Author: ajmaguire

Day 5!  Two more days and we’ve done our week’s worth of a release party-bloggy-thingy.  After that … I’ll get back to business as usual.  (Or as “usual” as I can be.)

Now then … lemme see … I’ve told you where the “Eldur” sprouted from.  I explained a little about Blood Magic.  I gave you the origins of our main characters Trenna and Nelek.  And I told you about the struggle for world-building and what have you that I had with creating Dyngannon.  What to tell you today, I wonder ….

I’ve got it!  Secondary characters!

Brenson Andreas Mustanen Dyngannon (Nelek’s little brother) was a hard character to tackle.  He’s so very … proper.  And sensible.  And scandalous all at once.  I always envisioned the Scarlet Pimpernel when I thought of him (the Anthony Andrews version, I’m sorry but that one was my favorite) and tried to play around that.  Honestly, in the original manuscript, I had a hard time picking who the main character actually was.  Brenson came awful close and the story nearly revolved around Brenson and Brigetta and all that yummy courtly intrigue.  But … yeah … Trenna stole the book.

Brockley Croften, Trenna’s adopted brother, was actually very easy to write.  He was just sort of … there.  Constant and warm and steady, a great counterpart to Trenna’s brash behaviour.  I love their relationship throughout the books.

Saboteur introduces a new secondary character — Tibitus Mavon.  This Human Lord was so fun to play with.  I never dove into his point of view, but I had fun with him just the same.  I especially love the way he and Trenna get along through the book.  There’s a sort of underlying tension between them, like neither of them can forget the battles they fought against each other, but it’s a tension that amplifies the theme of overcoming prejudice and hate.  I knew that if I could make those two work, then the rest of the book would make sense.

…. In fact, I’m going to nab my snippet for today from Saboteur ….

***

And then she saw him. Standing just at the front of the little herbal garden, General Mavon watched them emerge from the tower. His hair caught the evening light, gleaming scarlet against the masonry. Even from the distance Trenna saw that he would stand a good five heads taller than her. He looked every bit the giant, redheaded demon the Eldur people had made him out to be. More so, she could see him clearly in her memory: clad in tarnished armor, screaming in berserker fury as he led his men into the charge. Trenna was struck with the impossibility of their task as they began to close the distance to Mavon.

“How does one ask the enemy to set aside well-earned animosity for peace?” she asked, quietly so only Nelek could hear.

Nelek looked at her, rueful humor in his eyes. “With a great deal of humility, I think.”

“And if humility doesn’t work?”

“Well, you could always try it your way and get him drunk.”

***

That’s it for today!  Only two more days to go, I promise.  Then I’ll stop throwing confetti at everyone.

Human versus Eldur! (aka – World Building, World Burning, and generally torturing the characters)

When I started Sedition I had no idea about the world outside of Kiavana.  Honestly, I wanted to start small so that I could get things right in the sense of the nitty-gritty details.  The political structure of Kiavana was such that there were enough complications that the world on the grander scale didn’t matter to me at first.

If you’ve read Sedition then you know that I did eventually have to branch out of Kiavana Fortress.  ((SPOILER ALERT)) For most of Sedition, Kiavana was surrounded by a water-like wall of magic and what laid beyond it was unknown.  So, when my two reckless characters had to cross that wall, I was stumped for something like two months as I tried to figure out just what was on the other side.  I already had some clue given Nelek’s mother and the Ebony Blade.  I tried everything from drawing maps to coloring heraldry, and none of it really helped.

So … I did the only thing I could think to do … I kept writing.  I let myself discover Dyngannon (the world beyond the wall) with my characters.  This seemed to work out just fine, at least for Sedition.  But when I started writing Saboteur I knew I needed to have a better foundation than that.  In fact, I used what I learned from Lazette Gifford’s Two Year Novel Course (which I recommend for anyone who thinks they don’t have time to write a book) in order to build Dyngannon.

I now have scores of information about Dyngannon.  I know histories that I will likely never use.  I have maps that are so poorly drawn that only I can really understand them.  And I know WHY the Humans and the Eldur have such a long history of war . . . But, that’s not something I can give away.  The characters don’t know it yet, so I can’t really divulge it here without giving away the bulk of the next book.  But I can tell you that I know, that you’ll know soon enough, and that it took me a frigging long time to create it.

And I can tell you that this history of war is what really shaped Trenna’s character.  Naturally, she talks about it a lot in Saboteur since she’s on trial for war crimes.

Yes!  I said war crimes!  If you’ve already read Saboteur, don’t give it away.  If you haven’t, I’m not going to tell you what she did, you have to go get the book and read it for yourself.

But here, let me give you a snippet of Usurper.

