Legend of Kataria | Outcasts Book #1 (NEW VERSION)

A/N

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Legend of Kataria!

Well, to be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure what to put here, even though I felt like I should make an introduction. I guess I could start by introducing myself. That seems like a good place to begin, yes?

Greetings! My name is Kat Wingfree and I am a soon-to-be (hopefully) published author with a love for adventure, fantasy, and just really good story-telling in general.  While my typical genre of expertise usually lies in low fantasy adventures with numerous mythical creatures and a big obvious enemy to fight, I sometimes like to shift gears entirely and try something a little more to left field--

Which is where the concept for this book came from. 

Now, if you want a little backstory (and honestly, who doesn't, am I right?), if you've read my other novel Forgotten Legends, you may see a few similarities between the two and the reason for that coincidence is that I actually began writing the two series at the exact same time. Forgotten Legends was the focus of my love of dragons and took a lot of aspects from my love of mythology and lore, while this story; Legend of Kataria (originally just known as Outcasts) took on a different approach, honing in on the current hyper fixation of the time--that being the Warriors series. If you want a bit of a reality check, all of the characters in this story were originally spelled into various breeds of dogs and they then had to find a way to undo the spell and save the kingdom. 

I was 13, okay? It was cute, but admittedly not one of my best plots (although Blue did make a very nice English Spangler).

And from there the whole story kind of took a backburner to Forgotten Legends. Dragons seemed to be my niche and I was comfortable with that. 

And Outcasts was pushed aside and forgotten for almost four years...

And then I found it again, buried amongst a bunch of old homework assignments and paperwork. It was in bad shape, but I decided, now being a little more knowledgeable of the ins and outs of creative writing, to try and spruce it up and change--well, pretty much everything. The plot had to be scrapped, the entire world needed to be reconstructed, basically everything needed rebuilt from scratch.

Of course, at this point in time, I was well out of the Warriors fandom, but I was 20 feet deep into the Avengers movies and I had a serious desire to write the same kind of dry, witty humor that those portrayed. I also had a blooming love for the 007 movies (well, for Q but anyway) and wanted to incorporate a bit of the spy/hacking/espionage aspect (which eventually is where Miles came in, both as my sole UK character and the blatant man-behind-the-screen for all of the team's missions prior to Greeny's arrival). It is to this day one of my favorite points of the tale--and even though it is set in a dystopian universe, there are still so many parallels to our world (such as Miles repeatedly being addressed as the Q of the group and the random reference to Voltron).

Since recovering the few papers I had depicting my original draft, I have rewritten this story twice in hopes of capturing the essence of what I really wanted it to be--my first branch into a truly dystopian world, complete with action sequences, spies, magic, and, of course, mythological beasts. 

This is the second completed (or will be completed) draft of the book and I hope those of you coming in for the first time, as well as those returning from the previous edition, will enjoy what I have to offer. 

Things are about to get wild.

Are you ready?

Turn the page and let's find out together.