Book Extract: Dragon Kin’s Choice by Jo Gatenby

I am beyond excited to be welcoming Jo Gatenby and the blog tour for her book, Dragon Kin’s Choice.

What do you do when your world expands, but your choices shrink?

When an orphaned dragon bonds with fourteen-year-old Tad, who never knew his parents, they believe they’ve finally found the family they’d never had. However, there’s more to them than they realize, and that might be the very thing which tears them apart.

Meanwhile, the duke’s daughter, Marian, struggles to avoid an arranged marriage. In trying to escape her fate, the truth is revealed, and she is forced to reconsider everything she thought she knew.

And although the prospective groom’s younger brother, Aldoran, is resigned to being the ‘spare heir’, he’s restless and bored. Drawn into a web of secrecy, he struggles to rise above his father’s expectations and complete his mission.

When these four lives converge, their choices reshape each other—and the world around them—in ways none of them could have predicted.

*****

Jo has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy. 

beginning of extract

While the main character of my novel is a newly hatched dragonet who doesn’t even know the names of things—or even how to speak—one of my favorite secondary characters is Tad, the teenager who will become her bondmate.

This excerpt takes place shortly after we meet him and his friends, and learn that he can sense the emotions of others. He’s just jumped into the quarry lake and is still underwater when he glimpses her.

I’ve also used square brackets and italics [like this] to indicate mind-speech throughout the novel. You’ll also notice Tad’s peasant dialect. I wanted this to bleed into the prose slightly, giving the narrative the flavor of his speech without becoming distracting. So you’ll notice the was/were grammatical reversals, along with expressions such as if’n, mayhap, or certain sure woven throughout.

I hope you enjoy their very first encounter!

*****

A flicker of movement caught his eye. His body gently rocked side to side, and he glimpsed a large black form racing below him. Startled, his open senses registered curiosity—and an alien wisp of loneliness—from a thing what certain sure weren’t human.

He were delighted to think some creature, perhaps a skeal or fotter, had discovered their lake. Well, not a skeal this far from the ocean, but mayhap something else. He listened carefully, trying to locate it. His friends would be some jealous if’n he tamed it.

Closing his eyes, Tad concentrated. He were disconcerted to find himself staring upward from the depths, at a small dark shape hanging in the water overhead. A piercing shaft of fear paralyzed him as he realized he were inside the creature, looking up at himself!

The world lurched as his panic surged. He spared a frantic moment to worry if’n he would be trapped like this, within this beast.

The stomach of the body he shared rumbled with hunger, and for some reason that made him uneasy. Tad decided he’d best try to escape. He focused, pushing through a strange, disorienting wooziness, and were relieved to be seeing out of his own eyes.

Before giving in to his growing need to breathe, he turned in a circle one more time with rhythmic sweeps of his arms, hoping to spot it again. As he spun, he felt a second, stronger sense of hunger.

The huge, shadowy form appeared below him, surging upward, widening black jaws, full of pointy teeth.

In his mind, Tad shrieked, [NO! NOT FOOD! I AIN’T FOOD!]

Forgetting where he was, he opened his mouth to scream. Water rushed down his throat as the dark shape hurtled past, sending him spinning. Choking, he lost track of up and down. Disoriented and drowning, he tumbled, submerged in a world of murky green alternating with bright flashes.

Sunbeams! Flailing wildly toward the light, he burst to the surface, coughing and sputtering. He were alive, but a shiver of terror stuck hold.

He wanted out of the lake.

Now.

Water exploded to his left. It’s back!

end of extract

About Jo Gatenby –

Thanks to her great-grandmother, Jo Gatenby is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation in Canada. She is also the mother of two, and Nana to three!

She lives in Ontario, with her husband, Bill, her biggest supporter and harshest critic, and a geriatric cat named Jeffrey, who likes to help her write by sleeping on her keyboard or blocking her computer screen.

Jo likes to say she writes whatever the voices in her head tell her to! She has had more than thirty of her flash fiction and short stories published in on-line magazines and has self-published five children’s books.

You’ll find all this and more on her website. You can also say hello via Facebook and Instagram.

Dragon Kin’s Choice is part of the Kingdom of Galahar series and was released in September 2026. Click to buy on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Barnes & Noble.

Normally available for only $5.99 CAD / $3.99 US, anywhere you purchase EBooks (except Amazon).

However, as a special promotion for reading this blog post, visit Jo’s website—www.jo-gatenby-books.com—for a special SALE PRICE of only $1.99 CAD. This offer is good until Sept 30, 2026.

by

Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.