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The Hero Sagas #1
Rüneglaive: Sword of Heroes excerpt
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming Rüneglaive: Sword of Heroes, Book One of the high fantasy trilogy, The Hero Sagas.
100 pages, ebook
5 people want to read
About the author
Michael Richard Reed McLaughlin
2 books44 followersMichael Reed McLaughlin is a recent graduate of the prestigious Odyssey Writing Workshop. He grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, went to Newport Harbor High and then Del Norte High School, before attending film school from 1993–96, where he shot several short films, including Student Emmy® award-winning sci-fi short
The Fourth Trimester,
as well as a feature length version of that film. Believing that one learns more by doing than by study, he also wrote, directed, shot, edited, and sometimes acted in a scene on video every week as well as watched fifteen classic films outside of class each week.
Just before graduating, he came back to Los Angeles and formed a production company to shoot an independent film. The company was MRM Productions; and the film was Of Love & Betrayal, a simple story he planned on shooting in 16 mm on his own sailboat with some friends from film school. The project snowballed into a 35 mm project shot on a 76' schooner on location in the Bahamas. Filming was quite an adventure. There were several tropical storms, two hurricanes, dealings with drug dealers, DEA agents, two murders, and the usual cast & crew love affairs along the way. What fun!
Michael has penned several feature scripts in addition to Of Love & Betrayal, and has many more in development. He authored a novelization of the film, titled Pieces of Eight: A Story of Sex & Love, Trust & Betrayal. Michael also writes speculative fiction, including Rüneglaive: Sword of Heroes excerpt, Book One of The Hero Sagas trilogy.
Michael has been an avid reader and writer of epic fantasy for as long as he can remember. The first non-picture book he read cover-to-cover was Homer’s The Odyssey, which immediately ignited his imagination and inspired him to start creating myths of his own. He straightway started writing short stories, and even finished his first novel while still in grade school. That’s also when he discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and turned, in his reading and his writing, from Greek mythology to the lore of the Nordic peoples and to high fantasy.
The next great influence on Michael’s writing was Ray Bradbury, whose The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles introduced him to the infinite and limitless worlds of science fiction. He was lucky enough to meet Ray when he was still young; and Ray encouraged him to “keep creating [his] own worlds.”
In the books of The Hero Sagas, Michael set out to envision a world that would be intentionally familiar to fans of traditional high fantasy. After all, he was writing his The Hero Sagas, books because he wanted more adventures of the sort for which Tolkien had so keenly and satisfyingly whetted his appetite. Indeed, he meant for readers of J.R.R. Tolkien, Dennis L. McKiernan, and Terry Brooks to “be able to step into Ĭndrēl and feel reassuringly familiar and yet enjoy that sense of wonder and excitement that comes with discovering something exceptional and new.”
Michael believes, “The amicable reader will find the epic fantasy at play in The Four Reams to be a sort of Shalottian mirror though which might be glimpsed a counterpart to the world first given to us by its true master, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, in whose enormous footsteps we all follow.”
Just before graduating, he came back to Los Angeles and formed a production company to shoot an independent film. The company was MRM Productions; and the film was Of Love & Betrayal, a simple story he planned on shooting in 16 mm on his own sailboat with some friends from film school. The project snowballed into a 35 mm project shot on a 76' schooner on location in the Bahamas. Filming was quite an adventure. There were several tropical storms, two hurricanes, dealings with drug dealers, DEA agents, two murders, and the usual cast & crew love affairs along the way. What fun!
Michael has penned several feature scripts in addition to Of Love & Betrayal, and has many more in development. He authored a novelization of the film, titled Pieces of Eight: A Story of Sex & Love, Trust & Betrayal. Michael also writes speculative fiction, including Rüneglaive: Sword of Heroes excerpt, Book One of The Hero Sagas trilogy.
Michael has been an avid reader and writer of epic fantasy for as long as he can remember. The first non-picture book he read cover-to-cover was Homer’s The Odyssey, which immediately ignited his imagination and inspired him to start creating myths of his own. He straightway started writing short stories, and even finished his first novel while still in grade school. That’s also when he discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and turned, in his reading and his writing, from Greek mythology to the lore of the Nordic peoples and to high fantasy.
The next great influence on Michael’s writing was Ray Bradbury, whose The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles introduced him to the infinite and limitless worlds of science fiction. He was lucky enough to meet Ray when he was still young; and Ray encouraged him to “keep creating [his] own worlds.”
In the books of The Hero Sagas, Michael set out to envision a world that would be intentionally familiar to fans of traditional high fantasy. After all, he was writing his The Hero Sagas, books because he wanted more adventures of the sort for which Tolkien had so keenly and satisfyingly whetted his appetite. Indeed, he meant for readers of J.R.R. Tolkien, Dennis L. McKiernan, and Terry Brooks to “be able to step into Ĭndrēl and feel reassuringly familiar and yet enjoy that sense of wonder and excitement that comes with discovering something exceptional and new.”
Michael believes, “The amicable reader will find the epic fantasy at play in The Four Reams to be a sort of Shalottian mirror though which might be glimpsed a counterpart to the world first given to us by its true master, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, in whose enormous footsteps we all follow.”
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