Books for Breasts!

Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2006. I've been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I've never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until now.

Last week, I received several cases of my latest book Dragonseed. One of the ongoing themes of Dragonseed is the idea of healing, both from physical and spiritual wounds. Within the book there's a miraculous object called a dragonseed: Eat the seed, and all your injuries will be healed. Even your oldest scars will vanish.

I have some science fiction hoodoo underlying the dragonseed. The technology to create a pill that will both diagnose and cure any illness is pretty far out in our future, if it exists at all. But, the part of this that isn't science fiction or hoodoo is that I believe that technology has the power to work miracles. We have MRI and PET scans that can look into a human body and see it working in minute detail. We have developed surgical tools and techniques that can remove diseased tissues from a human body without doing undo damage to healthy tissues. My father had a heart attack recently, and the doctors had to place stents in his arteries. The incision to perform the operation was small enough to cover with a band-aid. And, right now, there are researchers who are taking apart cancer cells molecule by molecule to understand the genetic engines that drive them to a degree unimaginable only a few decades ago.

We live in an age of miracles because we live in an age of knowledge. Modern computers are finally powerful enough to process all the complex data contained within a human cell. The only barriers remaining between our present understanding a cure for any disease you can name are time and money.

These are not insignificant barriers. New technologies are always expensive. And, to be blunt, the world has a limited supply of really smart people, and a nearly unlimited supply of problems for them to solve. For better or worse, money is one of the most important driving forces of where the smart people focus their energies. In the sixties, it was decided we would put a man on the moon. We threw money at the problem, and produced a glut of rocket scientists. In the eighties and nineties, computer technology was fed enormous sums of money by the stock market, and smart people focused their energies on designing hardware and software, and with the result that today my cell phone has more memory than I do. There is a lot of money today flowing into health care, but only a fraction of this money goes to research of any given disease.

I'd like to invite you to increase the fraction going to breast cancer research, both due to my personal connection to the cause, and because I think that this is the right moment in history to truly make a difference. I firmly believe this is a disease than can be cured within our lifetime. I don't know if one day we will simply swallow a magic pill and be healed, but I do know that the day will come when we will be able to profile any cancer cell and match it with the appropriate drug to wipe it out.

To help bring this day closer, if only by a minute or two, I'd like to announce my "Books for Breasts" promotion. Anyone who contributes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation through the "Team Dragon" fundraising page will get a free signed copy of Dragonseed.

You can contribute to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation by clicking here. This will take you to my personal fundraising page; just click the button that says "support James." Then, to get your signed copy of Dragonseed, just email me your mailing address to nobodynovelwriter@yahoo.com. I've set aside 50 copies for this cause; if I give them all away by the end of July, I'm pretty sure I can get my hands on another 50.

I've set up a modest goal of raising $300* through this promotion. This means I need to average contributions of $6, which is less than you'd pay for the book on Amazon. However, I'll send you a book for a contribution in any amount, even if it's just a buck. Spend a buck, get a book, save some breasts. Who's with me?

*Okay, I obviously seriously underestimated the generosity of my readers. I hit $300 in under 24 hours. So, I'm going to raise my goal to $1000. Thank you to everyone who's given so far, and everyone who has helped spread the word via blogs and twitter. If I run out of books, I've had some interest from other writers in contributing their books to the cause. I'll keep you posted if it comes to this.

Dragonseed Chapter Two with Director's Commentary

Chapter Two

Good Boss

The early morning light coming into the loft was tinted yellow by the sulfurous plumes that rose from the smokestacks. Jandra had been in Dragon Forge for a week now and still wasn’t used to the stench, the rotten-­egg aroma of coal burning con­tinuously. One of the furnaces had been transformed into a crematorium, adding a black, oily soot that coated every exposed surface and smelled disturbing­ly like charred bacon. The bacon­-stink of the crematorium swirling together with the egg­-stink of the foundry left Jandra certain she’d never want breakfast for the rest of her life. She leaned against the window, looking out through the wavy glass, her forehead touching the cold pane as she gazed toward the low hills beyond the walls of the fortress. The last of the snow had melted off, leaving the landscape a mucky, reddish brown.

She was waiting on the second floor of the central foundry, in a high­-roofed loft with exposed ceiling beams and baked brick walls. The floors were thick, oily timbers, worn smooth by centuries of constant use. Half a dozen tables had been lugged into the space and all were covered with sheets of parchment scribbled with Burke’s notes and diagrams. Across the room, coals glowed cherry red in a large open fireplace. The room was chilly despite this. She sank her hands deeper into the pockets of her ridiculously large, ill­-fitting coat. It was a dark green coat from an earth­-dragon’s formal guard uniform, designed to fit a creature three times as broad across the shoulders as she was. Beneath the coat she wore a man’s cotton shirt and baggy britches. When she’d arrived at Dragon Forge, she’d been wearing a blood­stained blanket and a dress torn down the back from neck to waist. Everything she’d worn had been so ripped or filthy she’d wound up burning it all. The only things she’d kept were the large silver bracelet on her left wrist and her knee­-high black leather boots.

Behind her the elevator chattered. The iron cage rattled as the lift chains locked into place. The door squeaked open and Burke the Machinist rolled his wheeled chair onto the thick oak planks of the floor. Burke’s eyes were bloodshot; he’d obviously worked through the night. His long dark hair was normally pulled into a tight braid, but this morning his hair hung freely around his shoulders, revealing numerous streaks of gray. Burke wasn’t ancient; he was only in his fifties, in reasonably good health despite his broken leg. A member of an ancient race known as the Cherokee, Burke possessed a sharp-­featured face with a strong jaw that gave him an air of authority. The symmetry of his features was bro­ken by three parallel scars along his right cheek. Behind a newly­-fashioned pair of spectacles, Burke’s eyes glimmered with excitement. In his lap, he carried an iron rod, the final product of the night’s work.

“We’ve done it,” Burke said as he handed the long rod to Jandra. He winced from the movement. Despite the mobility allowed by the wheeled chair, Jandra could tell his broken leg was a source of agony. He clenched his jaw and drew a long breath through his nose, then said, “It’s a fully functioning prototype.”

Jandra took the device from Burke. The rod was four feet long and quite heavy despite being hollow. One end was open, slightly flared, sporting a perfect­ly circular hole almost a half-­inch across; the other was fixed to a triangle of wood that served as a han­dle. The steel was lightly engraved with a scale pattern at the open end.

“So this is a gun,” said Jandra, turning the weapon every which way as she examined it. She stared down the shaft bored into the center of the tube. Could this weapon really change the world?

