Shane Press (The Draconic Author) is a writer hoping to publish his first novel. Here you may find a glimpse of what he's working on, including conceptual artwork and chapter previews. There will likely end up being some form of Video Game reviews and such as well. If you like high fantasy novels, dragons, tales of heroics, and perhaps some amateur video game reviewing, you may find this to your liking.
Seasons greetings once again! Now that Christmas has passed, we are in that in between time where we are recovering from the merry-making of the holiday season yet waiting for yet more merry-making on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. More specifically, I find myself having written nothing of the eighth chapter of my book, and instead having written 5 more pages to my seventh chapter. While I do not consider that a failure, I wish I had been satisfied with my seventh chapter as I left it at the end of November.
The trouble I had with moving on to the next chapter was that several aspects of a village where the chapter takes place was left undefined because, at the time, I didn't see a need to elaborate on them. That changed immediately when I sat down to write chapter eight and I realized I had none of the foundation set for what I wanted to happen (specifically where it would happen) and so, back to the drawing board (of chapter seven). And that is where I stand at the end of December. Writing more of a chapter I thought I finished.
Apart from the problems of authorship, life has been enjoyable. I always enjoy time with my family, even if the amount of time is sometimes viewed as 'too much time' in the moment. Anyone with a large family will know what I mean, especially as you get older and drama inevitably develops. Regardless, I saw many people that I loved, including dear friends, and that's really the best part of this time of year, religious or not.
Apart from that, this past year has been an adventure for sure. I proposed to my (then) girlfriend last Christmas, and we've been slowly planning our wedding all year. It's going to have a mash-up theme revolving around Ren Faires/Christmas/Nerd-dum and we're going to get custom outfits made. I'm gonna have a cape. You know, because the Rule of Cool. I've written a few chapters of my novel. Got artwork for said novel created (which I discuss in my various World Building posts on this blog). And I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens, twice. Next year promises to be awesome. So until then, stay safe and best wishes.
And a Happy one of the other 17(?) Holidays between Thanksgiving and New Years!
Hope every is having a safe and happy holiday of choice! I know it's a day late for Christmas but it's also like two weeks late for Hanukkah. Best wishes to everyone and I look forward to taking this back up in earnest once life calms back down after the New Year begins. Stay safe!
On Friday, December 18th, at around 9 o'clock in the morning, I found myself sitting in one of the most comfortable seats I've ever seen in a movie theatre. I'm talking about lounge chairs that recline and have leg rests built in, and they're set up for couples! So there is an arm rest in between the pairs of seats that can be folded up and out of the way. So I had a great, comfortable seat for the showing, which of course was in 3-D. (The movie doesn't have any 3-D gimmicks but it makes the movie much better). So after a half an hour of previews for Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and (the incredibly white washed) Gods of Egypt, the following came on screen:
I was so excited! I was about to see a new Star Wars movie! After Revenge of the Sith was released, the whole world thought that it had seen all the Star Wars it was ever going to see on the big screen. We might get more video games, more books, more TV shows, but not movies. It wasn't until 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilms, that we all learned that, yes, there would be more Star Wars. And not just any Star Wars, the original (Legacy) cast members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Tony Daniels, and Peter Mayhew, alongside a new cast featuring Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. And now that three year wait was about to be over! And in the few seconds I had to consider all of this, those magical words: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far way..." came and went, before John Williams epic score kicked in and those hollow yellow letters came on screen to spell out. . .
It was here. I was watching it (with my lovely fiancee) and for the next 2 hours, life was good. Space ships, monsters, lightsabers, aliens, good vs evil. Star Wars was back and it was great!
Me (R2-D2) and my Fiancee (Yoda)
I will write a review after New Year's Day so people have a chance to see it without getting the spoilers. I want to discuss all the aspects of the movie. But for my non-spoiler review? "It was good! Go see it if you liked the original trilogy!" There you go. Short and sweet.
7 Days from the exact moment this hits the blogosphere, I will see "Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens," and I'm not sure if I should be excited or terrified. With so much at stake with the original cast members being involved and George Lucas selling Star Wars to Disney, not to mention the last attempt at Star Wars movies being very divisive (and even destructive) among the fanbase, the possibility for disappointment is immense. And yet, I will go and see it with baited breath and possibly a Lightsaber.
That being said, I have been playing "Star Wars: The Old Republic" frantically to feed my Star Wars fix before the movie comes out, and before I drive my fiancee crazy humming the Star Wars themes. The game has been out for a while, but in October, Bioware, the makers of SWTOR, released what is literally the best expansion for the game since launch, and quite literally it is better than the original story (which was pretty damn good.) Called KoFE by fans, Knights of the Fallen Empire turns the MMO into a Single Player Campaign, focusing a story around your character and how he affects the events of the plot completely independant of other players, allowing you to simultaneously play with your friends, while making all the important choices yourself (while your friends are making their own choices in their own continuity). I have not played the expansions new content myself yet, but several of the game play mechanics have changed with the release. I like all of them. SWTOR has been a game that I put on the shelf, waiting for something good to come of it for a while, and I'm glad to be back into it. The original content remains for players new and old to enjoy, while promising a reportedly amazing experience once you reach the newest content. And what makes it even better is that Bioware is continuing to add to the expansions story, so there is even more to look forward to. Bioware, who makes games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, has always made story telling the best aspect of their games, and they (finally) delivered an expansion that lives up to their past successes.
So, if you want to find me on SWTOR, leave a comment with a character name and I'll instead come find you! That is, if you're on the Jedi Covenant server. Otherwise, well... Too bad.
The End of an Era (of frantically trying to write)
So the end has come to National Novel Writing Month a few days ago, and I am happy to say that I wrote 4241 words, a mere 8% of the goal of 50,000 words. That said, I finished off Chapter 6 and wrote the entirety of Chapter 7. So I'm happy with myself. Considering this was my first attempt, I'm not ashamed of not writing more. NaNoWriMo is meant for authors to try and write a new 50,000 word novel. I've been using it as motivation to write my existing novel which currently sits at 28,023 words across seven chapters. Given I've been working on this draft for about two years, I'm happy with my slow but steady progress. This month's goal is to write Chapter 8, if not more, before the New Year. Then, it's a chapter a month for 2016 and by then I should be done! Wish me luck!
And I'm back! With NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving Weekend over, I'm going to try and get back to posting regularly. But for now, why I love Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving (in the USA at least) is a time of the year marked by a bipolar nature. It has become a time where most families spend time together, sharing a meal, and (supposedly) being thankful for the good things in their lives, while at the same time, many corporations are trying to get a jump start on "Black Friday" by opening on Thanksgiving Day so people can buy more stuff during the madness that ensues.
