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Mumling
When I was writing down Bartram’s backstory, I said that he was an officer in Mumling’s Army. That’s it - that’s how it was created.
At that time, I knew that Mumling was going to be a City State but I had no idea what the place would be out.
Over time, I’ve been able to add more depth to this city in various stories - The Grotesque of Silvanus and The Murkwode Reaving - as well as through fleshing out my own D&D campaign setting.
Mumling is a human City State of Gaelwyn with a population around 16,000. As Mumling isn’t along the Wych, I see them as agrarian farmers and deeply religious, connected to nature where Silvanus is the dominant deity. They’re very connected to nature and are also quite cognizant of man’s propensity towards greed, villainy, and corruption.
I don’t see the City States of Mumling or Nodderton as friends. I think they kind of resent each other. I may play that out in future work.
I see the place as kind of gloomy, dominated by elder oak trees, where humans have erected temples to Silvanus with spooky gothic architecture.
Mumling is also close to the Murkwode, a foresty-swampy flood plain that borders the Wych on the opposite side of some goblin-infested hills to Mumling’s north.
The Murkwode is a terrifying swampland, cursed, and a rumored den of thieves and pirates.
In a D&D campaign that I’m running, the player characters are exploring the Murkwode and trying to find caves once used by a prosperous thief to horde his wealth and evade authorities.
For those who care, the Mirkwood is a Sir Walter Scott and Tolkien location; the Murkwood is found in the Elder Scrolls. Not to be outdone, I wanted my own version so, murk, as in archaic Scottish, gloomy, and wode, an old English expression for wood, hence, Murkwode.
I’ve written about their prison system as being strict and punishing, yet offering a way out for young men through faith or military service. In true Protestant tradition, punishment is all about spending time to overcoming moral failures, and Mumling’s justice system offers it.
I haven’t written about it yet, but I picture Mumling’s military as small but extremely effective and well-trained.
I see their form of government as a kind of farmer’s grange or a counsel.
I see the people of Mumling as prosperous but humble, isolated, skeptical, superstitious, and religious.
Bartram serves Mumling - not unsurprising given its proximity to the Aevalorn Parishes and their attitudes towards nature.
Aevalorn Parishes
The Aevalorn Wilds are located to the south of the active map. The Wilds is a thick, lush rhododendron forest full of monsters. It is that fear of monsters that has kept the human City States of Gaelwyn at bay.
Halflings look at Aevalorn as the cradle of their civilization; all halflings of The Land trace their lineage to one of the Parishes (consolidated tribes) of the Precursors: the founding mothers and fathers of their various tribes.
Halflings are found in southern Gaelwyn in an area referred to as Aevalorn. To halflings, Aevalorn means quiet home. It is the place of their origin.
Geographic, political, and regional differences between halflings gave rise to Parishes. Aevalorn is home to seven Parishes dominated by a lush rhododendron forest. Aymes Parish lies in the mid-point of Aevalorn.
There are seven Parishes: Valley Parish, Aymes Parish, Greenfield Parish, Tatterfoot Parish, Wetfoot Parish, Applegrove Parish, and Duninish Parish.
There are numerous hamlets that I’ve identified in my work - Pondaroak, Amberglen, Mosshollow, and Ehrendvale.
In The Pig King, I eluded to another human region to the south of the Parishes named Shae Tahrane, an older D&D campaign setting that I created in the mid-2000’s and is currently unmapped.
Trelalee
Trelalee is a bedroom hamlet to Brigantia sporting maybe 6,000 people.
It’s located in a fen, a swamp, and was once the ancestral home of goblinkind. Man liked the area’s natural resources and eventually went to war with the goblins, ousting them from the territory. All of this came to a head in Crestfall: a goblinoid/human war that took place sixteen years prior to the current time where most of my stories take place.
Trelalee is a protectorate of Brigantia. That just means that Trelalee doesn’t have a standing military of its own - just local town guards - and relies on Brigantia for protection; kind of a big deal if irate goblinkind are always nipping at your heels. It’s a nice arrangement for Brigantia as Brigantia can exert political and commercial influence over Trelalee, but not everyone thinks that’s an ideal arrangement.
In Aevalorn Tales, there’s a scene in the 14th episode where I write about Isaiah, Gammond’s handler with the Thieves Guild, looking at a painting depicting Trelalee’s rescue at Crestfall by Brigantian forces. The subtext of the scene is that Isaiah, like most in Trelalee, resents being under Brigantia’s boot and that Brigantia wields far too much influence and meddles in their affairs. Foreshadowing here, but one day, that relationship is going to come to a head.
Trelalee is the home of Fenwater Abbey and the Sisters of Siena, the Watermaidens. It’s also home to the Iron Cages - a terrible prison.
I depict Trelalee as a rainy, wet, mosquito-infested, water-logged slough, and it really is, but its surrounding farmland and topsoil are extremely important to Brigantia; Trelalee is like Brigantia’s breadbasket. You have to feed 40,000 people somehow, and they depend on the farmers of Trelalee.
My first stories took place there with Bartram, Gammond, and Jore. I like the idea of this setting and I’ll frequently return to it when I want to write about thieves, goblins, the goblin wars, or Brigantia’s political strife.
Brigantia
When I think of Brigantia as a setting, I think it is the polar opposite of Nodderton.
In fact, if you looked at the map, the City State of Brigantia is located at the start of the Wych, near the glaciers of Stonereach, and not the end, like Nodderton. Visually, we start in Brigantia and end up in Nodderton. This is by design.