“More specifically, a shotgun,” said Burke. “And I wouldn’t look down that hole. It’s loaded. I’ve got the safety on, but there’s no reason to press your luck. Going forward, I’ll remember to mention this before I hand it to people.”

“So how does it work?” Jandra asked, examining the trigger.

“It’s a flintlock,” Burke explained, wheeling his chair around to get closer. He pointed at the small iron hammer that was pulled back, held in tension by a spring. A small sharp splinter of flint was held at the tip. “When you take off the safety and pull this trigger, the hammer snaps shut and the flint strikes a spark into the flash pan, here. That creates a small explosion and lights this fuse, which then triggers the black powder packed into the rifle itself. The black powder is loaded into the barrel from the front and jammed tightly with the ramrod beforehand.” He tapped a thin iron rod attached to the underside of the barrel.

“Oh,” said Jandra, not certain she could envision the process. She pulled out a small pad of paper from her coat pocket. “This sounds like something I should be writing down.”

“I doubt you’ll have the luxury of checking your notes in situations where you’d be using this,” said Burke. He showed her two white cotton sacks, each about the size of her thumb. “To speed the loading process and to keep the powder compact, I’ve sewed up the appropriate amount of powder into these bags. Each charge provides a serious kick. The other bag holds small lead spheres and is jammed in front of the charge bag. The explosion will produce an expanding force of hot gas that propels the spheres down the barrel at great speed.”

“How fast?”

“The balls of lead will come out of the barrel at about ten times the speed that an arrow flies off a bow. It’s going to make a crack like thunder.”

“Yowza,” said Jandra.

“Yowza?” asked Burke. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that expression.”

Jandra frowned. “I haven’t either. It must be some­thing she would have said.”

“The goddess?”

Jandra nodded, then sighed. She already had enough problems connecting with other humans, having been raised by a sky­-dragon. The fact that her most recent adventures had left her head jammed full of alien memories only added to her sense of isolation and loneliness. Of course, having the memories of a thousand­-year-­old woman from a far more technologically advanced society had a few benefits. She now knew the long­-lost recipe for gunpowder, for example.

Burke looked concerned. He was a member of the Anudahdeesdee, a Cherokee clan dedicated to remembering the secrets of the once dominant human civilization that existed before the Dragon Age. His people had a long history of confrontations with Jas­mine Robertson, the so­-called goddess, the woman who had altered Jandra’s brain.

“So, what are these scale marks along the barrel for?” She was eager to change the subject away from her jumbled memories.

“I often design my inventions to resemble creatures in the natural world, like my spy­-owl, my chess mon­key, the time-­frog, etc. I was going to call the gun the Noisy Snake, but the scale pattern was taking too long, so I gave up halfway. It had no bearing on the function.” He shook his head as he looked at the gun. “My grandfather used to scold me for being more concerned with making sculptures than machinery.”

Jandra smiled. “Your daughter showed me the spy­-owl. I liked the attention to detail in the feathers. You’re a talented sculptor. The fact that you’ve only needed a week to design and build a shotgun from scratch shows that you’re an equally talented engi­neer. ”

Burke didn’t look cheered by her words. “I’m put­ting a lot of trust in you, placing this in your hands and sending you outside the fortress. If the dragons capture this and figure out how it works, it could for­ever change the world. Are you certain you can get your powers back?”

“Nothing in this world is ever certain,” said Jan­dra. “But, the sooner I leave, the better the odds are that no one has taken the genie.”

Burke nodded. “Anza’s anxious to leave as well. She says she’s tired of the way this place smells. She should be here in a moment. Let me—” Before he could finish his sentence, shouting erupted outside the window.

“Get it!” someone yelled.

“Circle around!” a man called out. A dozen other excited voices chimed in.

Jandra went to the window. She raised the pane and leaned out. The action was taking place only fifteen feet below her. A crowd of men were chasing a tiny green earth-­dragon. The earth-­dragon was the small­est she’d ever seen, barely a foot tall, obviously a child. Unlike adult earth­-dragons, wingless beasts who moved in a slow plod, the earth-­dragon child was darting back and forth like a jackrabbit. Despite its speed, it was pinned in by the crowd, and quickly found itself with its back to the wall directly beneath Jandra.

The men gathered round, keeping a slight distance as the small dragon opened its turtle-­like jaws wide and hissed. Its tiny claws flexed as it took up a defen­sive stance. Its long, skinny tail whipped back and forth like a cat ready to pounce.

Jandra recognized the leader of the men, a white-­haired, bearded fellow named Frost, a blacksmith from the foundry. His eyes were wide and he was smiling, as if chasing this young dragon were great sport.

“Frost!” Jandra yelled. “What are you doing?”

The crowd looked up. Whispers ran among the men. Jandra caught the word “witch” among the murmurs.

“We found this lizard hiding in a cellar! We’re going to cook it!”

In response, the earth-­dragon yelled, “No eat! No eat!”

Jandra felt her stomach turn at the thought of what these men were going to do. A month ago, the drop to the street would have looked imposing. But, in a process similar to the reshaping of her memories, her body had also been retuned, leaving her with a phys­ical prowess that rivaled even the legendary Bant Bitterwood. She leapt from the window, shotgun in hand, and landed in a crouch between the crowd and the dragon child.

“Back off!” she said. “The new rule is: if it talks, we don’t eat it.”

The men looked wary. Jandra knew it was due to her reputation as a witch… a reputation that, at the moment, was completely undeserved. Once, she’d commanded the elements, and would have been able to summon a ring of fire to shield her, or simply turn invisible to escape a fight. Unfortunately, she required a device known as a genie to use her abili­ties, and her genie had been stolen. Until she got it back, her “witchcraft” was nothing but bluff.

She stood, pulling back her shoulders. The green wool coat she wore hung down to her ankles. She hoped that the bulky coat and the thick heels on her leather boots helped hide the fact that the smallest of these men outweighed her by a hundred pounds.

Frost was the largest of them, broad­-shouldered, bar­rel-­chested, with biceps like hams. His face was speckled with a constellation of scars, pale white splotches from a life spent hammering hot metal. While some of the men looked nervous after Jandra’s sudden appearance, Frost didn’t show the least flicker of intim­idation. He said, “Even if you are Ragnar’s sister, you have no authority to declare what is and isn’t food.”

Jandra put the shotgun to her shoulder, imitating the firing stance she’d seen in Burke’s sketches when he’d designed the gun.

“I think you’ll find this gives me the authority,” she said.

Frost didn’t look impressed.

“Is this more of your magic, girl?” Frost mocked. “Where I’m from, we burn witches. Perhaps we’ll cook the lizard over the fire we build from your bones.”

The dragon child grabbed Jandra’s coattails. He cowered behind her legs and yelled, “No eat! No eat!”

