New Author’s Series: I am Ocilla

At the inception of writing these features, I wanted to give some promotion to the winners of the MLP Premise Contest. Well, this is the only one I got permission to write about and I’m very pleased and honored to be doing so.

I am Ocilla, by Diane M Graham was one of the three co-winners of the Marcher Lord Press Premise Contest.  Her prize was instant manuscript request from MLP, and she is eagerly awaiting to hear back as I speak.  This is surely in God’s hands, but that’s not why you’re reading, is it?

I am Ocilla is a great YA fantasy, that draws on the themes of love and validation as a child of God.  It is an epic adventure with the fate of no less than five worlds on the line.  All our friends from fantasy literature are here:  fairies, giants, elves, dwarves, and dragons.  With this book you will enter a world you know and love, yet will still be drawn by the uniqueness of its presentation.  Graham was not scared to brave the bending of literary rules here.  With informal prose and a present tense point of view, it certainly is a refreshingly different read from the corporate cookie-cutter books of today.

Diane M. Graham is a stay-at-home mom of five children ages nine to seventeen.  She and her husband live on a mountain in easter Oklahoma.  She has been writing for two and a half years, and I am Ocilla is her second completed book.  She says, “Love for my children inspired me to write I Am Ocilla.  I want the reader to know their life is a song written for [God’s] glory.”

Graham’s tale of a real-life epic escape from a corrupt local government is nothing short of inspiring.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  Her posts are entitled “Mountain Life” 1-16.  Here is the first https://newauthors.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/mountain-life/, though you may have to look around a little  for the rest of the series.

To find out more about Diane M. Graham and her book, check out her page here at the New Authors Fellowship https://newauthors.wordpress.com/diane-m-graham/ and her personal blog where she mirrors her posts http://crazymountainwoman.blogspot.com/.

Now… a little more of I am Ocilla.

 

Open your mind and heart to the simplicity and complexity of a name.

Five hundred years ago, five kingdoms were cursed by a dark stranger when he failed in his plot to overtake the world. He vanished, slipping through a rip in time leaving behind devastation that separated the five kingdoms.  Rumors spread of his return and a desperate search for the Chosen One begins.  For only the Chosen One can fulfill the prophecy and free the world from the evil one’s grasp.

How important is a name?  For Ocilla, it’s all she knows of her life.  Trapped in a dungeon, she remembers nothing else, and in her darkest hour she believes dying is so much easier than the fight to live.  But destiny will soon change everything when the search for the Chosen One brings two strangers to her cell door.

 Travel with Ocilla on a fantastical journey to find herself and her true value, as she enters a world where darkness has descended but the bright light of hope shines through for those willing to believe…  a world where nothing is quite what you think it is and fantasy is truly reality.  In the process, she may find a love so pure and good, she can’t believe she is deserving of such a gift. 

Set out on a quest of faith, not common sense.