Brigantia is a monarchy and a matriarchal society, also in contrast to Nodderton’s king and patriarchy.
Nodderton’s all about taxation, crime, and punishment; Brigantia’s all about service and passing inherited wealth through women to create a thriving middle class that competes politically with family houses.
Where Nodderton is all about a traditional court ruled by a single king under a monotheistic structure, Brigantia is a more enlightened, polytheistic, faction-driven, cooperative structure.
Instead of looming dark castles, Brigantia is built partially by dwarves with artistically shaped stone featuring impossible sculptures and gardens. It’s more of a place of light than darkness.
Stories centering around Brigantia tend to offer contrast to traditional fantasy settings that are more like Nodderton. However, I find it requires a lot of explanation and it bogged me down in A Goblet of Bone. In my first draft of the first act, I had to spend so much time explaining it that I felt it slowed the entire story down. I can’t shorthand Brigantia as I can Nodderton, so it’s an ongoing challenge.
I refer to Brigantia as the Jewel of Gaelwyn and “the royal city” because it’s definitely a lofty and aspirational place. I picture it as 40,000 strong and one of the largest City States. It’s a river port city and extremely powerful, with an extensive military and a strong tradition of service. I imagine it as a gateway to the Dwarven Kingdoms of Stonereach, rich with art, culture, and trade. It’s a place of contrast where dysfunctional, selfish men are outcasts who live as paupers at the heels of powerful women, and where women run families and estates, not men.
But it’s also a place of contradiction. Brigantia is a place many would want to live in Gaelwyn, but it’s dominated by a familial class system, much to the exclusion of outsiders.
Jore Brix is a character from Britania.
I’ll let you in on a secret. The name “Brigantia” comes from my childhood. I used to play a video game called Ultima 4 where there the gameplay took place in a realm named Britannia.
Nodderton
Nodderton lies to the southwestern coast of Gaelwyn and is one of the larger City States in my writing.
It sits at the mouth of the Wych and borders the sea, so it’s a very strategic location and coveted by other City States.
When I imagine Nodderton, I think of a dense 20,000 population with lumbering tall castles, an extensive market, theater, and an expansive port and waterway.
Therefore I think it to be the seat of the Merchant Guild where there are extensive rules for commerce and taxation. I think of dungeons and a classic medieval prison system. Nodderton is ruled by a king. There’s an established monarchy, a court, and all of the palace intrigue that goes along with it. In my mind, Nodderton is a classic setting for fantasy stories.
I think there are a lot of different views of Nodderton though. In The Knave of Nodderton, I introduced a character named Aut Khronig, a corrupt intelligence minister; he wasn’t very nice. But I also introduced readers to a pleasant merchant named Faw Kag in the same story, as well as hinted at Nodderton’s theater culture. And I described the Athenaeum, a secret library, in Love’s Repast. I want to think that the place has a lot of depth; that there are many surprises under the hood.
It’s not all kings, taxes, courts, trade, and gloom, but its basic backdrop is well-suited for telling serialized fiction. I don’t have to describe it too much. It’s another shorthand for telling my stories.
Who is Jore Brix?
Jore Brix is the odd man out: he is my one and only recurring Gaelwyn (human) character in Aevalorn Tales.
He’s also offered in two versions: a young version for YA (Young Adult) stories, and an older version that plays stick to Bartram.
In fact, I think the only reason why I talk about him is because he hangs around Halflings so much. He is also the only honest-to-goodness wizard in my stories.
I see him around 5’10”, thin, and dressed in medieval aristocratic clothing with knee-high boots and a long jacket with internal pockets; he wears a belt with leather pouches for spell components.
He’s a wealthy aristocrat, a privileged son of the City State of Brigantia; since his bills are paid and lives a comfortable life, he spends his time studying and teaching at Pax Arcana.
He's a falconer, like most high-town men of Brigantia.
I see him as optimistic and scholarly, intensely interested in mysteries and puzzles. In fact, I see him as a perpetual student, always learning. He made his first appearance as Bartram Humblefoot’s sidekick in the original Aevalorn Tales.
I foresee his stories being clever puzzles where I take the reader down a rabbit hole of evidence and suspicion. In YA stories, he’s a Hardy Boys/Scooby Doo kind of guy. I also see him as a part of any one of my characters’ stories, but Bartram Humblefoot in particular.
Finally, I had some wacko idea that I might make a younger version of him and write some young adult fantasy, but I really haven’t worked that out yet. That’ll evolve over time.
Oh, look! A younger version! It’s almost magic.
Who is Kindle Muckwalker?
Kindle Muckwalker is a Halfling Ranger of the Aevalorn Parishes.
He’s an outdoorsman, a hunter, a guide; a detached character who is an anathema to most Halfling archetypes because he’s not about hearth and home, or gregarious, or particularly cheerful. He’s a gruff, focused character, with a direct sense of communication, heavily accented, and is generally considered quite peculiar by most Halflings.
He’s got slick greasy straight hair to his shoulders, parted down the middle; pointed chin; I often describe him as grimy, but with no stubble though because he’s a Halfling. He relies on a shortbow for a weapon and wears a quiver of 10 arrows on his back. He's got a hunting knife at his side, secured by the leg, and by the waist. And he has a thick leather belt and leather breeches to his knees.
Stories with Kindle are about leading humans through the Aevalorn Wilds. They’re gritty adventure stories with a splash of nature wrapped in there somewhere. I see Kindle and Jayleigh Warmhollow as companions in some way - with Kindle being a mentor-like character to Jayleigh - where I can introduce more heart and mysticism into his stories.
