EPIC FANTASY *With Dragons

An Epic Fantasy* like no other!
(*with dragons)
Epic Fantasy *With Dragons
Master Dragonslayer Corlan Tang is the best in the business!
So it is little surprise that jealous Guild rivals conspired to have the sniveling Prince to banish him from the city.
Sent out into the Valley of Death – and stuck with a runaway boy from the palace kitchen – Corlan decides on a plan. He will head to the far end of the valley where he’s heard a vast marsh provides nesting grounds for the dragon horde. There he will smash their eggs and lance the younglings, destroying dragons once and for all! Then he can return as a conquering hero!
However, like any foolhardy quest, there are constant dangers and seductive detours along the way – as well as unsettling encounters with new allies, fiends, and traitors. A quest changes a man, Corlan realizes, and he finally must reconcile the dark secrets from his past.
Despite every distraction, Corlan must succeed, if only for his own stubborn sense of justice, but also so he might return home again. To achieve his goal, he must push himself onward, use his wits and guile, demonstrate his daring-do, and employ all the will and strength he can muster – for surely the gods have assigned him their harshest tests in this twisted new world, harshly cleaved from fire and quake. After all, the fate of the world rests in our hero’s hands.

[Read more about the creation of this epic work on the author’s blog.]

The Story So Far

Having recently completed my own writing challenge, namely finishing a series of fantasy books that I set about commencing six years ago, I’ve taken the opportunity to reflect upon the journey. Before you worry that this’ll turn into a mawkish post about what I learned about myself, and the industry, and all the wondrous people I’ve met (I have, but that’s not what I’m blogging about), console yourself with the title of the post. The Story So Far…

One of the difficulties of writing a six book series is deciding what to put into each book with regards the prior events. The problem spirals as the sheer complexity of events expands throughout the epic. Now, not being a vastly successful mainstream author, it’d be unlikely that anyone would pick up my series half way through, although possible. And the books themselves are meant to be a part of a series, not standalone with a common thread/ milieu running through. Yet, given the books came out roughly one a year, I don’t flatter myself that my readers are so obsessed with my work that they remember very last detail from the prior one… I know I don’t!

When I began editing and rewriting sections of book two to cope with the fact it had originally being the last 40% of a mega-volume one (for those that don’t know, Darkness Rising 1 and 2 were originally Dreams of Darkness Rising, and clocked in at Tolstoy length, so was split) I began considering my ‘story so far’ options. Option 1 is some slightly clunky prose between characters where they reminisce and ruminate on recent events to the degree that the reader can catch up. That’d read like…

Emelia smiled wrly at Jem. “It’s funny to think that my latent Wild-magic powers were so successfully manifested at the time you and Hunor sneaked into Lord Ebon-Farr’s rooms, fought that hidden Air-mage, and procured that darned blue crystal that turned out to be part of a prism of power.”

“And all the stranger that that would then lead to Ebon-Farr’s niece, Lady Orla pursuing us across to Azagunta and capturing us, before flying to Thetoria, fighting a demonic humour, and setting Aldred on a course of investigation that would lead him far away.”

With a flicker of nostalgia, Emelia began to recall all the events that had lead up to that fateful day…

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AAaaaarrrggghh! Stop, just stop. No-one talks like that out with TV fantasy series. Yet it’s slightly preferable to the… ‘Story so Far’ info-dump that by book six would run to eight blooming pages!

It was our own literary goddess Alison DeLuca who edited Darkness Rising Book 2, and when faced with the info-dump story so far section I’d written to start the book, she got her virtual red pen, drew a big line through the forty paragraphs, and simply commented ‘we’re writers, we can find better ways of doing it than that.’
Challenge accepted.

Six books, five ‘story so fars’ and because of the plotlines and structure, several disparate groups and POVs , often in ignorance to one another. How to maintain originality…?

Well, here were my top five:

1. The Dream Play (book 3: Secrets)

Emelia, whose dreams are so significant to the plotline, and who through dreaming becomes linked with the main protagonist , Vildor, recants a ‘story so far’ by dreaming she is watching a play.

I know this place. It is a hall of deception, and for this I am glad. For all here wear cloaks of secrets, which wrap around their souls with the strength of iron.

I am seated in the decayed stalls, and before me the first Act has commenced. At my side sits Emebaka. She holds my hand with her own tiny scaled one. Her eyes glitter like diamonds in the winter sun. I make to speak, but she shakes her head. The dream must command my attention. My wayward mind needs order—I need to reflect on all that has passed.

There are children on the stage, stuttering their lines like nervous suitors. The faded backdrop is of the Splintered Isles. A man is taking a sack of gold, and the children are wailing as they are carried off stage.

My father is selling me. To the Eerians.

No more spoilers!!!

2. The Prayer (book 4: Loss)

In this ‘story so far’ the knight, Sir Unhert, offers a prayer for his companion, Aldred. This allows a reflection on their actions, and the second ongoing plotline in the series.

Blessed Torik, hear my prayer.

I have never been a devout man. I placed my faith in the strength of steel and the might of griffons, yet this day I ask for your forgiveness in this matter, and your aid. There is one I hold dear who lies dying before me, every passing day taking more of his vitality away, stolen like a thief in the dark.

And though we are far away from the majestic peaks of Eeria, and your great temples in Coonor, I know that my prayer will carry on the four winds, across the ravines and gullies of the Emerald Mountains, to your omniscient ears.

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3.The Crystals (book 5: Broken)

This one was quite random: the crystals, the focus of the quest and the goal of both Vildor and Jem, begin discussing the current situation. I was proud of this one, as it was fairly off the wall, and I think worked well.

That, and more. We must understand if we are to prevail. We must understand if we’re to be whole again—our four primary facets, and our newer darker aspect.

Then I shall go first, sister. For is it not the wind that drives the water, the wind that fuels the fire? I was first to be found, two centuries from when we were cast asunder by the jealousy of a son.

The emperor who bore me, whose blood is barely dry?

Hush, brother, let our sister speak. Let her tell you how she came to be here in this desert of flame.

4. Words (book 6: Redemption)

This was a tiny bit of a cheat, as I used a character from a prior book (Orla’s old flame, Muben) as a storyteller, who learns of the historic events and their precursors by meeting a goddess. Very Greek. I figured by book 6 most readers would just want a recap of key events that are relevant to the finale.

Words. Words as keen as a magnate blade, or as dull as a mace. They can freeze a man’s heart, or ignite his soul. And words… words are all I have.

When I was a young man I craved books. The intricacies of the script held such majesty, such power, that even before I could read them they made my spirit soar. Their wonder became my life, my livelihood, as I slipped the chains of my Eerian masters and took to the infinite roads of Nurolia.

The druids of Artoria, they carry their words on their flesh. Whorls and swirls of ancient scripture cover them like walking parchments. I often wonder if you took the contents of my skull and smeared it across the ground would it leak ink not blood. For words, dancing together in fables and tales, flow through me.

I sit watching as the fire peters out, my audience dwindling back to their farmsteads, I reflect upon one word. Ty Schen—that’s what they call me in Mirioth. It means ‘chronicle.’ They come from miles to hear the stories, the histories, and the legends. Yet once I had another name, one given to me by my late father, in the tongue of my homeland, the Sapphire Isles.
“Muben?”

Oh, I know, I’m a tease… leaving you with that excerpt… of a recap! And finally, I used this device in couple of books…

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5. The Journal (books 2 and 3)

Very similar to the letter idea (which I used in book 4, and turns up in a later book for someone else to read), I used the idea that some of my characters would write a journal as a recap device. It felt less contrived than the joking dialogue method I tried above, and served the purpose in earlier books where the plotline was perhaps easier to realistically summarise from a key character’s point of view.

It feels odd writing this in the pages of Livor’s journal, but it’s what he would have wanted, what he would have told me to do if we had had a chance to speak more in life.

Is there folly in conversing with the dead? Once I would have said so. Once life was simple—you lived life to the full, embracing every moment as if it were your last—and then you died. You died like my mother did, rotted by a wasting disease. You died like my father did, killed by his traitorous servant, a Dark-mage


So now I’m editing the sequel to my sci-fi/ steampunk series, The Nu-Knights, I’m toying with different ideas: files/ dossiers, diaries, confessions… The nature of the series makes it easier to do succinctly, and as a gradual dialogue in the story, so perhaps I’ll not need one for book two.

What about you other authors out there? How do you tackle it? And for the readers, is info-dump a big turn-off, or do you accept that fantasy=massive amount of summarised plot detail in first five pages?

