Happy Book Birthday to me!

Edge of Dreams has officially been born. I’m totally excited and yet absolutely panicked that nobody will like it. So pretty much, all is normal.

I have been thinking about what I should talk about on the day of book birth. You know, in childbirth, people just coo over the baby and don’t expect much from the mom. I can’t really set out party favors and streamers and serve cake. That’s seems sort of rude when nobody is nearby to attend. That leaves me to just babble on in interesting and hopefully entertaining ways to possibly whet your appetite.

I’m thinking I want to talk to you about Diamond City and what makes it special. First of all, it’s built on a prehistoric volcanic caldera. It’s such an old and deep volcano, that there are diamonds inside it. I love that setting. Just the idea of an enormous treasure place. Maybe it’s the fact that I love rocks and I want to learn to rockhound my own. I go scouring estate sales and riverbeds and the coast looking for treasures. So Diamond City is dear to my heart. I wish I had a place like that that was full of such treasure to dig in.

Under the caldera are ley lines of great power. I love the way magic becomes organic to the place. Some are given magic talents and some aren’t. What’s fun is how silly some of the talents are. I haven’t thought of all of them yet, but some are very limited. I should have you give me some ideas on useless magical talents. Anybody? Like maybe speeding up broccoli cooking on the stove? Or the ability to summon slugs.

We learn some cool stuff in this book about the area, that would be terrifically spoilerific, so I’ll not talk about those. I like the way there’s a diamond dole. That everybody makes a base amount from the diamond mines–sort of like the way people get money from oil in Alaska. It helps people in Diamond City afford to live there, for one. And also keeps people happier living there.

I’ve figured out some new stuff for the third book, or maybe the fourth, that I can’t mention here, but are really cool things about the Tyet factions and how that works. I’ll be looking at the larger world beyond Diamond City, and maybe even traveling to some other places.

There’s a lot of wealth in Diamond City–from diamonds, from illegal activities, and from legal activities. I love the idea of digging into a society that has a lot of money, some have magic, some don’t, and yet people aren’t necessarily happy. There’s so much fear and corruption in the culture that it’s impossible to ever feel truly safe. That’s a truth of many people all over the world historically and in the present, and I wanted to explore that.

I wanted mystery and that noir feel of the world. I may not be a hugely noirish storyteller, but the world has some of that shape and color. It’s got that kind of dirt and edginess.

I like romance. On top of that, I think people are driven by those sorts of feelings to do many things. Jealousy, lust, love, pride–all those sorts of things. So there’s romance. It’s not easy, and there will probably be more (I’m not sure between which characters yet and I’m not sure when, but again, romance/sex is a part of life).

I’m also digging into Riley’s past and you’re going to get to meet some more of her family. I’m not going to say anymore than that yet.

Diamond City has great beauty and great ugliness and a lot of secrets. These are things I plan to keep exploring.

 

One Comment

  • Denisetwin

    OOO sounds so cool. The talent thing kinda reminds me of Xanth, with some magical talents being useless or only useful in very specific instances, like one story centered around a character whose ability was to conjure rotten fruit Of course the Xanth ones are a LOT of puns! So trying to stay away from any Xanth ones (I read the books a long time ago) what about ability to change your eye color? Ability to make your fingernails/hair grow faster, ability to turn bread into rock, ability to age yourself, ability to wither vegetation, that’s all I can think of fast!

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