Today is the day!
Heroes of the Empire is now out and available for all major eBook formals. Get it here for Kindle and here for other formats, just 99 cents for a limited time. Paperback available at Amazon as well.
I don’t put maps in my books for a couple of reasons. One is purely practical – they’re expensive if they’re any good. The other is kind of philosophical – I think that if the book is well written and compelling that readers won’t get hung up on details of geography. I hope I’ve managed to do that in these books (and others). Geography is fun, but it’s not the story.
That said, I do tend to make maps for myself to use as a reference while I write. Here’s what’s been stuck to the metal part of my writing desk for the past six years, a map of the planet Oiwa:
The bag at the bottom is the collection of role playing dice I used to create the map. I rolled them out and traced around them to create continents and islands, then filled in the terrain. Some of it matched the story idea I was developing, but a lot of it didn’t and impacted things as they moved along.
Essentially, Oiwa boils down into three sectors, two in the north and one in the south. The one on the right is the Unari Empire, which is where most of the action of these books take place. Cye is just off the east coast of that north/south inlet at the bottom. For Widows of the Empire I wrote some about the areas called the Unaru (the very southern part, south of that big mountain range) and the Knuria (most of what’s north of those mountains). The top left contains the nations of the Western Alliance, which have mostly featured as an off-screen force in the books (from the “sometimes you build stuff for your world you can’t use” file). Aton actually goes there in a job that takes place off screen between the first two books.
To the south are the correctly, if unspectacularly named, Southern Islands, which covers everything on the bottom half of the map. They played a larger part in Widows of the Empire and do again in Heroes. As with the Western Alliance I’ve got a whole lot of lore in my head for how the various parts of the Southern Islands fit together politically and culturally, but there was never a good place for it all to go in these books. Aton spends time there in Widows and there’s action there in Heroes, too, but it’s mostly on ships and so we only get a glimpse of some of the Islander culture.
One of the cool things about writing stories that take place in other worlds is the freedom to create whatever kind of world that you want. With that comes a responsibility to bring readers into it in such a way that it feels real and understandable. Building Oiwa, including its history, has been a blast. I hope it was worth coming along for the ride.
Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.
As promised, here’ the second of two excerpts I’ll be sharing from Heroes of the Empire this month (for a third, exclusive one, join my mailing list!). In this one, Rossum witnesses how far the Emperor will go to hold on to power.
Rossum kept his eyes on the soldiers behind the barricade, the ones who now had their rifles in their hands. Some clutched at them so tightly, their knuckles were turning white. Rossum knew that look, that pose. They were frightened, getting into something they weren’t ready for.
The soldier on the barricade yelled something again, but even with the bullhorn it was drowned out by the crowd. He flung the bullhorn to the ground and went to his belt, reaching for his pistol.
Before he could unholster the gun, a bottle flew out of the crowd. It smashed against the barricade just at the soldier’s feet, shattering into pieces. The soldier threw up his hands to cover his face, lost his balance, and fell backward off the barricade. The crowd roared a cheer of approval that gave way to laughter.
Rossum didn’t think it was funny. These outnumbered, nervous soldiers had seen one of their leaders humiliated and possibly hurt. There needed to be de-escalation of the situation, not the pouring of more coals on the fire. He started to look for the best way out of here, off the stoop and down the street to safety.
The soldiers behind the barricade were looking for guidance. Their eyes flitted from each other to the lieutenant, who had yet to say or do anything. After a long moment, he drew a sword and climbed over the barricade. About half the troops did the same.
“Go home!” the lieutenant yelled, waving his sword. “This needs to stop!”
“We are home!” someone yelled from the front of the crowd. It moved back a few steps as the soldiers advanced, but resumed the chanting. “Our street! Our homes!”
Rossum knew the lieutenant had made a mistake. Even with bayonets, the troops were hopelessly outnumbered by the crowd. It was only the threat of gunfire, with the soldiers safe behind the barricade, that was keeping things somewhat calm.
The soldiers and the crowd had now realized the situation. After retreating a few steps, the chanting crowd started to inch forward again, back toward the barricade. The soldiers stood their ground for a moment before they started shuffling backward toward the barricade. Members of the crowd had started to pick up rocks, bottles, or any other items they could lay their hands on.
