2022 Award for Best Book for Young Adults — ADVENTURES OF MAYANA: FALLING OFF THE EDGE OF THE EARTH
You are dancing to the music of your dear life now As you partake it, enjoy it, wonder at its…
by David Perry
Belize, 1985-87
The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth is the story of a 17-year Belizean girl named Mayana who finds herself on an adventure in a fantasyland of magic, monsters, and intrigue. She crosses over from her homeland of Belize to an alternate reality where the laws of nature and science are very different from what she learned. While she attempts to find her way back to Belize, she befriends a young man named Shifu who mysteriously appears, and speaks only in parables. He helps Mayana use her new-found magic powers to fight monsters and witches and to attempt to find her way home. Shifu also helps her to discover the meaning of life, how to understand why people are the way they are, and most of all how to understand herself.
All during her journey, she relies on the recollections of conversations that she had over the years with her skeptical father who taught her that magic, miracles, gods and supernaturalism are all just hocus pocus. Mayana has to reconcile the teachings of her father with what she experiences in this new land where everything she learned is wrong.
David Perry
David Perry has worked in education for more than 30 years serving as a classroom teacher from kindergarten through adults, a Title 1 director and a school principal. As a teacher, David learned how to present material to students in a way that is comprehensible, engaging and meaningful. Learning how to put himself inside the heads of others allowed him to do this and he applied this strategy to his new book hoping that it would create a higher level of intrigue and interest in the story.
This is David’s first book and he was able to complete it when the Covid pandemic freed up some time. He had been wanting to write a book for a long time and he hopes to write a second one, perhaps Part 2 of this work.
In addition to writing, David plays the piano, cross country skis and figure skates. He and his wife love to travel and they have been all over the country, usually camping along the way.
David has a wife, a son and a four-year-old granddaughter whom he and his wife adopted as their daughter. His wife, Anaceli is from Belize, and David lived in Belize as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two and a half years. David and Anaceli go to Belize every year or two to visit family.
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The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth
David Perry (Belize, 1985-87)
Independently published, 2021
Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction
Target Age: High School/Young Adult
268 pages
$9.99 (Kindle)
Congratulations !on winning this outstanding award on ur 1st..,published book!!!Bravo!!!’The GorrillazGirls will bei reading it soon!! Love and Joy as you begin another wonderful year in EDUCATION!!!!Soooo many hearts and minds to touch!!👍❤️⭐️✝️
Wonderful news David. Your talents are never ending.
Dave, it’s Craig!! You finished your book and got it published and now you have received an Award for it? That is so Next Level!! I am Blown Away for sure!!! Congratulations!!! WOW!!
This story sounds great. I will be ordering it soon. Congratulations!
Can hardly wait for the second part to become available- anxiously waiting for new and exciting adventures to fire the imagination!
You are dancing to the music of your dear life now
As you partake it, enjoy it, wonder at its rising
into the clouds out there over the sharp rocks
dancing to the music of the time that remains
the story that goes on from there for you is a
finding and forging an understanding swiveting
–not the routines a nation’s decline promises—
coming as you partake it enjoy it watching it rise
into clouds above distant sharp rocks hopes surmount
you are dancing to the music of your dear life now
© Copyright Edward Mycue
MORE pieces by EDWARD MYCUE
________________________________________
Song
from: Night Boats, 1999
At night your strange heart
is music learned in love where moonmilk
is silence. San Francisco,
these are your rites. At your feet
are your children, a deep-pile
garnet rug, broken bisque porcelain
writing our histories on your
lymph that like your promise once
calf-white is now memory-tongued,
eggshell-thin, raving for healing
this desperate geography. Your
skies plum-colored, your boats
oarless bob in the marmalade waves.
Get washed you blind, handsome
city. Your harbor has a stone in
its mouth. A wingless buzzing
rises in grey fusion. This weather
mounts a holocaust song, red, full
like the hope-ruby with its rue and rage.
Now we are old linoleum, littered, torn and
we fight the sunset
climbing our blue humming.
________________________________________
From the ‘BUMPS’ series of poems
100. A PIECE OF ICE
IS ABOUT MELTING
BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
MEMORY OF HURRY.
55. BUMPS
BOYS ADMIRED OTHER BOYS’
MUSCLES. GIRLS OTHER GIRLS’
BREASTS. BOTH WANTED THE
BUMPS. WANTED TO SWELL-UP,
GROW-UP, TO BE SOMEBODY
BIGGER, beautiful, BUMPY.
BUMPS MEANT POWER, ROCK ‘N
SEX, WHITE TEETH, wheels,
DRINKING BOOZE FROM PAPER BAGS,
LIFTED ARMS AND pecs ALL BUMPY.
114. SCAR HUNT
SINCE THEY SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE ALL THE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD
ONEANOTHER AS A FAMILY WHO WANDERED LOOKING FOR A LAND TO LIKE. WHEN THEY
FOUND IT THEY BEGAN TO CHANGE IT INTO A GREAT CITY WITH DECORATED WALLS,
COURTYARDS AND A TOWER TO MAKE THEM FAMOUS EVEN TO TODAY A PROUD PEOPLE WHO
OVERSTROVE BECOMING COUPLED WITH A CURSE OF VOICES LIKE A TEEN GHETTO OF
MUSICDANCINGHUMMING PRESS-ME-TO-YOU TUNE HELPHELPHELPHELP AND LETMEALONE LET
ME ALONE EVERYTHING TODAY ADJUSTMENT ENACTMENT OLDCARSNOISE. NOW. SO TIME’S
ROUGH FINGERS PRINTED THEM OUT LIKE A STATISTIC OF DEFECTS WHEN THE WHOLE
SYSTEM WENT PIANO.
100. A PIECE OF ICE
IS ABOUT MELTING
BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
MEMORY OF HURRY.
43. A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE
A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE,
SHE TUGGED ON HIS COAT.
SHE CHASED.
HE SAID HE DIDN’T TOUCH HER, TRIED
TO DODGE,
THEN THE HORSE,
A BIG BEAUTIFUL HORSE
IN THE DREAM CAME AGAINST HIM
CROUCHING HIS HANDSOMENESS
AGAINST HIS CHEST.
HE KEPT TRYING, FAILING
TO UNLATCH
THE DOOR AT HIS BACK.
YES, HE SAID, IT WAS
A DREAM, BUT THE HORSE,
SO BIG AND HANDSOME,
FRIGHTENED ME.
I WAS AFRAID
HE WOULD CRUSH ME INTO HIM.
SO, HE SAID, SIR, PLEASE
DON’T OPEN THE DOOR.
75. MEMORIES:—– steam
IS WHAT YOU WANT MEMORIES TO BE
INSTEAD OF BEING SUCH A MIXED BAG
OF HIPS AND MAGNETS AND DEAD CATS.
________________________________________© Copyright Edward Mycue