Victoria Grefer's Blog, page 62

“The Crimson League” FREE on Kindle!!!

For a limited time–Thursday and Friday, May 3-4, “The Crimson League” will be FREE on Kindle for everyone! Over 225 copies have already been downloaded, placing “The Crimson League” in the top 50 of Kindle’s free fantasy downloads. Make sure to order it for NO COST while you have the opportunity! Once you’ve read it, you can even “lend” it to a friend free of charge!!!

Set in Herezoth, a war-torn kingdom with a history of conflict between those born with magic and those without, “The Crimson League” is a story of adventure, grit, and sacrifice. Join Kora Porteg, a girl of humble origins, as she aids a resistance movement fighting to wrest control from a noble-born sorcerer who slew the royal family. Along the way, Kora discovers she is a sorceress herself, as well as the unwitting subject of one of her society’s oldest and often mocked legends. Though she accepts she can have no place in Herezoth after civil war should end, she fights alongside the usurper’s sister, a thief, a scholar, two telekinetic brothers, and other members of the group that calls itself the Crimson League. As their prospects deteriorate and numbers decline, the League has no choice but to make a final stand against its foe and the army that supports him. “The Crimson League” is the first in a series of novels about Herezoth and its magicked inhabitants, as they struggle to make names for themselves, or simply to survive, against prejudice and evil.

Ranler Voldrone

Off limits says who?

SPOILER ALERT: This post betrays some aspects of the plot of “The Crimson League.”

 

Ranler is the Crimson League’s resident thief, and a useful person for them to have around. Any kind of group trying to subsist in an urban setting like the League is doing throughout “The Crimson League” could make use of someone with Ranler’s background and skill set. His last name, Voldrone, is a combination of the French “voler,” which means “to steal,” and the Spanish “ladrón,” which means “thief.” (The feminine version is “ladrona.”) He’s from Yangerton, and had alcoholic parents he deserted at the age of thirteen. He took up with a group of thugs not much older than him. That’s where he got his training. That group always considered him a bit soft, because he was pickier than them about his victims. He refused to steal from people who would suffer a moderate to substantial degree from the loss. His parents drank away most of the money that flowed into the household, so Ranler could easily imagine the devastation he himself would have known had someone robbed his family.

Ranler was arrested a year before Zalski’s coup, and sent to the Yangerton prison, which is actually a converted palace built a hundred years before “The Crimson League” begins. He got out, as the novel references, when Zalski offered amnesty to petty criminals who agreed to join the army. Ranler immediately deserted, and discovered the League soon after: Laskenay and Menikas were just establishing a presence for the League in Yangerton, and he met them when he and they both tried to raid a lightly manned bridge-house for weaponry. (Ranler had to sell the sword and other weapons the army had given him, because they were engraved and would have identified him. He had heard that confiscated arms were sometimes stowed for soldiers’ use at the bridge-house.)

Ranler is gruff. He can be moody, and he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind. Though he avoids violence when he can, he has no qualms about throwing a punch or even killing when he must. Though the League’s founders and members are respectable people by and large, they are not saints. There is always going to be some amount of dirty work involved in running a resistance movement, and Menikas and Laskenay see that the work is done without letting their consciences be bothered. Everyone who helps the League on a regular or semi-regular basis swears, as Kora does, that they understand their lives are forfeit if they betray the resistance in any way. Ranler collects the debts: I imagine there would have been one or two before Kora even stumbles into the League’s path.

One of the most redeeming of Ranler’s qualities is his friendship with Bennie. His insult and disdain at the resistance movement in Bennie’s village sending such a young (and worthless) girl to Menikas turned to concern when she explained they had sent her because she would likely have been found and killed back home, found in a matter of weeks. If going home was not an option for her, he figured someone had to give her some kind of training, so that she’d have at least some slight chance of survival in the city. He took her on as an apprentice, and grew to respect her when she learned quickly, never complained, and followed his direction without question or complaint. Soon he began to think of her as a little sister–and damned be anyone who tries to hurt a little sister!

And today's lesson is....

Ranler always respected Bendelof and Menikas, and had a crush on Kansten from the day he met her, though he conceals it well, and for the most part ignores his feelings for a good two years. He’s attracted to how much of a smart ass Kansten is, and to her independent streak. You can bet, though, when he bashes in Mouser Rone’s head he is thinking of Bennie blinded and locked in the Palace as much as he’s remembering the woman that he loved. Ranler could have handled losing one or the other without breaking as he does when he finally reaches Wheatfield. To lose both at once…. The blow is just too great.

Race in YA Lit: Wake Up & Smell the Coffee-Colored Skin, White Authors!

This is a VERY poignant and witty article about race in young adult fiction. As a Caucasian young adult writer (who, I admit, gives Zacry Porteg’s wife the typical “coffee-colored skin” of Traiglanders in the sequel to “The Crimson League”), this blog post really provides some food for thought.

Race in YA Lit: Wake Up & Smell the Coffee-Colored Skin, White Authors!.

Lanokas and Menikas

SPOILER ALERT: This post is about the background of the League’s two telekinetic brothers. It will reference quite a few facts you might not want to know before you read the book.

Sometimes being royal isn't all you'd expect....

Menikas and Lanokas are the only surviving members of Herezoth’s royal family, the Phinnean line, which had ruled for centuries. (Lanokas remarks at one point that his father was the eighteenth member of the dynasty to rule.) They barely escape from the Crystal Palace with their lives, but they manage to do just that, and immediately start the Crimson League with Laskenay and Neslan.