The strange, slow dance continued until what Rossum had thought inevitable happened.
One of the soldiers, sliding back on his feet, backed up until he ran into the barricade. He lost his balance and, without thought, pulled his trigger. Thanks to his falling backward, the shot fired harmlessly over the crowd’s head, but it didn’t matter.
Rocks, bottles, and other projectiles flew out of the crowd toward the soldiers. None found any particular target, but it prompted the lieutenant to start barking orders. In rapid fashion the soldiers still behind the barricade raised their rifles and fired into the air.
The ragged report of gunfire caused the crowd to stop, but only briefly. Another salvo of rocks emerged and the mass of humanity surged forward, sending the front rank of soldiers finally scrambling back over the barricades.
Rossum surveyed the block again. If he could get into the crowd and make it through to the other side, he could slip down an alley. He didn’t know where it went, but it would provide better cover if the troops started shooting. He could feel in his gut that they were going to.
He stepped off the stoop, down the street, and plunged into the crowd. He began to pick his way across, fighting the flow of the human stream like a salmon heading home to spawn. He brushed past two people, touching them, but neither seemed to notice. They were too busy chanting and pushing toward the barricade. Then he ran straight into someone without looking, knocking the other person down.
Rossum stopped and extended a hand to help the young man back up. His eyes went wide when he saw the man’s face. “Moth?”
“Rossum?” Moth said, grinning as he got back to his feet. “You’re one of us? I knew it!”
“Look, you need to get out of here,” Rossum said.
“No way,” Moth said, shaking his head. “We need to stand up to these animals. We have to show them that we won’t be frightened.” Moth’s voice started to waver just a bit, like he was trying to convince himself.
“You should be frightened,” Rossum said, nerves on edge as he listened for the next volley. “They’re going to start killing people.”
Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.
One of the cool things about writing books – a series of books, especially – is that you have characters who grow into the story in ways you never imagined when they first showed up. For the record, I’m not one of those authors who anthropomorphize my characters – I made them, I’ll do with them what I damned well please – but that doesn’t mean small characters who weren’t intended for big things can’t surprise you.
I had that happen in The Water Road books. Part of The Endless Hills, the second book, dealt with the aftermath of the sack of a city called Innisport. When I had the main character tour the devastated city I wanted a local to call her out about what her troops had done there. That character was called Mida and all I intended for her to be in one a single scene in that book. Turns out in the final book, The Bay of Sins, Mida not only came back but had a significant storyline of her own, which I used to explore how the people of that city were trying to process what had happened there. Vigram Rossum turned out to be a similar character for me in the Unari Empire trilogy.
I created him originally to be a foil for Aton Askins, the main character who spends most of the story finding ancient artifacts for a mysterious employer. Rossum was the head of security for the person from whom Aton, um, “liberated” his first artifact. Beyond Rossum trying to track Aton down to get it back, I wasn’t sure he’d play much of a role.
Turns out, I liked the idea of Aton having a foil. Not someone who was working against him, at least directly, but who was sort of in the same line of work. The fraternity of those tracking down ancient artifacts of the gods for wealthy patrons isn’t that large, after all. More than that, I liked the idea of having Aton’s foil know precisely what he was doing. Aton has always kind of worked in a state of what we lawyers call willful ignorance – he’s willing to do the job and make the money and not think too hard about where it all comes from. Rossum knows and he thinks Aton needs to know, too. In other words, I liked the idea of Rossum almost becoming a form of Aton’s conscience, getting under his skin and making him reconsider how he’s making a living.
Rossum wound up hanging around, to the point where he’s one of the many point-of-view characters in Heroes. Not only do we get his view of the events in Cye as the story barrels to a close, we learn some more about how he wound up working for his employer in the first place. Rossum was once an Imperial Marine who got caught up in a bad situation and made it worse by doing the right thing. His future employer plucked him from the brig and gave him a second chance, but now Rossum is having second thoughts. Will his current actions echo his past?
Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.
Here’s the first of two excerpts I’ll be sharing from Heroes of the Empire over this month (for a third, exclusive one, join my mailing list!). In this one, Belwyn shrugs off an old nemesis and is introduced to a new ally.
