Behind the Scenes of my new Dragons Novel

Behind the Scenes of Dragons, Magic, and Me

I want to take you behind the scenes of my new fantasy novel Dragons, Magic, and Me Volume 1 The Box to give you an insider’s view of the novel’s direction.

A dragon’s lifetime spans over 500 years. Unlike humans, they breed once every ten years at most. (If they bred as humans do, dragons would be the most populous species in the universe.)

Dragons as a species have subspecies based upon colors, such as red, black, green, white, gold. Just like humans, the various types don’t necessarily get along with the others. Further, the red and black dragons tend to have an evil bent and certainly detest humans, while the gold dragons respect humans and sometimes befriend them, if only for a short while (as far as a dragon is concerned). Currently, the numbers of each dragon type are fairly well in balance.

Dragons can Shadow Walk from one world to another world, as long as they are familiar with the destination world. Hence, dragons historically are spread out among a number of original planets, often in which the human population is seldom more advanced than an Iron Age.

A particularly brilliant Black dragon, Adler, discovered other worlds in which the human population is in a Modern or Space faring age! That is, humans of some worlds fly among other worlds via silver flying machines (ie. spaceships). Thus, Adler has set himself a new goal: to find many new worlds, but only share them with Black dragon close allies, the Red, Green, and White dragons. Purposely, he isn’t telling the Golds and other types about these new worlds. This way, his kind will have a powerful advantage over the other types.

However, his first problem is getting a Black or Red dragon to one of these new space faring worlds. He observed that the crew of these ships are frantic for good looking escorts and such when they land on a world. Every space port has a red light district close to it. Adler devises a very clever scheme. He confiscates one of these escort services and via some help from an unethical psychiatrist who is pursuing his own lines of illegal research involving implanting behavior patterns, he sets up the Unarmed Escorts. He kidnaps “ugly” young women, uses magic spells to alter their physical forms but disguises it as a bio-genetic DNA alteration that’s permanent in nature, and lets his psychiatrist implant the desired behavior in them, turning them into armless, but highly attractive beauty queens. Thus, he sells these women to wealthy men on these new space faring worlds, but insists that a caretaker accompanies each woman. The caretaker is a dragon, of course. Once that dragon becomes familiar with that new world, it Shadow Walks back and brings many other dragons back to this new world.

At the start of this story, Adler has “opened up” over a dozen new worlds that the Gold and other dragons know nothing about. However, in doing all this, he learns that some of these advanced worlds have developed “test tube babies” and DNA alterations and cloning processes. Now his plans change. He must find one of these worlds on which he can have Black and Red dragons cloned as well as baby dragons grown in quantity. Within say fifty years, the sheer number of Black and Red dragons could outnumber the others ten to one. At last, they could exterminate the Golds and other lesser dragons!

The Box was build by an Archmage. Its goal is to bring help to those in critical need, and on whatever world they live. The Box is highly enchanted indeed. The weenie to convince others to travel in the Box and help those in need is the gift of learning magical spells at an extremely rapid pace. Only certain types of would-be mages will succumb to this challenge, particularly those who lack patience or are in a hurry to learn all. It would be these type people that would be motivated to provide the help the various situations require.

Part of this story is to see how the close relationship between the Gold dragons and the select humans develops. Second, I wanted to show how other worlds and civilizations can well have very different traditions than our own. This is particularly illustrated by the noblewomen of the Rainbow’s End world. It also illustrates the alternate forms slavery and cruelty can take in these other societies.

Above all, it is to be an exciting, fun read for the reader, who I hope can’t put it down until the end. So yes, it is showing highly imaginative worlds and people, while emphasizing a long running plot that the characters unravel as they go from world to world situation, using what magic they do know to handle all manner of situations, unlike the usual fighter hack and slash approach, and also develops the tenuous dynamics between humans and dragons.

Also, I’ve added some intriguing twists and romance too. I hope you enjoy this new dragon series.

Vic

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Review of Myths of the Mirror

Review of Myths of the Mirror by D. Wallace Peach

As I began reading, it reminded me of The Dragon Riders of Pern that I read and enjoyed so very many years ago. Here in the Myths of the Mirror, in the Old Way, dragons invite humans to ride them bareback in a blending of nature, a harmony of man and dragon. However, in the village of Taran Leigh, greedy governors only interested in “coin,” have undone all this, and as the author says, “They imprisoned the winged dragons of in the black cells of a stone lair. Tormented by spine and spur the once peaceful creatures howl.” Yes, brutality and savagery now reigns, all for the sake of the greedy and not for the villagers.