“Menikas” and “Lanokas,” of course, are not the princes’ real names. Those are rather common names in Herezoth, especially for middle names: something like “Patrick,” “John,” or “Joseph” in the United States. Menikas has the full name of Hune Wilhem Menikas Phinnean, while his younger brother is Rexson Dalen Lanokas Phinnean. Their family crest is basically a warning not to mess with their bloodline: one side portrays a lamb grazing peacefully, while the other depicts a lion with a raised paw, ready to strike, the assumption being because someone did something DUMB to anger it. That lion is always drawn against a deep red background, to symbolize the blood it is not afraid to spill if it must. It’s that bloody background that gives the Crimson League its name: in the story, at least. I decided to name the resistance movement “The Crimson League” mainly because I liked the way it sounded, and I considered it a nice tribute to my alma mater, the University of Alabama, home of the Crimson Tide.

I did not think about this until well after completing a first draft of the novel, but there are some striking similarities between Menikas and Lanokas and the brothers Boromir and Faramir from the Lord of the Rings. The older one is basically a jerk, the younger one much more down to earth. There’s a lot of tension between them. They’re noble-born. It’s amazing I didn’t realize from the beginning how strong that influence was!

When Lanokas talks to Kora about his past, he tells her he enjoyed playing the piano to calm himself down when he still lived in the Palace. That hints of a fair amount of strife behind closed doors, and strife there was, you’d best believe it. Hune and Rexson are two very different people, with distinct interests. As a child, Rexson would go out of his way to mark how different he was from his brother: preferring fencing to archery, for instance, or the piano to the flute (Who would have thought Menikas was  decent flautist?). Forging a separate path from his brother was a defense mechanism Rexson used to deal with the fact that no one, his father especially, paid him as much attention or deemed him as important.Those trolls in the mountains Lanokas swears he had clue existed? He didn’t, though his father clearly had been in contact with them, even in diplomacy with them for years. Guess who the king DID let in on those affairs?

This just about says it all.... Yep.

When Zalski executed his coup, to forget years of established tension and rivalry was no simple task, especially for Rexson. He had spent so long distinguishing his interests from Hune’s, that admitting their interests now fell in line with one another meant accepting that most of the choices he had made up to that point had proved not just worthless, but even damaging. Rexson respected his brother, and sincerely, but through the years they had simply grown too distant to find some way to truly relate to one another, even after the depth of the loss they suffered together. Hune did not begin as a demanding, entitled, and unmoving “miserable excuse for a person,” as Kora calls him. His loss turned him into that, and to be honest, Rexson is partly responsible. If he had not spurned his brother’s early attempts to relate to him after Zalski struck–had gone to Hune upon occasion instead of to Neslan for advice, as Kora suggested–who knows how things might have ended when all was said and done?

What are you thoughts and opinions about the royals? Comment here!

Neslan Dormenor

"It’s a well known fact that what costs the most is esteemed, and should be esteemed the most. If someone achieves eminence in letters, it costs him time, loss of sleep, hunger, nakedness, headaches, indigestion, and other things associated with it. But for one to become a good soldier, it costs him everything it costs a student, but in such a larger degree that there is no comparison possible, because at every step he’s in danger of losing his life." -"Don Quixote" Ch XXXVIII

Neslan Dormenor is “The Crimson League’s” resident scholar. The eldest son of the Duke of Crescenton, whose domains form part of Podrar. I believe Argint Wicker mentions Crescenton once in passing, in speaking of Neslan, in “The Crimson League,” though the region features more prominently in the upcoming sequel. I named Crescenton in tribute to my hometown of New Orleans, the Crescent City. Like New Orleans, I see Crescenton nestled in the only bend in the Podra River in the region of the capital.

Neslan has three younger sisters, the eldest of whom, Kayla, died in childhood from illness. Kayla had the ability to rearrange wood particles, but she was the only magicked member of Neslan’s family. Neslan was always great friends with Lanokas, and was always, I would think, intimidated to some degree by Zalski, who was some years older and extremely assertive even as a child. Laskenay he always looked up to.

My first idea, on envisioning Neslan, was for him and a character named Ranler to be a kind of cooky pair who provided some comic relief, not unlike Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. That intention disintegrated when I realized, one, that I would not be able to pull that off without basically copying Rowling’s characters, and two, that as a noble-born scholar and a thief, Neslan and Ranler would not likely be great chums.

Neslan is far from the best warrior in “The Crimson League.” Menikas, Lanokas, and Ranler are all more skilled with weapons than he, and the adolescent boys are better archers. Neslan, like Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables, is more of a scholar and a poet than a soldier. That said, Neslan can hold his own with a sword, for he received training in the sport of fencing as a Duke’s son. Neslan is, in many ways, my version of the iconic man in the history of Spanish culture who chooses to pursue neither arms nor letters solely, but to excel in both. The greatest example of this stalwart figure from Spanish history is Garcilaso de la Vega.

Garcilaso de la Vega, c. 1501-1536

Garcilaso lived at the beginning of what is referred to as Spain’s Golden Age, and he is responsible for introducing the structural form of the sonnet to the Spanish language, thus revolutionizing Spanish poetry and literature. Though his precise date of birth is unknown, he died around the age of 35 from wounds received in battle, for he was also a soldier.

So, what do you think of Neslan? What passions do you have that equal his love for poetry? Comment below!