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Slaying Isidore’s Dragons by C. KennedyPaperback: 350 pages
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press (April 9, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1634760018
ISBN-13: 978-1634760010
Amazon: Slaying Isidore’s Dragons
Amazon Kindle: Slaying Isidore’s Dragons
5 Best friends
4 Vicious brothers
3 STD tests
2 Guys in love
1 Car bombing
&
Nowhere to run
Follow the burgeoning love of two teens during the worst year of their lives. Irish-born Declan David de Quirke II is the son of two ambassadors, one Irish and one American. He is ‘out’ to his parents but to no one else. French-born Jean Isidore de Sauveterre is also the son of two ambassadors, one Catalan and one Parisian. His four half brothers have been told to cure him of his homosexuality. Both teens have lost a parent in a London car bombing.
5 Weeks of hell
4 Attempts on their lives
3 Law enforcement agencies
2 Dead high school seniors
1 Jealous friend
&
A love that won’t be denied
Declan and Isidore meet at the beginning of their senior year at a private academy in the United States. Declan is immediately smitten with Isidore and becomes his knight in shining armor. Isidore wants to keep what is left of his sanity and needs Declan’s love to do it. One is beaten, one is drugged, one is nearly raped, one has been raped. They are harassed by professors and police, and have fights at school, but none of it compares to running for their lives. When the headmaster’s popular son attempts suicide and someone tries to assassinate Declan’s mother, they are thrown headlong into chaos, betrayal, conspiracy, allegations of sexual coercion, even murder. And one of them carries a secret that may get them killed.
5 New family members
4 BFF’s
3 Countries
2 Extraordinary Psychologists
1 Courageous Mother
&
A new beginning for two young men in love
Excerpt:
A Never-before-seen Excerpt from Slaying Isidore’s Dragons
When I write for youth, I try to bring them other cultures, history, and music. I lived outside of the U.S. for a number of years in my youth and one thing that has always stayed with me is how different school was for me in another country. Isidore is French and Declan is Irish, and they attend a private academy in the U.S. for the last year of high school. I share my opinion about the differences in schooling in Slaying Isidore’s Dragons. Here is a never-before-seen excerpt about school:
Isidore set his pen aside, sighed, and stretched. Declan looked up over his book. “Done?”
“Non. I am having trouble with the literature on Alexander the Great.”
“Why?”
“Is it me, or does American education tell you how to think rather than ask you to consider various aspects of a subject?”
“I think it pretty much tells you how to think until you get to university. I know it’s a lot different from school in Ireland. What are you having trouble with?”
“I have studied Alexander the Great in depth. This literature speaks of Alexander’s conquests, his wives, and his children. It speaks nothing of his relationship with Hephaestion except to say that he was one of his generals.”
“Okay, so?”
“Have you studied Alexander?”
“Yes, he conquered half the known world before he was thirty.”
“Did you read the Iliad?”
“I cheated and used Cliffs Notes.”
“Used what?”
“It’s a shortcut to get through a subject. Forget it. What’s bothering you?”
“Some believe the story of Alexander and Hephaestion is one of the greatest love stories in all of history, and that it was the death of Hephaestion that caused Alexander to go on a rampage in an attempt to conquer the remaining known world until his death ten months later. They were great lovers and open about it.”
“Wow, didn’t know that. So?”
“My assignment is to write of the last year of Alexander’s life. How can I do that without speaking of his rage over the death of Hephaestion?”
“It’s called make-believe.”
Isidore was openly irritated. “What? As if to invent it?”
“Sure. Write it as if they were best friends, not lovers.”
Isidore winced. “It would be like saying Tristan and Isolde were nephew and aunt.”
“Didn’t Tristan steal his uncle’s wife or something like that?”
“Yes, but the important part of the story is that they would rather die than be separated, and they did die rather than be separated. Their love was that deep. Now, I am to write that Alexander, who shared a love with Hephaestion of equal measure, was merely upset over a lost friend, and this played no role in the last year of his life?”
About Cody Kennedy: Raised on the mean streets and back lots of Hollywood by a Yoda-look-alike grandfather, Cody doesn’t conform, doesn’t fit in, is epic awkward, and lives to perfect a deep-seated oppositional defiance disorder. In a constant state of fascination with the trivial, Cody contemplates such weighty questions as If time and space are curved, then where do all the straight people come from? When not writing, Cody can be found taming waves on western shores, pondering the nutritional value of sunsets, appreciating the much maligned dandelion, unhooking guide ropes from stanchions, and marveling at all things ordinary.
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