Well … the check cleared the bank.

The Dinosaur Lords. It’s on.

Look for it in early 2013!

Rawr!

Also we add to Victor’s Dinosaur Army Roll of Honor Roslee [...]]]> First off, I’m awarding Victor’s Dinosaur Army Legion of Merit (the Dinosaur Army No-Prize) to Nancy Edwards, for conspicuous service in linkage and also ending me a suave dinosaur-bone fossil; and to our own Oliver Mellors, for repeated and continuing service above and beyond.

Also we add to Victor’s Dinosaur Army Roll of Honor Roslee Orndorff, for sending me such a cool text and giving me the idea to post An Adventurer’s Guide to the Dinosaurs of Paradise; Legion of Merit holder Lizzie Beth Frank for being the first to come back with a detailed critique of the published chapters; and Zoanne Leavy for kindly reading and commenting! Thanks, everybody!

Now, pursuant to a comment by Lizzie Beth, it occurs to me it might be useful to present our:

Cast List

for The Dinosaur Lords: Being Volume the First of The Ballad of Karyl’s Last Quest, A Romance in Three Volumes.

Our Chief Players:

KARYL BOGOMIRSKIY, VOYVOD OF THE MISTY MARCH – Dark brown hair and eyes, pale skin.  Small and intense.  An epic hero whose misfortune was to achieve the object of his quest.  Now an embittered dictator and resistless mercenary captain, feared as much by his employers as his foes.

MELODÍA ESTRELLA DELGAO LLOBREGAT, LA PRINCESA IMPERIAL, INFANTA DE LOS ALMENDROS – Dark-wine hair, dark-amber eyes, cinnamon skin.  The EMPEROR FELIPE’S beloved and neglected elder child.  Bright, willful, beautiful, passionate, confused – and painfully conscious of the fact that, of all the privilege, perquisites, and power she enjoys, she’s earned none of it through her own actions.

ROB KORRIGAN – Red beard, handsome face, hazel eyes, barrel body.  Dinosaur Master, minstrel, Eyrman, Traveler, scapegrace (which many, not least Rob himself, would consider multiply redundant.) A peasant whose skills the highborn will pay well for – however reluctantly – he despises the aristocrats he serves as much as they do him.  Except for one whom he worships:  KARYL.

JAUME LLOBREGAT, COMTE DELS FLORS, KNIGHT-COMMANDER OF THE ORDER OF COMPANIONS OF OUR LADY OF THE MIRROR – Orange hair, turquoise eyes, faultless features.  The perfect knight:  Nuevaropa’s most famous bard, warrior, and philosopher.  The EMPEROR’S nephew, favorite, and champion, all but betrothed to MELODÍA, he’s widely loved – and even more intensely hated by a few.

FALK, DUKE VON HORNBERG – Big, black-bearded, blue-eyed, brooding.  Youthful rebel turned the EMPEROR’S most loyal servant.  Strong as a Triceratops bull, smart, brave, handsome – and tormented.

BERGDAHL – Tall, gaunt, round-faced, blade-nosed.  Villainous servant to FALK, worse master.  Cunning, brutal, deliberately coarse, he was born the lowest and trampled lower.  He lives to make the world pay in hours of pain for every second of indignity he endured.

SHIRAA – Twelve striped, scarlet-eyed meters of appetite and devotion.  KARYL’S famed war-mount.  Little girl lost, in search of her beloved mother – and also a full-grown Allosaurus fragilis, one of the most terrifying of predatory dinosaurs.

Our Lesser Players:

THE CREATORS – of sundry aspects and genders.  The Eight deities who created the world Paradise.  Their worship is the only religion permitted on Paradise, although carried out by a multitude of churches and sects, some bitterly hostile to one another.

THE FAE – Enemies of the CREATORS. often called goblins or demons, not solely for that reason.  Trickish, mystical beings as inclined to battle one another as their great foes, the GREY ANGELS.  Their dealings with humans are capricious at best, and seldom ruled by kindness.  Of all the beings of Paradise, they are the only ones the Creators didn’t make.

THE GREY ANGELS – Over two and a half meters tall, skeletal, eyes like steel marbles.  The CREATORS’ seven supernatural servants who maintain the sacred Equilibrium of the World.  Mostly they keep humans in their place, not often in pleasant wise.  Their most dreaded weapons are plague – rare on Paradise – and the Grey Angel Crusade.  They can change their appearance, but revert over time to their true forms.

THE WATCHER – Cowled and diminutive.  A mysterious female figure reported throughout history as observing epoch-making events from a distance.  She speaks only to those whom she knows are about to die . . . as she speaks to KARYL BOGOMIRSKIY.

