The knife that broke the Dragon’s back is a brand-new novel about Anika Martin, a twenty-seven-year-old woman with the whole world before her, but also a troublesome world within her which too often stands in the way of taking her best shot and getting what she wants.
Join her the night she finally has enough, and puts a plan into action that she first attempted at sixteen.
In the weeks that follow, she struggles, and grows, and experiences both the light side and dark side of being human in herself and others.
She also discovers that some of the most foundational beliefs about who she is may have been wrong, and uncovering the truth could change everything.
This book was inspired by an artist crush who spoke and wrote so beautifully that author Shaun Roundy, MA set out to “write an entire book that sounds like that.” His experience of publishing twenty other books and teaching university writing for fifteen years helped make this his best-written book so far, packed with catchy sentence rhythms, engaging dialog, surprising descriptions of nature (including human nature), unique twists of phrase, and a multi-layered plot which you’ll enjoy unfolding from start to end.
Get your copy in paperback, eBook, or audiobook at:
https://amzn.to/4oD0ufh
Here’s the cover and first chapter:
Chapter One: Winners Never Quit
If you had to choose one word to characterize Anika’s life up until 14 hours ago, it might be “cautious.” She played it safe. She kept her head low. She remained mostly invisible, which seemed wiser than standing out and risking getting knocked down.
There were, however, two notable exceptions.
The first was running.
She joined track in high school, and her willingness to suffer, while pushing herself miles outside of her physical comfort zone, resulted in dozens of ribbons, medals, and trophies, along with a full-ride scholarship to college.
She loved the simple, rhythmic sensation of her feet striking the ground, her legs churning, arms swinging forward and back as if repeatedly kicking and punching some unseen adversary, and the air rushing in and out of starving lungs, while the rest of the world faded from conscious awareness.
She also loved the deafening roar of stadium crowds as she rounded the final bend of the track only feet or inches ahead of the pack, then hit the afterburners, igniting an unsustainable amount of power and speed, widening the gap and crushing anyone’s hope of overtaking her. She found the noise and attention intoxicating – and felt endlessly puzzled by how readily she set aside her habitual introversion as the spotlight fueled her determination to win.
The second exception was also running, but a very different kind.
Twice in the 27 years of her young life, she had spontaneously packed up and run away from home, leaving everything behind without a backward glance.
The first time happened minutes after Mother died, rushing to pack a bag with a few essentials and escape before some other adult could come along and stop her. She made it nearly 300 miles before getting caught.
The second time happened 14 hours ago, and with no one to stop her, she had driven nearly a thousand miles, with less than an hour to go before reaching her original goal.
Now she leaned forward over the steering wheel and peered through the dark night and heavy rain hammering out a random, musical cadence against her 4Runner’s windshield.
She squinted her eyes, red from crying in frustration for much of the past thousand miles, and read the green road sign approaching just off the country highway. As hoped, it read “Augusta City Limit – Population 318.” This was the last stop, the last semi-civilized waypoint, only fifteen miles from her family’s remote Montana cabin.
She hadn’t visited the cabin for eighteen years, not since she was nine years old, back when she still had a family, before Dad left and Mom died. All that remained of her family now was her pet dragon, Spike, which was the name she assigned to her sometimes-overwhelming anxiety.
She named it after the sharp, pokey sensation it generated in her throat whenever things started going too well, or when she considered showing up in the world rather than blending quietly into the background while everyone else’s lives rolled on around her.
She couldn’t be certain where the dragon came from, but she assumed she inherited it from her mother, from the family curse. Why couldn’t she have a normal pet instead, like a hamster or bunny rabbit or parakeet?!
Or why couldn’t she at least have a prince charming to vanquish the dragon simply by making her feel safe, loved, and valued?
She thought she did, actually, until about 17 hours ago when he revealed himself as a villain instead, and the betrayal sliced deep. She hadn’t anticipated it, hadn’t protected her vulnerable heart, and now found the ache impossible to ignore, no matter how hard she tried to turn her mind to other subjects, or to stop thinking at all.
