I’m a former comedy writer gone rogue, by writing fantasy.
My Land’s End series has been called
“Game of Thrones Lite” by reviewers, and also, “The Princess Bride with sex.”
ROWENA AND THE DARK
LORD, book 2 in the series, has just been released. I’m currently writing
book three and have discovered a fascinating thing about fantasy.
Here’s the trouble with magic: if you allow a mage to be
all-powerful, what’s to stop him from killing everyone he doesn’t like,
grabbing the girl, and getting his way all the time?
Nice for him, but not much of a story for our readers. So…I
have learned that the thing about writing books with magic in them is you need
to establish limits to that magic.
In fact, you need rules.
These rules need to be logical, and they need to be
consistent. They can’t be too complex -
readers must be able to understand them.
In ROWENA AND THE
DARK LORD, Cedric is the main user of magic. He is also the villain (Author
insert here: or is he?) Cedric is
learning magic, and becoming more powerful. He has gone over to the dark side
to pick up more power. He can create armies of ghostly faceless warriors. But
he has a major limit. He can’t do magic from a distance. Therefore, he can’t
kill or inflict harm on someone he can’t actually see.
Rowena is also a user of magic. But she is an ‘infant
witch,’ untrained. She has a magic bracelet, and no idea how to use it. Then
she finds out that with the bracelet, she can channel magic. So if someone is around, happening to use magic, she
can misdirect it. But she doesn’t know how to create it herself.
These limits on magic allow me to create a lively and funny
plot in ROWENA AND THE DARK LORD.
There is misfiring magic all over the place. A Roman Legion gets taken out of
time, and time itself is in jeopardy.
We take care of that one in book three.
Short Excerpt:
Men’s voices again, echoing like souls lost in a
fog. The mist lifted in one swift movement to disappear into nothingness. In
its place, were at least a hundred men.
Bugger. I messed up.
“Houston, we have a problem,” I said out loud. This
wasn’t supposed to happen. I must have pronounced one of the spell words wrong.
“Who is Houston?” Lars said.
“Romans!” Gareth hissed. He drew his sword.
“Romans?” I stared at the battle-scarred men before
us. They looked exhausted. They also looked bloody, dirty and rather short. Not
to mention confused.
How the heck could they be Romans?
Someone yelled “Form Square!” in—yup—that was
Latin.
“What the hell?” I stared. The men came to life
moving with purpose into a square. Within seconds we were facing a shield wall
bristling with spears.
Gareth and Lars already had their swords drawn.
They tried to move in front of me but I spread my arms to hold them back.
“Sheath your weapons,” I commanded.
They hesitated, eyeing the wall of men and knives.
“For crissake,” I insisted, “what do you expect to
do against that, besides get us all killed?”
With reluctance the swords slid back into their
scabbards.
The man on the horse wore a breastplate the sort of
armor that you only saw in museums back home. Or movies. I was reminded of
Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor. Richard Burton playing the part of Marc
Antony.
Hoo boy.
The man on horseback stared at me. No stirrups on
his saddle. A helmet that was in history books. Definitely Roman. I stared back
at him.
Romans? In this time? What the poop had I done?
“It’s a
freaking temporal rift!” My laugh was strident. “Where the hell is Spock when
you need him?
Melodie Campbell
achieved a personal best this year when Library
Journal compared her to Janet Evanovich.
She has over 200 publications, including 100 comedy credits, 40 short
stories, and 4 novels. She has won 6 awards for fiction.
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