And that length of post, probably needs a summary of its own!!!

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The Little Princess

EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS is a forthcoming novel about the quest of a dragonslayer banished from his home. But wait! This novel is wrapped around a novella which follows the story of a little princess who has her own problems. This excerpt concerns the birth of Princess Adora.

 

The story is clear to all who live on Sannan Island.

A palace guard captain bearing the name Yvik stood tall and straight one day after the mid-day meal, checking the correctness of her charges. In a bright yellow uniform, crimson epaulets and trouser stripes, a tall crimson cap with yellow bill atop her head, the woman made a wonderful sight when Queen Dorothea rounded the wide turn in the palace corr7215e3e5e547ae0042bafed856c24116idor, the passage between the Great Hall of Talk and the smaller Hall of Show.

The guard captain Yvik was fair and square, and sporting very yellow hair, her jaw in full alignment with the latitudes of the world. When the queen appeared in the corridor, Yvik had swung her sword up in salute, blunt edge against her shoulder. Her mistake was to allow her lips to part and her gleaming teeth to show, what some might call a grin.

The queen halted, and her procession crashed against themselves behind her in the corridor.

“What is your name?” asked the queen of the captain.

“Your Majesty, I am Yvik, captain second-class, first of the fifth, of the palace guards,” she replied in formal manner, keeping herself tall and rigid.

“I dislike the name yet your face pleases me,” said the queen with a flick of her fan. “You shall arrive at my slumber chamber at the edge of night.”

“Tonight, Your Majesty?” she asked, overwhelmed by duty.

“Did I fall over my words?” the queen retorted. Her staff chuckled for her. She turned to her note taker. “See that she is properly attired. And give her a better name. I won’t be calling my painful delights to the name of Yvik!” Her eyes returned to Yvik. “Oh. And bring your pet.”

“Pet, Your Majesty?”

“You have a pet, don’t you? Most upper level staff have one, I hear. I’d think a guard captain, even being second-class, would be able to afford one. If not, I’ll need to raise your wage.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, I do have a pet.”

“Then bring it!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

So at the designated evening hour, Yvik arrived—briefly renamed Destina. She arrived dressed in a floor-swishing crimson velvet robe with golden flourishes provided by the queen’s staff and smelling of the spice-laden perfumes and the musk of wild rutting beasts which, the queen’s body maid knew, never failed to excite Her Majesty and made her body quiver, respond in heavenly fashion, and in the end assured that she would achieve success in the ancient ritual.

Destina was let into the chamber, taken to the edge of the slumber seat, and was ceremoniously unrobed. Beside the woman knelt her pet, naked but for a narrow cloth wrapped around the dirty parts.

“There’s my lover!” cried the queen from atop the stack of eight mattresses. She pressed them down to the height of five.

A single golden sheet covered the queen save for her rounded head and coiled hair and the tops of her meaty shoulders. Her chubby hands and rotund arms rose and clapped the air above her chest, the signal to begin the ritual.

Her body maids assisted in maneuvering Destina and her pet into the proper positions, her perfect un-uniformed body aligned over Her Majesty’s great wealth of flesh.

Beside Destina crouched her pet, a short, thin man formerly of the stables, having the name Gup or Gunt, not that it mattered. She had bought him from the stablekeep about a year before, when she dared believe she owed herself a small measure of enjoyment at the end of her duties each day. Fortunately, he had proven worthy of her choice. Now she must give him up. When Her Majesty invites you to visit her slumber seat, you do not arrive without a pet to share.

As everyone assembled in the queen’s slumber chamber knew, it was the time of the great mating, when a woman chooses a pet for her slumber seat. A bow to ancient ritual was all it was. Otherwise, the few men allowed in Sannan worked the fields and the farms and kept to themselves as best they could, awaiting a welcome respite in the service of a mistress. However, twice each year a festival was held and men were let into the city. Much mating occurred during the festival weeks, despite the laws allowing only the officially arranged unions. The remainder of the year, many of the high-born ladies kept a pet for an occasional evening’s dalliance. Her Majesty, however, could not abide such a poor, dirty thing being in the palace anymore than might be absolutely necessary for nature’s briefest call.

Thus, ointments and oils were applied by the queen’s body maids, and after some time a union was made. The pet shrieked and grunted and the wildness of its actions delighted both the queen and Destina, who had never shared her pet with anyone. The queen, too, squealed in something between a cry of pain and a plea for mercy. The strained voice Destina shared with the queen when the peak rolled over her was similarly a combination of animal noises and a strange, annoying whistling. The women shared a gasp.