I have (almost) always been lucky to be able to spend the entire weekend with my extended family. While some things have changed over the course of my life, my mother's family has spent every Thanksgiving up in Oneonta, New York to stay at a cabin my grandfather built for longer than I've been alive. It has given me the chance to make a lot of good memories with my family, especially since the cabin sits on over 300 acres of forest. We've been able to play flash light tag and capture the flag together. We've had target practice using rifles and bow and arrow together. We've built 'forts' out of sticks and logs together. We've found spotted newts and toads and frogs and snakes together. We've ridden trike-bikes together. We've made pumpkin doughnuts and cookies together. We've built snowmen together.
These are the things that always made Thanksgiving fun. Every year I look forward to seeing my family and spending time with them. Now that most of my cousins are adults, we have started cooking a meal for our aunts and uncles. We light off fireworks and built bonfires and play complex board and card games. We see movies and talk about books and even dote upon our baby second cousin. And I hope that I get to do these things for many more years to come.
In case you were wondering where I've been, I decided to take a break from blogging for a bit to focus my writing time into my book. I realized I was writing more blog than book, and that was not what I intended to do with this.
I have plans to review StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. I've been playing that in my free time when I'm not writing, much to the dismay of my fiancee. Also, trying to finish a friends novel so I can review that for her. And a post about a particular online RPG that's near to my heart. Hope everyone is having a good week.
NaNoWriMo Update! In the past few days I've written 1189 words in my book. totalling 2205 so far. I'm gonna try to break 10,000 by months end, but we'll see. Just haven't had the time to put into NaNoWriMo, but then again this is my first time trying.
This is not news. A trope older than Beowulf and Iliad, literature both ancient and modern is full of examples that prove the trope. Some ask why, and the simple answer is that a blade has been present in warfare for almost as long as war has been waged (considering someone had to figure out how to make them, first). Even today soldiers bring a knife to their gunfights, and while there are no longer epic sword fights outside of Medieval Times and Renaissance Fairs, swords remain strongly embedded in how we think of war. Therefore, it is natural that in fantasy settings, swords seems to always find their way into the hands of a hero. The above link goes into some detail regarding examples in literature, and literary trends related to it, so instead I will tell you about The Sword of my book, and why I found it necessary to design this particular aspect of the book and bring it to life through art so early in my writing process.
My pommel design sketch.
Before I hired Graey Erb to create artwork, I tried my hand at drawing things myself. Above I was toying with the shape of the blade. I was inspired by the design of Orcrist from "The Hobbit" movies (shown on the right). Big surprise, I'm sure. Truth is at the beginning, I imagined The Sword for my protagonist would be like Anduril, considering my unrefined excitement for "The Lord of the Rings." Further thought and time eventually told me that a European long sword seemed out of place among lizard folk. It is much more common to find lizard folk or any of the other 'evil minion' labeled races having some manner of cruelly shaped curved swords. This comes from history as much as literature, as European Christians demonized the pagan tribal peoples of Eastern Europe and the Muslims of the Near East, both of whom of battled various European kingdoms either across land or the Mediterranean Sea (Crusades, anyone?). These cultures used curved blades that fit their tendency to attack from horse back, where a curved blade would be more practical than the straight edged blades that dominated Western Europe's armories. This allowed me to tackle and subvert another common trope, referred to as the Sinister Scimitar. In essence, my desire to subvert the "Reptiles are Abhorrent," which claims that lizard-beings are almost always evil, gives me the chance to subvert the trope claiming bad guys use curved swords.
Curved swords!
The first draft of Graey Erb sword concepts.
In order to create a fitting visualization of the sword I wanted, I emailed Graey (after discovering his art on Pinterest of all places) with a 20+ page project proposal that included my own sketches for designing the sword. The first draft of concepts were very different from each other, as I did not have a clear idea of what the sword would look like. The initial idea was that the sword was created during a Golden Age of the World. Since the Deities of this world have (or can choose to have) a draconic form, the weapons are made to evoke that. The pommel is shaped as the head of a dragon, the hilt is the neck/body, the crossguard the wings, and the blade has a tail either engraved or embossed upon it in some fashion. After seeing the first draft, I pointed out what I liked and disliked, and Graey went back to work, creating a second set of concepts. The one I liked the most, and that Graey iterated upon, was a combination of features from #1 (The pommel, crossguard and blade shape) and from #3 (the hilt texture and the style of detail on the blade). I also asked him to work on the proportions of sword, such as making the blade longer and thinner. The other designs, despite not being quite what I had in mind, actually gave me some ideas. Numbers 5,6 and 10, with the angular design elements reminded me of the dwarven architecture in "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" movies, so it gave me the idea that these designs could be reused when I get around to developing the other cultures that will be in my book.
Concept Pass 2
The second set of concepts nailed down the size and shape of the sword, leaving the details on the blade itself to be choose. I again went with #1, as the sunburst at the top seemed appropriate. It seemed too plain, still, so Graey and I came up with a stylized sun to replace the plain circle. It ended up being two pointed starbursts overlapping each other Next, something needed to go on between the lines radiating from the half circle. We narrowed it down to either a diamond or a four pointed star, and settled on the four pointed star. From there the sword was more or less complete. With some color, the sword came to life. There is one feature that I found unique which came from the original concepts: a medallion hanging off the pommel. It is common among the practitioners of Wushu, a style of the 'kung fu' martial arts in China, to have a tassel hanging from the pommel of their dao, a type of broad bladed sword. I like it as a way that my character, upon getting the sword, to personalize it without changing the sword itself. A common trope in fantasy is the named weapon, which either comes from the blade being historical/legendary or from the character being sentimentally attached to the weapon. I have not decided yet if I will name it or how it would be named, so the medallion seemed a good alternative.
Just a quick post. I'm working on another World Building post but just haven't had time to get it completed. Been too busy the past few days despite having more than the usual amount of 'free time.' Just got too wrapped up in stuff to do.
NaNoWriMo has also suffered this week. I barely wrote anything and I'm not feeling good about it. Hopefully this weekend works out better for me. I hope everyone else's weekends turn out better.
Halo 5: Guardians is the tenth game in the signature XBox gaming console series that spans 3 generations of consoles and the PC. (Halo: Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo: Spartan Assault, and Halo: Spartan Strike are unnumbered editions). This year, on October 27, the game was released following a seven hour live stream. I was very excited about this game, having preordered the special edition XBox One to play it on. After getting home from work, I tapped the XBox One and was greeted by the futuristic power up sound, and sat down to dive into the game.
