Alex knows she’s different; other girls don’t burst into
flames when they get angry. After she nearly burned the house down when
she was twelve, her mother confessed that her father was a demon. 

Now eighteen and mourning the death of her mother, Alex
sinks inside herself until she discovers a dagger that can open a portal
into her father’s realm. Although she yearns to meet her father, nothing
terrifies her more. When an unknown threat from across the portal menaces
her friends and her loved ones, Alex knows she must act.

Alex will do anything to save her friends—even risk appealing
to her father in his strange universe of bizarre creatures, unfamiliar
alliances, and unimagined power. She knows that to face a tormentor from across
the portal, she’ll need to learn to fight fire with fire.

For more information about ‘Firebird Alex’ please visit
Goodreads, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

The protagonist of ‘Firebird Alex’ is—wait for
it—Alex. But she’s got a cast of characters around
her which contribute to her journey and to The Sedumen
Chronicles as a whole. Here’s a brief introduction to the main characters:

Alexandra Gold:  Smart and compassionate,
18-year old Alex grew up with the love of a doting published poet mother, and
haunted by a horrible secret: that her father was a demon. The fear that one
day, despite how much she wanted to be a good person, she might turn into an
evil monster kept her from wanting to associate with anyone. So when
cancer killed her mother, Alex felt that the cancer had also taken her
only bridge to the world around her. And yet, in the back of her mind, she
knows that her mother would want her to be part of the world, and so she tries,
slowly, to claw her way back.

Rachel Silver: Short and bug-eyed, 13-year old
Rachel was orphaned young, but not before her mother asked Rabbi Normal Hirsch
to foster her. She’s gregarious and snarky but sweet and caring to the core of
her being—just the righ girl to help pull Alex out of her shell. The
two girls hit it off quickly, not simply because of their mutual loss, but
because of their love of gaming.

Rabbi Norman Hirsch: Father of Rachel, rabbi to
Alex, and a kindly, deeply spiritual man who wants only to
facilitate the enlightenment and fulfillment of everyone he can,
especially wayward souls. He doesn’t have a judgmental bone in his body, which
makes him the perfect for Alex, who judges herself so harshly
she initially retreats from everything and everyone.

Jacob Harman: The moment 19-year-old
Jake may seem like a stereotypical computer science major—tall,
gawky, too thin for his own good—but he has a soulful streak, alove of
cars, and will own up to the occasional foray into electronic
data harvesting on the less-than-completely-legal side. For all that Jake may
flirt with hacking, however, he has an unshakable sense of loyalty and a strong
moral code.

Detective Hector Godinez: A lifelong friend of
Rachel’s father, he repeatedly runs into Jake and Alex when the pair decide to
investigate a missing persons case of his. Like most good detectives, Godinez
knows far more than he lets on. Before long, he ends up being a sort of mentor
to Alex, trying to pick her brain and keep her out of trouble at the same time.

Orren Merton started writing fantasy and science fiction
at an embarrassingly young age, mostly for his own amusement.  In
2001, magazines, developers, and corporations began to pay him to write and edit
music software related articles, manuals, and  books. His music
technology articles have appeared in magazines and online
in Electronic Musician,Computer Music UK, Music Tech
Magazine,MIX, Cubase.net and Gearwire.com. His music articles and reviews have been
published nationally and internationally, online and off in Dark
Angel, OC Weekly, and The Scene LA. His Industrial rock
group Ember After released their debut album, Grasping At Straws, in
2008. Since 2010 he has written the urban fantasy novel The Deviant and the
science fiction novel Skye Entity. He lives in Southern California with
his family, pets, collection of sci-fi/fantasy memorabilia, and curiously large
stuffed animal collection.

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.