After escaping the dragon's attack on the Sorceress, Court rows Chris and Kenny through a rough surf landing on a hidden stretch of beach - the only safe place he can find on a coastline he knows is dangerous. It's a pure survival sequence: no magic, no easy way out, just a grown man rowing hard and two boys holding on. And when they finally make it ashore, Court delivers the bad news - they've landed on Cannibal Island.

Accidental Pirates - on sale this month.

The writing goes on with the relentless, pounding rhythm of a steam engine. I admit that's entirely untrue. What has happened is that I completed the final edits for Accidental Wizard, the second book in the Accidental Adventures Series. Book One, of course, being, mentioned above. As long as I'm sharing images, let me show you a unique character from Accidental Wizard. It all starts when the boys go on a hike with Grandpa. Things go off the rails of expectation rather abruptly. This is one of the characters the boys meet soon after leaving the familiar world behind: Sliven Quike.

He's the court jester to King Brand and Queen Lenora (background right). Counselor Shadrik can be seen on the left. Sliven talks in riddles and rhyme, making things interesting for the boys as they try to figure out what's going on in the strange, post-Arthur-and-Merlin medieval world.

Accidental Wizard will be available next month, so make sure you get Accidental Pirates now while it's discounted. Now that I've completed the editing for AW, I can resume writing on book three, which I'm calling Accidental Chessmen--we'll see if the publisher wants to keep that title or not, but I think they will, assuming they're willing to publish. I'm on chapter 17 or 18. My skirmish team is going over the first half and at least one of them thinks this third adventure is even more compelling than the first two.

Here's a couple blokes the boys meet in book three:

In my reading, I've finished the Prometheus Award winning A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce. I'm still reading Colt Ostergaard, by Rick Cutler, and Bonaparte in Egypt, by J. Christopher Herold. I'm enjoying them all and highly recommend them.

In audio books, I've enjoyed some Edgar Allan Poe short stories. The narrator is great, but I think I could do "The Telltale Heart" better -- at least that's what I thought as I did my own dramatic repetition of the narration as I listened. In fact, I seem to have some memory of doing a dramatic reading of a portion of that story in high school--maybe for senior literature with Mrs. Goodwin.

In music, ELO and The Beatles show up as the playlists for this week. After watching a documentary type show about Journey after a day at a professional conference this week, I noticed that I don't have any digital music from that band. I won't stop believing that I need at least a few Journey tunes for my playlists. I should be able to get and play them any I way I want it, and plan to do so faithfully.

"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother." -- Mark Twain

Awesome finds in Kindle Unlimited for Sci-fi and Fantasy.

Free reads in Fantastic Sci-fi and Fantasy.

They're literally giving these books away.

Some of you may be too young to appreciate the closing memes today: