Back at it, again

I have my two battle-edited chapters, and it’s back to work for me.  I guess I got a sort of Christmas vacation, ha-ha.

Recently, I dug up my old material and looked to see if there was anything I could post up without dying of embarrassment.  …I don’t think so.  Even the original draft of TRoL that I wrote over two years ago is now mortifying—not the style so much as the actual plot points of the story.  *sigh*

What I can share, however, is this old picture of Evynn Rider-of-Stars astride a unicorn.

Now, unicorns are no longer a part of PaD, but it’s still a good picture.  It was a drawing that I scanned and then painted over with Paint Shop Pro 7.  The setting is the Stessian Highlands in Cineach, with the Caraic Ciar (the Dark Mountains—nothing ominous about them) in the background.  I made a lot of use of the different patterns in PSP 7: there are seven different textures in the picture.  Three different gradients are used, as well.  (And you can still see traces of the original pen sketch here and there.)

Evynn is not actually so strawberry blondish, but oh well; this was also done when his hair was shoulder-length (‘tis chin-length now).  One more note, and this is funny: in the original painting, Evynn’s shirt was a parchment sort of color.  However, since we don’t see his face or hands, my mom pointed out that it looked like he wasn’t wearing a shirt.  Oops!  So I painted his shirt over with a nice green color.  Much better!

(Sorry that the copyright was so bold, but I understandably don’t want people stealing my hard work.)

FIFTY PERCENT FINISHED!!!

'Tis true!  Ironically, though Chapter 10 should be the halfway mark, Chapter 11 is finished first and thus makes the mark.  Even so, hurray!

Now if my co-conspirator just needs to give me the battle-edited next chapter to work on...

Oh, and:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

What IS The Phoenix and the Dragon?

 What IS The Phoenix and the Dragon?

The story is fantasy, certainly, but its future audience will discover that The Phoenix and the Dragon (PaD) series is not as a “normal” fantasy by any means.

Prototypes of PaD certainly drove for the genre of High Fantasy, the most epic type there is, best exemplified in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.  TRoL may still be considered High Fantasy by some people, but it’s certainly less magical that it used to be.  Probably the greatest reason for this development was the transformation of the Rioti’ordane.

Readers of this blog may recall my comparison of Uruk-hai becoming Numenorians.  That conversion changed everything.  The epic emphasis of the story turned from magic to, incredibly enough, politics.  In a very large sense, politics is what the war of PaD is all about.

And PaD is all about this war.  This is a series chronicling a huge, worldwide war in another world set in its own Middle Ages.

This is a story that could almost be considered historical fiction—simply put, it’s the history of a fictional world.  And yet, there’s still an aspect of fantasy, still an aspect of the supernatural.  In fact, the supernatural is perhaps more important now than ever, because Providence has a visible hand in the motion of events.

Some characters in TRoL have telekinetic and telepathic abilities simply as genetic trait of their races.  This is considered a less magical and more practical matter—it’s simply natural for these people.  Something akin to magic is touched upon in the later pages of the book, but even this is very far removed from spells and wands and even Rings of Power.

The Phoenix and the Dragon is still an epic.  It is also a war story.  And this epic war story not only concerns itself with the fates of nations, but with the hearts of the men and women that shape the war.  War brings out the best and worst of men, and this story is going to give you that.  Despite the different non-human characters, this is a very human story.

I dearly hope that you stay tuned for more, and that you’ll be willing—and maybe even excited—to read the first installment of this epic when it’s finally released.