His first appearance was in The Pig King.
Who is Joliver Barleywood?
Joliver Barleywood is a Halfling Bard of the Aevalorn Parishes. I picture him as middle-aged, fit, dressed always in a waistcoat and smoking a pipe.
Like Bartram Humblefoot, I picture this character rarely returning to the Parishes, preferring instead to be abroad and amongst Man in Gaelwyn.
This is a character who is interested in stories. I’m trying to make it a point where he’s always asking, “Tell me your tale”, or “Tell me about this or that”. He is a curator of stories; a collector of people’s experiences and dreams.
I want to write Joliver so that he exists somewhere legend and reality. He’s a wandering type, magical; he shows up in time to hear the last words of a dying man, witness an important event, or tell a story when it needs to be heard.
He’s jovial (“Joliver”), playful, teasing, and maybe a little bit snarky when he’s not performing. In D&D terms, he’s a Bard of the College of Lore, a jack of all trades, and a storyteller that holds his audience spellbound.
When I first introduced this character, he was retelling The Ballad of Skyer Dannon; Love’s Repast was his first stand-alone story.
What is a Book?
As an author, technology professional, and digital native, I think it’s beyond time to ask ourselves what a book is, and how technology has broadly transformed the business of publishing.
What we traditionally identify as a book is a certain dimension and size; something that was physical and has pages that we manually flip through to read in consecutive, sequential order; that it has a spine; it has a cover and a jacket, requiring layout designers, typographers, and visual artists.
Because books were physical, there needed to be a process to edit it and make sure it was right. Errors and omissions couldn’t be corrected in the finished product.
In order to make a profit off the product of a book, it had to be economical to produce it. There had to be at least x-number of pages printed under certain constraints to make y-amount of profit. Historically, the profit motive is what filtered writers from being published at all. Publishers knew that, in order to make a profit off a book, there was a formula associated with the cost of production, requiring a minimum and a maximum number of physical pages, in specific dimensions and materials (paperback vs hardcover, for instance).
In order to sell the book, marketers knew that there was a formula that worked: a strong character-driven story with a three-act structure with lots of escalating, high-stakes action, in regards to a fantasy novel, for instance. They knew that a man had to write it; the fantasy demographic repelled female authors. They knew that the protagonist must be a human male to best identify with the reader, and in particular, a white human male. They knew it needed a splashy cover and vivid colors, and it needed to be between x-number of pages, otherwise, a segment of the market wouldn’t be interested in it.
Publishers knew how many units they needed to produce and sell in order to make a profit off the volume. Thus, they made exclusive arrangements for marketing and distributing a book. These exclusive arrangements allowed for a certain amount of time a book sat on shelves, and was calculated from the amount of loss they’d suffer if they didn’t churn the inventory quickly enough. In most cases in the latter half of the 20th century, publishers had to buy-back underperforming books from the retailer and eat their losses.
Authors of traditional books were disconnected from their readers because they had no way to speak to them at scale without the marketing muscle of the publisher.
And physical books suffered a long-tail problem: they’d need to be taken into the storeroom within eight weeks or so to make more room on physical shelves for more product, physically leaving the consumer’s sight and imagination. Only books at the forefront of the consumer’s attention and imagination are what sold; anything else in a store room or warehouse was inaccessible by the consumer.
Therefore, up to the year 2010, there was a lot of gatekeeping that went on in the publishing industry. Fantasy books were costly to produce, expensive to distribute, must meet a slew of criteria to be successful, and excluded female authors and protagonists that didn’t mirror their readers. Authors couldn’t cultivate their own marketing relationship with consumers, and books had an eight-week lifecycle at most.
Throughout the 20th century, those filters, the sheer risk of publishing a book, generated mountains - continents - of rejection letters because, if we’re to be honest, who’d want to be a publisher anyway? Tons of costs, lots of risk, and tiny profits. Publishing sucked as a business model, and retail wasn’t any better. Only scale made money; i.e., Barnes & Noble killing traditional booksellers - remember that?
So what happened in 2010?
Around 2010, a number of factors converged to destroy traditional publishing.
The Internet had created a generation of consumers prepared to consume electronic content;
Broadband - fast, inexpensive Internet access had been brought to most of the industrialized world, and used routinely by lower-middle-class consumers;
The arrival of viable tablet-based computing platforms, allowing one to reasonably hold an electronic copy of a book in facsimile to a traditional book;
Electronic distribution platforms for booksellers allowed retailers to produce print-on-demand products, build electronic products on their platform, and resell and distribute digital media at scale;
Social media allowed authors to disintermediate the publisher and talk directly to consumers, to build their brand as an individual;
The proliferation of secure, nearly costless, Internet-based payment systems enabling an author to sell directly to consumers.
These influences are ongoing and erode the power and profitability of traditional publishing. Very soon, the traditional publishing world will be reduced to just a few players for, in a world where you make < 5% on printed products, scale is everything. M&A like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster must happen, otherwise, there is no scale, only efficient competitors, eroding each other’s market share and driving prices to the bottom; nobody will make money, and there will not be any more traditional book publishing business. It simply costs too much and there’s no money in it. If consumers don’t mind paying a premium for a book ($30/unit vs, say, $10/unit electronically), then not a problem. I’d be willing to bet, though, that sentiment will not last, no matter how people like the physical feel of a book in their hands.
So, what is a book?
Today, it a book is digital media - it’s an electronic product.
A book can be created by anyone with a computer.
