-death experience which activated her recessive Dragon genetics, unfortunately then making her a target in the ongoing war between the Tracons and the Rangers (descendants of the original people who rose up against the Dragons).

Unsure if she’s been rescued or kidnapped by Devlin Elite, Maggie is stuck on a flight to Italy with the decision to hide underground with the other Tracons or take her chances alone against the Ranger threat she just learned about. At least, those were the options before Devlin’s ex shoots Dev and Maggie, and Maggie’s mother is abducted by Rangers. The stakes are significantly raised when the threat of exposing to the world the reality of Tracons and Dragons balances against being exterminated by Rangers. I currently have eight books available, all of them fiction. You can find any of my books on Amazon simply by searching my name as shown in the first paragraph of this Authors’ Lounge blog post, or you can check out my website at www.amandaflieder.ca and choose your favorite book seller from all the available ones listed in my Bookstore.

I offer a Historical Fiction trilogy with a touch of time travel based in the ancient Roman Empire, and have a pair of Romance novellas which each provide happy endings if you just need some escapism for a weekend. I also have a short story, published to support teaching literacy to teens and adults who struggle with reading, and two short novels. One of these novels delves into Fantasy, and the other is Tracon. Happy reading!