Halo 5: Guardians Limited Edition XBox One
Blue Team: Linda-058, Frederick-104, John-117, Kelly-087
Halo 5 introduced a lot of new features to the game. One drastically changed the way the game is enjoyed from the way almost every other Halo game was played. This was that the developers removed the classic split-screen cooperative mode, sometimes referred to as 'couch co-op.' Instead, the developers choose to integrate a co-op system which forced players to connect over XBox Live, and giving players the choice of controlling one of four characters in each level. This system led to a change in the style of play the game had, because even when playing the campaign alone, like I did, the four characters were in each level. Instead of being a one man army fighting the hordes of aliens as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, the levels had either Fireteam Osiris, a team of four newly introduced SPARTAN super soldiers, or as Blue Team, some of the original SPARTANs led by John-117, making the game more of a squad based tactical FPS. However, your squad members become little more than bullet sponges that are passively useful as they chase after you shooting at enemies with far less sophistication than most of the artificially-intelligent enemies they encounter, leaving you to do not just the heavy lifting, but babysitting them to keep them going. This squad system also introduces a new 'death' mechanic. Instead of having to respawn after being taken down by enemy fire, like in every other Halo game, instead you can 'save' your fallen teammates, and they can save you, keeping you from having to endlessly replay the same tough segments and offering you a chance to keep progressing if you and your team can keep you standing. (If the AI teammates die, they respawn with no adverse affect on your progress, but player teammates must be saved.) The problem is that when playing alone, your teammates will charge directly to you in order to save you, sometimes getting themselves killed themselves, and resulting in you respawning from a previous checkpoint.
Fireteam Osiris: Tanaka, Locke, Vale, Buck
As for the campaign itself, you start off playing as SPARTAN Jameson Locke (Mike Colter), a former Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) acquisitions agent, and his SPARTAN Fireteam Osiris, featuring Halo 3: ODST star Edward Buck (Nathan Fillion). They are sent to recover Dr. Catherine Halsey, who was kidnapped by the Covenant Remnant in Halo 4's Spartan Ops side story. After killing the leader of the Covenant Remnant, Locke & Co discover that Halsey has found that someone is raising the Forerunner constructs known as Guardians. These Guardians are the focus of the campaign, as where they're coming from become, what their purpose is, and who is controlling them is the big reveal of this game.
Now, the second mission has Blue Team investigating a missing ONI ship, which you find out was researching biological weapons to use against what's left of the Covenant. The ship, however, is overrun with Covenant forces trying to steal technology. Master Chief and his Team are forced to destroy the vessel. While in the process, Master Chief is knocked unconsious, and the game starts to take a turn toward the a mystery: Cortana beckons John to the planet Meridian, saying "the Reclamation is at hand." Since Cortana was reported lost at the end of Halo 4, you wonder if John is just hallucinating, but John is convinced he has to follow her call. At the end of the mission, he learns Osiris is on their way to investigate, and John decides he has to get their first.
I'll stop the spoilers here. The above summarized the first two missions. That said, I found the rest of the game somewhere between awesome and good. The story is intriguing, but at parts it feels like it could have been so much better. Having the two groups of characters makes the game feel too different from the Halo games you love. In Halo 4, the death of Cortana set up a great story arc that could have been used to develop the Master Chief, the generally 'personality'-less protagonist meant to allow the player to feel like they're the hero, instead of just playing a hero. Instead, they spring seven new and vaguely interesting characters, and you barely play as the series chief hero, pun intended. Instead, the game ultimately comes off as just a huge ad for Halo 6, the inevitable sequel, where the feeling of wanting what's to come is greater than the satisfaction you should feel from a well experienced story. Halo 4 leaves you heart-broken for Chief after watching him lose what could be called his "True Love" (because lets face it, Chief and Cortana had a thing despite one being a inside of a machine, and the other being an Artificial Intelligence) Do you see what I did there? Halo 5 just leaves you going "Man why couldn't we play THAT game now?" The plot twist is rather surprising, and I actually saw part of it coming after learning about the Composer and how the Forerunners tech worked in Halo 4, so it's worth while, but it's not done well enough to be a real shocker by the time you get to it. (Bioshock's plot twist was epic in its reveal and how it made you feel) Instead you're just like, "Okay that makes sense," and ready to move on. The 'best' part of it is sadly at the very end, and by then you want so badly for a certain outcome that is clearly not going to happen.
Ultimately, I'd give the game about a 7.5 out of 10. I don't like the changes to game-play, as despite the rescue mechanic saving you some time, it ultimately makes you wait even longer when you severely screw up for a chance to try something else. Also, many of the levels play the same way, and instead of facing a variety of opponents with tactics that adapt to your playing, like in previous games, you either fight the same enemies fighting the same ways, or huge hordes of enemies you have to wade through and hope your AI partners can pick up some of the slack. The game is probably awesome with friends, as the squad mechanics would allow for actual tactics to be used, and the banter between the characters is enjoyable, but nothing matches Sergeant Johnson's gung ho Marine chatter or Cortana's sharp sarcastic wit. All we really have left from the original three games is Chief, and he's an observer in his own story.
So I'm sitting on the couch watching Star Trek: Voyager with my fiance, and an episode comes on called "Heroes and Demons." It's about a crew member who vanishes while experiencing a "holo-novel," a holographic recreation that's interactive, of the Epic of Beowulf. In the episode, two senior crew members vanish seeking the third, and it takes a fourth crew member, a holographic medical officer, to figure out how to 'defeat' Grendel, an monster from the Beowulf legend.
I find it amazing how much popular culture is inspired by that ancient tale. A legend ancient even when it was written down by monks almost a millennium ago, the tale has inspired books, movies, and television either with direct adaptations, or using the material to tell other stories. You've read how Tolkien looked to how the character of Beowulf acted and proved himself when writing his character Aragorn. Michael Crichton's* The Eaters of the Dead and the movie adaptation The 13th Warrior take the tale of Beowulf and tell it through the eyes of a historical figure, a Persian historian who is said to have visited Scandinavia, where he meets Danish warriors as he left his homeland.
I find it amazing. It might not even be a terribly complex feeling but I just couldn't help myself. I had to talk about it. So much of what we think is modern is influenced by the ancient. I see it all the time on TV (when I watch it). Marvel Comics love to take from the Norse Mythology for their Thor titles. The show Stargate SG-1 used all manner of Egyptian and Norse mythology as inspiration for the Aliens that humanity once thought were gods. In fact a Neil Gaiman novel that recently received major rewards for writing is called "American Gods," and it features versions of ancient Gods competing against the 'new' gods of wealth, fashion, and money. It's just fascinating to me, and I love discovering these influences, especially in things that I love.
Did you know that the original Halo games (1-3) have a heavy Biblical influence? I may have to write about that some time!