Frost took a step forward.

“Not one more step,” Jandra growled.

Frost took another step.

Jandra raised the barrel of the shotgun, targeting the empty air above Frost’s head. She pulled the trig­ger. Nothing happened. What had Burke said about a safety? She examined the intricate firing mechanism.

Frost reached out to grab the gun. Jandra slipped aside the metal latch that kept the flint from falling. She pulled the trigger again as Frost’s fingers closed on the barrel. The hammer clicked down. For half a second, there was a flashing light and a sizzle, plus a lot of smoke.

Lightning struck.

At least, it seemed like lightning, with a bright flash and a thunderous boom. The butt of the shotgun slammed into Jandra’s shoulder, knocking her into the wall. Everyone in the crowd jumped in unison, wide­-eyed.

Frost released the gun and spun away, cursing. He raised his hand to his right ear. Jandra had meant to aim above his head, but the gun had fired in a more or less random direction after Frost grabbed it. When Frost lowered his bloodied fingers, his ear was gone. Only a few shreds of bloody flesh dangled where it had been.

Jandra was disoriented. She hadn’t expected the gun to be so loud. She looked around, uncertain where the dragon child had gone. Her arm was numb from the impact of the shotgun.

She couldn’t help but wonder why the goddess had worked so hard to rid the world of guns. Of what use was a weapon that crippled its user?

The crowd grew deathly silent as Frost recovered his wits. He narrowed his eyes in anger.

“Witch,” he snarled. Jandra could barely hear him over the ringing in her ears. “The last time a woman scratched me, I tore her nails out!” He lunged toward her, arms outstretched.

Before Jandra understood what was happening, something human-­sized dropped down from above, landing between her and Frost. The crowd sucked in its collective breath.

There was a loud SNAP. Frost shrieked.

Jandra blinked her eyes. The person who had jumped in front of her was Burke’s daughter, Anza. Anza was dressed in black buckskins and had at least a dozen blades strapped to her body. It was said that Burke had trained Anza in the art of combat from the day she’d learned to walk. Frost fell to his knees in front of Anza. Anza shifted her body slightly and Jan­dra could see that she had Frost’s middle and ring fingers in her grasp, bending them back much further than unbroken fingers could possibly bend.

Anza pushed Frost away and stood between Jandra and the crowd, drawing a long slender sword from the scabbard slung over her back. The razor-­sharp edge gleamed like a mirror in the smoky light.

Men at the back of the mob looked around and wandered off, as if suddenly remembering other appointments. Some of the nearer men looked down at the ground as they, too, walked away.

Only two men remained behind to help Frost back to his feet.

Frost looked as if he were on the verge of spitting at the two women. Then, his eyes flickered upwards. Burke was at the window above, looking down stern­ly.

Frost growled, “Wait until Ragnar learns of this!”

“Why don’t you go tell him?” said Burke. “He can come to me if he wishes to discuss the proper pun­ishment for a man your age threatening teenage girls with violence. I’m disappointed in you, Frost. You’re one of the best fighters I know. But there’s a fine line between a fighter and a bully. I would advise you to learn where that line is.”

Frost glared as he turned away, leaving the two women alone.

Anza gazed up at her father, a smug look in her eyes.

“Don’t feel proud,” Burke scolded. “You just ruined the hand of one of my most experienced blacksmiths. And Jandra, that was a damned stupid thing to do. Why didn’t you let them eat the varmint? It may be small and cute, but it’s still an earth-­dragon. We killed them by the thousands to take Dragon Forge. What’s one more dead lizard?”

“This is only a child!” Jandra protested. “He’s innocent! He’s more frightened of us than we are of him.”

“Where’d the lizard go?” Burke asked. He was still in his chair, and couldn’t look straight down.

Jandra studied the area. Had the dragon slipped away while she was distracted? Finally, she noticed a shadow on the wall, and a peculiar outline. She knelt and reached toward the shadow.

The outline on the wall shifted color slightly. The eyes became visible as they looked at her. The chameleon­-like camouflage vanished as the dragon shifted back to a deep green hue, almost black. It held a skinny arm toward her, the claw at the end out­stretched like a human hand, though it had only three fingers. These digits ended in claws that any bobcat would have envied.

“No eat?” the dragon child asked.

“No eat,” said Jandra, taking his hand. “I’ll protect you.” She lifted the dragon child up and hugged him to her chest.

“Good boss,” he cooed.

****

It was late morning when Vulpine, the Slavecatcher General, drifted down to the rocky bank, his eyes drawn to the blue­s-caled corpses being picked at by black-feathered buzzards. The buzzards hopped away as he landed, some taking to the air to perch in the branches of nearby pines, others, more bold, backing up only a few yards to glare at him. Even though the faces were mutilated, with the eyes torn away and the flesh around the mouths pecked and peeled, Vulpine recognized these dragons, fellow slavecatchers, good and honorable defenders of order. He shivered as a chill wind stirred his feather­-scales.

There were human corpses as well, similarly muti­lated by the buzzards. Vulpine recognized them as Hemming and Terpin. The world was no worse off without them. He noted that Shay wasn’t among the corpses, nor was there any sign of Chapelion’s stolen books.

Had Shay somehow managed to kill three slave­catchers? It made no sense. It was plain that all three dragons had been downed by arrows. He’d heard about the new bow that had caused the massacre at Dragon Forge, a weapon with more than twice the range of a longbow. Dragon Forge was barely ten miles distant. Had these slavecatchers fallen victim to a rebel patrol?

He noted something odd about the arrows. He reached out and plucked one from a corpse and held it to better catch the light. His eyes weren’t playing tricks. These arrows were yard­-long, perfectly straight shafts of living wood. The fletching at the end wasn’t feathers, but fresh green leaves growing in perfect symmetry. Stranger still, the killing end of the twig showed no trace of an arrowhead. The wood simply narrowed down to a hard, thorn-­like point. What tree grew such twigs? One final artifact of the arrow disturbed him. The shaft couldn’t have been in the corpse for more than a day, judging from the con­dition of the bodies. Yet, the part of the arrow that had been buried in the body was covered with white, threadlike projections, as if the arrow had been tak­ing root. The shaft sported several fresh pale bumps, like it was budding.

Vulpine snapped the shaft. The bark that peeled away from the jagged break was bright green and full of sap. He sniffed the wood. It was an unremarkable odor; he still couldn’t identify the species. The biolo­gians back at the College of Spires perhaps could assist, though his gut told him that this was some­thing new under the sun, that no one had ever seen living arrows before. Most biologians were rational­ists, but Vulpine was old enough and wise enough to suspect there were invisible forces beyond the com­prehension of dragons. Most slaves believed in magic, in ghosts and witches, angels and demons, and Vulpine had some sympathy with these beliefs.