***

They’d come.  Twenty-six years later, but they’d come, just as his parents had predicted.  He should have known better than to doubt his mother and father, neither were the lying type.  Well, sometimes his mother would weave around the truth, but he’d never seen her tell an outright lie.  Father argued that avoiding the truth was just as bad, but even Kaden could see that there were some truths best left alone.

            And by the gods, how he wished this was one of them.

            What sort of pretentious, self-seeking man was he?  How could he consider taking a throne?

            The Dyngannon people didn’t know him.  They certainly wouldn’t welcome him.  What did it matter that a dead old woman had said he should reign?  She didn’t know him either.  She hadn’t ever visited, hadn’t explained why she’d chosen him.  All he had to go on were the memories his parents shared with him, and those were grim.

            His father hadn’t really known King Porrex, but his mother had.  There was always a hardness to her when she spoke of her King – her former King – and he had the feeling that she generally agreed with Noffi’s proclamation.  Or at least, she agreed that the King needed to be replaced.  Kaden wasn’t certain if he was insulted or relieved that his mother didn’t want him to do this.  He’d asked her on several occasions if she thought he should be King, and he’d always had the sense that she was hedging the question.

            Avoiding the truth, he thought with a frown.

            Dear gods, if his own mother didn’t think he could do it, why was he entertaining the idea? 

***

Nope, I’m not going to explain that one.  Read Saboteur and you’ll get it.

Hurray!  Here’s day three of the Saboteur Release Party!  This is where I get to post all sorts of weird stuff about the making of the books and the creation of the world and … yeah … all that fun stuff.  Yesterday we covered Trenna, since she seems to be everyone’s favorite, and now I’m going to cover Nelek Vronat Dyngannon, the warring Prince and Trenna’s lover-turned-husband.

I actually stole Nelek from a different book that I had written.  It was a “trunk novel”, or a novel that I wrote for practice and should never been seen by anyone ever.  One of these days I might burn the trunk just to be safe.  But anyway, Nelek was actually the younger Prince in this “trunk novel” and he was so very complicated that I actually wanted the heroine of said trunk novel to fall in love with him instead of the main character.  I thought that was a pretty strong indicator that there was something more to him and so, after I had tossed that novel into the trunk and vowed never to look at it again, I decided that something was salvagable from him and put him into the world of Dyngannon.

No, it’s not coincidence that he’s known as the “Warring Prince” in Kiavana.  In order for Trenna to really work, she needed someone with power and fortitude and, well, general oomph to him to play opposite in the book.  Someone who could get into as much, if not more, trouble than she could.  Someone who was a balance to her reckless, often brash self.  Thus, we have Nelek Vronat Dyngannon, grandson of King Porrex Dyngannon.  (The royalty thing was his idea.  Apparently in both versions of Nelek — the trunk novel and the novels that are decent enough for the general public — he had to be royalty.)

Now then … Nelek really gets to shine in Saboteur.  Meaning, he gets to prove that he’s just as gritty and kick-butt as his wife when he has to be.  In fact, SPOILER ALERT, the man gets to save her life in the first chapter.  ((Pfft, like that’s much of a spoiler.  It would be an awful short book if I let her die right there in the first chapter.))

I searched high and low for a snippet to give you here.  The one that I am going to post was in the original manuscript.  It got edited out somewhere around the 4th edit of the book for continuity reasons and … uh … word count reasons because I was far beyond my 120 thousand word limit.  This scene is actually referenced in the second chapter of Sedition and it’s a mite too long to post in its entirety, so I’ve cut it down to a bite-sized snippet.

Background — Nelek and Brenson are children in this scene.  They’re at the Temple of the Ebony Blade and were undergoing sword instruction from their mentor Sir Bedvar when the army sort of crashed the party in search of the (surprise, surprise) Ebony Blade —

***

“His Highness King Goddard has no command over the sword,” Bedvar’s voice reached them. “Only her Majesty Queen Auliere can request it.”

“Her Majesty the Queen is dead,” the lead man spat on Bedvar’s boot.

Nelek gasped, put hands over his brother’s ears, though he knew he had failed to protect Brenson from the harsh words.

“Mama?” Brenson croaked and peered up at him, looking for him to deny it.

 “Sh!”  Nelek shook his head at his younger sibling. “She’s not dead,” he stated firmly. “We would know it.”

Turning his attention back to Bedvar, Nelek prayed inwardly that he was somehow right. Bedvar had turned slightly at the announcement, not really looking up at the wall where Nelek and Brenson hid, but in that general direction. There was a great force of emotion through the Knights face before a steely resolve straighten him and forced him to look back at the army before him.

“Then the sword is in the command of His Highness Prince Nelek.”

“The sword is in the command of the Crown!”

