David Alastair Hayden

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!

Over the last few months, I’ve pri­mar­ily been work­ing on an expan­sion and sig­nif­i­cant revi­sion of The Storm Dragon’s Heart, a YA novel I wrote back in 2005. (Has it been that long?!) My test read­ers called it “Johnny Quest in fan­tasy Asia.”

I’m very excited by the result, and I’m sure I’ll be telling you much more about it in the near future.

Many were the changes I made to the book:

• Expanded the nar­ra­tive by 13,000 words.

• Added a new sub­plot and character!

• Changed the main character’s back­ground and abilities.

• Altered how magic works to bring it in line with the newer mate­r­ial that I’ve writ­ten in the same world.

• Replaced Japan­ese and Chi­nese terms with Eng­lish equiv­a­lents. The set­ting is a fan­tasy ver­sion of a num­ber of East Asian cul­tures smashed together. It is not Japan with magic. This unex­pect­edly caused some prob­lems for some pre­vi­ous readers.

• I dras­ti­cally sim­pli­fied the set­ting, thereby reduc­ing the bur­den of expo­si­tion. Some com­plete alter­ations, but in many cases I sim­pli­fied unnec­es­sar­ily com­plex aspects and replaced their fan­tasy names with stan­dard Eng­lish equiv­a­lents. Fan­tasy aspects that did not con­tribute to the plot or char­ac­ters or that did not add sig­nif­i­cant atmos­phere were neutered.

• The orig­i­nal text had 500-word trav­el­ogues between longish chap­ters. These trav­el­ogues were inter­est­ing and helped with the bur­den of the more com­plex set­ting. They were now obso­lete, and frankly, they really threw off the pac­ing. Even though I cut 16 of these, the book grew by 5,000 words.

• Shorter chap­ters of much more var­ied lengths. Stronger chap­ter hooks.

• And, of course, gen­eral improve­ments in the qual­ity of the writ­ing and in storytelling.

So what, you may ask, is in the works for this one? A pod­cast? I hope so. Sam­ple chap­ters soon? Almost cer­tainly. Oth­er­wise, I can’t say for cer­tain yet. But stay tuned.