He felt a chill creep along his spine as a shadow passed over him. The long fringe of feathery scales along his neck stood on end. He looked up, then immediately let out his breath and chuckled. It was only Balikan, a young slave­catcher he was training, drifting down from the sky to join him. The vultures skittered back even further, but Vulpine was glad of his company.

Balikan wrinkled his nose in disgust at the odor. The corpses weren’t rotting yet, but their bowels had emptied, and the gallons of blood that had seeped into the gravel had its own aroma. Vulpine had bare­ly noticed; he’d been around corpses so often the odor had little effect on him.

“By the bones,” Balikan said softly. “Who could have done this?”

“That, my young friend, is an excellent question.”

“I don’t see Shay’s body. Could he—?”

“Doubtful,” said Vulpine. “Shay’s never held a bow in his life. Nor has he displayed much in the way of a spine. He probably groveled for mercy when the slavecatchers caught up to him. Someone else killed these dragons. They must have been hidden in the trees.”

Balikan scanned the steep bank, his eyes darting from branch to branch.

“I don’t think they’re still around,” said Vulpine. “These corpses are at least twelve hours old. Maybe sixteen.”

“How can you tell?”

Vulpine nudged the twisted talon of the nearest corpse with a hind­-claw. “They plainly didn’t die today. The bodies are cold and stiff—it takes several hours to lose body heat, although one cold night on a damp bank can do it. Rigor mortis sets in little by little—the degree these limbs are contracted tells me it hasn’t reached its peak. I also know it’s not been more than a day because the buzzards haven’t made much progress.”

Balikan shuddered. “I’ve never been around this many dead bodies.”

“Get used to it,” said Vulpine. “You’ll see many more in the coming days.”

“Why, sir?”

“King Albekizan kept this kingdom stable for almost half a century. Now he’s dead, and his son didn’t last a month before a human assassinated him. The humans have taken advantage of all this insta­bility and captured Dragon Forge, just to the west of here.” He pointed to the brownish tint in the sky, evi­dence of the distant smokestacks. “I suspect that’s where Shay is, along with Chapelion’s books.”

“Then he’s escaped for good,” said Balikan.

“Nonsense,” said Vulpine. “I’ve had a few slaves vanish on me over the years. I can’t claim a perfect record. But I’ve never let a slave go when I still had a lead simply because pursuing that lead was danger­ous. Dragon Forge is a magnet for slaves. Shay and these two fools were among the first to hear the rumors and make a break for it, but they won’t be the last. Our jobs are going to be much more difficult if the humans are allowed to hold on to Dragon Forge. It’s imperative that we sky­-dragons act now to stran­gle this revolution while it’s still in its cradle.”

“But, the humans defeated an army of sun-­dragons!” said Balikan. “They slaughtered earth­-dragons by the thousands. Why will we fare any better?”

Vulpine chuckled. “Besting an earth­-dragon isn’t so hard. In my experience, the average human is twice as smart as an earth-­dragon. Sun­-dragons might be as smart as the humans, but they’re also bullies. They’re used to winning fights due to their size, but if a few of them get hurt, the rest turn tail and run. They don’t know the first thing about real courage—and next to nothing about strategy—because they don’t need it. When evolution has left you with the dead­liest jaws in the food chain, you get used to solving all your problems with your teeth. We sky-­dragons are made of different stuff. Our brains might be half the size of sun-dragons, but we actually bother to use them. We study the world. We learn things. Brute force failed to break the rebellion at Dragon Forge. It’s time for a more thoughtful approach.”

“You have a plan in mind?”

“The rough outlines of one, yes,” said Vulpine. “This isn’t something we’re going to be able to do alone, however. We should go consult with Chapelion.”

“So it’s back to the College of Spires.”

“No,” said Vulpine. “To the Grand Library of the High Biologian. That’s where Chapelion will be by now. He’s bringing some order to this chaos.”

“How?”

Vulpine ignored him. “Our second priority should be reconnaissance. Let’s study the area and gather the information we’ll need to solve this problem once and for all. They say the new bows can reach out up to a mile… but there’s a lot we can learn from over a mile away.”

Balikan looked puzzled. “Our second priority? What’s our first?”

Vulpine looked down at the bodies of the three slavecatchers. “We should build a pyre and cremate the remains of our brethren. I’ve known Zernex almost thirty years. He deserves a more noble end than to be pecked apart by buzzards.”

“Of course,” said Balikan, sounding embarrassed that this had required explanation. “What of the slaves?”

Vulpine shrugged. “Let the birds have their fill.”

-----

Comments on Chapter Two: This chapter had two seemingly contradictory goals. First, I wanted to recap the previous book, to bring new readers up to speed and to remind returning readers of what went before. The second goal is the goal of all chapters: I have to move the story forward, laying the groundwork for what's to come instead of dwelling on what's behind.

Hopefully, I found the right balance. The dialogue between Jandra and Burke is sprinkled with information about what's happened previously, such as when Burke reminds Jandra that they killed thousands of earth-dragons to take the fort. In the Vulpine scene, he has a full paragraph where he tells Balikan about the political turmoil of the last two books. But, all of this is backstory unfolds in the context of the present. By breaking it up and keeping it brief, I hope it reads like seamless dialogue instead of an infodump.

Fans of the series will, I hope, be pleased to see Jandra back in a central role in the book. The conclusions of the two previous books have been hard on Jandra. In book one, she loses her "father." In book two, her best friend betrays her. But I like Jandra because the tragedies she experiences don't shatter her, but instead leave her a little tougher and wiser. She has every excuse to hate dragons following the events of the previous books, but her core instinct when she sees the young earth-dragon in danger is to protect him. We'll be seeing a lot more of the young-earth dragon by the way.

The other protagonists returning from Dragonforge are Burke and Anza. Burke and Anza are sort of a symbiotic unit in the second book. Burke is the brains, Anza is the brawn. Though, brawn obviously isn't the right word. Anza is precision and grace, sort of a Cherokee ninja. One of my goals for the characters in Dragonseed is to split these two characters up so that they can develop more on their own. We'll get to see Anza use her wits to think through problems, and Burke will wind up in a fight or two without his buckskin-clad guardian angel watching over him.

This chapter introduces a new character, Vulpine, the slavecatcher general. Vulpine is perhaps the most dangerous dragon antagonist I've yet introduced. Blasphet was smart and evil, but he believes his own hype. He's overconfident in his complicated schemes. Vulpine is just a dragon with a job, and that job is to keep humans enslaved. He happens to be very good at it. But, he's not egotistical; he sees himself as a servant to civilization itself, a dragon with a duty to the world. He doesn't want other dragons to sing his praises. He just wants to put the world back into its natural order, with dragons on top. I hope readers will grow to like him, despite the really awful things he's going to be doing as the book unfolds.

