Author D.L.Tanner has published a Stephen King-sized novel based on the Native American legends of the Thunderbird, which was said to fly before storms with "lightning in its eyes and thunder in its wings".

Thoroughly researched, the book is based on the science of cryptozoology, the study of hidden animals. An undegreed curriculum anywhere in the world and academic suicide for anyone who pursues Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, the story concerns the plight of Ph.D. anthropology candidate Ian McQuade.

Virtually all of the known evidence and accounts are incorporated into the book, which the author asserts is primarily fiction only in the characters and situations which tie them together. The rest, from the legendary photograph of a Thunderbird supposedly taken in 1888 and lost in 1966 to the accurate depiction of the Anasazi culture is based on known facts.

Ian McQuade, the author's alter ego and main protagonist, is the embodiment of the frustrated cryptozoologist, who trades in a promising career in the related fields of anthropology, zoology and paleontology when he submits a doctoral thesis insisting that the mythical birds were real.

From that point on, he is drawn into a chase filled with allies and traitors that ultimately names for us as readers not only the most likely living fossil which accounts for giant bird sightings today, but a ficticious, highly entertaining supposition of what became of the Anasazi of the American Southwest.

After its publication originally in the summer of 2002, the author was contacted by a man who sat in his car along with other motorists in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia in September of that year as a huge bird stepped out onto the road and disrupted traffic for the space of three lights at an I-76 off ramp.

"I read him a description of the bird from my book, and aside from a ruffled ring of white feathers about the neck, he said it matched what he saw exactly," the author explained. The bird Mr. Tanner depicted in "Shadow of the Thunderbird", was 6 feet in height, 11 feet in length with 25 feet wingspan. Did it ever live? Yes. It was discovered in 1980 to have lived 40 million years ago.

As with Bigfoot and Lake Monsters, it begs the question, "What if the animal on which it is based never died out?" Book I of "The Cryptids Trilogy", "Shadow of the Thunderbird", is followed by "Track of the Bigfoot" to be published in the fall of 2003 and "Wake of the Lake Monster" in 2004.

"Shadow of the Thunderbird" 2nd Edition, 396 pages by D.L.Tanner, published by Book Locker. ISBN 1-59113-120-0.

Mr. Tanner is available for interview or inquiries at email address dltanner99@aol.com and online at http://www.dltanner.com



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