NaNoWriMo update! 536 words over the past 3 days. Not the best but at least I've been writing. Chapter 7 has been coming quicker than I expected but some of the details I'm anxious about putting on too strongly. A certain character is quite negative toward the protagonist, but I don't want to make the character into a caricature. However, at the same time, I want to just write it, and iron out the hiccups later. Thanks for reading!
Despite all the kinds of games out there, Role Playing Games (RPGs) are my favorite. They allow a player to take on the role of a character or cast of characters as they pursue a goal. Those goals can be noble, such as saving the world/kingdom/town/self from something, or something sinister, like stealing cars and kill people (or taking over/destroying the world). Different games offer this range of moralities with their own justifications. The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about being a criminal, and while they sometimes offer some kind of justification for the murders and thefts and destruction you will no doubt cause over the course of the game, most people who play them do so to experience that thrill of being 'evil' without the real life consequences. On the same token, games like Dragon Age: Inquisition offers the player a spectrum of options to choose from in pursuing the goal of stopping monsters from overrunning the world, and some are more noble than others. And then you have Zelda, where you're always the good guy, and the worst thing you can do is murder a chicken and smash peoples pots.
The games I just mentioned are video games, but RPGs also come as table top games. By table top I mean a game you play similarly to a board game, on a table with other people, and usually involves dice and a set of rules for how to use those dice to play the game. The game is also usually one by a player whose job it is to tell the story and take the role as the antagonists. These players are generally called Game Masters (GM), since they also enforce the rules. Because of the nature of the game players have virtually unlimited choice of how they want to proceed, tempered by the consequences and results determined by the GM. So unlike a video game, which has a goal in mind and certain limits as to how you can accomplish them, a table top game's only limit is the imagination, with the GM and the results of dice rolls the only thing that holds you back. A good GM will generally take what you come up with in mind, but if you're trying to kill 100 orcs with one arrow by bouncing it off rocks, you are asking to fail. There are still levels of success based on game rules, and some times things are just too ridiculous to work.
For instance, Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most popular table top RPGs in the world, uses a system of tiers call Levels (something many games both digital and physical use) to determine a characters abilities, powers, skills, and more. At level one, killing a single orc with an arrow can be hard,but not impossible. A lucky shot can take an orc out in one hit, or just make it angry and come after you. By level ten, however, one-shotting an orc should be easy, and you begin to be able to do feats such as making an arrow go through one orc and hit another standing behind him. By level twenty, you might even shoot four arrows at once, have them all punch through the orcs, hit the ones behind them, and maybe make the arrows explode for even more carnage. But the trickier the shot, the better your skills and dice rolls need to be. And by level twenty the orcs may just run at the sight of you. The dragon on the other hand...
The thing I like most about table top games, though, is the story. I've played noble paladins fighting for the honor of their deity while slaying the undead that plague the world. I've played warriors who seek to amend a disgraceful past and die gloriously in battle in the name of their ancestors. I've played a selfish, short sighted rogue who thought her (yes, I play female characters sometimes) way was the only way, and hurt both friends and enemies on her personal quest for justice. Table top games allow you to make your own history and goals for your characters, instead of having to follow the script of a video game. I enjoy Skyrim and Dragon Age as much as the next gamer, but even they limit your choices, and your goals. In the table top realms that come either ready to go from the publisher, or you make one up with your friends from scratch, you can do anything in them (GM and dice permitting). Want to be a sorcerer who comes from a cursed family seeking to enslave the very demon lord that cursed your ancestors? Go for it! Want to be a barbarian chieftain set on claiming the civilized world for your people so they no longer need to fear the night? Go for it! Want to help resurrect the God of Murder and watch the world bathe in blood for his glory? Umm, okay, sure.
Your goals don't even need to fit the fantasy genre, which D&D and many other games inspired by Tolkien focus on. There are games that take place in a world of Gothic Horror inspired by authors like H.P. Lovecraft. There are games based on Star Wars, Star Trek, even video game franchises like Warcraft and Dragon Age. You can be a Werewolf, a Vampyre, a Mummy, in the White Wolf "World of Darkness" setting. You can be a super hero, a super villain, a pirate, the options are as endless as the imaginations of players. You can even take a rule set you like and make your own setting where dragons with lasers fight pirates in flying space ships and people drink potions to gain super powers if you wanted.
In every way, an RPG is like getting to actively engage in writing a book in a manner that's unique. You don't have to think about how a battle will turn out, you roll the dice, and fate decides it. And that's what makes it so thrilling. I remember a game where I played a Half-orc samurai-esque warrior just beginning to uncover a plot to turn a peaceful valley into a gateway to Hell. Facing long odds and enemies several steps ahead of he and his allies, he remained determined to stop the evil plot, even at the cost of his life. Though the story ended up left unfinished due to the unfairness of real life not allowing people's schedules to mesh, I always imagined his end to be found stemming the tide of the demons, alone with no hope of victory, as his allies raced to close the bridge between realms, giving them as much time as possible before joining his God, Kord, on the battlefields of eternity.
Some day...
In a time where writing my novel was a chore, table tops gave me a creative outlet that I could use to try out tropes and ideas in unrelated settings, and seeing how a character might develop in a more natural way (as opposed to an author forcing things to happen, which might be described as artificial). That is why I write, and that is why I game.
Good evening, readers! Today has just not been a good day. I come to you empty handed because what I was planning to post was written terribly and I want to provide better content then something that sounds like a drunken rant. Instead, I will edit it and post it tomorrow. On top of that my update for NaNoWriMo is equally disappointing. I think I wrote one sentence today. This week was very stressful and it all just compounded itself into that sort of self-defeating apathy that happens when you're just too worn out to care. So tomorrow will be a better day. I will try to write more of my novel tonight and I will count it toward tomorrows contribution. Sorry blog-readers. But today the stress of life won this battle, but I will win the war. Goodnight and have a great weekend.
Many things inspire my writing. Chief among those is "The Lord of the Rings," which I've mentioned many times, but even more so, specific things in "The Lord of the Rings" inspired specific things in my novel. For instance, my main character. In my earliest drafts, my Protagonist was inspired by my favorite character in TLotR: Strider, aka Aragorn, son of Arathorn, heir to the throne of Gondor
Aragorn II Elessar, son of Arathorn, King of the Reunited Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, and all around bad ass. Early on, my main character was almost a rip off of the movie adaptions' version of Aragorn: ratty clothes, soiled leathers, elven hunting knife, born of some special legacy, gets "The Sword" and becomes "The Hero." I won't use that 'C' word but, yeah. I was a teenager and that was what I liked. Not much has changed but my character has, for the most part.