As Neven approached, Belwyn asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Only that you haven’t signed on yet,” Neven said. She was more pleasant than Belwyn remembered her ever being in Annanais. She was enjoying this. “I realize that’s not likely.”
“The gods returning to Oiwa is more likely.”
Unfazed, Neven said, “I wanted to thank you, before we’re done.”
“Thank me?” Belwyn chuckled. “For what?”
“You did the right thing, much as it surprised me. Not when you ran away from us and not when you put this rabble together, but at least when you realized where all this might be heading, you finally did the right thing.”
“And where is this heading?” Belwyn was generally curious what Neven might know, or just suspect, since she was apparently still in Chakat’s good graces.
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “These loyalty oaths are not coming as quickly as was hoped. The emperor himself is going to relocate to the Imperial offices in Jerrod Square to take them personally. He thought it was going to bring the Empire together, but there is so much unrest out there.”
“That’s because the Empire is pulling apart,” Belwyn said. She was already an outlaw, what additional risk was there in telling Neven what she really thought? “It’s largely Chakat’s fault, of course. If he’d listen to the peoples’ complaints . . .”
Neven put up a hand. “I’m not here to talk politics, Lady. All I’m saying is that the women who stay behind, including yourself of course, will continue to be outlaws. If the emperor feels the need to deal with you more forcefully, he won’t hesitate.”
“That’s the risk we’re willing to take to get the answers we want, the change we need.” Belwyn did her best not to show that she was getting sick to her stomach. Visions of soldiers with more loyalty to Chakat gunning down ranks of marching, chanting women filled her head.
One of Neven’s underlings got her attention, and, without saying any more, she returned to her post.
Belwyn walked back into the woods, telling Valpari to come find her if anything else happened. She went to her tent, where Coleman, Granger, and a few others she didn’t recognize had congregated.
“How goes collaboration with the enemy?” Granger asked with a sarcastic smile.
“I’m giving the women who want to leave the chance to do so without risk,” Belwyn shot back. “I genuinely care for their safety.”
Before Granger could say anything else, Coleman jumped in. “How many are leaving?”
“Some,” Belwyn said, being deliberately vague. “When all is said and done, we’ll still have a sizeable host. And we’ll know that everyone left is completely committed.” She decided to shift the focus of the discussion. “Neven told me that Chakat is going to start taking these oaths in person?”
One of the young men Belwyn didn’t recognize nodded. “He’s moving to Jerrod Square in the next few days.”
“Then it really isn’t going as well as Chakat thought,” Belwyn said. “At least that’s something.”
“It’s promising,” Coleman said, “but it’s leading the vigilance gangs to step up their patrols, recruit new members. Now they can demand papers, require people to show their loyalty cards, and hand out beatings to those who don’t have one.”
“Good gods,” Belwyn said, leaning against the end of the table. “Don’t people have more time to sign them?”
“Of course,” Granger said, “but Chakat isn’t getting the obeisance he wanted, and the vigilance gangs are an extension of his dissatisfaction. He wants more oaths, given more quickly. How better to assure that than to throw in the threat of a random beating?”
Belwyn shook her head. Things were getting worse. “We can’t keep waiting for some perfect situation to move. Are your people ready?”
“Almost,” Coleman said. “Another few days.”
“I’m not sure we have it,” Belwyn said as Brixton ran up, out of breath. “What is it?”
“Someone to see you, says he has an offer,” he said. “He managed to get here from Cye without being seen and avoided the queue out by Neven’s table, all her men.”
Belwyn stood up, scowling. “Another offer? About what, this time?”
Brixton shrugged. “Hagan’s waiting with him near the edge of the camp.”
Belwyn was bone weary from the day. She didn’t want to deal with another distraction, but what choice did she have? “No more than a few days, Coleman. We can’t let things get away from us.” She left without giving him a chance to object.
Brixton led her through the camp, to the opposite edge from the location where Neven’s sign-ups were underway, where the valley met the high hills that helped define the outskirts of the city.
When they arrived, Hagan was standing with a thin man about her age, with prominent ears. No hat.
“Lady Belwyn,” he said, extended a hand. “Or is it just Belwyn these days?”
“Just Belwyn. And you are?”
“Aton Askins,” he said, shaking her hand. “I think we might be able to help each other.”
Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.
