Michael Eging's Blog: The Silver Horn Echoes and Assorted Other Tales - Posts Tagged "fantasy"

This past week, I was the spotlight author for the Rave Reviews Book Club. I've been hesitant to begin blogging for the singular reason that I've too little time to begin with as I rewrite projects, produce a film and try to participate in raising my children.

But I found the experience with the club and the interactions with fellow writers, interested readers and my own thoughts to be a lot of fun. And besides, marketing is marketing, right? So, please consider this the beginning of my blogging. We'll see where it goes.


Also, I've just released a short story, "What's In A Name?" as part of a collection that I intend to publish over the next year. Tales of the Lost Horizon will go a variety of directions and I hope you'll stick around for the ride!

What's In A Name?: Tales from the Lost Horizon

First star to the right and straight on til morning!

Annwyn's Blood

Annwyn’s Blood has its share of heroes and villains that you recognize as soon as you see them chew up the scenery. However, one character in particular developed to be far more than we imagined when we began this journey. Aldonzo, the pampered prince from Southern Gaul is not your typical heroic character. Yet, as the story develops, he finds strength within himself to carry on following some horrific events. The following is an excerpt from Annwyn’s Blood, highlighting this fish-out-of-water prince.

"Sail to port!"

Aldonzo didn't dare look up from scrubbing the deck. Ever since the previous evening, when he had been dragged aboard this miserable tub, his stomach had been turning in continuous knots. But he didn't dare vomit. He'd seen a very graphic example the previous evening of what could happen if he did.

There had been an old slave aboard who'd suffered badly at the hands of the pirates—battered and bruised, cursed and tormented constantly. The extent of the abuse had been obvious to Aldonzo from the moment he had laid eyes on the wretch. But in the midst of the evening mess the oldster suffered a fit of coughing that ended in a vomit of bright red blood splattered across the Captain’s plate.

Fearful that he suffered from consumption (not to mention outraged at the slave's audacity to spit up on the captain's food) the pirates killed him on the spot before he could infect any others in the crew. So Aldonzo fought down the waves of nausea that washed over him. There was no telling what the pirates might think he could have.

He held no illusions why he, alone out of the entire expedition, had been kept alive. All the others had been merely soldiers. Even Kien, stout, dependable Kien, had been nothing more than another trooper to them. Aldonzo, on the other hand, was different—he was ransom material. He was nobility, from a rich, landed family with ties in both Britain and Gaul. The pirates knew well they could expect a healthy reward for his safe return.

Ha, he thought bitterly. Qualify that ‘safe’ return to mean simply in one workable piece. They beat him thoroughly to find out who he might be, and, much to his disgust and shame, he told them. He'd always imagined that in such a situation he would be filled with iron-willed resolve to oppose his foe, who would have to kill him before anything of use could be revealed. Some hero, he thought ruefully. But he had never imagined reality to be so brutal.

His left hand throbbed in its rough bandage where they had severed his finger to remove his ring.

So it was that when the lookout reported the sail of another ship, Aldonzo just kept his head down, his right hand scrubbing despite the splinters and lye, his left cradled against his chest. He fervently hoped the ship approaching would be one of Cynric's war vessels. But even that hope hung by a thread. The Anglan king possessed little by way of a navy and lacked sufficient skilled sailors to use even what he did have. And even if he had, they seldom ventured this far from land.

He kept at his work, removing the accumulated filth of regular neglect, working his way aft from the stem to the mast and listening to the shouts and orders around him. Yes, it was a trader's vessel and, yes, it attempted to evade this vessel crawling with unkempt reavers. The other captain probably knew this ship for what it was even before it sailed into smelling distance. Slow and cumbersome, the merchant’s ship would be no match for the faster raiders' vessel. All around Aldonzo, the brigands prepared themselves for yet another plunder, yet more death.