Books are software. They can be edited and changed at any time, providing instant updates, and released through versioning - just like software.
Authors can grab an ISBN directly electronically; they can manage their own catalogs and meet reseller requirements for inventory and distribution; they can print-on-demand, doing one-off unit-based printing at practically zero cost to them, eroding maybe 2% of their margin.
An electronic book can be distributed at zero cost to anyone, anywhere, in the world, and run off any digital device. There is world-wide distribution of a book at zero cost with no licensing intermediary eroding your margin.
It doesn’t matter what size a book is - how many pages or words; in this case, size doesn’t matter. The costs of production and distribution are exactly the same. A book can be replicated a zillion times at no cost.
The longtail is overcome by filters, social media, and search. Consumers can dig into catalogs with millions of titles and find what interests them, and social media can help market titles to new readers.
A book can be marketed directly to consumers by authors, allowing them to make their own brands and relationships. No longer does a publisher get to intermediate that relationship, allowing anyone, anywhere, to create a following of readers.
Its typesetting doesn’t matter. The consumer, not the publisher, can choose their own preferences for typeface on their digital readers.
In an electronic format, books are extensions of digital assistants like dictionaries, thesauruses, note taking and research/citation tools, and Internet search. A single in-narrative click can help inform a reader or lead them to more engagement with the author online.
Editing and art assets are increasingly cheap - most of that labor can be outsourced using Internet based freelancing - allow authors to access quality talent at increasingly lower costs. And one day, AI-generated imaging will offer authors free high-resolution artwork at zero cost.
The development and publishing of a book is highly automated. If you can learn how to press a couple of buttons, you can move data between - what used to be - complicated formatting changes.
In essence, the author is their own publisher, editor, and marketer, and they have direct access to the market and consumers from which to create and maintain their brand. This is simply the dream of authors like Richard Brautigan - we are all publishers.
I am fortunate enough to live in an amazing time of transformation in this industry. The nature of what a book is has radically been transformed.
I generally write short stories (~10,000 words) and distribute them world-wide at no cost, about characters and settings that’d usually be gateway’d out by traditional publishers. But with today’s model, I can write and distribute anything of any size. Who’d want to read novellas about Halflings anyway? Well, I’m lucky enough to just do my own thing and improve my art to connect with audiences and build my own brand. What an amazing time!
The era of waiting around for someone to validate you as an author with an acceptance letter is over. You are an author; you are a publisher. Even traditional publishers vet authors based on their skillsets in developing their own work - they’re more likely to hire someone who comes in with an audience of 10,000 readers and an established catalog of content, than someone who doesn’t already have it. Why put a risky bet on someone who can’t do it themselves?
Even as I write this, though, I’m very much aware that another transformation is in play concerning AI (Artificial Intelligence). In the very near future, most of what readers consume will be written by automation - computers trained on writing specific forms of content, creating amazing works of art that will compete with even the best of us human authors. So the ability to be seen, hired, read, and compensated as an author will continue to meet headlong forces. I write because I like telling stories; not because I think I’ll make any money at it, and that concept of making money is probably unrealistic.
In a world where computers produce written content, only a miniscule percent of authors will actually make money in this business. True talents will own their own brand, disintermediate publishers and booksellers, and go directly to their audience, who will circulate their work in social media as to attract new readership; all the while, they’ll be under constant threat from AI that can emulate their unique style at a drop of a hat.
What is a book? And what is an author? Well, both are rapidly changing.
Take advantage of change. You, as an author, no longer need to wait around for someone to tell you you’re good enough. That’s crap - go publish now! And publish every day.
Thanks for reading my work.
R
Author’s Note: Love’s Repast
On November 16, 2022, I published Love’s Repast on Wattpad.
Ahh, Wattpad. I mean, at least it’s getting read by a few people, that’s nice. I promise I won’t bitch about Amazon Vella anymore. Okay, I’m lying. I’m likely to continue griping about it. Anyway.
This 3,000 story was written in response to a Reedsy writing prompt that read:
“Write about a character who must confess their true feelings by midnight, or risk losing it all.”
Having only 3,000 words to work with, I wanted to write something familiar that everyone would relate to, so this is a story about writing a love note.
In writing about love, I thought Joliver Barleywood would be the best character so I brought him out; this is his first independent, stand-alone story. Joliver Barleywood first appeared in The Ballad of Skyer Dannon.
I put Joliver in the City State of Nodderton in a secret library called the Athenaeum which is, after all, just a fancy name for a library, regrettably referring to Athens which doesn’t exist in my setting but I thought I could get away with it.
If you happen to play Dungeons & Dragons, you know that Bards, as a class, choose a Bardic College at 3rd Level, and I worked this into the story. In order to join the college in Nodderton, Joliver had to find the library where I picture a good urban adventure hunting down clues on where to find it. This hasn’t ever happened and I’ve never introduced my players to an Athenaeum in Nodderton, but it’s there now!
Joliver is joined by the principal protagonist, a young blacksmith’s apprentice named Jak Lot. The character’s name follows my usual one-syllable consonant plus a vowel structure for most in the Nodderton region. Faw Kag, from The Knave of Nodderton, or Den Cobb from this story, all follows the same naming idea.
In this story, I’ve reintroduced a Diary of Correspondence, a device that I refer to in A Goblet of Bone.
It has some tinges of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and it’s meant to; early on, though, I have Joliver say a line where he’s not going to write this love letter for Jak Lot, so we could avoid that trap. This wasn’t going to be a retelling of that story.
