Harald the Merciless

It's 1243.  In The Dragonscale Blade, Harald is the village bully.  He doesn't like the look of this new arrival, Vinny Balfour.

‘Well, well, miracle boy.  So you got lost and you got found again.  Don’t know where you been for near ‘nough a whole year.  Maybe them wolves ate you up.  Then I reckon they spat you out again ‘cos you tastes like foul, nasty, foul stuff.  And then them twitchy little fairy elves got hold of you and dressed you up like a proper bluebell with twinkletoe shoes, you numkin.’ 

Excerpt from The Dragonscale Blade

An hour ago, he was on his back sprawled on the dining room table, big enough for twenty-four guests.  On his back, right there, in the middle of a selection of crumbs, plastic wrappers and half-eaten fast food from the fridge.  Three-quarters of a second pizza was balanced on his groaning belly.  He managed a lazy, sideways look at the letter.  ‘Ok, then!’ he groaned, snatching it, holding it up above him and tearing it open.  ‘What now?’

Vincent, there are things here in this house which no one should find.  No one.  Least of all the Malsaurians. 

Vinny grunted, propped himself up on an elbow and shook his head.  The pizza slid down the front of his grey hoodie.  It rolled across his jeans and onto the floor.  The words might have been all nonsense.  Certainly, it was all the usual, fancy, tricksy nonsense that his father came out with.

‘Malsaurians?’ he said out loud to himself.  He stuck his finger in his mouth and used his fingernail to remove a piece of olive from his teeth.  ‘Looks like Dad’s finally found a chair in the crackpot corner.  Well, at least he remembered my name.  That’s something, I suppose.’

But that was an hour ago, before the urgent tone of the text message.  Before he had admitted to himself that his father might be nuts, but he wasn’t stupid.  Before he’d stuffed the letter into the back pocket of his jeans without reading the rest of it and wheeled the Harley Davidson out to the safety of the driveway.  Before the sheer size of the place suddenly spooked him like it had never done before.  Before he’d fetched the petrol cans from one of the garages.   Dropped them onto the ground, hammered his forehead, repeating over and over, ‘Malsaurians?  Malsaurians?’  Before he’d run, looking over his shoulder, in a panic, splashing the stuff all through the ground floor rooms like some mad crazy idiot. 

The Hunger Games v. The Dragonscale Blade

As a new ebook writer, checking sales and checking out reviews on Amazon is a bit of a weekly, if not daily, habit.  Just curious, that's all.  Is there any significance, I wonder, in how quickly The Dragonscale Blade comes up in the search box as I type in each individual letter?  Of course, you can probably guess which title comes up as soon as I type in The....

Illustration

I must say I do miss illustration and graphic work in general.  Before teaching, I designed and made wooden toys and other sculptural stuff.  They sold all over the place:  Nieman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman in the States, the Victoria and Albert Museum in England, Naef in Switzerland and many, many more around the world.  You may have one of my Animal Boxes at home, for instance.  I took part in exhibitions at the Barbican and the Museum of Childhood in London, and Le Galerie de Jouets at the Louvre in Paris, and again, many more over a period of about twenty years.  I designed pencil boxes for Stabilo, lighting for Quandt Originelle in Germany and children's quilts and bedding for Banian.
Then, or at the same time, I illustrated some children's picture books for Barefoot Books.  So now, I'm writing full-length fiction for an older age-group.  No pictures.  What am I going to do?

I've been watching some sparring going on in one of my linkedin groups recently.  The subject has been about writing.  In the blue corner, creative writing; in the red corner, the need to respect and adhere to garmmatical rules.  I think the war is a phony one.  Being in command of basic grammar is essential if creative writing is to take place.  Of course, you might break all the rules.  Why not?  But it's so much better if you know what the rules are in the first place.  Picasso, for instance, doesn't crash through all the leading art conventions by accident.  At least, you wouldn't think this if you've ever looked through his 'cahiers' - his workbooks - which show you just how much he planned those masterpieces that look so free and spontaneous.  In terms of rule-following and creativity, what's true for painting is true for creative writing.

The Dragonscale Blade cover

I haven't been happy with the pale green cover design.  It wasn't my first choice of background colours, but then the original one was so dark the red lettering clashed so much it made your eyes water.  Also there was nothing there that a reader might relate to.  No sign of life whatsoever apart from the rubbery-looking reptilian hand.  I tried a photoshopped face,but that turned out to look like a cross between Mr. Spock and the lizard man that I often see attending the men's toilets in one of the main London stations.  (If you're quick, you might just catch a glimpse of it - the cover, not the lizard man - on Amazon before I take that one down too.)  A third, simpler cover should appear in a day or two.  I'm not sure it says everything I want it to, but that's it now.  No more.  I've got other things to get on with, including figuring out who the real murderer is in my forthcoming sequel, The Book of Zanj.

Origins of the Story

Looking at my files, I dscovered the picture of al-Azraq was downloaded about 3 years ago.  The story of Vincent of Baalfire has gone through some transformations.
It started when I found out about this Arab leader called al-Azraq, but referred to by the local Christians as El Drac - the Devil or the Dragon.  I'd been to Andalucia a few times and was fascinated by the Arabic civilisation, its inventiveness and intellectual progress, that stretched at one point from Persia across northern Africa to Spain.
The Dragonscale Blade started as a tale about ordinary people in medieval times, and one boy in particular, being caught up in an act of aggression that had nothing to do with them. (Doesn't this happen all the time?)
I enjoyed all the minor characters in it.  They were all colourful.  The main character, however, didn't really come to life for me until I made him a kid from the 21st century.  Vinny changed everything.