Assassins are a strange phenomenon in fiction. Why should anyone care about a protagonist who’s a hired killer? Yet we readers (and viewers) seem to love them. Why the fascination? 

Sure, super-sweet abilities and nearly magical skills (or truly magical depending on the genre) are given to them by popular culture in books and movies and video games, but under the hype all you have is a killer. For a writer this makes them uniquely challenging characters. Readers need to identify with your protagonist. But how do you make a cold blooded killer sympathetic?

Often assassin characters only kill in self defense, and only bad guys. A few years ago I read a fantasy novel about an assassin who is never shown killing a single person! But when they are done right they are golden. David Gemmell’s redeemable anti-hero makes Waylander one of my favorite books.

Why do I love assassins? Because I can’t resist the challenge.

[Wrath of the White Tigress][1], featuring Jaska the Slayer, originated from a short story I wrote back in college. The story featured a character inspired by a class of assassins from a fantasy RPG that I cowrote. A few years later, I recalled the short story and decided to revise it. Questions about that world and the character immediately popped into my head. Many things changed. The entire setting for one. I thought about how assassins are detestable people. 

My chief concern: What led Jaska Bavadi to become a killer? I thought of a number of motivations, most of them done many times before. Then it occurred to me: What if he’d never intended to become an assassin? What if the very person he most loved and trusted in the world had him under mind control? What would happen when the chains that bound him broke and he learned the truth, that he was not a champion of the people but the top killer in a ruthless regime?

Thus was born the Jaska Bavadi you see in Wrath of the White Tigress. An assassin who never meant to be anything but a warrior protecting the innocent. As if Bruce Wayne were actually the Joker but thought he was Batman because of the mind control of Alfred who is secretly Ra’s al Ghul. 

He thought he was a hero. She showed him the truth. Now he’ll do anything to stop the man who made him a monster.

Speaking of the chains that bind … After I completed Wrath of the White Tigress I decided, again, to polish up that short story. I changed the character’s name and switched it to the Pawan Kor setting. The original story protagonist, in case you can’t tell, lacked sufficient motivation for slaying. I started to motivate him again. 

Wouldn’t you know it, the story grew and another novel was born: Chains of the Dark Goddess, which will be out in June. It’s the spiritual sequel to Wrath of the White Tigress and features another appearance by the mysterious Nalsyrra. 

The protagonist in Chains is not an assassin, however, but a vengeful killer out to punish those who wronged him, an anti-hero willing to destroy the world to save the one he loves most. 

You’ll never get to read that short story, but if I ever run out of novel ideas (not likely), I’ll have that little nugget of story gold there just in case. 

The Storm Dragon’s Heart is a free download from Amazon on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, March 21-23.

Go forth and download. Or wait until Saturday and buy it.

And if you already own it, go forth and … write a review!

At least tweet about it.

In honor of my favorite holiday of the year, Dragon*Con, both of my ebooks are currently on sale for $.99. So if you haven’t bought your copies yet, get moving!

• The Storm Dragon’s Heart: Kindle, Nook
• Wrath of the White Tigress: Kindle, Nook

The print version of Tigress remains at its regular, highly affordable price of $11.99 at Amazon.

After Dragon*Con, the ebook prices are likely to increase. Though if sales are strong, I might leave one of them at $.99. Maybe. But only one.

It may not be blatantly obvious to you, dear reader, not at this point anyway, but The Storm Dragon’s Heart (SDH) and Wrath of the White Tigress (WWT) are set on the same world: Kaiwen, Kawan, Qawin, and other various spellings appropriate to the respective languages of the planet. I’ve written six novels, and only one of them doesn’t take place on Kaiwen.

Pawan Kor from Wrath of the White Tigress

SDH takes place on the island continent of Okoro, which I’d guess is about the size of Australia. It is on the other side of Kaiwen from Pawan Kor which is the southern portion of a massive continent, the name of which I cannot remember at the moment. (Yeah, I know. Cut me some slack. I came up with all the big picture stuff a decade ago and haven’t needed all of it yet.) Pawan Kor is bigger than Okoro. Perhaps as big across as Spain to India.

A few clues that show the books share a common world:

• Two moons: Zhura Dark Moon and Avida Bright Moon. You’ll note that their names are the same in both settings. An odd but intentional choice.

• Magic functions the same and a channeling stone is generally required. The channeling stones are called qavra in WWT and kavaru in SDH. Note their names are different, an odd but intentional choice. Qavra are best worked by people of Zindarhi descent, or their mysterious, remaining ancestors the Qaiar Zindarhi. For those beings, use of the stones is natural. I will say no more.