I actually wanted to turn this classic story on its head and deny Jak Lot his girl, perhaps shifting the reader’s perspective of the ending mid-way through. I wanted to make a convincing argument that Jak Lot wasn’t really what the woman in the story wanted.
I think, sometimes, we just need to recognize, no matter how much we want something to be, it’s probably not good for us. It’s not good for you, being something you aren’t, or for them, chasing after someone who clearly wants something else. Love’s like that: sometimes you have to admit to yourself that, yikes, this isn’t going to work - not in a million years - and I should step away from it. The party I’m enamoured with can probably do better and just let them go.
So that’s this story. The protagonist runs into a wall. Instead, Joliver offers another way to think about it. True love, the truest, is letting someone go; acts governed by selflessness. Believe me, I can recall a handful of relationships in my life where I should have had some of Joliver’s advice and just dropped it. It could have saved me a lot of time and money, and would have aligned my perception closer to reality.
I had fun with the ending because I made it kind of X-Files-ey, resulting in something fitting for a secret library, I thought.
I had fun writing it! Thanks for reading -
R
Author’s Notes: The Knave of Nodderton, Episodes 7, 8, and 9
Over the last week of October and the first week of November, 2022, I published three episodes of The Knave of Nodderton on Amazon Vella.
Honestly, I won’t even bother citing the stats. They’re dismal. Let’s agree I’m writing for myself and shouting into a void. I have yet to even see The Knave run across “newly updated” or “recently added” stories; I just don’t rank with the algorithm.
Again, I think this is just a failure of Amazon’s platform. There should be a lock against a story categorized as “romance” appearing in “fantasy”; even a “fantasy romance”. It dilutes the algo so that everything “romance” appears at the top of every list. I mean, just let me compete against other “fantasy” stories, okay? Jesh!
Anyhow, these three stories are a dip in the action. I’m moving Gammond around Auchenshuggle and describing it a bit in the process. I’m reintroducing some characters mentioned in the 1st and 3rd episodes and giving Gammond some needed sleep.
I did write a bit about halfling luck in the 8th episode and I really enjoyed that. Luck is a major facet of Gammond stories, and this story presented an opportunity to cover that.
Halflings in D&D are considered “lucky” and I imply as much when I’m writing. They can’t roll ones, and what that means is, during the course of the game, if they fail at something, they get to re-roll. When I wrote about Gammond in Aevalorn Tales, I wrote about the distinction of bravery and luck for Gammond. When I work with Gammond, I’m usually doing an interplay between good and bad luck - something extraordinary can happen with him either way.
In this story, Gammond “luckily” enters Auchenshuggle and isn’t spotted; he “luckily” encounters Gar Pok, an imprisoned sympathizer, who can lead him to Brath Dannig; he’s “luckily” allowed into Brath’s home by his sister who sees a halfling at her door as “good luck”; and he “luckily” gets some free food and a nap. Lining up all of the fortunate coincidences without making it appear contrived is part of the challenge.
Also, in episode 9, Danros “luckily” learns the Chamberlain’s real name, Remus Scorpio, and continues to be burdened with the red-haired halfling dogging his future. Readers can see where I’m setting up an inevitable collision between Danros and Gammond, but first, I have to reveal something out of my hat in the next episode.
Also, importantly, we've learned in episode 9 that Danros used to be a member of a theater troop out of Nodderton; in episodes 2, 4, and 5, I eluded to Nodderton having a theater culture. So Danros used to be a bard who became a thief to survive.
I’ve also revealed a physical toll for using the Palantir. It’s a limitation imposed on Danros to create a little bit of drama.
The story’s about half-way finished. I’ve revealed Scorpio as the actual antagonist, Danros is an an anti-hero, and Gammond’s my protagonist, and somehow these two characters are going to meet up to take on Scorpio. It’s around 16,000 words at the moment so with a little more embellishing, I could spin it around into a 40,000 word novella at some point.
Anyhow, thanks for reading!
Author’s Note: The Pig King
On Sunday October 23, 2022, I published The Pig King on Wattpad; an approximately 11,000-word short story broken into five episodes.
I was doing some research on a potential new story and ran across a historical event that took place in the Pacific Northwest around 1859 called the Pig War! Cool, eh? Essentially, a pig was killed in a disputed territory which nearly sent the US and UK down a path of conflict. I wanted to write a Maedrey Puck story about how Halflings avoided greed and corruption when they came into more contact with the human lands of Gaelwyn, and I thought something like the Pig War would be a great premise. I fleshed out the story’s outline while taking a Sunday walk with my partner, Camille; she actually came up with the Trial by Jam.
I was seriously disappointed when I learned there was already a classic fairy tale entitled The Pig King written by Giovanni Francesco Straparola. Luckily, the tales are so dissimilar and his work was published, like, 500 years ago, so I figured I was in the clear with copyright law.
Frequent readers of mine will recognize Kindle Muckwalker as the Ranger mentioned in The Groteseque of Sylvanus. Kindle and Jayleigh Warmhollow are contemporaries. You might also recognize Faw Kag as the human glass and herb trader from The Knave of Nodderton.
There are two co-stars in this story. Swain Thistlewillow, the land owner, and Gilbert Bramblewood, the pig owner. Deliberately, I wanted to make Gilbert feel like a burly Scottish fellow and Swain feel like an entitled New Englander. Swain and Gilbert aren’t enemies but they are caught up in a conflict. Neither wish to back down and they’re creating a rift in the halfling community.
