A SAMPLE OF ARARANKHA'S BESTIARY

Finally, my early draft is complete. From what my family has read of it, it has received rave reviews. I have developed some quite good digital art work for the story, and I hope one of my family members will read it soon enough.

The novel is basically a lost world story; explorers go to an uncharted area of the map to find animals long extinct. And, like all good paleofiction, the animsalds try their hardest to kill and eat the explorers.

While it is a fairly used concept, Ararankha is a fun exercise in world building. I love world building, it my opinion, it only builds to the credibility of the story to add a ton of detail and research to your creatures. I also love field guides, full of gorgeous artwork on strange creatures. One of my books in my collection is World of Kong, a WETA art book on the concept art of creatures in the 2005 movie, presented as a field guide. With absolutely beautiful artwork and some excellent world building, it is one of my personal favorite books.

So, my own book comes with an illustrated field guide to the lifeforms present in Ararankha, not all of them in the story. I have decided to show a couple creatures to you, some creatures present in the field guide.

Ararankha comes out basically whenever Im satisfied with it. Please comment.

Thanks for reading!

Kelston Hubler

ARARANKHA'S FIRST DRAFT IS FINISHED

Boy, that was fast.

Indeed, the first draft of my story, Ararankha, is complete. I'm going to have peer reviews and refine it further, but I really enjoyed writing it. It's roughly 136 pages long, so not really a novel, but it's written on a big page size, so it would likely be longer in a different format.

The story is about Marika Jackson, a traveller in South America who, after a really bad accident, finds herself in a Peruvian village, and joins an expedition into the Andes in search of a prehistoric animal. While they do, indeed, find prehistoric animals, I wouldn't exactly say they have a good time finding them, considering most of them want to stuff the explorers in their mouthes.

Ararankha is my tribute to dinosaur literature new and old, a combination of the old adventure stories of lost world and new ideas on dinosaur evolution and speculative boiology. It will indeed be a very fun read. I've even included a bestiary at the end, complete with illustrations, hopefully.

What I set out to do in Ararankha is not only create good monsters but good characters. I personally believe a good character in a monster story is one that can keep you entertained through the bits the creature isn't there, so I try my hardest to do that.

Ararankha is founded on a mountain of lost world stories, from Journey to the center of the earth to Jurassic Park. It my tribute to techno thrillers and dinosaur fiction.

So, if you like interesting characters, conspiracies, and flying velociraptors, Ararankha is definitely a story you'll enjoy (once it's done, of course, editing takes forever.)

Thankfully, now I'll finally have time to get back to work on Atomic.

Happy New Year, and enjoy the Super Bowl tomorrow!

Kekston Hubler