Apart from the tropes I liked, the character also appealed to me because of how the actor, Viggo Mortensen, portrayed Aragorn. In the novel, Aragorn is a character who knows that he is the heir to a kingdom and a mighty legacy, but he tends to make sure everyone knows it, too. He leaves Rivendell with the Sword of the King (unlike in the movie) and basically lets anyone who doubts him because of his vagabond appearance just who he is and why that sword he's carrying shines with the light of the sun and moon. Some quick literary analysis: Tolkien based Aragorn on the heroes of myth and legend from Northern Europe, such as Beowulf. Beowulf, if you read the translations of the surviving manuscript, is pretty much that guy who knows he's the best there is and decides, "Yeah, I can kill that beast Grendel unarmed and naked." And then does it. Then takes the next step and kills Grendel's mother. And then a Dragon. Solo. While no one-on-one monster slaying is done by Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings books, he does have some suitably heroic encounters. He faces off with all nine Ringwraiths, some of the most deadly fiends in Middle Earth, with nothing more than a mundane sword and a torch in the Fellowship of the Ring.
In the movies, however, Aragorn is portrayed as a reluctant hero. He still knows that he is the heir to a great legacy and the elves can't wait to remake that awesome sword so he can go save the world with it, but chooses a humble and honorable life as a ranger to protect those in need, fearful of the corrupting influence of power. It was that version of Aragorn, the hero that's heroic only because duty calls and would rather just be left in peace, that inspired my character. In my story, the protagonist just wanted to be a respected hunter in his village, but an encounter with an ancient plague and a need for someone to do something about it (and a dash of certain people not liking him) ends up propelling him along the heroic story arc. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't go on any further about the plot. The other part of the character of Aragorn that inspired my own character wasn't so much something specific to Aragorn, but it's something common to the archetype Aragorn represents: The Hero. And in myths and legends, the Hero almost always has The Sword. I mentioned a few times already that Aragorn gets "The Sword" for his particular book. That sword is Anduril, the Flame of the West, forged from the shards of Narsil! Basically it's the weapon that the Bad Guy even fears because it can hurt him. Common trope. And teenage-me loved it. Get the awesome sword, be the awesome hero. Simple formula. Works just about every time. From Luke Skywalker to Eragon to Bilbo to Arthur. Getting "The Sword" means you're "The Hero," and so it shall remain for my book. Nothing new, I know, but hopefully the context within the book itself will make it better. That tends to be how these tropes work. It's not the trope itself but how it's used which makes a book unique. Again, won't divulge much, but you will see "The Sword" of my book soon. It's pretty cool.
NaNoWriMo update: Another busy day as you can tell by the late posting, but productive. Chapter 7 is under way with another 261 words typed, totaling 1277 words so far. I'm pretty sure I will get this one done this month. I have it planned out almost from start to finish, so just need to add the details. But you know what they say: The devil is in the details. Wish me luck!
Quick note: This had pictures in it but Blogger must have messed up the html somehow, so I removed them until I can fix them.
Lord of the Rings Reference. Congrats if you got it.
That said, I really have had a bad day for free time. I was considering writing a review on the Halo 5 single player campaign, but I want to do a good job and haven't had the time until 6:30 pm today.
That also means I have had little time to write for NaNoWriMo, though that does not mean I haven't written anything. The current word count is 1016, and I finished Chapter 6! So, I consider that an accomplishment. At this rate I could reach 30,000 words for the month, which is no small feat! When I edit my 'chapters' I anticipate a lot of things being reshuffled and actual chapters being made of pieces of the chunks I write.
*Two Hours Later*
Wow! I let the night get away from me! Today is not a good day for the blog.
Seems my initial plan that I could get something meaningful written every day before 3pm was a gross overstatement. That first week was easy. But it has gotten exponentially harder to select a topic every day that would not sound like I'm rambling just to have something written. That said, I still hope to post each day but the posts will likely be much later in the day.
As for NaNoWriMo, I have a total of 759 words typed as of this post. At this rate I will definitely not get close to 50,000 words for the month, but we'll see what happens. My main difficulty so far has been deciding which way to write things. I am currently working on a segment where my main character is entering a new place, and he encounters the residents, who initially are hostile to the newcomer. So I've been struggling deciding how they react and what those reactions would lead to. The next part that becomes a struggle is when I get to that new area and have to describe it. While I always have an idea of the generalities of a locations features and landmarks, translating it into words so a reader can appreciate the vision in my mind. I stumble a great deal, often because I worry about missing details, or because I feel my initial description is suddenly inadequate.
If you would like to help, leave a comment mentioning a feature of a forest/mountain lake that would be interesting. I happen to be a writer that loves input, because I can refine it into something that works for my novel, regardless of what it is.
That's all for today. Since today is Election Day in the United Stated (and since I promised, "No politics") I could not think of anything substantive to discuss today. I am also not ready to delve too deeply into novel specifics yet. Thanks for reading! Feel free to suggest topics for me to discuss, books I should read, games I should play, or even YouTube channels to watch. Best wishes!
Hello readers! Happy NaNoWriMo! November is the time of the year where both veteran and novice writers can set a goal for themselves: Write their d@mn book! Or more accurately, write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. On top of that, there is an organization dedicated to this endeavor that offers a place for writers to post their work as well as offering tools, advice, and even encouragement to keep writing. In order to write 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to write an average of 1667 words a day. That's a lot, to be honest, however, it is a lot to think about. On a good day, I could blast that out and be happy with it. But for 30 consecutive days? Without getting caught in Revision Hell? Without writers block or an idea not developing properly? Hence the support structure.
Perosnally, I know I can't write a 50,000 word novel in a month because I haven't even written 50,000 words in 12 years! I am however, keeping track this month. So far I have written 308, all of which come from today. We will see how far I get by November 30, but my goals are as follows:
Write as much as possible. Not a specific goal but still something I need to have as a goal because "Write as little has possible" as been my goal for a while and its not helping me write!
Finish chapter 6 for Tolkien's Sake! I've had my sixth chapter staring at me for over a month or two and it's driving me crazy! It's also a terrible reminder that I write too slow, so, "Finish It!"
Start chapter 7 and also finish it! Fingers crossed!
Start chapter 8, bonus points for finishing.
Write as much as possible. Just so it sinks in.
I will probably compell myself to write more after posting this, but I will keep the total words typed count running all month. I hope it gets close to 50,000!
For more about National Novel Writing Month, click the links below, and Happy Reading and Writing!
Hey just a quick post. For those looking for the Halo 5 review, I'll try to do that this coming weekend. I didn't get to play it this weekend and I still have to dig into the Multiplayer. This weekend was not kind to my free time, or my productivity. Also Happy National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I'll let you know my plans for it tomorrow.
This will be short. I just wanted to rant about sports for a minute.
