Black Gold
There’s something Strange in them there hills…
El Larson and her Parasaurolophus partner, Crooner, are the best trackers in XXXX county. They make a tidy living locating and returning missing dinosaurian livestock for ranchers in the area. But when El and Crooner decide to investigate reports of stolen dinosaur eggs, they soon realize the thefts go much deeper than simple poaching. Facing a mysterious cult, a crooked Sheriff, betrayal, and a little-known process called “draconic regression,” El and Crooner must work together to take down a would-be tyrant and save the county’s dinosaurs from extinction.
As a longtime fan of Dinotopia and the familiar tropes of the Western genre (Star Wars is a space Western and I will die on that hill), I’ve been toying with the idea of a “dinosaur western” for a while. For a long time it was a very #noplotjustvibes project, but in 2023 I finally got my notes together and started drafting the novel during NaNoWriMo.
Black Gold is planned as a standalone novel, with no sequels, although I’d be open to revisiting the dinosaur-populated Old West in future projects.