From his position by the helm, the first mate shouted orders, and the distance between the ships closed. Aldonzo glanced up. The other ship teemed with passengers—Saxon settlers in search of a new life in Britain. The other sailors hustled women and children below the decks. The crew and male passengers strapped on leather-covered bucklers and hefted weapons, arming for the impending attack.

Aldonzo put his head back down and slowly crept across the deck to the starboard side, away from the other ship. Deck crew cursed and kicked him as they ran past whether he was in the way or not. Others heaved ropes up from the hold and tied on the grappling hooks. Then the brigands clustered so tightly on the port rail that the ship heeled from the weight.

Due to an unfavorable wind, the fleeing ship wallowed a bit, wind spilling from her sail, and the pirates cut through the waves to close the distance. Aldonzo's stomach churned with apprehension. The helmsman appeared not to be as skilled as he had thought, taking an unfavorable approach, but it only prolonged the gut-wrenching anticipation of the inevitable, and Aldonzo’s innards had had about all they could take.

A great shout broke from the pirates as the grappling hooks sailed through the air to the other ship's gunwales. Some caught, some didn't. But enough held to allow the raiders to start hauling the ships together by hand.

The defenders wasted no time hacking at the ropes, but the pirates constantly pitched out more hooks as archers picked off the defenders. Steadily, the ships rocked closer together, and with a great crash and grinding they struck sides. Brigands poured over the bulwarks to the other deck. The Saxons made a fight of it, but Aldonzo, peeking over a coil of rope, clearly saw they would not be the victors of the brutal engagement.

There were only a few experienced seamen on the Saxon ship; most of the rest were only farmers and had no sea legs. Their difficulty in keeping their feet on the pitching deck proved to be fatal. The Saxons briefly rallied near the afterdeck, but the stand was cut short when those pirates occupied with finishing off the Saxons in the fore completed their task and moved rearward to reinforce the aft contingent.

The entire battle lasted only minutes. Then the real killing began.

During the fall semester of 1985, I enrolled in a science fiction and fantasy creative writing class at Brigham Young University. The professor, one “Doc” Smith, required the class to write a new story weekly. Each assignment focused on an element of storytelling—one week focused on character, setting, plot, etc. So each week a crop of tales were submitted by the class that plumbed the various aspects of a short story.

With the arrival of setting week, I found myself wrestling with a variety of settings, but needed them to be the story’s anchor. And what could be more critical to a vampire fantasy tale than the setting? Creepy in my mind equated shadows, misty rain, thunder and lighting, etc. But not in the Hollywood sort of way where lightening cracks at a specified cue to highlight the drama (or lack thereof). Rather, I wanted the setting to become a hurdle to the hero, a young knight on a quest, something to be overcome along with the villain of the tale. Thus the setting was woven into the story not only as an overarching hurdle, but also as a key element during the conflict with the villain.

The short story, One Dark Knight, told the tale of Erik of Birkenshire and his quest to free the princess, fight the good fight and ride off into the sunset. However, in it’s original form, it left open that something wasn’t quite right with the rescued princess—and that something could bite the young knight in the future.

After graduating from Brigham Young, I began graduate school at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a focus in Russian/Byzantine history. It was during this time that I contacted my life long friend and oft collaborator, Steve Arnold, and work on Annwyn’s Blood began. When completed, we shopped the novel to agents, publishing houses and anyone who expressed interest. However, the feedback in the mid-1990s was all very much the same. Thank you for a great read. But who wants yet another vampire novel? We hope you will send your next manuscript to us.

By the early 2000’s, both Steve and I were up to our eyeballs raising families and shifting focus in terms of our writing. Sometime around 2005, I put aside an unfinished fantasy novel to write the feature film screenplay, Song of Roland. Following that, Steve and I collaborated on the story for a WWII thriller screenplay entitled Blood Money. Both scripts launched us into writing a horror script that is currently in development, Feast of St. Nicholas. However, Annwyn’s Blood remained unpublished.

