THE DRAGONS OF HEAVEN

Drawing on the legacy of Indiana Jones, Jack Burton, and The Shadow, Missy Masters is an adventure heroine for the 21st century.

Street magician Missy Masters inherited more than the usual genetic cocktail from her estranged grandfather. She also got his preternatural control of shadow and his legacy as the vigilante hero Mr. Mystic. Problem is, being a pulp hero takes more than a good fedora and a knack for witty banter, and Missy lacks the one thing Mr. Mystic had: experience. Determined to live up to her birthright, Missy journeys to China to seek the aid of Lung Huang, the ancient master who once guided her grandfather. Lung Huang isn’t quite as ancient as Missy expected, and a romantic interlude embroils her in the politics of Lung Huang and his siblings, the nine dragon-guardians of creation. When Lung Di—Lung Huang’s brother and mortal enemy—raises a magical barrier that cuts off China from the rest of the world, it falls to the new Mr. Mystic to prove herself by taking down the barrier. It may be too great a task for a lone adventure hero. As Missy prepares to confront Lung Di, she faces a tough decision: remain loyal to Lung Huang and see China destroyed, or side with the bad guy and save the world. Alyc Helms fled her PhD program in anthropology and folklore when she realized she preferred fiction to academic writing. She lives above a dive bar in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she’s a project manager for Macmillan, a freelance editor, and a volunteer copyeditor for Nightmare Magazine. In addition to writing, she dabbles in corsetry and costuming, dances Scottish Highland and Irish Ceili at Renaissance and Dickens fairs, rants about social justice issues, and games in all forms of media. She sometimes refers to her work as “critical theory fanfic,” which is just a fancy way to say that she is obsessed with liminality, gender identity, and foxes.