The story revolves around two young people, Terasa and Conall, who struggle to find their own myths, their own paths through life, though there are additional memorable characters who are critical to the myth story. Part of Terasa’s task is to uncover the secret mysteries of her past, her father, while Conall initially becomes part of the dragon riders of the lair, replete in all its brutality and savage mistreatment of the noble dragons. More of the plot, I won’t reveal, but I do love happy endings. (Hint.)

The tale is very well told. I enjoyed how slowly all of the many pieces of the puzzle were revealed, forming a whole. Note, this is not one of those highly action-filled novels, rather the author is carefully crafting an entire world for our pleasure.

The author has an amazing command of the written word. Every paragraph is filled with highly descriptive words, painting a fascinating world for your imagination to grasp; lush and rich descriptions abound. Reading this novel is like staring at one of those incredibly detailed and realistic Renaissance paintings or, if you prefer, listening to a fabulous Romantic era symphony of sound. Rich and lush hardly begin to describe the author’s writing style. It is like sipping fine wine with every paragraph. This is not a novel to race through, but to savor the marvelously and carefully crafted scenes as they appear. Yes, the story is captivating; the characters, realistic, but I found the poetic imagery breathtaking. I give it my 5-star rating, for this is one novel that you will want to read and imagine…

Vic

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Special Promotions

Hi Everyone,

I’ve had a great holiday season. After many test scenarios, we’ve invented a new gaming system that may well work out for my Complete WWII game! And yes, if I ever get that game written and programmed, it will be available here on this site.

Also, I’ve been hard at work on re-editing and producing Kindle mobi editions to accompany the pdf versions of some of my fantasy and science fiction novels, but I still have a long way to go to get them all redone in both formats.

At this point, the Trident series (3 books), the Lindsey Barron series (7 books), and the Elizabeth Stanton series (13 books) are done.

Starting Tuesday on Amazon.com and running for a week (Feb 11-18), I’ve a special $.99 promotion running for all the novels in the Trident series and in the Lindsey Barron series. Grab them at the discounted prices while you can.

Again, if anyone is interested in reviewing one or more of them, contact me right away. I am willing to provide free copies in exchange for reviews.

PS. I seem to be working harder now than before I retired!

vic

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Why I Write Fantasy Novels

Why I Write Fantasy Novels

I get an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction from writing fantasy novels for three key reasons.

One, magic. What would life be like if one could cast magical spells? Such spells range from protection spells, such as my Skin of Stone spell – which protects the body from physical blows from things as sword strikes and even bullets, to offensive spells such as a Ball of Fire. Let your imagination flow freely and then ask yourself just what would live be like for you if you could do such things? Intriguing.

Two, mental skills that mimic magical spells. Often called psi powers, the same considerations apply. What would life be like if you had powers of the mind at your disposal, such as telepathy, telekinesis, and many more? Again, I find such notions highly intriguing.

Three, character development and interaction. I enjoy mocking up unique characters and then “wearing their hat,” writing as though I was that person. In fact, in one novel, I had a high action chapter involving seven quite different and unique characters constantly interacting with each other, making a fascinating read.

Back in the 1980’s, I played a lot of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, even going so far as having an article published in the Dragon magazine and a game module in the Dungeon magazine. That, coupled with my love of Tolkien, led me to write my first such novel, The Return of the Wizards.

From there, I decided to merge magic spells and psi powers. The result was the Trident Series, which also became a love story as well. In the third book in that series, you can find the chapter with the seven characters in action that I mentioned above. Jon Brown has the psi powers, while his new friends have magical spell casting abilities. His friends are each very unique with strong personalities, quite divergent from each other.

One of my students once asked me why I didn’t have a novel involving dragons. So I wrote the Zoran Chronicles in response, making dragons the focal point of that series.

Harry Potter was impressive. I just knew that I had to respond. After all, the US needs its own version. Thus, I began writing the Lindsey Barron series, which soon grew to six novels to tell her complete story. Then, later on, I added a twist. People can change. What would happen if the main evil wizard that haunted Lindsey in those six books suddenly changed – for the better? Enter the recent addition of the seventh novel in that scene! I’m just now finishing up the 8th, continuing  to explore that huge personality change.

As I wrote the two huge science fiction series, I could not help but have sections that are almost fantasy as well.

Several years back, they did a remake of Alice in Wonderland as a short mini-series. Impressed with it, I decided to try my hand at writing something akin to Alice. The result was Without Warning, a fanciful wonderland-like fantasy novel.

Nearing completion are several more completely different fantasy novels. Deadly Games (inspired by the Game of Thrones, whose author annoys me no end by killing off all the main characters, and which I certainly don’t in this one) and the three novel series Reclamation, inspired with the direction our country is going with its health care, big government, and corporation control of politics. With luck, they will be out in early 2014.

I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did writing them. They should stir your emotions as well as giving you something to think about, to ponder, when you are done with them, beyond just a good, exciting read.

Vic

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