When Gaerbith Met Kieran

Struggling to complete this scene. I’ve already composed the first paragraphs of a scene that comes later, involving these characters, but am not sure how to proceed with this fight scene. It should be intense, I think, but witty.

Perhaps I am asking too much of it.

From the Plains rose a smudge of green that grew or shrank depending on the swell of the land as they travelled. Days later, it revealed itself as trees, and in two more days, the trees revealed their size, giants standing arm-in-arm.

Yanámari halted her mount on a grassy rise and looked East. “The Guardians.”

Gaerbith nudged his horse up the slope and joined her. Thick limbs intertwined, and massive trunks were separated only by the shadows between them. Somewhere beyond them light flashed, perhaps sun reflecting from the glass observatory built by King Meresh in long ages past. How had it survived the war and all the centuries after?

“The House of the Sky,” Gaerbith said, clasping Yanámari’s hand. “Home to your mother’s ancestors.”

“That blood is too remote to claim any kinship here.”

“Still. Almost home.”

By nightfall, they rested in a hollow among the tangled roots of the guardians. Fallen branches provided enough fuel for a fire in a small pit dug where the Plains sidled up to the trees, and a tiny brook trickled out from the shadows as if it had been awaiting their arrival before springing up from the ground. Gaerbith and Yanámari sipped handfuls from the rill spilling over tumbled stones, and the horses drank from the little pool it formed before disappearing into the tall, waving grass. Animals shuffled and snuffled somewhere beyond the Guardians—familiar night noises—but when a sudden silence fell, both horses lifted their heads, chins dripping, and pointed noses and ears toward the darkness.

A faint shrr of cloth against cloth sounded a moment before the quiet firmness of a careful footfall.

Reaching over his shoulder, Gaerbith gripped the hilt of his sword. “Come, you. No skulking. Show your face.”

He did not expect the answering chuckle, or the pleasant low voice that accompanied it. “That sword is nigh man-tall. Exchange it for a stave, and we will have fine sport.”

A thick staff flew from the shadows. Gaerbith caught it more by instinct than sight.

 

c2017, KB, for Dragon’s Bane, a novel

 

The connection between these two guys is a minor plot twist — revealed to the reader earlier in the story, but not yet known to Kieran. And, at this moment, not known to either guy, because Gaerbith does not yet know it’s Kieran who is challenging him.

 

Dragon’s Bane Update

First, a bit of housekeeping: The recent Goodreads giveaway was a success. Not quite as many participants as the 2015 giveaway, there were still a large number of entrants interested in Dragon’s Rook. The winners are Jessica from the Netherlands, and Sheila from New Mexico. Signed paperback copies have been mailed, and should arrive soon.

Second, questions have been asked by readers concerning the availability of Dragon’s Bane, the second half of The Lost Sword duology. They have served as prods to speed up the completion of the story:

1) I just finished Dragon’s Rook and loved it. Any news on when the sequel will be available for purchase? I can’t wait!

(T)hank you for the kind review! We writers pour pieces — minutes, hours, years — of our lives into our work, so when readers receive it well, we are encouraged to continue.

As for when Dragon’s Bane will be available, I had hoped it would be completed and published by January 2016, but life matters took me away from it for a long while. (I won’t bore you with the details.) However, I hope to have it ready soon.

Today’s revisions included (SPOILER ALERT) a reunion scene between two characters who each thought the other was dead. 🙂

2) I just finished Dragon’s Rook, really liked it. I was wondering when the sequel is coming?

First, thank you for reading the book!

Second, I’m pleased that you enjoyed it.

Third, I wanted the book completed and published this year. However, due to life circumstances, my writing has been quite slow. Dragon’s Bane is about one-third complete, and there are copious notes regarding unwritten scenes.

The ending scene was written about fifteen years ago — believe it or not! — but it may change. I’m exploring a couple of potential plot twists that never occurred to me during the writing of the first book, but which may deepen the story even further.

