Hoofprint Press: #TeaserTuesday and an Update

In case you haven't heard yet, my next release drops this coming Saturday. Prodigal Son, Lean Dogs Legacy Book Three, arrives on 12/15, and you can pre-order it here.

After that, the next release will be Dragon Slayer, Sons of Rome Book Three, which I'll be working on for the next few weeks. As it stands now, the novel is 623 paperback pages, and currently 202k words...though both of those numbers will increase greatly in the days ahead. This is going to be a big book! And not only do I think that's okay, but it's also necessary.

It's okay because, at the end of the day, this is one chapter in a fantasy saga, and as a lifelong fantasy reader, I can tell you it's not uncommon for books to wind up 700 to 1,000 pages long. Weaving a tapestry requires many threads, and the weaving takes time.

It's necessary because my initial plan for the book shifted once I actually began writing it. Before I started, when I was still in the planning stages, I intended DS to be a book only about Val; I was going to tell his story, and only hint at his brother's story. I would then write a separate book about Vlad, and fill in some of the missing pieces there. But once I started writing, I realized that would not only be redundant, to have TWO books about the same period in history, but that it would take something away from Val's book, because these two stories revolve around one another. They're brothers, and their fates are linked, and to understand one is to understand the other. So the focus of the novel had to shift - had to include two main character journeys, and that bumps up the word and page counts for the book.

There's a third reason it's such a long book. History has not looking kindly upon these boys. Vlad Dracula is painted as a monster, a madman, and a warlord. His brother (Radu in real life, Val in my series) is seen as an easily-seduced, weak-willed opportunist. A simplistic, shallow way of looking at a remarkable, and devastating sequence of events. While DS is a fiction novel, and I've undoubtedly taken creative license, I wanted to show the audience a version, my version, of the true events. To walk you through it, rather than summarize it.

My goal was not to paint a portrait of heroes and villains, but to provide reasoning and emotional context for the things that happened. Because Val and Vlad are central characters in my series, we inevitably see history through their eyes, colored by their experiences and prejudices, but it's my hope that readers will walk away curious, and form their own opinions about the things that happened in the mid-1400s in Eastern Europe.

Inevitably, I've grown fond, even protective of some real life historical figures, many of which I never expected to care about. Below is a tidbit that I'm not sure will make it into the final version of the novel, but which I really love, and which I will try hard to work into the mix. If you've read White Wolf and Red Rooster, you know that Val is a dream-walker, and one of his earliest friends, thanks to astral projection, was Emperor Constantine of Constantinople, the last emperor of Byzantium.

Val stood – or gave the impression that he did – beside the emperor on a dangerous little ledge that ran around the topmost dome of the St. Sophia cathedral; one of the highest points in all of Constantinople. Hands shading their eyes, for all the good it did Val, they could just make out the bustle of activity six miles away, across the deep-water inlet of the Golden Horn, up the rise toward the site of Mehmet’s Throat Cutter.

Below them, heat mirages shimmered in the narrow, twisting streets and alleys of the city, a deep-baked summer heat that Val could neither feel nor smell, but which he imagined. Back in his tent, those six miles distant, doubtless his unconscious body sweated through his clothes.

“The walls have gone up quickly,” Constantine said with deceptive mildness. He rested his hand on a thin metal railing, the breeze tugging at his curls, and the long lines of his royal tunic. He turned to Val. “How is this possible?”

I warned you, Val wanted to say. I told you he could accomplish this. Instead, he said, “The Ottoman Empire is vast, densely populated, and diverse. Mehmet pays well, and he punishes severely. His workers are motivated, and there are plenty of them.”

Constantine wiped a hand down his face, and he looked exhausted. “Meanwhile, we’ve slowly bled dry. The religious divide is crippling us.”

As was the city’s economic downswing, one which seemed to be a lasting condition, and not a momentary trend.

“I’ve sent missives,” Constantine said. “He’s building that fortress on land that doesn’t belong to him. This is a breach of our treaty.”

“The treaty hangs by a thread,” Val said, as gently as possible. “Threatening to turn Orhan loose again…”

Constantine groaned. “We underestimated Mehmet. When his father died, all of Europe rejoiced. Mehmet was young, and we’d all heard the stories that his head was turned by, well…” He trialed off, and Val looked away from his pointed glance.

Constantine had never come outright and asked Val about his relationship with the sultan. Val wasn’t going to start offering that story up freely now.

“You thought,” he said, “that the threat of Orhan’s existence, him free to rally a force of his own and challenge for the throne, would distract Mehmet for a time. I’m telling you” – as he’d told him before – “that Mehmet thinks he’s the second coming of Alexander. Nothing will keep him from attempting to take this city. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“I know, I know.”

“He’ll try to draw you out. He likes that – playing games. He’ll do something to provoke you.”

“I won’t respond to it.”

“You can’t.”

“Val,” the emperor said. “Have you ever thought of…can you not slip away? At night? It’s only that you’re so close now.” He gestured toward the distant activity, a bustle like a disturbed ant hill. “If you could get away from Mehmet…”

Val shook his head. “No. No, that won’t…no.” A bare smile. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”