Dagana: The Last Mermaid
by Kody Boye
Genre: Fantasy Thriller
I have always loved the ocean. Beautiful and tranquil, it seems like it can do absolutely no harm.
Until the night my parents go missing, and then are subsequently found dead.
Both have been viciously mauled by something off the Gulf—something even the medical examiner
claims is an ‘unknown animal.’ But the worst part? I swear I saw something in the water the night they
were both killed.
But this is no chance occurrence. As the body count begins to rise, and as more tragedies unfold, I
realize that something has to be done.
Someone has to hunt down, and kill, the monster of Mermaid Cove.
That someone is me.
Though he was born and raised in Southeastern Idaho, Kody Boye has lived in the state of Texas since
2010. His first short story, [A] Prom Queen's Revenge, was published at the age of fourteen. He has
since gone on to publish numerous works of fiction, including the young-adult novels When They Came,
The Beautiful Ones, The Midnight Spell and ALT CONTROL ENTER, as well as fiction for adults. He
currently lives and writes in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. He is in the process of obtaining an
undergraduate in creative writing and plans to pursue an MFA to teach afterward.
GUEST POST
Shaping
Dagana
In
my novel Dagana:
The Last Mermaid,
we are introduced to a young woman named Jessica Pruitt—who, like
any other teenager, has goals and ambitions, troubles and woes. At
the very beginning of the book, we are presented with perhaps her
biggest conflict, which is her parents’ constant fighting. Then,
through a twist of events, we see them fall victim to what will
eventually be called “The Monster of Mermaid Cove,” but not
before our heroine sees a flicker of orange in the water, signaling
that this is not any normal kind of monster.
When
I decided to write Dagana:
The Last Mermaid,
I knew that I wanted her to be a deadly creature. However — given
that there is a wide history and great mythology of mermaids, I had
to decide how I wanted to craft this story, and how I wanted her to
be present within it.
There
were a few problems I ran into with traditional mythology. The first
was that I could not necessarily make her a Siren, since my
protagonist is not a man being lured to his death. The second was
that I could not necessarily make her a Shapeshifting, Disney-esque
type of mermaid either (though an initial idea was that the mermaid
in Dagana
was, in fact, a shapeshifter) because I didn’t want there to be an
added ‘mystery’ to the novel surrounding the monster’s
appearance. I wanted Dagana
to be a ruthless killer — an apex predator who dwelled off the
coasts of a small town exacting what might be vengeance killings
against the people of Mermaid Cove — and because of that, I
realized I had one of two choices: to either tell the story from a
dual perspective (wherein the mermaid had a point-of-view within the
novel,) or tell the story of a young teenage girl. In the end, I
chose to tell Jessica’s story — because while the stories of
monsters can be interesting, real-world problems are ultimately more
terrifying than their fictional counterparts.
*
* *
The
novel is available on Amazon in eBook format, as well as in stunning
audiobook and as a beautiful paperback.
Visit
www.kodyboye.com for more
information.
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