In 2012, while salvaging folders on a failing hard drive, I found an old version of Annwyn’s Blood. It needed a lot of TLC to revise and finalize for publication. Both Steve and I decided that it had remained hidden long enough and that after a polish, we would let readers decide if it was worth continuing on this journey. In late 2013, after many rewrites, professional edits, comments from beta-readers, etc., we turned the manuscript over to Amazon and other online distributors. Nearly 20 years after the first manuscript, the story saw the light of day.

I was recently talking with my daughter who related to me some of my own stories created and written when she was a young child. She has since graduated from college and is now living and working far from home. The time she recalls occurred when my wife and I were still in college. During that time, I was excited by the worlds opened to me through my study of medieval history and English. As a writer, it was one of the most productive periods of my life, writing short stories and poetry that filled late 1980's era hard drives. We traveled from Utah to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland, College Park to study with a preeminent scholar of Byzantine and early Russian history. And all the while, I wrote.

In the evening, I would spin tales for her and her brother of worlds far from our own, populated by lost kings, intrepid elves and paladin knights. Many of those stories sprung from my imagination, others from the pages of Tolkien, Lewis and Alexander. Each character had unique voices and I tried to find those voices, often to their delight. Giants with craggly deep voices, brave heroes with stolid, confident voices, etc. Usually my feeble efforts dissolved into laughter, yet we discovered worlds beyond our own within those pages.

Last night, my son wrestled with an assignment focused on Quixote where the author of an article postulated that changing the author (Cervantes) altered the depth and perspective of the work, even if the words remained exactly the same. I asked him, if you didn't know the author had changed - does it even matter - for the story remains. I postulated that possibly the reader has greater power over the written page by bringing imagination to the effort. The power to speak in different voices, imagine faces and identify unique ticks and place characters in fully developed lands even more fantastical than what the page conveys.

My children still remember stories told to them with my very rudimentary acting abilities. But what I thought to be just a father's attempts had became magical memories to them. They remind me of them as I wrestle with rewrites of rewrites. To them, the hard work was already done. They have imagined the worlds already. It's now upon dad to share them with all of you. Lessons I've learned from my children.

What's In A Name?: Tales from the Lost Horizon

Over the past few weeks, a few posts/reviews of my short story What's In A Name? expressed the sentiment that this short story should be expanded and written as a novel.

Of course, such responses to an epic fantasy short made me think about why I love short stories and chose to wrote this piece as a short, rather than a novel.

I cut my teeth as a kid reading Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock and Ray Bradbury short stories. These shorts were at times epic in nature - full of world building, fantastic situations, monsters, lore, etc. Some were set in far future worlds, others in the more mundane present or realities scattered across the multiverse. The decision to write What's In A Name? as a short story began with the very conception of the tale.

The story started for a college class. The challenge at the time was to create a character in which growth would be seen throughout the short story arc. Vondrall of course became that central character who grew from an unseasoned officer to someone who would inspire his comrades by the end of the short story. The short story format provided a focused palate where he could shine. Thus the nature of the quest, the selection of the company, the journey across the world, etc. really are just background for the growth of the character which occurs in the pages of the short story.

I rewrote the short story extensively over the last year. This time, there was another layer to the short story that developed in a very focused sense. The journey of a young, inexperienced leader who finds faith and light while struggling against ultimate darkness. Again, as a short story, this element becomes a contrast with the character who, by his own acclamation, should have emerged victoriously from the quest.

Short stories are very different than novels. They are intensely polished for story arc, character development and word selection. Each element woven into the story serves a purpose because the length inherently doesn't always provide page space for novel length explorations. What's In A Name? immerses you into a world as ambitious as those contained in Howard's Cimmerian or Moorcock's Eternal Champion shorts. The journey is much more focused than a novel. On purpose. Elements that stand out in the current story may have been lost or muted in a novel. Writing this short piece actually allowed me great freedom to tell Vondrall's tale. Because of the length, I could focus on humor, character interactions that filled in back story and drove the narrative ahead. Then with streamlined construction, I hope the comparison between two lead characters comes into sharp focus by the end of the tale.

