DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER excerpt

Now 70,000 words into DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER.

Let’s have a brief, spoiler-free excerpt.

The character of Dietmar was inspired by recent versions of Alfred from the Batman movies. Like, originally, Alfred was basically Batman’s eccentric English butler who brought him tea and made occasional deadpan remarks. In recent versions of Batman, Alfred has evolved from a butler to a former special-operations officer who runs Batman’s logistics from behind the scenes and is an expert in a dozen different fields from cybersecurity to nuclear engineering. Like, if Batman dies, this version of Alfred could probably secretly run an urban insurgency to take down whoever was responsible for Batman’s death, and no one would be the wiser.

Anyway, since Gareth and his friends were young, I thought it would be a good choice to include an older, wiser sidekick, and I think the dynamic has worked out pretty well. Though Dietmar would get along pretty well with the Michael Caine version of Alfred.

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“I daresay,” said Gareth, and a ghost of a smile went over Dietmar’s face. “Well, let’s cast the dice one more time.”

“We shall make a burglar of you yet, sir,” said Dietmar.

“You can be the one to explain that my mother.”

-JM