• The nature of deities is the same. Greater deities linked to celestial bodies and big concepts. Such deities are distant and perhaps have no direct impact on the world. Many lesser deities of varying powers, mostly minor spirits. (The world is primarily animistic.) There’s a lot going on in the background that will be revealed in time. I mapped out the source of magic and deities for the world, based on events that took places tens of thousands of years before the events of these novels. I will say no more.

• White steel which can cut through magical energies and beings. Dark iron which is the opposite of white steel. It’s able to soak up energies. I’m sure there are other small details that I’m just not thinking about at the moment. Hell, I’m likely forgetting something major. And I may be holding out on something.
  
  

I have included in this post the maps for SDH and WWT, but these are simplified views of larger, more detailed maps that I’m not sharing yet.

Northern Okoro from Storm Dragon

Chains of a Dark Goddess should have the larger view of Pawan Kor along with a focused map for the story itself. The bigger map of Okoro will appear with Legacy of the Lost Gods. Why am I holding out? Because I’m still refining some of the locations and want them to be as accurate.

If you’ve always thought Avatar: The Last Airbender needed a shot of Johnny Quest vibe, this here’s the book for you!

The Storm Dragon’s Heart

Turesobei dreamed of adventure, a way to prove he was no longer a child.

Wizards should be careful what they wish for.

Destined to become his clan’s next high wizard, studious Turesobei has constantly struggled to live up to other people’s demands and expectations, but now he’s had enough.

When his treasure-hunting father arrives with important news to discuss with the current high wizard, Turesobei spies on their secret meeting and accidentally foils an assassination attempt. As a reward his father invites him on an expedition to find an artifact known as the Storm Dragon’s Heart.

But when disaster strikes, their quest becomes a race for survival.

Aided by a sassy ninja cat-girl and a mysterious diary that transforms into a winged familiar, Turesobei must face deadly cultists, vengeful spirits, and a mad wizard from a rival clan who’s determined to use the artifact to destroy Turesobei’s homeland.

The Storm Dragon’s Heart will delight readers with a thrilling tale of exotic lands, mystical creatures, forbidden love, and fast-paced adventure. (Ages 10 and up)

Purchase the ebook at: Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The print book is coming later this month!

Wrath of the White Tigress is now available on Amazon!

Read a sample on Kindle for the Web!

He thought he was a hero.
She showed him the truth.
Now he’ll do anything to stop the man who made him a monster.

For twenty years Jaska Bavadi has faith­fully served the Palymfar Order and its Grandmaster, the powerful wizard Salahn, but an encounter with Zyrella Anthari, last high priestess of the White Tigress, shatters the spell that chained Jaska’s mind.

Now faced with the horrors he unknowingly committed against people he swore to protect, Jaska must put Salahn’s reign of cruelty to an end. Together, he and Zyrella race to save the White Tigress and stop Salahn from opening the Gates of the Underworld. An army of palymfar warriors stands in their way, but the dangerous secrets that cloud their destinies threaten to doom them first.

In the tradition of ­­Michael Moor­cock, David Gem­mell, and Glen Cook, Wrath of the White Tigress delivers a thrilling tale sword & sorcery fans will love.

Galactus would never select me. I’m a terrible herald. Norrin Radd I am not, though I, too, seek Shalla-Bal. I have been sitting on important news, failing to alert you, dear reader and friend, that my novel of heroic sword and sorcery adventure, Wrath of the White Tigress, will soon debut as the first novel from Typing Cat Press! [1]

WotWT will be available from Amazon, B&N, iBooks, and other fine ebook retailers at the highly affordable price of $4.99. The specific release date is yet unknown (though sometime in the last days of June). I will let you know as soon as I can. (The Kindle and Nook versions will appear first.)

The print version will follow in late July, priced around $10-12. Above and to the right, you can see the beautiful cover art created for WotWT by Sandara. This same cover will soon appear on the Podiobooks version as well. (I’m looking into doing an Audible version of the book for those of you who’d like to purchase the entire audiobook without interruptions.)

WRATH OF THE WHITE TIGRESS

He thought he was a hero.
She showed him the truth.
Now he’ll do any­thing to stop the man who made him a monster.

For twenty years Jaska Bavadi has faith­fully served the Palymfar Order and its Grandmaster, the powerful wizard Salahn, but an encounter with Zyrella Anthari, last high priestess of the White Tigress, shatters the spell that chained Jaska’s mind.

Now faced with the horrors he unknowingly committed against people he swore to protect, Jaska must put Salahn’s reign of cruelty to an end. Together, he and Zyrella race to save the White Tigress and stop Salahn from opening the Gates of the Underworld. An army of palymfar warriors stands in their way, but the dangerous secrets that cloud their destinies threaten to doom them first.

In the tradition of ­­Michael Moor­cock, David Gem­mell, and Glen Cook, Wrath of the White Tigress delivers a thrilling tale sword & sorcery fans will love.