FELIPE, EMPEROR OF NUEVAROPA – Short, round, ginger-bearded.  Loving yet distracted father to MELODÍA and MONTSERRAT, whom his cherished wife MARISOL died bearing.  Uncle and avid patron to JAUME.  Elected, like all Emperors, from TORRE DELGAO, he’s pudgy, pleasant, unduly influenced by whoever spoke to him last – and terrifically easy to underestimate.  A figurehead who’s determined to make himself, and the Fangèd Throne he occupies, into something more.

FRAY JERÓNIMO – man of mystery; appearance unknown.  FELIPE’S confessor – and, many of the Emperor’s other advisors fear, all too often the one who speaks to him last.

RAGUEL – A GREY ANGEL.  A friend to humankind.  In that he only wishes to wipe out some of them, instead of all.

###

Just a few notes: this is a greatly abbreviated Cast List, as you might envision in a 1000+ page manuscript.

The Chief Players are all viewpoint characters. Yes, that does mean all.

The Lesser Players are just folks you ought to, you know, know about.

I’m working up a whole slew of supplementary material for the novel, based on my brain-crushingly voluminous notes on every damned aspect of character, story, and world I could think of to work out. Some will get posted here. Some will await publication of the novel.

Of course, An Adventurer’s Guide to the Dinosaurs of Paradise will continue until we’ve dealt with all the dinosaurs and similarly Mesozoic beasties mentioned in the Prologue, Chapter 01, and Chapter 02 – at least!

And, never fear – there will be maps.

So, please stay tuned, kiddies, for more dinosaurian epic-fantasy goodness.

And thanks for reading!

Now: more dinosaurs!

Fatty:

Protoceratops andrewsi

This tubby critter is the analogue to pigs and sheep (no wool-gathering on Paradise, kiddies!) The Wikipedia entry describes them as a little bigger than I remembered: 6 feet [...]]]> First off, two new inductees to Victor’s Dinosaur Army Roll of Honor: Brooks Powell and Nan Silvernail. Thanks for boosting the book, kids!

Now: more dinosaurs!

Fatty:

Protoceratops andrewsi

This tubby critter is the analogue to pigs and sheep (no wool-gathering on Paradise, kiddies!) The Wikipedia entry describes them as a little bigger than I remembered: 6 feet long, two feet high at the shoulder, not quite 400 pounds. Still, the ones I describe here in the Prologue of The Dinosaur Lords free preview, and refer to throughout the book are slightly larger models – maybe eight feet, three feet high, up to 800 pounds. I call them Protoceratops robusti.

The dinosaurs of Paradise are all real dinosaurs – or at least ones science believes, as of March, 2011, to have been real. Protoceratops were real; my childhood hero Roy Chapman Andrews turned ‘em up in Mongolia in 1922. P. robusti is a hypothetical larger subspecies.

That’s one explanation. Another is that they started out as standard-issue P. andrewsi and got bred up for beef. Or, well, pork. Heft, in any event. Paradisiacal domestic dinosaurs tend to be about as easy to breed to spec as dogs. Which is why the war-duckbills you’ll be encountering straightaway in Chapter 01 tend to come in so many gaudy colors.

Next -

Plate-back:

Stegosaurus stenops

One of everybody’s childhood favorites, right? Good old Stegosaurus!

If you think I’m kidding about the Thagomizer in the mouseover up there (you do always check the mouseover, yes?), click here.

On to other news … you’ll notice – boy, will you notice – that I’ve handily provided ways for you to link your favorite posts and pages on Digg, StumbleUpon, and many more. Indeed, I apologize for the buttons’ being so danged noticeable. The Tweet This software I use to produce them is reluctant to display changed settings.

I shall persevere. It’s what I do. (Among other things, granted.)

Anyway, should you feel moved to do so, please feel free to promulgate your favorite Sense of Adventure posts and pages using those handy (if overt) buttons! Doing so, (especially with the free Dinosaur Lords preview) is a great way to improve your chances of being able to hold your own copy of the novel in your hot little hand – soon.

Thanks for your help – as well as your faith in bearing with me through lo!, the many years wandering the wilderness of no, really, I’ll finish the draft someday!

And as always – thanks for reading!

I expressed the hope the ancient Persian mages brought everybody something nice. My favorite answer: “Myrrh. Again.”

Pictured: Zoroastrians!

What they brought me was my very own shiny copy of Tim [...]]]> Earlier today I wished that to my readers on Twitter and Facebook. Same to you, if you’ve not seen it before. (Or even if you have.)

I expressed the hope the ancient Persian mages brought everybody something nice. My favorite answer: “Myrrh. Again.”

Pictured: Zoroastrians!

