Sorry I've been quiet - I've been writing!
Trial by Fire is now officially 100K (103K, actually), which means soon I will be able to do daily postings here and on Royal Road.
I will be uploading about 10 chapters here tomorrow for Patrons Only.
The Royal Road version of TBF has already started, and will soon be updating twice (!) a day, every day, until the book is done.
You can read it here: 2018-04-25 11:24:02 +0000 UTC
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The scene that greeted us at the Taltos skyport was that of armed chaos.
We arrived in the early evening, and the area around the docks seethed with travelers - a very large number of which were non-humans. Elf-like Lysdian, the cat-like Meewfolk, and cliques of masked, hooded Mercurions milled around in crowds, marched up gangplanks onto creaking old airships, or got into shouting matches with soldiers from behind barricades. Some people were clearly leaving. Others were st...
2018-04-15 20:45:46 +0000 UTC
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Please let me know what you think of the story thus far in the comments :)
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Three days later.
We woke with the sun onboard the Hóleány. Or more accurately, I woke with the sun. I was curled around Karalti under a down comforter, her back and wings arched against the front of my body. The single level gain had made a huge difference to her. She had doubled in size, and her scra...
2018-04-03 07:18:34 +0000 UTC
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The Vlachian royal ship was called the Hóleány, which was pronounced ‘Hoo-lan’ and not ‘Holeannie’. It was easily the nicest ship in the port: a sleek cruiser with four huge magictech engines and layers of waxed silk sails. It looked like a flying luxury yacht made of dark polished wood.
The pair of knight and priest led me and my saurian friends down the harbor front with some urgency, half sheltering me and Karalti with their cloaks. Guards were po...
2018-03-29 02:56:24 +0000 UTC
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Six feet behind him, Karalti’s body was consumed by a kaleidoscopic haze as the opal seams in her scales spread over her entire body. The guard nearly dropped her as she seemed to liquify and then double in size. It distracted everyone, even the mage.
Before she had even stopped glowing, the dragon reared her head back and opened her jaws wide. “CHAAAA!”
A thin stream of burning liquid, like ghostly white napalm, streamed from her mouth. The net caught on fire, a...
2018-03-21 22:16:53 +0000 UTC
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Matir is one of The Nine, the elder gods originally worshipped by the dragons and the avian Aesari. While often described as the God of Darkness, Matir is more accurately described as a god of life, death and rebirth who is aligned with the Darkness element. While often misunderstood, he is not an evil deity – unlike his twin sister Rusolka, the Goddess of the Ocean.
Darkness is a fertile element in Archemi, and the stories of the dragons have Matir wed to the goddess Veel...
2018-03-16 00:36:00 +0000 UTC
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From the shadows, I watched the seven men move into position. One Mercenary stayed outside of the fence while the other six filed in and fanned out. They acted like professionals who knew how to work together, but the way they were moving told me that they weren’t a hundred percent sure where I was. Either that, or they had a couple of guys coming from behind the stable.
I pulled Cutthroat around by her reins, pointing her in the direction of the approaching vanguard, and ...
2018-03-14 14:28:58 +0000 UTC
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Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur is hard at the best of times. Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur through a crowded city port with a stuffy nose and a baby dragon kicking you in the kidney? Welcome to the glamorous life of a virtual reality videogame adventurer.
“Karalti! Can you not!?” I hissed down toward the struggling bundle that wriggled inside my cloak, struggling to control my mount as she snapped and lunged at passersby.
“Karalti see!”<...
2018-03-12 19:22:49 +0000 UTC
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If you came from RRL, you may have seen the old version of this chapter as the Epilogue of Dragon Seed. It was edited and is now the prologue of Trial by Fire - J.
Two hundred dragons were gathered in the hatching chamber of the Eyrie, and their moans and the rustle of agitated wings stirred the hot air as the man who had been Baldr Hyland marched toward the Matriarch’s nest of sand and stone.
The Matriarch was a sorry sight. Her semi-comato...
2018-03-12 19:15:15 +0000 UTC
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"I braced my spear for impact, but then then an odd, confused expression passed out the ghoul’s face, and its head split in a wet explosion of mana-warped brain matter. It collapsed, an ax buried in what remained of its skull, and I looked past it to see a vision of Valhalla.
Suri flung her second ax at a retreating soldier, hitting him in the shoulder and dropping him to his knees. As he went down, she pulled her huge curved sword from her back and carried...
2018-03-08 18:24:38 +0000 UTC
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“Hey, you know what my dragon calls you?” I called back to Suri, wrestling Cutthroat into walking the right direction. “You’re ’Grumpy Lady’.”
“You want to know what I call your dragon?” Suri retorted.
“Yeah, but only if it’s PG-13. She’s a baby. Kid-friendly insults only, thanks.”
The woman scoffed, jogging ahead of Cutthroat and back out onto the street. The effect was instantaneous: Cutthroat trilled happily, and pranced off after her...
2018-03-02 08:13:06 +0000 UTC
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Dragons in Archemi grow by leveling. They grow rapidly, nearly doubling in size with every level between Levels 1-10. At Level 10, their first soft cap, they begin to grow more slowly until they reach their full size at Level 30.
Queen dragons are usually the largest dragons in Archemi, with the only comparably sized dragons being Platinum and Gold males.
By Level 4, Karalti's head rests at about 7.5ft off the ground (about the same size as a hookwing) and she is large enough to serve as...
2018-02-28 12:05:11 +0000 UTC
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Super secret Patron stuff!
As I work on Trial By Fire, I'm planning out the character class/skill growth for Hector and Karalti. I don't like my books to be too crunchy, but I learned from Dragon Seed that this shit needs to be very well planned out in advance.