Rereading the chapter this morning, I note that both the Jandra scene and the Vulpine scene dwell around new weapons. Jandra gets to learn about guns. I'm nervous about the guns! I expect letters from actual black powder gun owners telling me I'm getting the technology wrong. And, I am: While I did do some research into early guns, I'm also working under the assumption that Burke has tweaked the technology some. I'm not trying to describe an actual blunderbuss, but instead Burke's reinvented device. If you are an actual user of black powder guns reading this, feel free to chime in. It's obviously too late to change anything in this book, but I'm always keen to learn more.

The other weapon we examine in greater detail is Bant Bitterwood's living arrow. Jazz, the goddess, gives him a living bow strung with her own hair in the previous book, and a quiver that continuously replenishes itself. In the last book, there's so much going on after Bant gets his bow that I don't really stop and focus on what a wierd and wonderful weapon this really is. The arrows also have an interesting symbolic value. In the first book, Bitterwood's signature is that his arrows are fletched with the feathers of dragons. The weapon helps build up his mystique as a dragon-slaying ghost. In this book, Bitterwood's arrows are green things locked in an eternal spring. Perhaps this says something about Bitterwood's mental state in this book. I should say no more.

Dragonseed Preview Chapter One with Director's Commentary

With exactly one month left until the official release date of Dragonseed, I plan to post one preview chapter each Monday until the book actually hits stores. I'm going to follow each chapter with a brief "director's commentary" feature, where I'll briefly discuss my creative process behind the chapter. I'll try to keep the commentary section spoiler free; mainly, I will be discussing things such as why I chose a particular POV character, what I know about the larger setting that didn't make it into the book, etc.

Chapter One

Hope of the Slave

Clouds the color of bruises stained the winter sunset. Shay hoped that the yellow-­brown sky meant they were near the foundries of Dragon Forge. He wasn’t certain Hemming would make it if their journey lasted another day. Shay, Hemming, and Terpin were at the edge of a pine forest on a steep hill leading down to a slow muddy river. On the other side of the water a broad, flat field had been trampled to muck. Shay wondered if this was evidence of the retreat of Shandrazel’s army. Thousands of earth-­dragons had fled on foot. The ground would surely bear witness.

“I don’t think I can go on,” Hemming whined as he slid down the bank, landing on a bed of gravel beside the river. Hemming was the oldest of the three slaves, a stooped, white-­haired man in his late sixties. In a perfect world, Hemming’s age and experience would have endowed him with wisdom and toughness, but in actuality it had left only a fragile shell of a man with an unceasing passion for complaint. “My blis­ters have popped,” Hemming moaned. “My boots are filled with blood.”

“All the more reason to keep moving,” said Terpin, sliding down beside him. Unlike Hemming, a house slave, Terpin had worked the grounds of the College of Spires. He was a short man, but heavily muscled. His wispy hair clung in a band around his ears, as white as Hemming’s more ample mane, though he was at least twenty years younger. Terpin’s face was a mass of wrinkles and he only had teeth on the left side of his jaw. His voice was authoritative and gruff as he said, “Walk while you still can, old man. If you can’t go on, we’re not going to carry you.”

Hemming’s lower lip quivered. “Y-­you’d leave me behind? After we’ve come this far together?”

Shay cleared his throat. He still clung to a skinny tree on the steep slope. The last ten feet down to the river looked particularly treacherous. He couldn’t get the memory of the horse’s broken leg out of his mind. He announced, “We’re not leaving anyone behind. I’ll drag you both if I have to.” He was the youngest of the slaves, only twenty­two. He was lanky, tall despite his hunched posture, with a thick head of orange hair bright as the scales of a sun­-dragon. Unlike the drab, threadbare outfits of the older men, Shay was dressed in a long red coat with shiny brass buttons. His black boots were scuffed and muddied from walking, but the upper parts still showed their former polish.

Shay had led a more privileged life than either of the older slaves. He’d been the personal attendant to Chapelion, the sky­dragon scholar who oversaw the College of Spires. Few humans knew how to read, but Shay’s precociousness had been recognized at an early age and encouraged by Chapelion, who’d seen advantages in having a literate slave. Chapelion had thought that his bright­-eyed favorite had been smart enough to recognize the benefits of life in his service. Instead Shay’s relatively easy life in the face of the hardships of his fellow men had only made his status all the more intolerable.

Not that his life had been easy—as a slave, he’d been subject to beatings for minor mistakes. His back bore scars from the bite of whips. When news of a human rebellion at Dragon Forge had reached the College of Spires, Shay instantly knew that he belonged there. He’d persuad­ed Terpin to accompany him, because he liked Terpin and thought the tough, worldly slave knew a thing or two about surviving in the world. They’d taken Hem­ming because the older man had eavesdropped on their plans and asked to come, and they’d both been certain he would betray them if left behind.

“Hemming, I’m as tired as you,” Shay said. “I want nothing more than to stretch out on the ground and drift to sleep. But look at those clouds. That has to be the smoke from Dragon Forge. I’ve heard the sky above it is always tinted this way at sunset. We’re close.”

“It’s Terpin’s fault we don’t have horses,” Hem­ming grumbled.

Shay sighed to hear this argument brought up again.

“Oh lord,” Terpin groaned, throwing his hands up.

“If you’d listened to me, we’d be there already,” Hemming said.

This was arguably true, but Shay didn’t think it mattered. They’d left with two horses, with Hem­ming and Shay sharing a mount. On their first day out, they’d pushed too far. Terpin had assured them the horses could go another mile, then another, and he’d beaten the horses with branches to keep them moving. After hours of rough treatment the horse that carried the two of them fell dead, its heart burst. The next morning, they’d taken turns with the last horse, and as Terpin rode down a ravine the horse had stumbled and broken its leg. Shay knew they had made mistakes that cost them dearly, but he couldn’t see any advantage in dwelling on them, not when they were so close to freedom.

“What’s past is past,” said Shay. “We’re all cold and hungry. Dragon Forge will have fireplaces, and food to fill our bellies, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s whiskey as well. It’s worth another hour of walking, even in the dark.”

“Whiskey gives me heartburn,” Hemming grum­bled. “And you think they’re just giving out food? You think they’re going to welcome three runaway slaves with open arms?”

“It’s a rebellion. They need soldiers, and workers, and cooks, and any other talents we can bring,” said Shay. “They’ll feed us. Especially once they see what I’m carrying.”