Below is a taste, a scene from the first third of the book, a confrontation between Lady Yanámari and her mother, Queen Una:

The eyes widened, the fury grew, and as it did, Queen Una fully materialized, her form solid, even the tiny creases around her eyes and mouth delineated. She released Yanámari and stepped back, lifting her arms from her sides and lowering her head, looking at Yanámari from beneath dark brows.

As the queen opened her mouth to speak, Yanámari laughed. The sight was too comical: flowing black garments, menacing stare, threatening posture. A bit too much like the Hôk Nar Brethren. In the past two days, she had seen more amazing things than this.

Beside, what true power resorted to manipulation and magic?

There was something external about magic, as if the one who practiced it and the one upon whom it was practiced were both tools of a capricious power that must be cajoled and lured with secret rites and careful spells. Is that where her mother had been all these years? Learning the dark arts? What an absurd expenditure of time.

Where was she when I was a child and longed for a mother? When I might have loved her?

But there was no hope of traveling that road—the cart had already passed.

(c2016, KB)

For more information or to read reviews, visit keananbrand.com.

 

Step Right Up!

(rabid used-car-salesman gestures and wild-eyed look) “Step right up, folks! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”

The lawyer clears his throat, and the salesman amends his pitch. “A once-in-a-year opportunity!”

The lawyer nods.

“Enter now to win one of two signed paperback copies of Dragon’s Rook!”

And, for those readers who don’t prefer the high-pressure sales pitch, here’s a graphic with an embedded link, which you may click or not, as you wish. 😉

 

In Progress

In the past, I’ve shared incomplete poems or scenes, or pieces that have been worked and re-worked, to show fellow writers that perfection is 1) often relative, and 2) not a one-step process. Writing is the practice of perseverance.

In the wee hours of morning, when my head hurt and I couldn’t sleep, I pondered the beginning of Dragon’s Bane, the second half of an epic fantasy yarn. Scenes need re-arranging. (Anyone who knows me knows I play “52-card pick-up” with chapters and scenes, mixing up parts of the story until I settle on a progression that feels right.) Emotion needs to be established. (Always tricky.) Mystery and atmosphere must be heightened. (Always fun.)

And I need to write more poetry and fragments of the story world’s history. I used almost all of them for the first half of the story (Dragon’s Rook), so the well is almost dry. Time to dig deeper.

As I lay awake, this gap-filled poem arrived, employing phrases and concepts from the first book, obliquely summarizing the entire story:

in the high mountains
beyond Craydaegs’ gate
behind Brona’s Veil
the people await

past the curtain of night
on the path of the moon
in the land of the horse-kings
_______________-oon

hear the horn of the Woodsman
heed his ____ tread
his fell axe is trimming
the leaves of the dead

the warrior, the flame,
a sword in the west
away, all ye Dragons
let enmity rest

c2016, KB

Once finished, it’ll be the opening poem before the story begins.

lake at Myriad Botanical Gardens, Oklahoma City (c2014, KB)

 

Granite

Ideas from unexpected places? Happens all the time.

This week, while writing story notes in a spiral-bound notebook, I was listening to episodes of “Ancient Impossible” on the History Channel.* When I’d hear a historical detail I wanted to remember, I’d jot it on a separate page from the story notes.

In Dragon’s Rook, I wrote about a mountain city carved from granite.** However, I didn’t reveal how it was carved. Granite is serious stone. It doesn’t like to be cut.

However, there are examples of granite cut in ancient times, and they were the subject of a couple segments on “Ancient Impossible”: How did the ancients cut a large core of granite — a cylinder with evenly-spaced narrow grooves spiraling down its length — and how did they cut a slab that is marked as if by a circular saw, a piece of technology that no one expected to have existed then?

And that reminded me of something that should be incorporated into the next book, Dragon’s Bane: How was the city of Elycia carved into a mountainside composed mainly of granite?

Not gonna tell you. Yet. 😉

But it makes sense inside the story, and it explains one detail mentioned in Dragon’s Rook — the grooves left in the stone cliffs.

I want to go write that material right now, but I’m still finishing Thieves’ Honor, a space opera novel, which I hope to have complete by the end of the month. And then it’s back to Dragon’s Bane. And, after that, The Unmakers, a novel of paranormal suspense.