[1] Full Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Typing Cat Press.

The power went out here after a storm yesterday afternoon. A small storm. We live deep in the woods. Lots of places where a tree could strike the lines along the way. We were supposed to have power back on at 6 pm. Didn’t happen until 12:30 am. Grumble.

Naturally, the battery went out on my Macbook, delaying completion of the ebook I was working on. (I unplugged the Macbook during the storm.) And I hadn’t charged my iPod Touch in a few days, so I couldn’t read any books or write on it.

The solution?

Why pull out a typewriter, of course. Specifically, my gold-speckled Olympia SF from the 1950′s (?). Lap-sized with the sweet action you’d expect from an Olympia. And of the ten typewriters I own, it has my favorite font. (I’m a 12 characters per inch kinda guy.)

The rub, of course, is that I’m not working on composing anything new at the moment. I have two novels in first draft state that I’m working on revising. I’m generating two ebooks. I have new things planned, but I don’t want to start them until I take care of the aforementioned projects.

I could have read by my bright LED Coleman lantern. (A Hunger Games reread is next up.) But I wasn’t in a reading mood. I wanted to work damn it.

So I started a new story: THE BONES OF KAZARDAHL. Novel, short story, novelette, novella? I don’t know really. Though I’d wage money on novella. It’s adventure fantasy. Not too serious or grim, though that might change. I have barely an inkling of where it will go. Just the notion of a few characters. Should be fun.

How it starts:

With fire and sword and a thirst for something, anything but the relentless cold and howling winds of the North Mark, the reavers descended on the sleeping town of Kazardahl. Sleeping save for one man who had retired there. One man, but not just any man. Once he had been the greatest wizard in the Kingdom of Bregh. And awake this late at night he was because retired or not, it is not the habit of a wizards to sleep at night.

If you are going to offer authors copyediting or other publishing services, please don’t quote prices in terms of pages.

I have no idea what the page-length is for any of my novels. I’m certain I don’t care. I’m certain that if I knew it would tell me nothing of value. Yes, if I format the work for a standard submission, I will know how many pages there are, if I bother to look at the total. (Never have before.) Assuming everyone uses the same beautiful Courier font and margins, though…

But if I’m looking to produce an ebook myself, I’m never going to use standard submission formatting. Why would I?

And if you quote your by-page services along with specific formatting requirements, that would work. However, the message it sends to me is that you’re stuck in the past.

Pages are variable in the 21st century. Stick to word counts.

(Yes, I could tell you how many pages are in any of my new short story drafts because I do those on manual typewriters. However, those are only rough drafts, not even close to finished works. Plus, the pitch sizes and line spaces are very different on the ’29 Royal Portable, the ’56 Olympia SM-3, and the ’55 Hermes Rocket. So that doesn’t tell you much, either. And really, this bit here is beside the point. I just wanted to talk about typewriters.)

I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been writing furiously. And now, the first draft of Chains of a Dark Goddess is complete at 96,000 words!

This tale of Daggers & Deviltry takes place in Pawan Kor*, which is the same setting I used for Wrath of the White Tigress. The events in Chains occur approximately three years later, and one character from Tigress crosses over into this new tale. It is not, however, a sequel.

Perhaps a statistical discussion of how I wrote this novel would be interesting. The first chapters (about 15,000 words) and the plot were created in July 2009, then I let it steep for a year (not entirely by design) before returning to it in August 2010. I don’t have data from late in the summer or just after Dragon*Con. I do, however, have data from the last 40 days: 34 days of work, 6 days off. In that time, I wrote 68,000 words for an average of 2,000 words per work day. The fewest words written in a single day: 200. The most words written in a single day: 7,000.

I’m pleased with this, though I’d like to see that average climb to 2,500-3,000 words per day. Honestly, I’d prefer to do 5,000-10,000 words a day. And I feel I’m perfectly capable of doing that in a first draft. I suspect the more I write, the closer I will get to that goal. If I could write a novel in about a week and then spend two months cleaning it up, I’d be a happy, happy writer.

I expect the second draft to add about 10,000 words to the overall length, though I will be cutting as well as adding. My method is to write a sloppy first draft that focuses on getting the story told, even if the writing itself stinks. During this process I often crudely sketch out descriptions of places and characters. The second draft is where I make the prose sing (I hope) and fill out descriptions and background details that I left out. Or, correct details that I changed later in the story, sometimes adding in new ideas and concepts. And, I may add new scenes or shift internal character explorations into external forms. For example, instead of a character thinking about whether he can survive a battle, I might rewrite it to have him discussing his worries with a friend.

I have no idea how long it will take me to complete the second draft, but the plan is to do it in less than one month. And I’m already 26,000 words into it!

* Actually, all the novels I’ve written so far take place in different parts of the same world, which I usually call Kaiwen.