I’m very happy to announce that Heroes of the Empire, the final installment of the Unari Empire trilogy will release on June 7 on Kindle and other eBook formats and then in paperback shortly thereafter.
The world is falling apart around Aton Askins. His childhood friend is rotting in a cell for a crime she didn’t commit. There are soldiers in the streets of Cye and an army of angry widows waiting outside the city. His mystery employer might be using him to gather artifacts of the ancient gods to build some kind of weapon. Now he’s been given one last job, one last artifact to find, supposedly on a mythical floating island halfway around the world. He needs to stay in Cye to help his friend, but he needs to finish his work so he has the money to take his family away from the city. Most of all, he needs to keep those he loves safe from what’s coming.
The Widows Army is restless and may be slipping away from Belwyn of Annanais. Stuck outside of Cye, unsure of what to do next, she needs to do something, anything, to make sure the promise she made to these women to find answers about their loved ones doesn’t go unmet. When an unlikely ally presents himself, she uses the opportunity to enter the city and finally find the evidence she needs to show the world the truth of the Port Ambs bombing. All the while, the currents of protestors and revolutionaries are threatening to overtake her.
Lives collide and the fate of an empire hangs in the balance in this thrilling conclusion to the Unari Empire Trilogy.
A few years ago, off the back of reading N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, I wrote about whether stories that involve magic that are set in the “real world” need to have a meaningful impact on that world.
I had started thinking about that issue thanks to an observation by a legal blogger (of all people!) about Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, in which he concluded that:
it therefore strains credulity to believe that powerful sorcerers have been around for centuries, yet have never revealed themselves to normal humans, seized political power, or had any impact on history.
As I said in my post, I’ve wrestled with this in developing (or not) some of my own ideas. If the story is set in our world, but with magic, shouldn’t magic change things?
I was set to thinking about this again after reading R.F. Kuang’s Babel, which is up for a Hugo.
Babel is set in an alternate history version of England (for the most part) of the early Victorian era, just on the verge of the First Opium War in China. The main characters are training as “translators” at Oxford who practice a form of magic whereby they engrave pairs of words on silver bars that are then used to do particular things. Some of them are completely magical – there’s one that explodes someone’s heart, for example, and another that can heal the sick. Most of them, however, merely make things that already work do so more smoothly and efficiently – carriages travel more smoothly, gardens are more pleasurable, factories require fewer employees, etc.
For our purposes, what all this means is that the British Empire is precisely the same thing that it was in our real history – a globe-spanning colossus that exploited its colonial territories and other weaker, developing nations for fun and profit. There’s nothing about the world of Babel, in broad strokes, that is different from our world. Does that matter? Is it a flaw in Kuang’s world building?
At one time I would have said it was, or at least leaned that way, and you can certainly find reviewers on Goodreads who find that to be a major flaw. But I think what Kuang has done is use the fantasy element to crystalize the themes she wanted to talk about that are very real in our world and our history, namely colonialism and its legacy. In Babel the raw silver needed to fuel the magic works almost like spice does in Dune, a purely extractive industry conducted in a faraway place for the benefit of entrenched, moneyed interests back home. Sure, the actual silver trade did that, too, but the magical gloss heightens the inequity of it.
Could Babel have told the same story without the magic? A few specifics would have to change, but in general, sure it could have. It’s a book about a character who at first thinks he’s been plucked from a dead-end life to live a life of learning and privilege who slowly learns what that privilege is based upon and rebels against it. Magic isn’t required for that, but it doesn’t hurt, either. There’s also the possibility, of course, that what Kuang is saying is that whatever resource we’re talking about, including magic, was going to fall into the service of the most wealthy and powerful anyway, which is not wrong.
In my conclusion back in 2020 I suggested that writers are leaving some interesting ideas on the table by not playing out the impacts of their world’s fantastical things on the world as we know it. I still think that’s true, largely, but I’ve come to accept a caveat – that, sometimes, what you’re after isn’t a big world building “what if?” exercise and trying to do so would just take away from the story you’re trying to tell. As usual, the focus should be on what best serves the character and the story, not anybody else’s idea of how world building should be done.
Sometimes the ideas the animate a movie are better than the movie itself.
As with many films of the 1930s-1960s I’ve seen recently, I stumbled into The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on Turner Classic Movies.
