The Warlock’s Army

That’s the tentative title of my latest masterpiece. I’ve settled into my summer routines and the work is going well. The setting is a fun one, a large lake with giant crawdads living in the depths. The characters are developing, and the plot is forking off in all sorts of neat ways.

Like a lot of my stories, the focus here is on family. It’s a big family, arbitrarily divided by its patriarch, the warlock Revel Breed. He kept all the boys to train them as fighters, but sent all the girls away to live with adopted families. Breed is an outsized figure, wealthy and with magical powers. With his wealth and reputation, he controls Revelary Lake and the small towns around it. Everyone, from the town elders to the youngest child, is terrified of his moods. Breed can be incredibly generous, or paranoid, or caught in a trance. Creating this character without making him a cartoonish figure is one of my challenges for this book.

The other challenge is with the girls Breed gave away. Witches and warlocks are visibly different from other people. Although Breed persuaded different families to take the girls in, not all of them are open to this witchery thing. Some view their witch daughters as valued assets, while others try to make the girls suppress their magic. Yet each set of parents is doing their best to be a good parent.

On the boys’ side of things, the oldest son struggles with his identity, too. With a dominating and mercurial father, he’s the one the younger boys look to as their leader. Breed considered the girls so unimportant that he never told his sons that they had sisters. When they find out, they are driven to locate the girls — but without angering their mercurial father.

There are many miles to go, or perhaps I should say, many pages to write. But it should be an interesting voyage around Revelary Lake!

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