Why is it that we love to stress ourselves out watching sporting events? Is it the cycle of anticipation followed by the reward of watching a team you like winning or the disappointment of watching them lose? Is it like gambling? Where you know you have no idea what will happen next but you can't wait to see it? If I wanted to dig out my psych textbooks I could go into it all, but the answer has something to do with both of those things. We are addicted to the exhilaration of victory, even vicarious ones. We clearly gain nothing from watching Dez Bryant catch a last second pass to win a football game or watching David Wright blast a baseball into the upper deck, but we love it? And when a quarterback throws an interception that costs the game or the batter hits into a double play it hurts and makes you a mix of angry and sad. But we do it every weekend. This weekend all of my teams, The Dallas Cowboys, The New York Mets, and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, lost games. The odds are so rarely in our teams' favor but we watch and hope and sometimes are rewarded, but usually we're disappointed. Goes for every sport, and (almost) every team. Some teams are lucky and have a long history of success. The Cowboys have been contenders many years, and have won like 10% of all Super Bowls played. Only 4 of the other 32 teams have done that. But the Mets... I'm lucky and blessed and so happy to watch them play in the World Series after such a crazy season. We have our best pitcher on the mound tonight and I hope when I wake tomorrow to get ready for school that the Mets have won and a World Series Title is still a possibility for the Mets. But if they lose, the Royals take it home to KC and I have to hope for next year. I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but I think, no matter what, we will always have sports to stress us out, and sometimes fill us with pride and exhilaration.
Ever heard of Excalibur? Durandal? Patton's Ivory-handled Pistols? What about the Rosetta Stone? The Liberty Bell? The Magna Carta? These are examples historical artifacts and ancient wonders that give backstory to our world. History both tangible and lost that shaped culture and events; a few the stuff of legends. Now while works of fiction are planned and constructed, as opposed to seemingly random chance, these things all influenced the world at some point, and the fact that some of these things are still present in modern culture shows how much wonder and awe they inspired.
The same principle applies to fictional worlds. Without backstory, without history, we are left without context for the events of the story. What would "Harry Potter" be if Hogwarts was a brand new wizard school without the secrets and mysteries that fill the halls? What if the Deathly Hallows didn't exist? If the fear that still existed after Voldemort's defeat (the first time) was absent? It would be a very meaningless story about a wizard whose parents never died, who never had to outsmart the most terrible wizard ever to exist, and the books would be about mundane concerns that really don't seem that compelling. Imagine "The Lord of the Rings" without the Rings. Why would Frodo leave the Shire? To buy groceries? Gandalf would be pretty bored, that's for sure. And if Morgoth and Angmar and all the other things that gave the novel its scope were absent, why would we care about these diminutive hobbits? My point is: everything I discussed this week relates to a world's history. The races, the cultures, the language, the mythology, all make the history and are made by the history.
The Symbol of the Deathly Hallows
In fantasy, artifacts tend to usually be the goal of a quest, or needed to defeat an evil power. Sometimes they do things that no one can explain, and others do things no one has a use for. For my book, artifacts were one of the first things I thought about when first creating the world, and considering my age at the time most of them were weapons. This has a lot to do with the numerous 'artifact weapons,' such as Glamdring, Orcrist, and Narsil, that have histories going as far back as the first great wars of the worlds history (many thousands of years old in most cases). The only other artifact I came up with in my original drafts was something I called "the Omnicron," a stone that had undetermined power. It was the goal of both the Hero and the Big Bad to get it before the other in order to accomplish their respective goals (killing each other, basically). But I found that initial idea too simple (and way too over used in the genre). However, the idea was morphed into something else, and is still the focus of the plot, but its origins and its purpose changed. So maybe only changed superficially, but my beta readers have enjoyed "the orbs" in my work. From there, other artifacts begin to take shape.
The next most important artifacts for my story are a collection of "Hero Weapons" for my protagonists. A common trope in video games, Hero Weapons are usually something special that a hero uses in battle, and one of the most famous in literature is Excalibur. Not to be confused with the king-maker Sword in the Stone, Excalibur was a sword wielded by Arthur and made him unbeatable in battle (until someone inevitably betrays him). For my heroes, we have a sword, staff, a special arrow (not a bow), and a pair of daggers. Who gets them, you'll have to read the story. But I will let you all know about the Sword next week. You've seen it already, and I look forward to explaining the process of how Graey Erb and I worked together to design it.
Have a great weekend and a safe Halloween! Look forward to a review of Halo 5 over the weekend. Best wishes!
Last time I mentioned how including numerous cultures in a work can add depth and variety that makes improves the work (or it could detract from the work if done poorly). To add to my world, one of the first decisions I made when I ultimately began the project was that it would start in a forested valley 'somewhere' beyond the borders of the more civilized parts of the world. While the valley once was the center of an ancient civilization, wars between both mortal and immortal beings left the valley abandoned except by the few who felt it was their duty to remain and protect what had been left behind, while the rest moved on.
The people that still lived among the ruins are part of a culture I referred to as 'the Faithful' because they had chose to remain in and protect the cities of their ancestors, while 'the Exiles' were the ones who moved on from the Valley and chose not to cling tightly to their past in order to accept a new future. A third culture, that I refer to as 'the Forsaken,' were on the wrong side of the aforementioned wars, and were driven away by the victors. The latter two cultures I will not be discussing this time, but that they come from the same origin culture is important. The Faithful are the predominant culture in the valley save for one village of refugees from a Exile town that was integrated into the valley and has a mixed cultural identity.
The Valley.
The Faithful are called such for they were (and still are) the pious citizens of a civilization that revered a Sun God, among others, in a henotheistic/polytheistic manner. When the god of Night, Sun's brother, decides he wants to be king of the hill, a terrible war rages across much of the world. Now this isn't a spoiler (you learn about this in the first few chapters) but the Night God loses, and the Sun God vanishes, assumed to have died stopping the Big Bad Night God by trapping him 'in the Path between worlds.' The war, however, left the valley a mess and a city in ruins and a whole lot of smaller settlements uninhabitable without the infrastructure maintained by said razed city. So the Faithful go native and become a more simplistic culture, hunting and gathering, in order to protect what's left of their ancestral home. But what if the Big Bad comes back?
That is where the group that gives us the title of my book comes from: The Pathkeepers. Tasked with watching for signs of the Big Bad's return, the Pathkeeper philosophy is the driving force behind the valley culture. And they became the stuff of legends across the world as stories of their (sometimes alleged) deeds filled taverns around the world. But in truth they were a simple people.