“What is that?” the queen asked, huffing and puffing.

“My pet has made a noise, Your Majesty. My greatest apologies!”

“It smells so foul!”

“A thousand pardons, Your Majesty!” cried Destina.

“Only a thousand? I would think a million might get you closer to saving your position in the palace guards.” The queen regarded her body maid. “Remove the dirty thing this instant!”

Two beefy women grabbed hold of Destina’s pet, pulling him off the queen’s wide body.

“Then we have finished? It’s done?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank the goddesses! I don’t know how much more I could have taken.”

The pet was promptly pulled from the slumber chamber and no one knew or cared what became of it.

Destina was wiped clean, put back into the robe, and dismissed to some new location where she was unknown yet again called Yvik.

The queen’s body maids wiped her prodigious skin, washed her in the inward places, then set about testing the success of the ritual. It was a delicate procedure. After several hours in which the nursing staff pushed a long, thin tube up and inside the queen, measuring the dripping at the top of each hour, listening for just the right gurgle, just the right pop, just the right hiss, the chief nursing maid finally was able to pronounced success.

“Thank the goddesses!” the queen repeated at the bottom of each hour. She hated the testing but knew it was necessary. Better that than the need for a repeat performance. Pets could be so disgusting. Palace guards could be so quirky. If only the goddesses could flick their holy fingers and make a child appear fully formed.

On the fourth day after the ancient ritual, a royal announcement was made, stating for all the people in Sannan that the queen had, in this time of union, achieved royal success. And the word success was the golden prayer all who performed the ancient ritual hoped to speak and dared to hear. Obviously, a great cheer arose throughout the city. At last, their queen would bear a royal heir, already ten years since the passing of her mother, Queen Marvala.

And so, after some time, like in all stories big and small, whatever was required for the goddesses to mix together the perfect specimen of ladyhood, it was Queen Dorothea who opened her mighty thighs and with great effort and pain pushed out the perfect babe.

The fleshy thing was immediately identified as a lady and given straight into the arms of Her Majesty.

“She looks so adorable!” the queen was heard to say. “I shall call her Adora.”

“Hail Princess Adora!” the nursing staff cheered.

 

[Read the next section here on the Edgewise Words Inn blog, concerning when Princess Adora is nine years old and gains a baby brother.]

 


 

Three Stories We Keep Reading over and over and over

Throughout the past three years, I have been able to ascertain that there are three stories, types of stories, or story memes retold again and again which nobody is willing to welcome any longer, and henceforth should be exiled to the dustbins of hosiery! Here they are in all of their unspoken glory – and beware the variations, too. Unfortunately, I have written each of them.

1.

The love story. Emotional linkage. Moreover, two young romantics slathering over each other. Worse yet if one of them is of some special, protected category such as ghost, gremlin, zombie, homeboy, vampire, wolfboy, fairy, fairy tale meme, or absent-minded English teacher. It is enough that we recognize that people have this flaw, this need for completion, but must the rest of us read about it? see it splayed open across the grand screen? discuss it through the night on social media-  as though it were a traditional recipe for disaster? Sure, we have the so-called “anti-romance” – but isn’t that just another sheep of another color than black? Let them do what they do in private and leave the rest of us alone, thank you very much.

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Variation: The love story set in a dystopian society where good is evil and black is white and everyone is out to get everyone else because that is the way of the world and nobody is better or worse than anyone else and the equal ones are slightly more equal than the others who are not. Often they must play a game to determine who is most equal.

Example. A Beautiful Chill is an example of the oft-repeated cliche of campus unions and reunions where Art & Letters rejoice in unyielding depravity up to the final revelation of emotional slaughter. Woe is me, sayeth the love-lorn Author. (Credit for keeping it real; that is, on Earth and in modern times.)

2.

The discovery of a new world. In this avenue I would add all the doorway, portal, gateway, wardrobe, tunnel, and wormhole stories where one of “us” goes somewhere else and woo-hoo it’s almost like where we came from (or it’s quite different) and aren’t we amazed! And what does our hero/heroine do there? Exploit the darn place to within an inch of its history! Such stories have been foisted upon us usually as warnings of what we have become or shall become if we do not pay attention, pay through the nose, or pay the first-born child of every family in debt to our fanatical financials and lords of leisure! And yet we take no heed and continue to fall into our dubious inheritance. No more! “If it ain’t here, it ain’t real,” quoth one long-lost quotation master. Who should care for a world of pure invention?