He tapped the leather pack slung over his shoulder. It had been a heavy burden to tote all this way, but he thought the contents were the most precious thing in the world. He held onto the faith that Dragon Forge would welcome them with the same certainty that dawn would follow the night. Hemming didn’t look convinced.

“You youngsters think you’re immortal,” Hem­ming said. “But if we’re stumbling around out here in the dark with numb feet, we’re likely to break our legs. You remember the horse, don’t you? You remember the way that bone jutted through the hide, the way that blood shot out in a fountain?”

Shay did remember this. Any time he closed his eyes, he could see it. This was one reason he was still clinging to the tree instead of jumping down to the gravel.

Perhaps sensing he was touching Shay’s fears, Hemming went on: “None of us can see worth a damn in the dark, but the slavecatchers can. They’ll find us while we’re lying there in the open field with broken legs. Those bastards have eyes like cats.”

“Our ears are rather sharp as well,” said a voice overhead.

Shay looked up, his heart in his throat. Perched in the gnarled branches of a towering pine, he spotted a pair of golden eyes glowing in the last rays of the sun. The blue wings of a sky­-dragon unfurled against the dark sky as the beast rose and glided down to the gravel bed, landing ten feet away from Hemming. The old man trembled. A high­pitched cry erupted from his lips, a sound like a rabbit shrieking in the jaws of a hound.

The slavecatchers were frequent visitors to Chape­lion’s chambers, and Shay recognized this one as Galath, a fairly young and inexperienced member of the trade. Perhaps they still had a chance. Hope faded as a second sky­-dragon glided down to join Galath. This was Enozan, a much older and more experi­enced slavecatcher. Still, it was two against three; not all hope was lost. In the air, sky­-dragons were much larger than men, with their twenty­-foot wingspans and long whip­-like tails. On the ground, however, standing on their hind­-legs like oversized blue jays, the two slavecatchers were no taller than Hemming. Perhaps this gave Terpin courage because, as Hem­ming fell to his knees to beg for mercy, Terpin grabbed a fallen tree branch and wielded it like a club.

“Stay back!” he shouted. “Or I’ll knock your brains out!”

There was a rustling in the tree behind Shay. A third dragon had landed in the branches. Shay rec­ognized him immediately—Zernex, one of the most feared slavecatchers employed by the College of Spires, second in cruelty and cunning only to Vulpine, the infamous Slavecatcher General.

Zernex spread his wings wide and stretched his neck as he stood on the swaying branch, perhaps for balance, perhaps to emphasize his size. While sky-­dragons were small compared to sun­-dragons, they were still fearsome beasts. Their heads were the size of a large ram’s, with jaws that could open wide enough to close around a human throat and sink into it with gleaming rows of saw­-like teeth. Their talons may have been little larger than a man’s hand, but they were tipped with sharp­-hooked claws that could slice through flesh with ease. Zernex raised the fringe of long feather­-scales that ran along the back of his neck as he snarled at Terpin. “Drop the branch, slave! I’m paid the same whether I bring you back alive or dead. I won’t hesitate to gut you.”

Shay shouted at Zernex. “If you don’t care if we’re alive or dead, why bring us back at all? Leave us alone! The College of Spires won’t miss three slaves!”

Zernex glared at Shay. “Do you think we’re fools, boy? You’re running off to join the rebellion. You think we’re going to let you go get armed with a bow and arrow so you can kill dragons? Besides, we both know you aren’t merely escaped slaves… you’re thieves as well.” His eyes fixed on Shay’s leather backpack.

Despair welled up within Shay like a black fog. He looked at Hemming, groveling on the damp gravel, his hands clasped behind his head. A small hard knot formed in Shay’s belly. He’d never been in a fight in his life. He’d never even thrown a punch. But he’d been running away to become a rebel, hadn’t he? He spotted another fallen branch on the slope below him. He let go of the tree and slipped the leather pack from his shoulders. He jumped down to the gravel, grabbing the branch. He stood back to back with Terpin and shouted, “You’ll never take us alive!”

“Take me alive, please,” whimpered Hemming.

The branch that Shay had grabbed was damp and half­-rotten. He cast his eyes about for another weapon, but it was too late. Apparently emboldened by Shay’s defiance, Terpin lunged, hacking out with his more sturdy club. It was a powerful swing, but easily anticipated. Galath, the target of the blow, flapped his wings once and darted backward as the club passed through the air where he’d stood.

Terpin, off balance, didn’t show a similar talent for evasion. Enozan’s toothy jaws shot toward him in a serpentine strike, clamping onto the bald man’s windpipe. Terpin unleashed a gurgling yelp as the dragon shook his head back and forth. Enozan kicked out with a hind­-talon, sinking his hawk­-like claws deep into the man’s belly. In seconds the fight was over, as the dragon dropped Terpin’s lifeless body from his jaws.

Shay fought to keep from dropping to his knees as the older man fell.

“Oh god oh god oh god,” prayed Hemming, his head pressed into the gravel.

Galath hopped forward and opened his reptilian jaws wide. He snapped them shut on Hemming’s skull with a horrible crunch. Hemming’s whimpers suddenly went silent.

“Why?” Shay shouted, dropping his useless branch, clenching his fists. “Why’d you kill him? He wasn’t fighting you!”

From the branch above, Zernex answered. “It’s a long way back to the College of Spires. It’s easier to carry just the heads.”

Zernex dropped from the branches onto the bank, grabbing the leather pack Shay had dropped. He held it up, his eyes fixed on it hungrily as if he appreciat­ed the importance of its contents. “This is what Chapelion cared about most. And while I won’t hes­itate to kill you, Shay, I think your master would prefer to see you alive. I imagine he’d like the satis­faction of watching you flayed. Honestly, you’ve known Chapelion your whole life. Did you truly think he’d let you get away with even a single book from his private library?”

“I know the truth about those books!” Shay protested. “They were written by men! For men! In a time before the Dragon Age! They shouldn’t be part of a dragon’s library!”

“If dragons can own men, why can’t they own their books as well?” Zernex asked in a condescending tone.

“You can’t own us!” Shay shouted, reaching down and grabbing a smooth river stone the size of his fist. “You can only enslave us!”

Shay hurled the stone with all his strength at the hated slavecatcher. Zernex lifted the leather bag in his fore­-talons, blocking the stone before it collided with his chest. Shay knew he had no chance in a fight. He turned toward the river. He didn’t know how deep it was. Could he dive and swim downstream? Lose his pursuers in the dark? Or would he only freeze to death in the icy water? What choice did he have? Better to drown a free man than ever to face the lash again. He darted toward the water.

Behind him, there was a hiss as a dozen feet of leather sliced the air. His charge was brought to a sudden halt as the tip of a whip curled around his neck like a noose. His feet flew out from under him and he slammed to the ground on his back.

