About my Book

The Pathkeeper Chronicles

So you may have asked, after reading the first post, "So Shane, what exactly is your book about?"  The simple answer is:

My Lizard People.
Art by Graey Erb.  Copyright Shane Press 2015

And now you may be wondering, "Why lizard people?"  Let's go way back into my past to answer that question.

So I grew up in the 90's, and if there was one thing I loved as a child it was dinosaurs.  Jurassic Park came out in 1993 when I was five years old, and seeing that T-rex roar as it came out from behind the electric fence during the storm was mind blowing.  Even before then, I would watch anything I could about Dinosaurs, including a Walter Cronkite hosted A&E special called "Dinosaur!" which I probably watched so many times that I'm surprised the VHS tape didn't snap.  (Leave a comment if you ever watched a VHS tape over and over again...)

Also as a child, I spent a lot of time out doors, specifically in the small city of Oneonta, in upstate New York, USA.  Mostly rural, the mountain my grandfather built a house on as a family retreat was where I met these cute little lovelies.

The red eft, or red-spotted newt

These little guys were always underfoot in the late afternoon, coming out to search for bugs and enjoy the moist warmth of rotting logs.  I would collect that and feed them ants and then let them go again to find the next time I would visit.

That said, as I grew older, my dinosaur fascination turned into a Godzilla fascination (Or Gojira for the purists).  A giant radioactive dinosaurian monster that fights other monsters (and occasionally levels cities) was an instant favorite of mine, especially since I was completely naive to the allegorical underpinnings involving Japan's sad history with atomic energy.  But that's for another blog.  I was hooked.

So what else is huge, levels cities, and breaths fire?

Dragons!

And you would think for a fan of fantasy that the dragon would be the apex of awesomeness, right?  Well, you would be right to think so.  They don't call it "Dungeons & Dragons" for no reason.  Before Gygax and Tolkien, story tellers throughout history have held the dragon (and there various cross-cultural equivalents) as the apex of power.  There is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the various draconic beings across the world.

Now I'm not the first to decide that lizard people should exist.  Ignoring myths and legends, D&D, The Elder Scrolls, Dragonlance, the classic Warhammer, and many other games and novels have decided that lizard people should exist!  But more often than not they turn out to be enemies (the lizardfolk in D&D), or enslaved (the Argonians in much of The Elder Scrolls Lore).  On top of that, when they aren't evil or antagonistic, they seem to be consistently portrayed as swamp dwelling tribals (often in a Mayincatec fashion) that scream, "Death to the warm-bloods!"

The D&D Lizardfolk

Now, those are some sweeping generalizations I made.  A website I enjoy visiting, TvTropes.org, has numerous articles on the subject ranging from a synopsis of the common tropes to an explanation of why they are so often villainized.  And I recognize that these tropes get challenged sometimes.  The Elder Scrolls games let you play as Argonians.  Dungeons & Dragons has made so many types of lizard people (some of draconic origin) as both NPCS (non-player character) and PC (player character) templates that you be almost anything with scales with the right Dungeon Master.  But I challenge anyone who reads this to point to me a book that has any form of scaly humanoid as the principle protagonist, and not some sort of side kick.  Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and predominantly Humans feature more often than lizard folk.  Even anthropomorphic animals get more prominent roles than our scaly friends.  Ever read Redwall?  A Narnia novel?  An Aesop fable?

So, being the dino/dragon/amphibi-reptile lover that I was, I declared that I would tackle the glaring absence of non-human like protagonists in literature that I believe exists with my book.  And by embracing some tropes common to them and fighting against others, I slowly devised a race of beings that I thought would make a fine contender as the "next big thing" in literature.  Or at least something I had fun writing about.  My lizard people (I will reserve revealing the name of the race for now until my book comes out) have varying cultures and numerous civilizations within my world.  In the beginning of my book I showcase a tribal culture, to root the book in some of the recognizable aspects attributed to lizardfolk in literature and games.  But the story leads the protagonist and his allies to European style city, a Japanese/Mongolian themed nomadic culture, and beyond.  I wanted to make them as varied as humans.

Which brings up the last thing I'll write about in today's blog, the dreaded question I've been asked several times by different alpha-readers whom I showed my early work to in college:  "Why don't you just make them human?"

As I mentioned, lizardfolk don't get top billing unless they happen to be 500 stories tall and named after a Japanese legend (I'm looking at you Gojira).  So while my lizard people may act like humans, talk like humans, wear clothes and use tools like humans, and even have interpersonal relationships like humans, I will never, ever, for any reason, make my characters human.  Maybe it's because I don't see the point when the internet is full of anthro-dogs, -cats, -rats, -dragons, etc.  So why not some lizard folk headlining a novel?  I mean wouldn't this guy look good on a cover?

Meet the main character, somewhere in the middle of the novel!
Art by Graey Erb.  Copyright Shane Press 2015.