on Reading and Writing and All the Speculation In Between
In book one of the Red Slaves series, Natasha tells the group about her flight of dragons. In book two, protagonist Anne has to learn to deal with the reality of that grouping. And she gets to learn about flying. One of the fun bits of research I did for a particular scene in the…
It being the week after Easter, and the general spring obsession with new life, it seems appropriate to blog about the strangeness of creating dragon biology. I grew up reading about Anne McCaffrey-style dragons. Their biology developed on a different planet, around a different star, and then was bioengineered to become what they were. My…
One of the most fun elements of writing a story is doing background research to ground your tale in some level of reality that allows the reader to trust you and willingly suspend their disbelief. When you stumble across an item that perfectly fits into the world you’ve created, it’s a strange intersection between an…
The central premise for the Red Slaves series is that Communists figured out how to trap the magical beasts of their countries to use that power for their own ends. The inciting incident that is never described is when Ivan and his brothers awaken, as if after a long sleep, missing true knowledge of themselves–or…
One of the clearest ways Red Slaves reflects my own preferences and inclinations is the obsession with the printed word. For Anne, if it has been published, it has a level of credibility it would be hard to otherwise trust. In fact, she spends the first few months after her initial transformation bent on pretending…
As a brief (warning) introduction: I’m participating in the A-Z blog challenge again this year, and again on the topic of the series I’m in the midst of writing. One of the self-reflective things about writing Red Slaves is the opportunity to weave in a sub-plot about culture clash. In the first book, Anne notices…