The way I see it, Halflings are a communal folk spared greed, scarcity, and competition. Halflings don’t hoard. They share. Maedrey Puck helped create a reminder for sharing that would stick with future generations. There’s an abundance of resources that surrounded Halfling communities like Ehrendvale, so that puts downward pressure on scarcity. Sure, there’s the idea of private property, but Halflings give what they have to help others. They keep what they need, they share what they can, and they don’t perceive themselves in competition with others.
In this story, I describe the Halfling community of Ehrendvale as a trading hub. Human greed had started corrupting cooperative Halfling traditions, and this story tries to set the lore to keep the human influence at bay.
This story is about the folly of greed and hoarding wealth, and compromising for the betterment of all in a community instead of an individual. I think it’s a good reminder in the years ahead as economic scarcity, greed, and inequality dominate our real lives.
The Pig King will be one of the first works I’ll take cross-platform - to Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Books, by Q1 2023.
Thanks for reading!
R
Author’s Note: The Knave of Nodderton, Episode 6
On Wednesday October 12, 2022, I published the sixth episode of The Knave of Nodderton on Amazon Vella titled Trapped and Tangled.
My goodness, the stats are just dismal.
It’s a characteristic of Vella given the mysterious alchemy of their search algorithms and what goes in their story carousels. My story shall exist forever in the background. But I’m not going to let toiling in obscurity get me down!
In this episode, we rejoin Danros and I give the reader a wealth of insight into his character. To begin with, he’s looking for a way out of Auchenshuggle and the role he’s been forced to play. His current predicament wasn’t orchestrated and it turns out he’s more of a victim than we thought.
Next, Danros is a skilled thief and he’s sneaking about Rendaldo’s manor trying to find a way out. Unfortunately, a secret door eludes him.
We also learn how he came to possess the Palantir and how the device works. We also get a glimpse of the treasure he’s amassed during his stay in Auchenshuggle.
And a bit of scrying toward the end allows us to see that Gammond has a part to play in his misery.
By now, I think my reader is getting the impression that Danros isn’t necessarily the villain of the story. As always, you should look for the fella with the goatee.
This episode marks a turning point in the story where the reader’s let in on the joke. The wrathwizards are really a ruse disguising real villainy in the background. More of Danros’ plight can be seen in this episode, and why the pressure is mounting on him to get out before it’s too late.
Coming up in Episode 7, Gammond arrives in Auchenshuggle where (from Episode 5) he’s expecting to stay at the Bird & Rye. Well, you can probably guess how that’s going to go.
Thanks for reading!
R
Who is Maedrey Puck?
Character Description
Maedrey Puck is a lightfoot halfling cleric of the Aevalorn Parishes, a Child of Yondalla.
In her sixties, she walks with a limp and relies on a weirdly-curved juniper wood staff to hobble around. She has piercing olive eyes, a smattering of black freckles, and a pock-marked face.
I often describe her as having many strands of tight box braids interlaced with crushable metal and bone beads; in writing the character, she may turn to these items for spell components when her focus, the juniper wood staff, is out of reach.
I write her as a devout eccentric - totally off of her rocker - who uses her very twisted sense of justice and wisdom to protect halflings; honestly, she is just as likely to drown someone as baptize them.
She exists in the past as a contemporary of Skyer Dannon and her stories generally concern a time when the Aevalorn Parishes started having more frequent contact with the human City States of Gaelwyn.
Her name of Puck is deliberate and refers to the character in Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Stories
As a cleric, I use this character to explore spiritual and moral themes. I find her fun to write because she’s sly, crafty, and tuned to the metaphysical world.
She made her first appearance in the Ballad of Skyer Dannon and her first dedicated story was The Pig King.
Author’s Note: The Knave of Nodderton, Episodes 4 & 5
On Wednesday, October 5, 2022 and Friday, October 7, 2022, I published the fourth and fifth episodes of The Knave of Nodderton on Kindle Vella.
The two episodes convey a single scene where Gammond encounters two young men who’ve captured a third and are torturing him for information.
In this scene, Gammond uses an ingested poison named Torpor. When I wrote the duration of its effect in the narrative, I actually did roll 4d6 to get the incapacitation duration. By this time, he’s figured out that few people refuse buttered bread and, if necessary, he can play that to his advantage with a poison like Torpor.
He also brandishes a fairy puppet to assist with his ruse.
Gammond was carrying these items around from his Nodderton visit that I mentioned in Episode 2. He visited the children’s fair and a number of apothecaries.
In this episode, I emphasize that Gammond is a halfling. He’s small, doesn’t even carry a weapon aside from a knife, and he survives of his wits and his ability to hide. Gammond can’t confront adversaries directly, and in this story, he has limited experience with thieving and no experience fighting. Gammond’s “weapons'“ are his cleverness and bold courage. I wanted to illustrate that point with this encounter.
To me, Gammond’s limitations are what’s fun about this character and writing his stories. In the fantasy genre in particular, it seems like we’re always given a protagonist who had an exemplary body, a range of combat experience, and armor and weapons. They’re combat machines and can’t lose, and I find little suspense in those stories. I like writing and reading about the underdogs, unlikely heroes, because their jeopardy is so much greater.
All the best - thanks for reading!
R
Author’s Note: The Knave of Nodderton, Episode 3
On Friday September 30, 2022, I published the third episode of The Knave of Nodderton on Amazon Vella, “Heavy is the Crown.”
This is the third and last “free” episode offered through Vella; starting with episode four, Vella imposes their token exchange to eke out fractions of pennies from readers.
