Introducing the Taylor Thomas Trilogy
Book One: The Temple of Light
"What if you had a dream and it felt so real, so like right there, that it made you stop and wonder? And what if just because of this wondering, your parents took you to get a bunch of nanobots stuffed into your head so they could take your brain apart and rebuild it again, better than before?" So asks Taylor, from The Temple of Light, the first book of the Taylor Thomas Trilogy for young adults. "You'd leave, is what if! Especially if a crazy Pleiadian alien named Zanadar showed up and offered to take you away to that place you really did visit in your dream."
The author's sketch of The Temple of Light. (Created as an example for his fifth-grade students' writing project.)
And so Taylor leaves Los Angeles, and her friend Kyle, for Mount Shasta and the subterranean city of Telos, where the survivors of the lost continent of Lemuria are living and waiting. Once there, she discovers that her life has been destined to a purpose greater than her own. According to the Lemurian's most treasured text, Taylor has been prophesized to lead a team named the Sacred Seven on a trip back into the past. Their mission? Save a planet perched on the brink of destruction! Doubtful of the foretelling, Taylor is reluctant to accept her destiny. Yet the alluring Temple of Light captures her attention. Now, more than ever, she yearns to once again experience the mystifying light she caught a glimpse of in her dream. To get inside, she must first acknowledge her fate, and then endure an intense initiation process. In spite of an intolerable impatience and stubborn skepticism of her own psychic powers, Taylor learns much from the many challenges she receives from her teachers.
After struggling through her final test, Taylor enters the temple to join the Lemurians in their amazing Dance of Divinity. During the ritual, when the time comes for Taylor and the others to depart, she receives a disturbing vision. When the dance is over, the Sacred Seven remain standing in the great temple. For Taylor has decided to return to Los Angeles to save her friend Kyle from the runaway nanobot swarms, and gobs of goo that are consuming the world. In the end, with Zanadar's help, Taylor, Kyle, and a Band of five homeless misfits — a not so Sacred Seven — escape the self-replicating badbots and travel back into the past with the hope of saving the world in the present.
Book Two: The Rock of Jerusalem
The author's map for the second book of the Taylor Thomas Trilogy: The Rock of Jersusalem. Click here to enlarge
In book two, The Rock of Jerusalem, Taylor, Kyle, and the Band travel in their interdimensional vehicle of light and land in front of the towering ziggurat of the Sumerian moon god, Nanna, in southern Mesopotamia. It's 1787 BCE, and the new Sacred Seven is in the city of Ur, the birthplace of the Bible's Abraham. While resting in the Court of Nanna, Zanadar appears to share the story of his nemesis, Harak, the first Pleiadian to start talking to humans. Of course, nobody believes that Harak was really the god of Abraham, but they do indeed decide to go in search of the patriarch of the world's three monotheistic religions.
Taylor, Kyle, and the Band travel the Fertile Crescent, from Ur, up the Euphrates, to the Land of Canaan, until finally arriving at The Rock of Jerusalem. The comical exploits of this motley crew — Taylor, Kyle, Lazarus, Armando, Dewey, Keri, and Marshall — as they make their way through Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, have a profound and lasting effect on the course of human events. After the miraculous meeting on the mount, the Sacred Seven takes off once again in their amazing vehicle of light.
Book Three: The Parthenon
The Parthenon – Athens, Greece 2005
In book three, The Parthenon, the Sacred Seven lands near the Temple of Apollo in Delphi in the year 399 BCE. Taylor marches up the Sacred Way into the temple, and begins a psychic duel with the oracle, the priestess, Pythia. When finished, Taylor, Kyle, and the Band set off from Mount Parnassus at Delphi, for Athens, with the intent of visiting Plato's Academy. When they reach the Academy, the seventeen-year-old Aristotle is arriving to begin his two decades of study and teaching. Taylor battles her way into the Academy for an audience with the young Aristotle, and even with Plato, the founder of the legendary school.
Leaving the Academy, the Sacred Seven heads to the Agora. Following a stroll down Panathenaic Way, Taylor and Keri burst into the all male Athenian assembly, challenging the Counsel of 500 to include women in their democratic ways. The two young women are promptly captured, sent to Socrates' Prison and sentenced to death. After Kyle, Lazarus, Marshall, Armando, and Dewey break Taylor and Keri out of prison they then sneak into the Acropolis, and gather in front of the Parthenon, the temple of the goddess Athena. With a crowd present, the Sacred Seven takes off for their final voyage in the interdimensional vehicle of light.
In the end, when the Western world's storyline has been unraveled and left undone, Taylor, Kyle, and the Band return to a present world vastly different from the one they left behind. Many strange characters inhabit a wild and natural Earth. The Lemurians are out. So are the Atlanteans. Aliens, like the Pleiadians and the Sirians, visit the planet all the time. And, yes, Taylor does reunite with her parents. But there are still many problems waiting to be solved in this strange, new world.