Not only that, it was part of a slate of movies programmed by Steven Spielberg, so there was a little intro discussion between he and Ben Mankiewicz about the film. It was the last of the great westerns directed by John Ford (a huge influence on Spielberg, among others) and they talked about how it confronted issues about the transition of the West as a conflict between an older regime built on violence and self-sufficiency to a new order based on the rule of law. As a lawyer, and someone with a degree in history, that sounded like something I should just eat up. Damned if the actual movie didn’t get in the way of that.
The “old” West is represented by none other than John Wayne, whose performance here spawned a million impressions punctuated by the word “pilgrim.” He plays a rancher, Tom Doniphon, who has made a hardscrabble living out of the land and thinks everyone needs to be capable of using a gun to protect themselves (he is, naturally, a crack shot). The “new” West is represented by Jimmy Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer from the east who believes in bringing civilization to the West. They go back and forth about the best way to handle the titular Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), a local brigand who furthers the interests of big cattle ranchers who don’t want the unnamed territory to become a state.
That setup is fine so far as it goes, but Ford doesn’t really do a lot with it in the end. Stoddard’s stagecoach is robbed on its way into town by Valance. When Stoddard complains to the town marshal about it he dodges responsibility by pointing out that it occurred outside of town and therefore outside of his jurisdiction. But we later see Valance do all sorts of criminal things right in the middle of town and not only does the marshal do nothing, Stoddard never demands that he do so. Stoddard never tries to take the job and be the law. Hell, we never actually see him practicing any kind of law in the movie (he does some school teaching, though). No, what does Stoddard do? He pretty quickly gets himself a gun and starts practicing how to shoot.
It’s no great spoiler that Valance winds up on the wrong end of a gun (it’s right there in the title, people), although it’s a little unclear precisely who “the man who shot Liberty Valance” is, in the end. Both Doniphon (from the shadows, we later learn) and Stoddard shot AT him, but it’s unclear who hits him and which shot is the fatal one. Regardless, what is beyond clear is that Stoddard fully joins in the game of dealing with Valance through violence, leaving any real pretense of the law behind. And it’s Stoddard who gets the honor of being that man, even if he doesn’t really want it (which is a really interesting conflict that could have been explored more deeply).
So the movie kind of fizzles in its portray of the “old” versus “new” West, but how is it otherwise? Well, it’s a tale of two movies.
The first, which focuses on the leads – Wayne, Stewart, Marvin, and Vera Miles as the love interest – is pretty good. All those performances are good and the have good scenes together. Marvin, in particular, is really menacing as Valance (and has a young Lee Van Cleef as a sidekick). The love triangle between Stoddard, Doniphon, and Miles’ character is underbaked (Doniphon is building an addition onto his house for her, but she doesn’t have any apparent desire to move in), but, hey.
The other movie is the weirdest feast of overacting I’ve ever seen. There are multiple characters – the Cowardly-Lion-esque town marshal, the drunk town doctor, the (also drunk) newspaper publisher – who perform so broadly that had they wandered off this set onto the one for Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks would have told them to tone it down. If you’ve seen the episode of Futurama where Zoidberg’s uncle directs a “serious” movie but demands that the background actors run around throwing pies at each other, you’ve got the picture. Big ideas can be great drivers of a story, and fiction can be a fantastic way to explore how people grapple with those big ideas. But the idea is not the story. The story is the characters in it, what they do, and why they do it. The biggest and most important idea can be felled by a poorly executed story. That’s what’s the most frightening for us creative types – the big ideas are the easy part, but there’s so much left to do once you’ve hit on one.
A couple of weeks ago John Oliver pointed out that the original version of Mickey Mouse is about to slip into the public domain and out of copyright control. Naturally, he has plans for this, but it’s worth remembering that the last time Steamboat Willie was in danger of passing out of copyright control Congress snapped into action and extended the term for copyright protection. I haven’t seen anything indicating they’re going to do it again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea was at least floated (probably without success, given the current GOP jihad against Disney), particularly given what’s happened to poor Winnie-the-Pooh.