Like just about everything I put on Vella, readership is practically zilch. I find that there’s a lot of noise on Vella and no real way to put titles in front of readers. If you write YA-vampire-werewolf-BDSM-slash-fic, or romance, it seems like your work bubbles into their featured carousels. Not so much when you’re writing about fun halflings. Yay for you. Not that I’m bitter.
Anyway, this is the third installment of Knave, and the POV shifts back to Danros. It explains the events following the Bird & Rye incident and the predicament that he’s gotten himself into, and can’t seem to find a way out of.
I revealed a couple of truths in the story.
One, it’s apparent from this story that the pearl Danros keeps on him is, in fact, a Palantir - a scrying orb. Unlike the wrathwizard stuff, Danros isn’t making that up. It is ridiculously small and he has trouble actually using it because the images are so tiny. The use of the Palantir has helped Danros acquire power and prestige, and boot Lord Rendaldo from power.
Two, it was also noted that Danros was intimately familiar with the jails and dungeons of Nodderton, and I throw in a couple of suggestions that he's a trim, fit, nimble rogue, who talks too much, and doesn’t do well sitting. He’s most definitely a criminal.
Three, I elude to a runner to Nodderton in this piece as a reference to Gammond’s discovery in Episode 2, and sets up the conflict in Episode 4.
Finally, four, it’s also revealed that Danros, as a character, isn’t necessarily a bad guy. Sure, he’s helping Auchenshuggle for a 10% cut but, for the most part, he hasn’t killed anybody (except for the events at the Bird & Rye).
I pretty much say that Danros is the “knave” of the story and introduce the central arc of the story. He’s a scam artist who got everything he wanted, but, is in over his head and wants out.
Thanks for reading!
R
Author’s Note: Piskie Sticks
On Friday September 30, 2022, I published Piskie Sticks, a short story on Wattpad.
The rankings line up under the #halfling and #halfling tags, as well as under #fairies.
This story was originally written as serialized fiction for the Aevalorn Tales anthology. It’s a Gammond Brandyford backstory that attempts to illustrate a number of things about the character before he leaves Aymes Parish for his wander.
He’s a menace; how he’s looked at by most within Pondaroak.
His overall carefree nature.
His problem with understanding right from wrong and his willingness to harm even harmless little fae to get what he’s after (sociopathy).
His character’s relationship with Lucien Shrillgrove and Elina Hogsbreath in this story does take place in Pondaroak.
The backstory on how Gammond came into possession of the endless bread basket and butter crock.
Primarily, what I wanted to drive at in this story is Gammond’s nature. I wrote in his character bio that he just doesn’t give a crap and he’s willing to do almost anything he needs to do to accomplish a goal. That means doing some very questionable things, like capturing and torturing a fairy, in this case, or looking for a Goblin warlord all on his own in Of Luck and Locksmiths. In D&D terms, his alignment is chaotic neutral and I try to write him that way.
What I also wanted to touch on his own Gammond came into possession of his light stone and the endless items. They feature prominently in his stories and I figured that they needed their own back story.
Originally, Piskie Sticks had two sections. In this edition, I cleaned up the work and inserted more content, and wrote another section describing Gammond’s wander with the fae in the forest to raid her treasure hoard. I also re-aligned the story to match a timeline with The Knave of Nodderton, and removed the references to Dumbria in the work. Piskie Sticks takes place about six or eight months before Knave, and Knave takes place four or five years before Of Luck and Locksmiths. I also took the time to re-align some elements of Elina Hogsbreath with my work this last month on A Thyme of Trouble.
I always like writing Gammond stories - I feel like they’re my groove, you know? - and splitting this one out from the anthology is just an ongoing effort to capitalize on creating layers of searchable content within Wattpad.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Find more Gammond-goodness in Knave, my current project.
R
Author’s Note: The Knave of Nodderton, Episode 2
On Tuesday September 27, 2022, I posted the second episode of The Knave of Nodderton, “The Memory Box”.
Unlike Wattpad, there’s no real way to get useful stats and demographics out of readers on Vella, but the current readership for the story is modest. Probably six views rather than eight; two of ‘em are me :). That’s one of the reasons why I prefer Wattpad as a publishing platform. The stats are far more generous as an author.
Under Vella’s rules, the first three episodes are free. You don’t start earning tokens until the fourth episode. I also don’t think you show up in the scroll for “Recently Added Stories” until the 4th episode is posted.
This episode is an introduction to Gammond and where he’s been since leaving the Aevalorn Parishes in Piskie Sticks. I re-introduce the everlasting bread basket and butter crock, he makes a little money, and he acquires a magic item: a box that stores a memory and replays a memory.
I used these boxes in a recent D&D 2022 campaign and the old dwarf memory is an actual memory that I wrote out for the campaign. I truncated it in the narrative because it’s not relevant to Gammond’s story, but I wanted to convey to the reader what the box is and does. Otherwise, we’re moving Gammond down the road to a conflict that he’ll work through in the third episode.
And of course it’s a plot device :) … keep reading!
Aside from the box, I wanted to give the reader the impression of Gammond as a wanderer, and that he prefers to be on his own, unlike most halflings in the Parish. He’s an adventurous tyke to begin with, even before he gains his animated amulet Vongur - that’s later on in life - so there’s nobody for him to talk to yet, but that’ll change in the next episode.