The valley culture is sustained by hunting local wildlife and harvesting as much edible flora as the valley can sustain. Without the infrastructure of a large city or civilization, the level of technology is somewhat primitive in certain ways, such as clothing being all animal skins, and yet they can still make more refined things like flax linen and tools (when they have the resources). They also do not keep themselves completely separate from the larger world, except to keep potential threats out of the ancestral lands. Instead, members of the culture are encouraged to leave the valley to see the wider world. Divided into separate villages overlooking different ruins, the culture differentiates between the village in the skills the village needs the most, such as one village exists floating on a lake, and spear-fishing and swimming are skills they value more then others in other villages like archery or hunting on foot with a spear.
I could go further into explaining the culture and the Pathkeepers but that feels like I'm spoiling learning these things along with the protagonist. I will instead leave you with some early artwork from which the symbol for the Pathkeepers evolved from. This was of course from Graey Erb, Earl_Graey on DeviantArt. Be sure to check him out at www.GraeyErbIllustration.com, or on DeviantArt.com. I'll write a post further explaining the evolution of the image some other time. I don't want to spoil anything before the book is even finished being written! Thanks for reading!
Every great story has a great setting created by a great author. JK Rowling created Hogwarts. Tolkien created Middle Earth. Terry Pratchett created Discworld. Suzanne Collins created Panem. Whether the setting is on an imagined world, tucked creatively within our real world, or is a dystopian version of our own, these great settings did not spring forth from the ether fully fleshed out and ready to have stories told about and within them. For Tolkien, it was his life's work that created Arda and Middle-Earth. Years of studying old languages, creating new ones, and writing (either poetry in the trenches of The Great War or the first lines of "The Hobbit" on the back of a student's exam) culminated in the fantasy realm that inspired so many others. The same goes for most authors. Each took their passions and their life experiences and used them to craft their world. And these works become the experiences of others, which then shapes the world. There's a reason D&D, Dragon Age, and EverQuest, to name a few, all involve elves, dwarves, wizards, and dragons. His name is Tolkien. JK Rowling will no doubt shape the future of how people think of magic, as games, music, and even plays take inspiration from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter TM. Each author's world has become a place others love to dwell in.
Every author seeks to draw you into their setting one way or another. A friend of mine, Robin Dilks, self-published a paranormal romance novel that takes place in both the historical past and the present, redefining the mythology of the Biblical character Lilith in "Rachael Awakened." (Still reading it. Review pending.) I was drawn into how she mixed paranormal tropes like demons, werewolves, and vampires, with historical eras like renaissance Italy. With mine, I hope to appeal to high fantasy readers looking for something a little different, by playing with the established genre enough to make things unique and fresh.
For my story, creating the world started by figuring out some of the mythology that would be present. Since I was following Tolkien for inspiration, that started with deciding that there would be a pantheon of deities. From there, I had to have some sort of explanation for their existence, as well as an explanation of where the physical world came from. I'll save the specifics for now but I ended up going with something slightly more cosmic than creationist, meaning the deities did not necessary "create" the world the story takes place in. Shaped it, sure, but they did not "sing it into existence" like Iluvatar and the Valar did at the very beginning of "The Silmarillion."
My next step was, silly as it sounds, finding conflict. In Tolkien's mythology, Melkor is the Big BadDark Lord from Day: Zero, and I sincerely wanted to do something else. While I still wanted to play with those two tropes, I did not want my work to come off as even a little cliche (even though it probably will anyway), so I choose to take a more Lovecraftian angle toward the the Big Bad, while saving the Dark Lord bit for something else. But I won't say more. You'll have to read my book!
From there it was trying to decide what the world contained as far as sentients. Most fantasy works, and especially science fiction works, have different kinds of mortal beings who interact and sometimes represent different thing. Most times they are allegories for different real world states, religions, philosophies, or ethnicities. "Redwall," a classic about a mouse who becomes a hero to save his little town, uses animals like mice, badgers, otters, and cats, to represent different kinds of people, with some being summarily bad (like evil rats opposed to the good mice). Sometimes these allegorical pieces are intended and other times not, and only revealed through analysis. I am doing some of this, but in a way where the individual cultures of my lizard people, and of any other sentients I include, will say more about what they represent then the being itself, while still letting the nature of certain beings influence that same representation. If that sounds confusing: You'll have to read my book!
And then it's identifying what sorts of cultures this world will have that comes next. My story starts in a very tribal setting for a few reasons, it never stays there. Just as LotR moves from the Hobbit filled Shire culture to the many Mannish cultures across Middle Earth (from Bree to Rohan to Gondor and back), so too will my story explore the world and its cultures. That I think is one of the most important aspects of world building. If you try to write a white washed world where Good here is Good there and everyone agrees that Good is Good, well it just doesn't reach the level a world that's complex and diverse. What's Good in the protagonist's hometown might not be looked upon the same in a corrupt city where the only way to survive is to commit crimes. That creates conflict, and conflict is what drives a story.
I wrote previously that I bounce back and forth between world building and actually writing the story. I'm still not sure what would work best (for me or other people) but I have to say that without knowing enough about the places my characters are going, I can't write. So if you're reading this for writing types, consider what works best for you, first, and then accept advice that you find helpful. And always remember that if you think it will work and it doesn't, try something else. Don't force it. I never write well when I force it. Thanks for reading.
Creating a language when you have terrible grammar
In my quest to emulate my chief inspiration, the late great Professor Tolkien, I aspire to create a language for use in my book. That said, I know I will not be able to do even close to as good a job as the Professor, primarily due to the fact that he wrote his great works as a linguistic exercise. Tolkien was fascinated with languages his entire life, teaching himself Finnish and Welsh and going on to study old Norse and Latin and Ancient Greek as he studied works such as The Kalevala and Beowulf. He studied the old Welsh Arthurian legends and most of his scholarly work was based on this, while his creative works were a way for him to come to terms with a fantasy he held of what Britain might have been like if the Frankish Normans did not invade and conquer Britain in 1066. So Quenya, and Sindarin, Black Speech, and a few others from the LotR related works he created, and he created the world of Arda (the planet Middle-Earth is on) around these exercises. So, while I do not have the linguistic skill or desire to do quite the same as Tolkien, I wanted to at least create one language for my own use.
The Bible
(Of made up languages)
Now this practice of creating fictional languages is not limited to Tolkien's genius. In fact, I possess a book called "The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages: From Adunaic to Elvish, Zaum to Klingon -- The Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons." And yes, that says Klingon. Qu'pla! Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy have been creating languages for decades, and even some were meant to be used in everyday speech (such as Esperanto). Why not try my own hand at it? So I tried. And failed. Because I had no idea where to start, at first. This book is actually what got me started. In the back of the book is a section about creating a language with some very generic advice. Nothing world shaking, and definitely less impressive than a linguistic textbook, but part of this section is a list of about one hundred words that a common across most languages.