Karalti has three Paths in which Hector can invest EXP and two possible Advanced Paths she can advance along after she reaches maturity at Level 30: Shadow Wing and Nightmare.
The Path of Alacrity leads to the Shadow Wing cl...
2018-02-27 06:38:44 +0000 UTC
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The Dragon Seed paperback and ebook are about as done as I can stand. I can't believe it's only 7 days until it goes out. Even more unbelievable to me is how many pre-orders it has - 268 as of today! I posted the epilogue of Dragon Seed on Royal Road last night, which meant I could finally reward myself with two things: reading James Hunter's Viridian Gate Online, and purchasing RUINER, a cyberpunk action shooter I've had my eye on for about a week now.
One of the things I've taken away ...
2018-02-22 02:07:44 +0000 UTC
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My artist came back to me with the cover for Trial by Fire. Hector takes a background role to Suri (who is introduced in Book #2) and Karalti.
Suri is a beserker with a dark past, a woman who gains power from pain. Karalti... is basically just an adorable derp at this point in her life, really.
I'm going to start posting chapters of Trial by Fire pretty soon!
2018-02-19 18:25:57 +0000 UTC
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One of the characters from my forthcoming LitRPG/Gamelit series, Archemi Online.
2017-12-22 17:22:40 +0000 UTC
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The coughing fit kicked me upright before I was even awake. Strangling, eyes throbbing from the pressure in my head, I coughed and heaved and flailed around, unable to see anything but dancing black and white spots. My lungs were burning by the time I pitched back onto my pillows, exhausted and shaking with lingering terror. Not just terror of the present: terror of the future that awaited me. I was now at Stage Two of the HEX virus – in three days’ time, I’d be dead.
...
2017-12-22 02:57:06 +0000 UTC
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"You are missing a key element to this,” Keen said. “But you seem to fancy that you’re a clever man, so let me ask you a question - do you know what cordyceps unilateralis is?”
“Cordyceps is a family of fungus,” I replied quickly. “They’re famous because of their ability to parasitize and control insects.”
“Correct,” Keen replied. “Much in the way that a demon has parasitized you. Or more accurately, what used to be ‘you’. That is what demons do, as according ...
2017-07-31 08:23:14 +0000 UTC
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There was an eerie, unsettling feeling to the place that had nothing to do with it being a funeral home. I looked around and tuned in, walking a circle around the cars and letting my eyes relax, my gift for detail open up to the world. There was a row of steel freezers against the far wall, fridges where they stored bodies before taking them to the embalming room. There was a small office, unlocked and open, that had rows of screens with camera feeds on them, and an elevator used to transport a ...
2017-07-14 15:47:01 +0000 UTC
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2017-04-13 18:03:05 +0000 UTC
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This is Patrons-only for the time being. What do you guys think?
2017-02-05 23:33:55 +0000 UTC
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And now... back to work
2017-01-30 12:39:56 +0000 UTC
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It's hard and about 9 inches long and 2 around. It's...
...An illustrated hardcover!
2016-12-30 13:33:37 +0000 UTC
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This is where the magic happens: I draft on an awesome web app called MyWriteClub, which tracks your wordcount in real time and allows you to measure your progress. The drafts get stored in Scrivener. I am part planner, part panster, and I tend to write up a rough outline and then write a bunch of important and/or fun scenes from the outline. When I do my second draft, I seize on the moments of inspiration in the rough draft and develop them, turning the novel into something more linear.
...
2016-12-23 07:46:01 +0000 UTC
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This is the start of the short story I'll be submitting to The Expanding Universe: An Exploration of the Scifi Genre. It's super rough, but this is true of all first drafts.
If there's one thing you never want to hear in a biosphere, it's nothing. Silence.
To give you the Cliff’s Notes version of why this sucks so much, bear with me a moment. ANSWER frontier arcologies start out as big gray cubes of compressed building materials. When a spaces...
2016-11-04 02:27:28 +0000 UTC
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You guys get to see it first! I'm quite nervous sharing my drafts, tbh... but hopefully you enjoy it in all its gory wonder.It rained blood the day that I enacted the first stage of my revenge, and not in the romantic, metaphorical sense.
Three weeks had passed since Sergei robbed Vassily’s grave: Three weeks to heal, to regain my fitness, to test the limits of my magic, and to get my very first tattoo. I had it done at a small, no-name shop just off Times Square, the same place...
2016-10-14 10:09:23 +0000 UTC
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This portrait is currently at the midtone stage, where I am bringing his skin to life and getting the structure of the colors right.Kaus is one of the characters from Cold Cell... and he may just get to know Alexi better than anyone else, even Vassily.
2016-10-14 10:01:56 +0000 UTC
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Seung Min-Joon, also known as Angkor, makes his debut in Stained Glass, the second book of the Hound of Eden series. He is one of the most complex and enigmatic of the characters in the series, possessing layers and layers of secrets behind what first seems like an open, sensuous demeanor.
Angkor is a word that means 'walled city' or 'fortress'. He chose the nickname because it embodies possession of his own body and a strong foundation of identity, something that he has had to fight for...
2016-10-08 01:17:38 +0000 UTC
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Alexi's autism is fairly apparent in this picture, taken in 1986 - the year Burn Artist is set. Uncanny Valley much?Vassily, on the other hand, has perfected Ukrainian Blue Steel.
2016-09-29 00:46:53 +0000 UTC
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O Lord, save my sinful soul
From local punishment
From the far-away zone
From being frisked
From the tall fence
From the severe prosecutor
From the Devil or from the devil owner
From small rations
From dirty water
From steel handcuffs
From hidden obligations
A cold cell
And short haircuts
Save us from the death penalty
Amen
Cold Cell is t...
2016-09-21 05:08:20 +0000 UTC
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