Zernex loomed above him. The other two slave­catchers drew close, forming a rough triangle as their golden eyes looked down. Above their shadowy forms, a few dim stars glowed through the haze of clouds. Shay clawed at the loop of leather around his windpipe, trying to pry it free. He couldn’t breathe. The gravel beneath him was ice cold as dampness seeped through his coat.

“Hmmph,” Zernex sneered, looking down. “Chapelion should have known teaching a human to read was a waste. Even if your kind is smart enough to recite the words, you plainly lack the capacity to understand them. A truly educated being would have known that nothing but death awaited him if he stole from his master. I think there’s a famous quote from a human holy book about this, isn’t there? ‘The wages of sin are death?’”

Shay had heard the quote, but wasn’t in a position to discuss its significance. His eyes bulged and his lips felt numb as he found the tassel at the end of the braided leather around his neck and tried to untwine it. No matter how he pulled, it only grew tighter.

The dragons chuckled softly as they watched his struggles. He could barely hear them over the pound­ing of his heart. When a new voice from the trees spoke, he heard the words almost as if they were part of a dream. Unlike the reptilian voices of the dragons, the new speaker was plainly human, a male, his voice chill as the winter wind.

“Nothing true in this world has ever been written in a book,” the man said. The three dragons whirled toward the slope, looking for the source of the voice. Black spots danced before Shay’s eyes as he suddenly found a way to tug the whip that produced slack. He fumbled with trembling fingers and worked the leather loose, until he drew a long gasp of damp air.

“Death has nothing to do with sin,” the man con­tinued, still invisible in the shadows of the trees. “Death claims the righteous as surely as the wicked. It awaits the slavecatcher as certainly as the slave.”

“Who’s there?” Zernex growled. “Show yourself, human.”

“These have been the last words of many of your kind,”’ answered the voice.

“Spread out,” Zernex commanded Galath and Enozan. “Search the hillside. I would like to meet our mysterious philosopher.”

Galath spread his wings, flapping, rising up ten feet. A whistling sound rushed through the air and his wings went limp. He fell to the gravel bed, unmoving. The bloody tip of an arrow jutted from the back of his skull, having come all the way through after entering his eye.

Shay kept still, wondering if the dragons even remembered him.

Enozan leapt into the air. There was a second whistling sound, and he, too, fell to the gravel, though he was still alive. He was only a few feet away from Shay, down on all fours. An arrow was buried deep in his left breast.

“What?” Enozan gasped, looking confused as he twisted his neck to study the shaft that jutted from him. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the fletch­ing on the arrow looked to Shay like living leaves. They were bright green, as if they had been plucked in spring. It was the dead of winter. What tree had fresh green leaves this time of year?

Enozan spasmed. He coughed and pink saliva sprayed from his toothy jaws. His strength failed him and he collapsed, one of his broad blue wings drap­ing over Shay. The dragon shivered; blood gushed from his wound with each heartbeat.

Zernex snarled. Shay was dismayed to discover he hadn’t been forgotten after all. The slavecatcher reached down and grabbed him by the collar of his bright red coat. He yanked Shay to his feet, pulling him around to serve as a living shield.

“You obviously care about this slave!” Zernex shouted, his fore­talon pressed against Shay’s jugular. “Show yourself, or I’ll slit his throat!”

From the dark hillside there was no sign of move­ment.

“I mean it!” Zernex screamed. The dragon’s claws hooked more deeply into Shay’s flesh. A bead of blood slid down Shay’s throat.

Zernex’s demands were met with silence. Cold sweat trickled down Shay’s face as Zernex’s eyes darted back and forth, searching the shadows. “Come out,” he said, fear reducing his voice to a trembling whisper. “Your surrender is this slave’s only hope.”

In the branches of tall pines, a shadow separated itself from the others rising, taking on the form of a man.

“Do not speak to me of hope,” the dark figure said. “I am not the hope of the slave. I am the shadow on the stone. I am the black unbroken silence. I am the Death of All Dragons.”

“Bitterwood?” Zernex whimpered, sounding as terrified as Hemming had moments before. His claws began to tremble. His grip slackened. Seeing his chance, Shay grabbed the talon and pushed it away, dropping down, freeing himself. He leapt away as Zernex spread his wings to take flight. The slavecatcher let out a pained grunt. Shay tripped on the gravel and rolled to his back. Zernex had an arrow in his left leg, buried in the meatiest part of his thigh.

“Bitterwood?” Zernex whispered again, sounding like he was in shock. Terror flashed into his eyes. He craned his neck heavenward, and beat his wings in a mighty down thrust. He lifted from the ground, his tail swinging around toward Shay. Acting on pure instinct, Shay grabbed the slavecatcher’s long tail and yanked hard, with his full weight. Zernex was thrown back to the gravel bed, landing on his left wing with a sickening snap.

Shay rose to his knees and saw a smooth river stone before him nearly as large as a skull. With both hands, he lifted it above his head and hurled it at the slavecatcher, who was struggling to stand. The heavy rock caught the dragon in the side of his jaw. Zernex’s head was knocked back to the gravel. He still wasn’t dead. He lifted his long, serpentine neck, his jaw bleeding and broken, and looked toward Shay with murder in his eyes.

In a flash, there was an arrow sprouting between those eyes, the green, leafy fletching shuddering from the sudden halt of its flight. Zernex’s golden eyes crossed as they tried to examine the object between them. Then they fluttered shut, and the slavecatcher’s head dropped. Shay grabbed another good­-sized rock and lifted it, holding it for a moment above his head, waiting for any sign of life. At last, he dropped the stone before him. Zernex wasn’t breathing. The dragon would never catch another slave.

Shay rose on unsteady feet. He was breathing hard, his heart racing. The last five minutes of his life seemed disconnected and unreal. The bodies of three dragons and two men sprawled before him, their dark blood blending with the gathering shadows. He saw the leather satchel and lifted it, slinging it back over his shoulder.

He looked up toward the hillside, searching for any signs of movement among the black branches of the pines. The shadow he’d seen earlier was gone.

“A­-are you really Bitterwood?” he asked.

No one answered.

“Are you… are you going to Dragon Forge? To join the rebellion? I’ve read about you. You fought at the last rebellion. At Conyers.”

Shay listened hard, certain he heard movement.

It was, perhaps, only the rustle of trees in the win­ter night. Shay waited for several minutes, until the cold set his teeth chattering. He knew his only hope of surviving the night was to keep moving. He turned up the collar of his coat against the breeze. He rubbed his windpipe, feeling the indentations on his throat where the slavecatcher’s claws had been. When he lifted his fingers, the tips were red and wet. He turned toward the west, and saw the clouds above the distant foundries glowing brightly, reflecting the furnaces of the rebellion.