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Variation: The parallel universe, the time travel story, the dystopian tale – all of them are poor representations of the main theme, us doing whatever me must, all relying on knowledge of our existing set of circumstances in order to make pun of all that we hold close to us and dreary. They mean to trick you. Smoke and mirrors, just smoke and mirrors. Mind not the poor excuse that is what you have now, for life could be far, far worse over there. Be glad you are here.

Example: The Dream Land, a lengthy tome [read ‘trilogy’] ostensibly of interdimensional [read ‘doorway, portal, etc.’] intrigue [read ‘political skulduggery’], alien romance [see above complaint], and world domination in volving two high school science nerds who grow up to become far too dangerous. Too many giant war rabbits for my liking, also. And a comet just for overkill.

3.

The medieval family clash. As a variation on ‘new worlds’ is the ‘old world’ meme. I speak here of our vainglorious return to days of yore. Either said stories are poor recreations of history mismanaged or they are faux pas histories which serve the purpose of greasepainted stages of perversity. Need we more of that? There is good reason those days of yore are done – and none too soon: we who represent the greater good of our species are simply too embarrassed by what we are capable of bestowing upon our peers. We seek atonement, forgiveness, or another round of the merry-go-round. While we may wish to relive the highlights and lowlifes, the sum total of our aspirations is a rousing return to that which never was and cannot be all in the name of trying it again for the better and falling, indeed, crashing from great dragon-borne heights to the fire-pit below!

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Variation: The story that hides in a return to mythological creations and through them and their unfolding narrativity seek to impress us with the sheer drudgery of life in those days. Be glad of the life you have now and forget those of long ago. Yet such creatures and the winsome gods and goddesses themselves make for poor judges of our modern tastes. Be not fooled or made a fool!

Example: After Ilium, where the narrative necessarily parallels the standard liturgy yet is viewed through the rose-colored lenses of a neophyte (often called ‘the lucky loser’) for the purpose of excising tears from unwary readers. It’s a quite dubious in the depiction of an infamous battle: the wooden horse and the glimmering walls and the shiny gold.

 

There is a solution. Seek not for such misguided diversions but instead search out only fair and acceptable solutions to the diversions you crave, for they do exist. Break free and live a life beneath a tree, in the fields of the locust, all barefoot and squishy, with fluffy-bunny clouds overhead and the wind in your hair – like all good little munchkins who have survived remakes of wizard-themed films. And if that fails you, then there likely is little hope; you might as well embrace your day job (night, whatever) with hardy gusto. Good day to you!

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I plead guilty, charged or not. I have dabbled in the literary arts and dared sail among the gods and goddesses of my imagination, no matter the fatigue in my wings. I saw the light above the clouds, heard the creak of heavenly gates, and yet, in the end, as imagination faltered, I flew on. And here I am . . . for what it’s worth.

“We are all little stars,” said someone on Twitter yesterday.

Land of Nod, The Prophet (Land of Nod Trilogy) | Still searching for the Prophet, Jeff faces new dangers…

In this second book of the popular Land of Nod Trilogy, Jeff Browning continues his quest to find his father in the strange new world he has discovered. His journey takes him across a savage wilderness in which danger is inescapable.

While Jeff searches for The Prophet, his friend, Artimus, faces a less obvious but just as deadly maze of political conspiracies as he tries to convince a reluctant public that the invasion he helped thwart was only the beginning of a much more serious threat.

An epic science fiction, fantasy adventure with action and intrigue on every page.

War is coming.

Land of Nod, The Artifact | Trapped on an alien world…

Jeff Browning has been haunted by terrifying dreams since the mysterious disappearance of his father (a renowned physicist). But when he finds a portal in his father’s office, he must overcome his fears in an attempt to find him.

The portal takes him to another dimension – one populated by fantastic and dangerous creatures and also an advanced society of humans.

As Jeff looks for clues regarding what may have happened to his father, he is accused by some of being a spy while thought by others to be a prophesized figure . . . who may be the key to victory in a developing war.

 

Buy it from Amazon here