Sifriana comes down out of the sky into a camp of knights and pirates and gives them a deadline. Everyone scatters for the tree line, including the men who were arguing about which of them got to kill Chris ten minutes earlier.
It changes the shape of the book. Two kings who have spent years trying to destroy each other end up standing on the same wall, and by the end they bury their dead in the same rows and start talking about a joint defense.
Honest note for parents: this is a war story in its back half. There is battlefield combat, and named characters do not survive it. There is no crude language, no romance, and the violence is not lingered on. Accidental Wizard will blow your socks off. Get it now.
Today I finished writing the third book in the series: Accidental Chessmen. I expect to have my edited draft completed and sent to the publisher by the end of the month. I was slowed down significantly by the the need to play the chess-like game that becomes the gut-wrenching finale to the book and then add an appendix to the book to include the board and rules so that boys could recreate and play the game themselves. I've made no secret of the fact that I used Edgar Rice Burroughs' Chessmen of Mars as inspiration for my story. One of my beta readers has indicated that it is his favorite Accidental Adventure so far because of the influence of the ERB tales he loved as a kid. I couldn't agree more. And yet, it's not an ERB tale; it's merely similarly scented, because it's an adventure book for boys. There's no romance. No Dejah Thoris. Just the powerful fragrance of fear, adventure, courage, growth, and accomplishment. I know I should be talking more about the books that are already out in the series, but I just finished writing this tale today, so my mind is completely submerged in it.
Any Ennio Moricone fans? He created a lot of memorable music, but I think my favorites come from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. There are two pieces that stand out above the rest of the great music from the film: The first is "The Ecstasy of Gold," the excitement of which is heightened in the movie when Tuco runs around the cemetery looking for the grave, running, and running, lashed by the whipping tongues the tempo. The second is "The Trio," during which in the movie, the three men take positions and eye each other and the tension builds as the music inexorably increases in intensity. In the movie it's a long scene that would be painfully boring without that driving music pressing ever forward with the sound growing from a trickle, to a rushing stream, and threatening break into an unstoppable raging river before it backs off to build once again. The music continues to build and back off until finally the piercing trumpet leading the charge penetrates the wall of hesitation and steps aside to usher in the pounding hoofs of the other instruments to reach the anticipated conclusion.
Please take a look at The Chosen of Magic, by Amy Proebstel. It's a romance with a little magic.
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