* Anyone else listen to TV rather than watch it? Must come from all my years of having a radio but no television — listening is now a habit.

** The Mount Rushmore carvings are granite.

 

Filthy Lucre

“Filthy lucre” is an Old World, Bible-language insult regarding ill-gotten money. Some folks think money itself is evil. Some, as do I, think the love of money is the real evil.

Yet, however one may view it, money has become a necessity.

Therefore, allowing readers keep a couple extra bucks in their pockets, the e-book price for the novel, Dragon’s Rook, has been reduced to $2.99 (US). Yay!

Comprised of Dragon’s Rook (2015) and Dragon’s Bane (2016), The Lost Sword is a slightly different slant on epic fantasy. It has a grand scope, yes, and there are swords and dragons, prophecies and portents, chosen heroes and dastardly villains, but there are subtler themes underlying the tale: what is courage, honor, free will, servitude, freedom? What is faith, trust, love? How does one live one’s own life despite the expectations of others or the calling of a being greater than oneself? How does one live for oneself, and yet live for the sake of others?

The story is rife with questions — most culled from my own struggles with similar issues — and there are rarely easy answers. (Which is a bit like talking to the Voice, the deity character who does not always reply when the mortals ask more information of Him than He has already given. 😉 )

At the risk of spoiling the second book, “the chosen ones” may not all survive or be in charge at the end. Their task may be far different than everyone — including the immortal Keepers — anticipates. That part of the tale has yet to be written, and I am pondering several different possibilities. However, readers can be assured the ending will not be dark but filled with hope, and it will fit the story that led up to it. That is a certainty.*

Captain Gaerbith is heir to a secret: the location of a lost sword he cannot touch. In a village far from the battlefield, Kieran the blacksmith remembers nothing before the day when, as a young boy, he was found beside a dead man, a dagger in hand.

Maggie is a healer’s apprentice, and earns her way as a laundress. Her shadowed past and crippled hand make her an object of suspicion and ridicule. Far to the north, the king’s daughter—Yanámari—plots to escape the royal city and her father’s iron control.

Etherium, the one metal capable of harming Dragons, can be wielded only by a true descendant of Kel High King. King Morfran seeks a Kellish smith who can recreate the lost sword, false proof of Morfran’s right to the throne.

Forces are aligning, old prophecies are fulfilling, and in the east a fire glows in Dragon’s Rook.

Dragon’s Bane is coming together nicely, and should be released next year. Dragon’s Rook is currently available from these e-book vendors:

Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (Nook)
Kobo
iBooks (iTunes)
PageFoundry (now Inktera)
Scribd
Oyster
Smashwords**

The paperback is available via Amazon or CreateSpace for $17.99 (US). I am pleased with the look and feel of the print version. The dragon eye is almost 3D — well done, Suzan! — and the matte finish is soft, buttery, mimicking the texture of the leather background image.

* Anyone else a bit weary of “gritty” fantasy, pessimistic dystopia, and other bleak tales?
** Go here for a special Smashwords discount, available through August 31, 2015.

 

Brevity is the Soul

Of all the genres of novels I’ve edited, I most enjoy Westerns and mysteries, but the one in which I’ve the most experience is romance. Therefore, a person might be forgiven for thinking I might be able to easily incorporate romantic scenes into my own stories.

No. No, not without much cursing and gnashing of teeth.

And when one of my alpha readers squinches her eyes and purses her mouth and shakes her head — despite her best efforts at remaining courteously noncommittal — I know I’ve failed.

(spoiler warning for those who have not yet read Dragon’s Rook)

There is a reunion scene in Dragon’s Bane in which a couple meets again after he thought she had died. Each being of a reticent nature and possessing a painful past, they have never declared themselves, so the scene required the showing of deep affection but also deep restraint:

He embraced her, and through the fabric he felt the ridged scars on her back. She turned her face into the hollow of his shoulder.

Nay, lass, do not hide.

If you knew the truth—

He drew a deep breath. What can you say, Maggie Finney, to change my mind?

She grabbed handfuls of his tunic, pressing her fists against his lower back.

