Category: Subscriber-Only Snippet Series

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who
comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows
great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy
cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know
victory nor defeat.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Everyone thought the Arenas had died. Especially the one who helped stop them in the first place.

Chaya Deneral wishes for two things: to forget her past, and to be left alone with her family in peace.

To the world, she is hailed as the super who finally had the courage to stop the Arenas, live battles between superpowered humans enforced by the government for the enjoyment of the people. But the world doesn’t know about the 699 lives she took before her 700th opponent told her she could change— or that she’s avoided him ever since they stopped the Arenas. No, she just wishes to be left alone on her Nevada homestead, with the three kids she has somehow become a guardian too and the only creature she uses her thought impression ability with, her horse Cinco. All that changes when a girl named Marie ends up on her property, unconscious and with a heck of a story to her name. Not only does she possess two abilities, but she tells Chaya that the Arenas are alive and well— and far more dangerous than before.

Marie wants to rescue her sister from the underground Arenas, but with autism and a severe lack of ability to control her powers, she needs Chaya’s help to get there. And the only way Chaya can help is to find the very person she has been avoiding for the last eight years, and to face the dust of the arena she’s been trying to shake off her boots ever since.

Jenna Terese’s Ignite and The Hunger Games combines in this superhero dystopian set on the southwest Nevada range.