What they brought me was my very own shiny copy of Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.

Another Facebook commenter said it’d be “one heckuva book if it lives up to the title.” I told them I was impressed by Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek – favorably enough to buy it again in the new, expanded edition.

I’ll let you know about the “lives up” part.

Three Kings Day is a pretty big deal in Puerto Rico – and pretty much the only part of my Puerto Rican heritage I was actually raised with. Fine with Little Me, obviously, since presents are entailed. None of our nativo or Mexican immigrant population here in ABQ seems to make much fuss about it. I suspect it’s more a Caribbean thing – as seems partially confirmed by a Facebook friend (and Wild Cards fan, always a mark of conspicuous excellence!) who said they make much of it where he lives in Quintana Roo, on Mexico‘s Caribbean coast.

Of course, the Magis’ gift to me might not be entirely disconnected from a certain judiciously-timed use of an Amazon gift card a friend was kind enough to give me for Christmas….

Thanks, Larry! And, uh, Royal Ancient Persian Dudes!

In other news … you’ll have noticed it’s been a bit since I posted. Between the holidays, still being a touch sick, and being so slammed with writing that most days I spent doing it from early on until my brain stopped working well enough to continue, I just haven’t had the wherewithal.

Despite my increasingly urgent desire to do so – “Almost there! Al – most – there!” – I haven’t even been able to get back to The Dinosaur Lords rewrite. I got the Seekrit Projekt phase completed – and then had to jump on ginning up three new synopses for another project. (This one isn’t really secret. I’m just not going to tell you what it is yet.) Two of them I had to spin out of whole cloth; the third required substantial revision of an existing, if short, synopsis. So – busy? Boy was I busy!

Also in the midst of this came back some revision notes on the Seekrit Projekt. Fortunately they’re relatively minor, and I think I’ll be fine if I get ‘em in next Monday or thenabouts.

Which will allow me to, you know, rest, recover, get some actual errands done. And get back to DinoLords!

It’s been a little trying because I’ve not been sleeping well. I go to bed tired and can’t get comfortable. Then I sleep sporadically – and wake before I’ve slept enough and can’t get back to sleep. Aggravating. Although last night I did, finally, get a very good (if still episodic) sleep.

One quick testimonial: the third of the new synopses had me a bit stymied. I had a fairly good setup. What I lacked was an actual, you know, plot. So how did I handle it?

Why, yes. I let go – let Leo. Asked. And – as, let me emphasize, always – received. In fairly short order.

I’m exceedingly happy with the outcome. So, I might add, is my editor (who thanks to the Miracle of the Internet has already signed off so I could submit them to the Big Editor and get contracts started – meaning, eventually money.)

If you’ve not read that Golden Oldie – why, good gracious Charlie McCarthy, it’s from way back in June of  ’10! – you might bang the link above and check it out. I can’t promise you that letting go that way will work for you.

I can promise you it works for me.

Wishing everyone once again a happy, healthy, prosperous New Year – and every day, and many more!

Thanks for reading!

As I think I’ve mentioned (although I can’t find [...]]]> I’ve started to read my writing aloud as I rewrite it. It’s one of those things I don’t know why I’ve not been doing all along. Both perceptive audience members at my readings and the amazing Critical Mass writers group advised me to try it. It helps.

As I think I’ve mentioned (although I can’t find it now) I had a problem the last couple of years with overly-long and complex sentences. It bothered me. Yet I had no idea how to stop doing it. My writers group pals offered advice that helped me to do so quite expeditiously once I flat-out asked for help. And one of their suggestions was to read through everything aloud. If the tongue tended to stumble, that was a good place to trim or reapportion.

I mention this briefly now because in rewriting a chapter of The Dinosaur Lords (it’s happening!) I thought of phrase to describe sunset light splashing on:

…the steep slate slopes of roofs.

Now, that seemed a fresh and evocative way of putting it. Then I tried reading it aloud. Whoa! After five tries it was still like going down an uneven staircase in the dark.

Of course there’s nothing complex or convoluted about the phrase. But it is, it turns out, a Hell of a tongue-twister.

So there’s another tool for your chest.

Another way to avoid the heartbreak of unending and confusing sentences is to dictate. This is something I’ve experimented with off and on for a quarter-century. What I intend to do, later on today when I get back to writing o n the action/adventure novel, is fire up my Dragon NaturallySpeaking software and try to get back to that. I’ll let you know how that comes out.

Update, 11/23/2009 5:15:42 PM: Over on Twitter, Bosque Bill sagely asked what I’d replaced the above phrase with. It was:

“the slate of steep-pitched roofs”

You deserve to know, I belatedly realize. Thanks, BB!