In earlier drafts, the pair talked about what happened after her “death”, and of the events that brought him back to the outlaw camp to find her grave, but it was boring, anticlimactic, cliched, and lacked the trueness I sought.

Several paragraphs were rewritten and rearranged and finally cut until only this one remains:

Maggie had fallen asleep standing up. Kieran guided her to the ground. She slumped against him and he eased her down, grabbed the blanket, then lay on his side, pulling her to him with an arm around her waist. She sighed. He tucked his knees behind hers, felt her heartbeat through her back, smelled the warmth of her neck. He had neither the wherewithal nor the desire to move. No matter the roof over his head, this was home.

It says everything I wanted to say, and in far fewer words than were written in effort to achieve it. Sometimes I need to blurp hundreds, maybe even thousands, of words onto the page before I know which ones I don’t need.

Brevity, as the bard said, is the soul of wit. Sometimes, brevity is also the soul of an entire scene.

 

Think Before Typing

Driving into a storm, Wyoming, August 2013 (c. KB)

At the end of May this year, I responded to a suspect question via e-mail as if it were legitimate instead of snarky: A potential reader called into question a synopsis of my novel, and asked how a plot point could be possible, given the circumstances.

Well, read the book, was my first thought, but — to be fair — that particular part of the story is actually central to the second book, so it’s not broadly explained in the current novel.*

On the other hand, there was a distinct tang of antagonism to the question, and it made me not want to respond at all.

However, giving the inquirer the benefit of the doubt, I answered honestly and unemotionally.

I won’t reveal either the question or the answer, because they don’t really matter. The problem was the attitude underlying the question, and with the confrontational way in which the question was posed.

One would think that — with all this proliferation of faceless, voiceless communication that has the potential to inspire online disputes and conflagrations over even the pettiest of misunderstandings or disagreements — folks would take care with their words so their intentions are not misconstrued.

Or perhaps, sporting a nifty avatar, they think themselves immune or powerful. As a friend says, “People are brave behind that perception of anonymity.”

————–

* The Lost Sword duology consists of Dragon’s Rook (January 2015) and Dragon’s Bane (coming in 2016).

 

Released Into the Wild: Dragon’s Rook

art & design c2014, Suzan Troutt; background photo c2014, Keanan Brand

It’s been a long journey — twenty years — but Dragon’s Rook is finally going to see the great wide world.

This book could have been released much sooner, but I would have been less happy with the results. Some publishers wanted to chop it into smaller pieces, some wanted to mine it for a particular plot while ditching the rest, some thought it too derivative and some too different, so I stopped seeking a publisher and decided to go independent with it.

The publishers who wanted a shorter book were not wrong, but I simply could not meet their tiny word count. Still, I knew the book needed work, so I tightened the writing and the story itself, cutting tens of thousands of words in the process.

Even on the day Dragon’s Rook was uploaded as an e-book, I made revisions. Considering how easy revisions are in this digital age, if I’m not careful I could tweak this thing into oblivion, but I’ll back away and let it be. There are other stories to tell.

And this one is only half-told. The second book, Dragon’s Bane, was the subject of this year’s NaNoWriMo effort, and is still a long way from complete.

But back to publishing: It’d be great if I could finance the printing up front — hefty paperback, dust-jacketed hardcover, nice marketing materials — and oversee the entire process, but since I’m a rookie at this type of publishing, I’m using Smashwords and CreateSpace, releasing the e-book first and then the printed version. In the future, though, I’d like to do this right.

Currently, the EPUB (Nook) version is available for pre-order, and the MOBI (Kindle) format will be available soon. The price is $3.99, and the book will be available for immediate download on January 26, 2015.

NOTES:

If readers are interested in a PDF of the novel and are able to make payments via PayPal, they may leave comments on this post or send e-mail, and I will be happy to oblige.

Also, I will be happy to make free e-copies available to a select number of reviewers. If interested, please leave a comment or send e-mail [keananbrand@yahoo.com].

Finally, for those interested in the artist — Suzan Troutt — she blogs at Jade’s Journal, and  sells jewelry at Gothic Tones. Follow the Gothic Tones page on Facebook for contests and special sales.