I like to think I'm a capable storyteller, able to take the material and write a novel from it. I've done that with Annwyn's Blood, which also began as a brief vampire short story then exploded into a fully developed novel. However, I'm not sure I will do that with this tale. I am very flattered with the desire to expand the story. At present, I'm already sketching a follow-up short story, set in the same world and re-examining the impact of the events chronicled in What's In A Name?

Would the story be better served as a novel? I'll leave you to be the judge of that.

Thank you to everyone who has downloaded and enjoyed this short story. For those of you who haven't read it yet, here is the link!

What's In A Name?

My daughter, who encouraged me to start this, is cheering me on to release another short from Tales of the Lost Horizon so stay tuned. I am excited to share them with you.

While at Awesome Con, and live author events, I have been asked what inspires some of my work.

I have been widely read in science fiction and fantasy since I was a kid growing up on a farm in Ohio. Some of my earliest favorite authors inspired my initial writing style, my topics, and work drew upon Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, and Roger Zelazny. Television, movies, and a love of history fueled my exploration of themes, characters, and situations.

Early on, I had a professor in college, "Doc" Smith, who along with other aspiring authors I interacted with in college, encouraged me through classes and work on the Leading Edge, a science fiction and fantasy magazine published by students at BYU. During this time 1985-1990, much of my short stories and poetry works were produced, including the award winning Lost Spell, Dancing with Demons , the award winning What's in a Name?, etc. This was a very productive period of my life as many of the stories were written as assignments in "Doc" Smith's short story class, as responses to religion and English classes, etc. Tales of the Lost Horizon grew from publishing the stand alone short stories in 2015 as a compilation of these works.

The poetry was also written during this earlier period. For example, Cry of the Hunt was was written to tell a story in poetic form for a college English class.

The most recent piece in the collection, Cast Iron Sights was written in 2020 for my daughter, Gwen. The inspiration to compile these stories also came from Gwen, who wanted to see work by her dad published during a time when we hadn't published anything new since late 2017, even if they were stories and poetry that she grew up remembering from her father sharing them with her. Fortunately, we found the works on both old hard drives and paper copy. We had a masterful editor; and Gwen worked with the artists to produce unique pieces for the compilation. She inspired me with her energy.

Steve and I wrote Annwyn's Blood in the early 1990's based on the short story written in the autumn of 1985 entitled One Dark Knight. That tale grew into a novel, and was shopped into the market place by the mid 1990's. At the time, many of our responses to the piece included commentary on how the vampire genre was over saturated, and yet we saw the 2000s explosion of interest in vampires and undead tales.

Paladin of Shadow Chronicles, which includes Annwyn's Blood, has drawn heavily from historical events, mythology, and imagination. I attended graduate school at the University of Maryland College Park, studying Byzantine and early Slavic history. Both Paladin of Shadow and The Silver Horn Echoes are grounded in this intellectual pursuit of understanding aspects of the late Roman and early medieval periods.

In the 2000s, I began work in writing screenplays. Of course, the story of Roland and his companions became the subject of my first optioned piece simply called Song of Roland. That was followed by Blood Money, in 2008, which grew from a story outline written by Steve and I. We completed Feast of St. Nicholas together in 2012. This was drawn from my love of old horror films, and the area where I grew up in Northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. So the script is steeped in the region, and the community I love so much.

Where do we go from here?

Paladin of Shadow Chronicles will tie together our exploration of the early medieval world in the final installment of that work, due out in 2025. I have begun outlining a new western screenplay entitled Son of Thunder and I intend to revisit the historical fantasy world of Roland. I continue to read primary sources from the period, and have found stories that yet need to be told. Be patient with me. I look forward to sharing them with you.