The Prologue to The Adventures of Braxton Revere

Aw, it's that time all of us writers love, when you get to share an excerpt from your novel, hoping to entice readers to give your work a shot. But where to begin? I spent a lot of time thinking about it, desperately searching for that one place where I had written something so clever that masses of people would go running to their computers to load up Amazon and find my book in order to devour the rest. After some time searching, it became clear that it was best to just start at the beginning.

Genius.

Without further ado, here is the prologue to The Adventures of Braxton Revere. The story is told from Braxton's perspective; the prologue is to bring you in to his world.

Prologue

When Marianne finally found him, frightened and alone, his face painted in tears and grime, he came running and buried his head into her small frame. All she could do was hold him as he sobbed out the awful news: his father was dead, killed at the hands of Ralugard. She could hardly believe it. The famous vampire-killing Revere family was reduced to this boy, Braxton Revere. Special, and certainly Revere blood, but a boy all the same. The burden now fell on her to not only slay this demon, but to train little Braxton. It was a grave task; how could she succeed where the great Fenton Revere had failed?
  

Before the thought could overtake her further, young Braxton choked back tears and his story continued. Special? A Revere? Indeed he was, for he went on to describe how he rose up from his grief, driven by a surge of anger, and seized the mantle of his heirs before him by thrusting a stake through the black heart of his father’s killer. Once again the plots of Ralugard were laid to ruin, another chapter ended in his long saga with the Reveres.

It was an astonishing tale, and Marianne resisted the urge to scold him when it was finished, for following this display of great courage, Braxton had erred grievously. It was not his fault. He was a boy, after all. How was he to remember, amongst such unspeakable tragedy, that the body of the vampire was to be secured, and kept safe from enemies? That ultimately, to fulfill the family destiny, they must forever remove the head of the snake by destroying the vampire’s body in the proper way: through fire. To do so would prevent Ralugard from re-emerging the way he always had before, returning when least expected in the fashion of droughts, earthquakes, and other such pestilences that tormented mankind.

Though she knew they would be too late, with all haste Marianne and Braxton returned to the sight of the tragedy. When they arrived, the missing corpse confirmed what she already knew. The boy took no notice, buried in grief as he was, unable to gaze upon anything but the fallen frame of his father. 

Marianne moved to console him, though in truth she could use comfort herself. She knew all too well what the missing corpse meant.

Someday, somehow, Ralugard would rise again.

It would fall upon her, and this boy, to stop him when he did.

Find out what happens next in The Adventures of Braxton Revere, releasing May 29th on EAB Publishing!

A Sequel?

Since the big, epic, life-changing announcement of a long-awaited second novel releasing this summer--no, not from Harper Lee, my second novel, The Adventures of Braxton Revere--I've heard one question over and over: why isn't this a sequel to your first book, On the Backs of Dragons? OK, I've only heard it 5 or 6 times, but still, I have to admit that the question has somewhat surprised me. Yes, some people claimed they enjoyed OTBOD, as I call it. But I often have a tough time receiving and believing praise. I've always been that way. I try to be harder on myself than the rest of the world will be--it's good practice. I do love to hear compliments about the book, yet still I struggle, in part because I know others that couldn't even finish it. I try not to take it personal--we all have different tastes. Some people like Star Wars, others Star Trek, and then there are freaks like me who can enjoy both. 

That said, it seems clear that the people who liked OTBOD have impeccable judgment. Those that didn't like it are most likely the type of people that like Nickelback and getting parking tickets. Not much you can do about them.

As to the question: why isn't this a sequel? Well, it just isn't. There are many reasons people sit down to write a novel, but for most I believe the overriding one is quite simple: they have a story to tell. That doesn't mean I don't have a sequel story to tell. I do. I even have a rough draft, and while it is very rough (going from a rough draft to a novel you are happy to release is a long road), I am very pleased with it. I want to tell that story. Maybe some day.

But not now. No, right now I wanted to tell this story, about a guy who was willing to risk his neck to save those who had spent their lives harassing him. A story about a guy who would want to tell that story himself, which is why it was written in first person. I'm really excited to tell that story.

Someday, maybe I'll get to tell more of the story of Caroline, Jonas, Mouse, Chupwah, Jomey, Akari, Eston, and the rest. But not yet.

What I've Been Working On

For those who don't know, November is National Novel Writing Month. I've never participated before, but since I happened to have the week off to start November and was getting ready to bang out something anyway, I decided to jump in feet first and give it a shot.

The basic idea behind it is to get 50,000 words by the end of the month. Doesn't matter how you do it, just do it. I think this is a great exercise even when it's not National Novel Writing Month. No matter how hard you try, I'm fairly certain that for the bulk of us wanna-be writers, the first draft is going to be terrible. So there's no sense in lingering on each and every word, because either way, it will probably stink. Sorry, but it will. Bang it out, then go back to it later.

I'm far from a veteran, but what I've noticed is that there is only so much you can outline and plan before writing. I think it's good to have some major concepts, clever ideas, characters, etc. queued up and ready--certainly do what you can beforehand, but it seems to have its limits. At least, my imagination is only capable of doing so much. But when you actually get into writing, ideas will appear, characters can materialize, and plot points can tie together. Or they can fail spectacularly. Either way, the work has to be done, and banging out whether it be November or February seems to work best.

So here is what I have been up to, writing-wise. I finished a couple of drafts on a little vampire hunting novel titled Adventures of Braxton Revere and recently received back some edits from a very fine young editor. I'm looking forward to digging into those, though it will be hard work to bring this idea up to snuff.

I also received word that a short story I wrote, titled Jim, will be published in the winter edition of a new literary journal titled Midnight Circus. I'm excited about this for many reasons, obviously. Foremost of which, I'm excited because it is my attempt to pay tribute to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, my favorite novel. The story is a second person narrative following Jim on his escape from slavery. I recently reread the book, as I am wont to do, and I was really struck by the idea that Jim's daughter, who is deaf and can't read because it is forbidden by slaves, has to somehow be told that her father is gone. Heartbreaking. I'm excited to share it with the world.

Lastly, the project I'm tackling for November is a sequel to On the Backs of Dragons. I had a lot of ideas for a sequel, but was having trouble weaving them together. But the combination finally spun in place and I've been having a blast revisiting that world. It's been fun visiting a world I've already created rather than building from scratch this time around. And I hope people who enjoyed the first one will be excited to see what Caroline, Mouse, Jonas, Akari, Chupwah, Eston, Maldazor, Cyril, Jomey, Matthias, Fritz, Tod, Drake, Grayson, and many others have been up to. A lot of it has been quite a surprise to me! So far, the part I have enjoyed the most was revisiting a couple of very minor characters that appeared only briefly--if you've ever wondered what happens to the nameless Storm Troopers or SPECTRE henchman after their failure, you might enjoy it, too.

One other thing: make sure you check out my short story Ellen and Helen below. I didn't get much feedback on it, so it's either terrible or people didn't read it--or both! Regardless, I had fun doing it.