Lord Timson is one of the defining characters of Facets of Fantasy. He gives “Millhaven Castle” its slightly-dippy, humorous tone, and he puts the other stories into a framework. Facets should be viewed as a complete story told in five chunks, instead of a set of unrelated stories. And this means Lord Timson’s mildly funny effort to invite random villagers to a dance in the hopes of finding ONE (Alyce, of course) because she might threaten his throne actually has reference to the other four stories as well.

When I wrote “Alyce,” as a remake of Millhaven Castle, Lord Timson was of course there and his plot about inviting-Alyce-for-a-silly-reason was reiterated. But King Felipe, although funny, isn’t quite the same. It’s Lord Timson’s role within Facets that gives him importance—without the addition of other stories around him, King Felipe has a different meaning. In The Birthday Present & Millhaven Castle, a shorter book I published before Facets of Fantasy, the same situation occurs—just in a nutshell. "Millhaven Castle" is joined to a very different story, Dystopian-sci-fi, and when that happens Lord Timson comes into his own.

In short, Lord Timson ties the books he is in together. He appears in the last story and culminates what we’ve learned along the way from a similar character in previous stories. For instance in Facets, Isadore Halogen; the Dragonak; Lord Andre; and King Thazan all have a shared interest in a shady way their family gets and keeps power, is very angsty and secretive, and has unexplained interest in other characters that gives away how anxious he is. But when Lord Timson comes along, it suddenly takes a light tone. It’s not viewed as at all dramatic or threatening to anyone. It’s just . . . just an imposition on other people’s time.

Which is also funny, because Lord Timson is a particularly useful villain. I’m sure he’d be quite disappointed to know that. 
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And there will be more updates.

Since three of my sci-fi adventure books are hitting virtual bookshelves, I’ll switch gears and do another “Not Quite the Hero” post. This time the focus is the vintage-era drama Bellevere House and Horace Carter. Anyone familiar with Jane Austen at all knows this character is based on Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park. (After all, the first letters of their names are the same!)

Everyone loves the drive Henry brings to the plot and I really enjoyed turning him into Horace Carter. Horace was just a great person to write about, because he’s so entertaining. Like Henry, he’s the sort of type you love to see in a book—debonair, a little bad-boy, perhaps quite flawed, but ultimately has a good heart. I’m not sure that person is quite realistic, but he’s what makes novels so great. I wanted to give him and Maria a happy ending because I just couldn’t stand for him to be sad at the end—but of course he shouldn’t end up with Fanny/Faye.

Besides, Horace deserves some gratitude for all that he offers the story. He’s a perfect side character and almost embodies the guy who just missed being the hero. But without him the book would almost fall apart and would be a good deal less fun. Sometimes if we look at someone’s flaws too much—even if those flaws are real—we can overlook their good qualities and we shouldn’t. There’s more to almost everyone than meets the eye.

And there will be more updates.

The Chronicles of Palladia is something I’m very excited about going forward. Finding a good story to tell is about finding a need that other authors aren’t meeting. No group of authors can fully meet the demand from everyone, no matter how talented those authors are. So there must be a story out there that is being underrepresented.

At first I didn’t notice Palladia much and when I did, the thoughts quickly faded off into lack of interest. The whole idea began as a simple short story in the Facets of Fantasy collection and even after I expanded it into a longer book I felt this book, City of the Invaders, would quickly disappear. When I changed an old fake-history rom-com into the Palladia world (Consuela), I of course thought, “where is this going?” so I talked a little bit last year about a possible series. But City of the Invaders just couldn’t hold my attention and I decided a series wouldn’t be practical or interesting.

But then, while my designer was working on a new cover for the very new Victoria: A Tale of Spain, I realized I wanted one for Invaders too. And when it popped out, I was surprised. It didn’t look like I expected. I’m not one of those book-cover jerks, but maybe I’d been staring at that old cover so long I hadn’t noticed the story developing beneath it. Palladia could perhaps be a science fiction world that wasn’t like the others on the market—something people might need because it was different.

So I’m going to pull the two drifting book ideas I already have out into the Palladia world. One of them into a third Chronicles of Palladia story and another into a longer, standalone novel using the Palladia world. There is now a website page for the Palladia WIP.

And there will be more updates.