This was not the story she expected to live, and she had no regrets about abandoning it to start a new one. If she really was living in a fairy tale, then she had just fled the palace and run away to the deep, dark, enchanted woods, complete with dramatic weather and occasional lightning slicing across the black sky to set the proper, ominous tone.
What kind of creatures could she expect to find here? Maybe there would be a kind woodsman. Or a wise old woman or noble prince. Or a cruel monster – though Spike was more than monster enough to scramble all her hopes and ruin the story.
And what part did she play? Could she safely assume she was destined for a happily-ever-after ending, when she was both princess and monster all rolled up into one?
But her tired mind was in no mood to explore silly fantasies, so she dropped the question as the darkened village drew near.
At 2:00 a.m. on May 5th, the tiny town looked utterly deserted. Then again, it probably always looked that way. With only three hundred residents, how much activity could it offer?
Maybe the community would experience a sudden flurry of traffic, with dozens of people appearing as if out of nowhere, every weekday at 5:00 p.m., or just before or after church, or just before bowling leagues (if they had a bowling alley), or…well, Anika couldn’t think of what other events might occur in such a tiny, remote hamlet.
On one hand, she expected the idea of such solitude, of such extreme peace and quiet, to comfort her. After all, she had left Las Vegas precisely to get away from everyone, to escape, to lie low and be left alone and undisturbed until she could sort everything out and figure out how to start fresh.
On the other hand, the thought of such detachment terrified her. She felt like she had driven straight into a vacuum, a vast and unrelenting black hole, where she would find herself more alone than ever, where the isolation and loneliness could drive her mad, and where she could easily hatch a brood of new problems rather than vanquishing the old ones.
What if this story turned out to be a tragedy, and she ended up as the crazy old hag, living alone in the woods, keeping company with wild animals who had grown accustomed to her, and dancing naked during lightning storms and downpours?
An abrupt shiver ran down her spine and briefly shook her shoulders at the thought, but she gripped the steering wheel more firmly and continued on.
She took a deep breath and held it for several seconds, then expelled it slowly as her car coasted to a halt at a bright red stop sign reflecting her headlights at the edge of town. Once stopped, she kept her right foot pressed lightly against the brake pedal and thought about what to do next.
From here, she had to rely on distant memories to find her way the last fifteen miles to the cabin. But how hard could it be? Only so many roads could leave this small town, and the cabin had to lie along one of them. Surely she would recognize it once she arrived.
An abrupt burst of wind buffeted the car, rocking it from side to side. Fresh sheets of heavy rainfall slammed against the windshield, the sunroof, and splattered against the black asphalt road below her, dimming the already-faint glow from sparse streetlights, and further dimming her hopes of rediscovering happiness and hope in a solitary, backwoods Montana cabin.
“Winners never quit,” she whispered to herself under her breath. “Winners never quit,” she said again, tapping the palm of her right hand firmly against the steering wheel, as if encouraging the car, and not herself, to stop worrying so much.
“Winners never quit,” she continued, hearing the words in her high school track coach’s encouraging yet demanding voice, reminding her of the philosophy that once carried her over many finish lines ahead of the pack. The philosophy that began to transform an awkward, lonely, shy young girl into a winner in the first place.
“Winners never quit. Winners never quit.” The words fell into sync with the windshield wipers which acted as a metronome, keeping the tempo far steadier than Anika felt inside. “Winners never quit! Winners never quit! Winners never quit!”
Anika repeated her mantra over and over until the dragon inside settled down and went back to sleep, until the words drove thoughts of failure and despair from her mind, or at least banished them to the outskirts, to the dark, shadowy edges of consciousness.
Las Vegas now lay a thousand miles behind her. While she knew very well that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it now became painfully obvious that beginning was the easy part. With the thousand miles behind her, with one journey nearly over, the real difficulty had scarcely begun.
“Winners never quit,” she began again, and continued whispering under her breath as she lifted her foot from the brake, pressed on the gas, and continued forward through the dark night in what she hoped was the right direction.
Note: we updated the title to say “Dragon’s Back” instead of “Camel’s Back” to make it catchier and for yet another layer of meaning, along with the cover design. Here’s the original cover. If you have one of those, it’ll become quite a collector’s item!