Shay took one last glance at the pines, shifted the pack to better balance it on his back, and walked toward the glow on the horizon. The foundries of Dragon Forge burned like an eternal sunrise. This was the hope of the slave. With numb feet he stag­gered forward, freedom bound.

--

Director's commentary: Readers may be surprised I opened with a new character, given the already large cast available to me. I had several goals in mind when I created Shay.

First, I wanted to make the book easy to read for new readers to the series. As a new character, Shay is useful since, as he meets the existing cast in the next chapters, he'll provide a convenient gateway to explain these characters to new readers, as well as perhaps refreshing the memories of readers of the previous book who read it last year.

Second, I felt like my core cast of Bitterwood, Jandra, Hex, and Burke are all a bit larger than life. This is fine, I designed all of them to be dominated by certain traits. Bitterwood, obviously, is defined by his hatred of dragons and his talent for killing things. Jandra is meant to be a peacemaker, a character who straddles the divide between humans and dragons and longs for a world of justice for all races. Hex defined himself in the last book as a warrior philosopher, and will continue this role, both as a big toothy monster who is good at chomping his enemies, and also as a political radical who distrusts anyone who claims the right to rule over others. Burke, of course, is defined by his inventiveness and his rather complex relationship with his daughter Anza, who he has trained from birth as a warrior. All of these characters have their roles to play, but Shay is someone who doesn't come into the book with any special powers or abilities (well, aside from the fact he can read). He's brave and idealistic, but this doesn't make him any better with a sword. He's an ordinary man swept up in extraordinary circumstances. I think readers will quickly grow to like him.

Third: Speaking of the core cast, I wanted to open with a Bitterwood scene, to establish that Bitterwood is still out there killing dragons. I think some of Bitterwood's best moments in the trilogy come when we see him (or fail to see him) through the eyes of others. I enjoy the moments when Bitterwood performs for his victims, quoting scripture to them before he riddles them with arrows. Shay gave me a good witness for Bitterwood in his Ghost Who Kills mode.

Fourth: Slavecatchers! As an escaped slave, Shay gave me a great excuse to introduce one of the books main villians. Why I mention human slavery in the previous books, I really don't dwell on it in any great detail. I decided to change that in this book, and explain more about the roles that slaves fill in dragon society. I decided that there would be a special class of enforcers among the dragons, the slavecatchers. I didn't want to give the role to an earth-dragon, since I wanted the chief slavecatcher, Vulpine, to be really brainy (he's mentioned in this chapter, and will play a major role throughout the book). The job also seemed like it was a bit beneath the dignity of a sun-dragon. So, while I'd said that all the male sky-dragons were scholars, I decided I'd allow for exceptions in their ranks for the career of slavecatcher. I really think that the Vulpine will prove to be the most formidible foe the humans have yet faced. I really can't wait for you to meet him.

Finally, I think that Shay's reference to the books being from the "human age" should raise questions in the minds of new readers. As for what books the pack might contain... stay tuned!

SFFE, The Future and You

Today marks the launch of a new site called Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics. I'm a member of its editorial board, though what that entails, exactly, is still a bit vague to me. I think at some point I might be supposed to contribute an article or something. Anyway, the site has been established to celebrate the positive in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. By celebrate the positive, I don't mean that it will only talk about happy, upbeat fiction and films. Instead, the site is intended to be a place where people talk about what they love in the genres instead of what they hate. We aren't going to waste energy convincing people that the latest Hollywood movie is awful SF, or the latest best-selling teen-oriented fantasy is literary drivel. Instead, we'll turn our energies to talking about what a terrific film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was, or the thrill we felt when we first read "Snow Crash." I'm looking forward to seeing how the site moves forward with its mission. I'm reminded a bit of my attitude when I started my small press zine "Pursuit" back in the 90s. Then, I was bugged by all the dystopian futures I saw, and wanted instead to publish stories that imagined worlds where libertarian ideas had finally triumphed. The motto for the zine was "Imagine freedom." It's very easy to attack the things you don't like in this world. It sometimes requires a little energy and thought to instead promote the stuff you love.

And, speaking of things I love, I love science, and I love hearing myself talk. Fortunately for me, Stephen Euin Cobb runs a podcast hosted at Baen's Universe called "The Future and You" where he invites science fiction writers (and actual scientists) to discuss trends they anticipate in the future. My interview was supposed to last a little under an hour. Instead, I .... well, lets just say I ran over my time a bit. Or a lot. And instead of filling up one episode of the podcast, I'm going to be featured in three episodes. I do talk a lot about the future, but I also talk about circus freaks and angels. It's tough for me to stay on topic. Anyway, I think the episodes may be of interest to folks who enjoy my writing, either in my books or my blogs. You can find my episodes under the master list of episodes of "The Future and You." After you listen to my episodes, be sure to check out others. Cobb is a terrific interviewer, and, I can now attest that he has excellent taste in guests....

Oops!

Earlier today, I posted a longish post about religion on this blog by mistake. Sorry. I meant to post it on my second blog, Jawbone of an Ass. I routinely discuss my radical views on religion, politics, and circus freaks there; this blog is meant solely to focus on my writing news, of which there's been depressingly little lately. There are many things on the horizon, but writing is a frustrating industry as far as speed of things unfolding. I've had news since, like, February regarding a new development with my Dragon Age books. But... here it is almost June, and I still don't have anything in writing, so I'm still sitting on the news, since until contracts are in my hand, nothing is solid.

If my publishers don't provide me with actual news to announce soon, I may start manufacturing some news. I do plan to hold a contest in June to give away copies of Dragonseed. Stay tuned.

ConCarolina's, DragonCon, CapClave

I'll be attending ConCarolina's in Charlotte, NC the last weekend of this month. I'm teaching a writing workshop there with IGMS editor and fellow novelist Edmund Schubert, as well as participating in a variety of panels. I plan to be there all three days; a good time will be had by all.

I haven't been doing much in the way of fall cons the last few years, but I've just learned I've been accepted as a guest at DragonCon in Atlanta (labor day weekend) as well as CapClave in Maryland in October. I'll post more news as the dates get nearer.

Bitterwood fan site

I just discovered an unofficial Bitterwood fan site that looks as if it just launched. It's got forums to discuss the book and overall looks really well designed, though at the moment no one but the site designer has posted there. Now that I've found out about the site, I'll try to drop in from time to time. If anyone here is looking for a place to discuss the Dragon Age books with other fans, give this a shot. It looks like the sort of site I'd want to design for myself if I were a web-page designer instead of a novelist.