Nodderton is a city-state that I reference in A Thyme of Trouble. The way I see it, the Free Cities of Gaelwyn compete for protectorates so they can earn taxes from these smaller hamlets like Aushenshuggle in this story, so I’ve briefly talked about “protectorates” in this work. If you looked at the map, Aushenshuggle is actually closer to the Free City of Mumling, but the way I saw it is that Mumling was separated from the hamlet by the Wych and couldn’t respond adequately to convince Lord Rendoldo of Aushenshuggle to sign-up with them. I also introduce Nodderton’s skills in building things and the Alberding Bridge over the Wych.
More’s coming up! There’s a little more action and adventure in the third episode, I promise :)
R
Author’s Note: The Knave of Nodderton, Episode 1
On Friday September 23, 2022, I posted the first episode of The Knave of Nodderton on Amazon Vella.
The Knave of Nodderton takes place in a hamlet named Auchenshuggle - and, gods, I love that name - which is a protectorate of the City State of Nodderton. I haven’t written about the coastal City States in Gaelwyn yet so I was looking forward to it.
This is a Gammond Brandyford story but when the episode launches, my full attention is paid to the antagonist, Danros Genolbo, and his misadventures at an inn named the Bird & Rye. Gammond will be brought into the story in episode two. I’m anticipating ten to twelve episodes in this story at about 2,000 words each.
This is also Gammond’s first stand-alone title. I’ve routed most of his stories under Aevalorn Tales on Wattpad.
When I write stories with Gammond, they’re playful and fun and the narrative in this piece reflects that, especially when Danros corrects the grammar of a Lord’s Guard during a confrontation. I’m also borrowing the Palantir trope from The Lord of the Rings, but I can assure you that it’s got my own spin.
If you’ve read the story, you can probably see that there’s something going on with Danros. He has some knowledge, enough for him to know what would happen when the Lord’s Guard drew his sword, and when to dive for cover. As he said, he knows things, but something about him doesn’t quite fit.
I’ve taken this story to Amazon Vella to play a little more with the platform.
It’ll be a fun romp, I think! Thanks for reading …
R
Author’s Note: The Grotesque of Silvanus
On Thursday September 22, 2022, I published The Grotesque of Silvanus, a short story on Wattpad.
Interestingly, the rankings are throwing this story more under Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ll take the #9 in Halflings ranking. Do I want to dominate the #halflings tag? Maybe I do (shrug); don’t judge me.
This is the first story where Jayleigh Warmhollow appears. I wrote the story to coincide with Halloween and the All Hallow Tide season, and within it, I wanted to explore the mythology of guardians.
When I first sketched out this character earlier in the year, I gave her “Warmhollow” as a surname, but throughout writing this story, I kept writing it as “Wormhollow” which, in retrospect, sounded cooler for a Druid character, and I considered changing it. The character, though, isn’t supposed to be repulsive and that’s kinda the image I get with “Worm” so the “Warm” stuck with her. When I was reading the story aloud, I kept saying “Jay-LAY” rather than “Jay-LEE”, which really annoyed my testers. Needless to say, it’s taken me a little while to get used to saying her name right. :)
This was my first story featuring Jayleigh. I picture this character as an avenue to explore nature lore and old secrets. Structurally, when I’m writing her stories, I’m looking to hone some skills as an author with poetry, song, rhythm, cadence, and voice. This story features a lot of colorful, dark descriptions, one song, one poem, and numerous places within the narrative that I played with rhyming.
Jayleigh is a wise and aware character and I write her with a voice that exceeds her 22 years. That wisdom came at a price, however, and I explore a little bit of her origin story in this piece, explaining how she set fire to her house and accidentally killed her parents, and, how she attempted suicide at 14. She’s young, but she has a lot of miles, so she uses a lot of high-falutin words. I also eluded to another character that’s intertwined with Jayleigh, Kindle Muckwalker, who is a Ranger of the Aevalorn Wilds and helped train Jayleigh to survive in the Wilds after she ran away from home. This character has a lot of backstory and pain to be resolved, and the story ends on those notes.
Because it’s a Halloween story, I, of course, had to make one of the guardians Jack of the Lantern who I pictured as a duplicitous spirit. One side of that coin is maniacal laughing crazy jackolantern, and the other was a goofy cross-eyed kind of persona. The scarecrow was the first guardian that I thought of for the story, and the Green Man was the guardian that I chose to make grumpy, bad, and bitter for somewhat obvious reasons. Guardians like these are all around us in the modern world and many young people aren’t exposed to the mythology. In this story, I wanted to make a tour of the lore surrounding each of these guardians and explain the “why” they’re here in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, readers will have a keener eye when they walk the streets or visit a family member, finding an old man’s head in the garden, or seeing a scarecrow, and think of their connection to myth. I meet many young people these days that just walk by these things and never notice them, and that’s a shame :)
I also needed to introduce Garwig, Jayleigh’s sidekick. Yes! It’s fully my intention to bring Garwig away from the sanctuary at times to go on new adventures with Jayleigh. I bet you didn’t see that coming?
I chose Silvanus because it’s an old name and has two references. The first is to the Roman deity of nature and the second is to D&D where a Silvanus God there is pretty much an echo of the Romain version. It’s a nature deity so the use of a Green Man and the need for a holy sanctuary/garden seemed even more relevant. The Free City of Mumling also appears in my current long form work in A Goblet of Bone.
Just work with Jayleigh is coming but I’ve got a busy Q4 ahead of me. I’m kicking off another short story on Amazon Vella; I’m writing Bartram’s Goblet of Bone book; I’m going to be editing and cleaning up the Ballad of Skyer Dannon for Wattpad; and I’ll be turning that into my first fantasy fiction book sold through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo by the end of the year. So I hope I’m able to find some time for her. :)
All the best - thanks for reading!
R