Tonia Laird is a Métis author from Treaty 6 territory in Canada. Her writing credits include the AAA video games Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, as well as lead writer on the mobile romance game, Everlove: Rose, and the creator and writer of the interactive novel, Poster Girl. She also has short stories and a small comic published in multiple literary magazines as well as an 8-page story she both wrote and illustrated in the comic book anthology A Howl: An Indigenous Anthology Of Werewolves, Wolves, and Rougarou. Tonia graduated with an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan and now resides in a small prairie city with her husband and son.
Her debut novel, A SHADOWED PATH, is a fast-paced fantasy thriller exploring the power dynamics and effects of colonialism on community and kin from an Indigenous perspective.
After her adopted son is murdered, the half-human, half-immortal Ibinnashae, T’Rayles, allows the unthinkable. She stands by as a foreign death talker, a nashir, pulls her boy’s soul back into his body in a desperate attempt to learn the truth about his death. When the ritual goes awry, her son’s memories are trapped in her own mind and she slowly starts to sink into the Dark between worlds. Consumed by vengeance and thoughts not her own, T’Rayles returns to the streets of the colonial city, Seventhblade, armed with the name of the woman who hired her son’s killers and a sword that sings for blood. As she cuts a path through the city, an unwelcome eye follows her every move. Elraiche, an exiled god from a land across the sea, manipulates the factions in the city with the ease of a seasoned trickster. He’s searched for decades for the perfect opportunity to return home. For the perfect weapon to take back what was once his. And now, he’s finally found it. The sword in the halfsoul’s hand. His spies tell him it’s tied to her heritage. His spies tell him she needs it to set her son free. He knows she won’t give it willingly. So unwillingly it is.
Her novel is complete and will be on offer soon.
Tonia is represented by Amanda Orozco and Marilyn Biderman.