As a writer and musician I’m a fan of copyright. The basic idea is that allowing the producers of art to have a monopoly on its sale and distribution incentivizes the creation of more art. But there’s always been a question of how much copyright is too much and when works should move into the public domain and be free for adaptation by others. The Copyright Act of 1790 established a 14-year copyright term, renewable for another 14 years, but those terms were doubled in the 19th century. Then between 1976 and 1998 (when The Mouse roared) terms ballooned to the current life of the author plus 70 years or 120 years if a it was created by a corporation. So in the brief life of the United States we’ve gone from copyright that expired while the creator was not only still living but probably still creating to a term that runs for decades.
Weird things happen when copyright terms run so long that they outstrip the lives of the work’s creators. Recently there’s been controversy about changes to books by the likes of Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie to better reflect modern sensibilities (I talked a bit about the issue here). What’s interesting is that both authors made such changes in their lifetimes, presumably without much fuss. What makes it seem wrong now is that it’s not the authors making the changes but their current copyright holders, who didn’t create a thing. Without lengthy copyright terms that extend beyond the lives of those authors this wouldn’t be an issue – anybody who wanted to could publish the original versions or whatever bowdlerized versions they wanted.
Thanks to this in-depth video, I recently learned about another problematic case of long-term copyright. Remember “Down Under,” by Men at Work? Particularly the flute riff that repeats several times during the song?
Released in 1981 it was a huge international hit, hitting number one in the US and UK. It wasn’t until 2007 when a TV quiz show noticed that part of the flute part matches almost perfectly the melody of “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gumtree,” a popular Australian song. After the show aired, people called the company that held the copyright to “Kookaburra” about the similarities, resulting in a lawsuit against Men at Work and their record company for infringement. The company won, a result which Colin Hay has suggested helped speed flautist Greg Ham’s depression and death (Ham played the famous riff, but wasn’t actually one of the listed songwriters).
What makes the “Down Under” story so concerning is that this wasn’t a situation of the writer of “Kookaburra” herself, or even her descendants, making the claim, it was a company that bought the rights at auction after her death. It was purely a commercial maneuver and could not have contributed in any way to encouraging the writer to create more art (her being dead, after all). And while the riff has become fairly iconic, it’s hardly essential to the song, providing a little bit of extra flavor in the arrangement.
Questions on the persistence of copyright always bring me back to Spider Robinson’s Hugo-award winning story “Melancholy Elephants.” It’s that rarest of beasts, a sci-fi story about the law. In this case, it’s about a proposed law that would extend copyrights indefinitely, and the widow of a famous composer beseeches a legislator to not pass the bill – even though it would financially benefit her. She makes the point that there are only so many combinations of notes, rhythms and such out there (echolyn’s “Suite for the Everyman” covers this with sections titled “Only Twelve” and “Twelve’s Enough,” respectively) and if they’re all placed off limits for future composers people will eventually stop making new music.
The same is true for stories, whether they’re written in books or told on screens. New writers often worry about sharing ideas for stories, unaware that pretty much no “idea” is new. What makes a story worth writing is what you want to say with it, not what others have already said. Not only has Romeo and Juliet given birth to adaptations as diverse as West Side Story, a ballet, and a Dire Straits song (which produced its own amazing Indigo Girls cover!) – it was based on a history of similar stories dating back centuries. The idea of Romeo and Juliet was not new – Shakespeare’s presentation of it was.
It was Picasso who said “good artists borrow, great artists steal” – and even that wasn’t an original thought. That’s probably a bit flippant, but the core of it is true. Every creative person is the sum of their influences, the things they’ve read, heard, or seen. Placing those things eternally off limits will do more to stifle that kind of creativity than it will to encourage creators to create in the first place. Killing off creative endeavors altogether is probably too high a price to pay for some author’s grandchildren being able to live of their book sales.
As in nearly all things, balance is key. It’s just that I’m not sure we’re particularly well balanced at the moment.
Sure you do! I’m happy to announce that my short story, “The Dragon of the Bailey,” is one of two dozen stories collected in a new anthology, A Flight of Dragons.
You can get your version in either Kindle or paperback.
“The Dragon of the Bailey” was inspired by the ravens at the Tower of London. Legend says that if the ravens leave the tower either the monarchy or the nation will fall. So, naturally, the clip the ravens’ wings! Ideas really can come from anywhere.
JD Byrne 