Having a list of words to make, I had to decide what the language would sound like. Deciding that the longer snouts and the more limited motion of lips, there were certain phonemes I decided probably wouldn't be common, or exist at all. Sounds like bah, mah, puh, fuh, poo, boo, moo, foo, etc., considering those sounds require the pursing of lips. "But Shane, you characters speak Engl-" Suspension of disbelief, darn it! To be fair, Tolkien thought of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" as being part of a fictional historical text called the Red Book of Westmarch, originally written in the language of "Mannish" and translated 'by' Tolkien in the modern era, making his works a pseudo-history of England. (I may write another blog on this concept and what Tolkien was trying to do some time.) Tangent over, moving on. So my language would lack certain sounds, but I still had no idea what the words themselves would be. While I studied Latin in high school and Italian at Rutgers University (Go R U!), those who took the class with me could tell you how terrible my understanding of grammar is, and therefore aside from vocabulary, anything besides English makes me sound incoherent. So instead of using a real language and bastardizing it to fit my needs, I decided a more noble course. I bastardized a fictional language instead. My choice, quite fittingly, was dovahzul (literally Dragon Voice), also know as The Dragon Language. And if that name sounds familiar, it should, if you've played as the Dovahkiin in "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."
Using the website www.Thuum.org as a starting place, I read through their lexicon of words both from the game and invented by the fans to see what words might sound like in a draconic language. And then I began to either mutate an existing word from dovahzul or made up my own, basically by making noise until something sounded good. Not the most elegant strategy, but I also used their website to understand the supposed grammar of dovahzul, giving me a template of sorts to work from.
At the moment, I have less then 20 words. Most I came up with myself, but a few are mutated dovahzul words. Everything else has some place holders taken right from the dovahzul dictionary that I just haven't gotten around to creating proper words for.
So that's it for this part of world building. I've seen other fantasy worlds steal straight from old norse or other dead languages, which makes me feel less bad about co opting some words for the time being, but make no mistake about my intentions. Linguistics is not my strong suit by any means, so working from an existing language is some what my only option. Besides, imitation is the finest form of flattery, right?
Leave a comment! I would love to hear from my readers! What do you think of my strategy? Stay tuned for more world building!
I'm not sure if this is as much fun for other authors, but the planning out my world while planning out the story that will be told within that world is a great deal of fun for me. It started with my main character and quickly into the race of people he belonged to. As far back as 2003 I knew I wanted my main character to be a 'dragon guy,' probably because of my mild obsession with the anime 'Dragon Ball Z' at the time, but it never got more complicated than that. I was constantly changing what they could do, starting off as near analogs for DBZs saiyans that turned into dragons, to fire-breathers, to having or not having wings. Eventually I boiled it down to the basics after reading "The Lord of the Rings" and seeing the films and maturing in my tastes and ideas a bit. It wasn't until I had to write about them and describe them without walls of text that I began to seriously wonder what they really looked like. So in May of 2015, I contacted an artist I discovered through Pinterest, of all places, and asked him if he would be interested in working with me on a project to design my main character, the race he belonged to, and a sword that would be at his side during his adventure. He would later also help me create the design I use for my profile picture, which is also an important symbol in my book. His name is Graey Erb, and he can be found on his website GraeyErbIllustration.com or on Deviant Art as Earl-Graey (We see what you did there, Graey).
The Captain Approves.
To make the task easier for Graey, I assembled a document of things I wanted to see in my new race of lizard people. I had seen a few years ago a piece of art on Deviant Art by another artist, koutanagamori, called "Lizard Man," that served as the chief inspiration for my own lizard man. It showed a creature with digitigrade feet, a prehensile tail, an arched neck and a pointed snout, and some horns or spines coming out of the rear of the skull, and wielded a pole-arm, with sketches of the character expressing different emotions or movements in the background. I knew that this was close to what I wanted, but needed my characters to still be different. And that difference was to make take them from just being a somewhat standard lizard people, to having some more draconic (dragon-like) and dinosaur-like traits.
With that in mind, I used the physiology of the "Lizard Man" character to describe the basic body of my own lizardfolk, I went on to explain the features I wanted my race to have. I proceeded to research lizards, reptiles, and even dinosaurs for traits that I wanted to appropriate for my race, then use pictures of the lizard/reptile/dinosaur to give the artist a visual rather than verbal explanation. The first specimen I found is a lizard that takes it's name from the terrible antagonist of Tolkien's "The Hobbit," Smaug!
The Smaug lizard, Smaug giganteus,
aka the sungazer, giant girdled lizard or giant dragon lizard.
Clearly a reptile after my own heart, the sungazer was a natural choice to be used as inspiration for my own creation, and I choose the horn-like protrusions on the back of his head, and the texture of his scales, to add to my lizardfolk. Now, these features are more prominent in my main character than in other characters featured in the book, due to their being multiple sub-races (some with horns and some without, for instance), but still carried over to the general flavor of the people. From here, I had to find features for the lizardfolk my main character interacts with through the majority of the story, which are the lizardfolk without horns. These characters, though part of the same race, had some slightly smoother features when compared to the sungazer, so I choose another lizard friend that I'm pretty sure the internet loves.
The face of a happy lizard. Or one about to steal your crickets.
Thank you, TheLioness24 @ DeviantArt.com, for your
beautiful gecko picture!
If ever there was a friendly (looking) lizard in the world, it's the leopard gecko. So I wanted to incorporate them into my own lizard people. Their 'trademark' grin and skull shape along with the eye placement made them seem an ideal candidate for my needs. They even looked similar to koutanagamori's own lizard man that they seemed to be meant to be - um - appropriated.
But how was I supposed to say it, Ariel!
The final piece of the puzzle was the clothes, and for that I moved away from lizards and towards native peoples. Inparticular, I focused on the Cherokee and Iroquois for inspiration, being peoples I was familiar with and lived in a region similar to where the story begins. Since most native peoples wore leather, the most basic material I suggested Graey to think of was such, while also suggesting that fur might make sense to include in a temperate climate like that of the north-eastern part of the United States of America (where I live). Flaxen linens were not unheard of in other native cultures, so that was suggested as well. Also, I gave suggestions on motifs and symbols that may find their way into their clothing, since these people revere fire and light. Ultimately, Graey took all of my notes and suggestions and produced the follow pieces of art, in order. As a quick note, I have to point out that his first version of my lizard folk was so spot on that I was immediately in love with them, and couldn't wait to get my main character finished.
I have to thank Graey Erb again for the fantastic work he did on this project. If it wasn't for his patience and hard work, I would not have such a great piece of art to draw inspiration from when writing. This artwork, all of it, makes writing so much easier when I can just reference them to help describe my characters. Please take a moment to check out his work at www.graeyerbillustration.com. And thanks for reading!
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