 No further words were needed. Bedvar drew his blade just as the army surged forward. The knight took five of them down before falling. His sword glinted brilliantly in the sun, slashing and arching in the familiar movements of battle. Nelek watched, fighting for breath, as a mace came down hard across Bedvar’s head and the man dropped like stone. Finding his voice, Nelek let out an anguished shout that mingled with the clash of weapons against the barred temple door.

****

There you go!  That’s my snippet for Nelek, straight from my notes and archives, full of cliche’s and horrible grammar and everything.

One of the comments most commonly made about Sedition is the character of Trenna.  Everyone seems to love her, and to be honest I’m pretty attached to her as well.  She’s quirky and tough, great with a sword, not so great with relationships, and has a sense of humor.  In short, she’s a blast to write.  But … where did I come up with her?

I’m going to sound a little off-balance, but I think most of my writer friends would agree that sometimes there is a physical object that yanks a character into view.  For me, I picked up an old templar sword and ka-boom! there she was.  I wish I could say the whole story was like that, but I’m afraid the sword only showed me the character and I was intrigued enough to start writing her story.

In actuality, the first scene I wrote with Trenna in it was the ambush scene from Sedition.  I’ll post the little blurby for you all to see what I started with …

***

It would have been a well-planned ambush, five archers hiding in the treetops all trained on the trail below with keen and steady eyes. Many wouldn’t have even noticed them, but Trenna, who had been escaping the castle by means of a cross-country walk, had caught sight of a flash of black where there should have only been green. Somewhat bored and aggravated at the state of things between herself and Dalton, she moved to investigate.

They weren’t in uniform, but they seemed well trained. They had at least camouflaged themselves in such a way that they almost looked a part of the great pines they sat in. And it looked as though they’d been planning this for a while because she spotted small, squared platforms under their feet. The question was for whom they were waiting. Politics notwithstanding, living in close quarters with so many people riled a lot of nerves, and there were plenty of powerful people with enough money to hire assassins.

Come to think of it, there were plenty of assassins for hire as well.

She wondered if it paid well.

***

That’s the first scene I ever wrote with Trenna in it.  Sedition fans will notice that this is actually in Chapter 4, but let’s face it, the rough draft never resembles the finished product.  And I knew when I wrote it that I was just testing the waters to see if I liked her enough to spend the years it would take to complete her story.

In Saboteur we get to see the depths to her character.  She’s not all about brazen swordplay and drunken bar fights, and I wanted that to really shine in the sequel.  That was part of the reason we find out that she’s pregnant in the first chapter of the book.  I wanted to limit her ability to fight, forcing her to take aid from her husband, Nelek.  ((For those who haven’t finished Sedition yet, I apologize for that spoiler.))

Next up … Nelek Vronat Dyngannon.  Tomorrow, I’ll explore where the “warring Prince” came from.

As promised, I am going to give you all a grand post of extra’s, snippets, previews and everything Saboteur that I can think of without giving away the whole story. My finals are finished, my brain is slowly recovering, and I’ll be back to writing for a month before the next semester at school begins, but before I go and do that I need to properly introduce you all to Saboteur. Because I was nearing the end of the semester when it was released, the poor book was not given the appropriate amount of attention that it should have been. On my part at least.

So! Saboteur is the sequel to Sedition … Which was the pretty black and white and grey cover with the big sword on it. It was also the introduction to the world of Dyngannon, a fantastical place populated by Eldur and Humans. Eldur, which I snagged from an old English word meaning “from the elder tree.” Why did I pick that name? Well, because someone somewhere at some point described elves as people of the tree’s. I really can’t remember who or when, but I remember it because it stuck with me. And my pointy-eared race of people have a lot in common with elves — Tolkein elves, not Santa elves — so I thought I’d be cheeky and name them something dealing with tree’s.

Now, as much as the Eldur have in common with elves — pointy ears, longevity, tree’s — they have some distinct differences as well. First of all, they aren’t peace loving and for all their years of living, they aren’t really elegant or snobbish, as some elves are prone to being in this genre. They are gritty people. Also, their magic is … erm … different.

Blood Magic has one very simple rule — everything is a trade. You can’t just make a wound disappear, someone else has to take it for you. And, when you get married, you trade your individual life for a life bound to another — meaning, when you die, so does your wife or husband. This very simple rule has been a great plot-complicator. We see Blood Magic a bit more in Saboteur than in Sedition, but the work I’m currently doing on Usurper (the third book in the series) is the one that is really going to explain the details of the magic.

In fact … didn’t I promise you snippets/sneak peeks? … Here you go! Fresh from Usurper’s pages::

***

“Varaloomessa oct ell et te,” Bree repeated, wafting the magic still closer.

Warm light filtered past her eyelids, an odd tickling sensation running over her lashes, and then she traded her sight briefly for a vision of a low-flying hawk. Magic itself picked which hawk, an odd twitch to Blood Magic was that it often had its own ideas of what should be done. The magic in use only knew she wanted something in the air, something that could give her a clear view of the island, and had accepted the price of her own vision for a time.

The only problem was that she wasn’t certain how long magic would keep her eyesight. She could be rendered blind for months if it so chose.

Shoving that worry firmly aside, Brigetta concentrated on the hawk’s vantage. It wasn’t far from the little cabin they were standing in, flying close to the treetops. Bree wavered, disoriented, and reached out for something to steady herself on. Faxon’s hand clasped on her own and she felt him step closer. She felt his body heat warm against her side and tried to relax.

Because she had only traded sight, the vision came with no sound. This made things even more disorienting, since she could still hear everything in the room, to include Faxon’s quiet breathing just beside her. Exhaling through her teeth, Brigetta battled a weird sense of vertigo and focused more.

The bird turned in a wide circle, scanning the forest floor in search of food. At least, she assumed it was hunting. That was what hawks did, after all.

Unfortunately for the hawk, its hunting grounds were being intruded upon.

***
And … That’s my first snippet/ sneak peek. I’m going to keep this book party / belated release party going for the next week. For those fans who recognize the name Brigetta, I’m happy to report that … yes … this is the very same Brigetta from Sedition. While she isn’t in Saboteur, she is absolutely integral to Usurper. I’m actually quite surprised by her antics in this novel and can’t wait for the rest of you to see what I mean.

Look out for the next snippet tomorrow!

I’m too tired to celebrate, but my final paper for my final class is finally done for the semester … Oh … oh … that means I can write again … but … but …

Yeah, I’ll wait until Monday. My brain is seriously frazzled. I don’t think I could manage recalling the PLOT of Dead Magic, let alone what scene I’m on right now.

As happy as I am that Saboteur is out for sale … I am in the middle of Finals and am super-crazy busy. As soon as this week is over, I’ll throw some fun extra’s up and some sneak-peek information on the next book in the Sedition/Saboteur series. Until then … pray that my brain doesn’t melt too badly during this week.

Hurray!  It’s here!  Saboteur was released this morning from Wings ePress.  I’m going to throw the purchase link in HERE so that you can easily access the book.  There are several different ways you can get it.  It’ll be on Amazon soon, I promise.  You’ll see me make an announcement here again when that happens. 

Remember, this is the sequel to Sedition, so if you loved Trenna the first time then you’re bound to love her again.  She’s just as sassy and kick-butt, and has that wonderfully gritty sense of humor to push the story forward.  And if you haven’t read Sedition, then you can still love Saboteur because … well … Trenna is just that awesome.  Plus, if you read Saboteur and then love her, you can learn how her story began in Sedition whenever you want. 

Woo!  I’m so happy to see it out for sale.

Now excuse me while I go work on Usurper.

First of all, I hope everyone had a great holiday.  I was sick, but I still managed to make a turkey and put up my Christmas tree.  For those of you who think it’s too soon to have your tree up … well … you might be right, but I totally did it anyway.  My son and I had a great deal of fun doing it, too.  I promised Hazen that when we put the tree up, we would also pull out the train set I bought him.  (The train set was on clearance back in January, so I’ve been holding onto it for a while.)

Because I was sick all week, I was a little behind in my Errata list for Saboteur, but fear not!  It is completed and now sitting in my Publisher’s in-box.  Which means, of course, that Saboteur will be out on schedule; December 1^st 2011!  In fact, I purchased some business cards with the cover art on them and am sorely tempted to send them out in lieu of Christmas cards this year … (That’s a joke, I’m really not that tacky, I promise.  But that does remind me, I need to go buy some cards before I’m horribly late in sending them out … again.)

Come December 1^st, I will make certain to share the purchase links for Saboteur everywhere.  I’ll make it super easy to find, I promise.  For those of you who have been pining after more of Trenna and her gritty, sword-swishing sass, I think you will be extremely pleased with this newest installment.  ((SPOILER ALERT)) She totally gets to kick some butt.

Because I have moved from the world building to the actual writing on Nellis V, I have removed its project page from the site. I’m thinking of making a snippet and/or teaser page because my poor little blog looks so small now. Plus, you know, I still love all those pretty pictures of space. So how is Nellis and National Novel Writing Month going? …. Well, good and bad. Good, because I do love the world and the story, but bad because there is absolutely no way I am going to make it to 50k by November 30th.

But that’s all right. I sort of knew that would happen.

I finished a great book this week. The book was Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare and I loved it. There were some moments that I found predictable, but the characters carried the story so well that I could forgive the fact that I knew what was coming. Plus, I mean … seriously … you just can’t go wrong when you mix vampires and steampunk. That’s just a recipe for awesome right there.