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Month: July 2023

Review: Dragon’s Son, by M. K. Casperson

Review: Dragon’s Son, by M. K. Casperson

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Dragon’s Son by M. K. Casperson

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Dragon’s Son is a short, suspenseful fantasy novel about a bitter conflict between brothers.

Beotia is a powerful kingdom, which has expanded over the last few generations to rule over many human realms. However, Beotia’s most dreaded enemy is the black dragons who live in the northern mountains. Beotia has long maintained a specialized army of dragon-slayers to defend against this foe, and that army is very much needed.

At the beginning of our story, the king of Beotia is enamored of a mysterious woman, who becomes his mistress and bears him two sons: Villian and Alexis. As the young princes grow up, the king’s only legitimate heir is a weak and unassuming daughter, which encourages their desire for power.

Yet in the end, the conflict that threatens to ruin the kingdom is between the brothers. For their mother was no ordinary woman. She was a dragon in human guise, and she bequeathed to her sons all the ambition, greed, and cruelty of her draconic heritage.

The story that follows is one of conflict between the two brothers, but also of conflict within Alexis himself. Influenced by his young wife, he struggles against the urges derived from his mother’s blood, even though he needs the powers of a dragon to defeat his brother. There’s plenty of suspense in the story, as the reader hopes to find out whether Alexis will overcome both his rival and himself.

Dragon’s Son is a fairly short novel, and the plot moves along at a fast pace. I read almost the entire story in one sitting. I was impressed by Ms. Casperson’s prose style; it was very clean, with almost no distracting copy- or line-editing problems. Viewpoint discipline is very good. The story is written from two different viewpoints (Alexis and his wife Amarea), with strict alternation and each chapter clearly labeled. No risk of getting confused here.

I found a few structural choices a little odd. The first chapter seems to set up a conflict that simply evaporates before it has any significant impact on the story. Meanwhile, the first few chapters from the protagonist’s viewpoint are all epistolary rather than viewpoint narrative. Once the main line of the plot emerges, though, it grabs the reader’s attention very effectively.

One thing that did distract me a little was the presence of historical references that ended up seeming out of place. As someone who’s familiar with Greek and Byzantine history, some character names and setting details seemed to promise that this was a historical fantasy, that certain real-world historical events might make an appearance. That turned out not to be the case, and the story went off in a very different direction than I was expecting. Not a serious issue – it’s probably just a matter of specific inspirations that the author chose not to disguise. Most readers probably won’t be diverted by these.

All in all, a very promising early novel, and a quick and exciting read. I’m interested to see what Ms. Casperson comes up with next. Very highly recommended.

Status Report (25 July 2023)

Status Report (25 July 2023)

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Things are moving more slowly than I’d hoped with respect to getting my basement back into livable and usable condition. Here’s where we are as of this morning:

  • Furniture and almost all of my personal goods, including the bulk of my library, moved out.
  • Foundation repair and installation of a new drainage system and air-quality system complete.
  • Water heater replaced (this wasn’t on the critical path, but the old one was a few years past its warranty date, so better safe than sorry).
  • Replacement drywall hung, holes in ceiling left by plumber during emergency repair patched, everything trimmed and spackled and ready for painting.
  • Walls and ceiling have been painted.

The sticking point is the new carpeting. That wasn’t delivered until yesterday (24 July), and we’re supposed to hear from our sales rep today to schedule installation. The earliest we could get the carpeting done would be tomorrow (26 July), and later in the week would be a safer bet.

The problem is, that almost certainly pushes Moving Day – the day I get back all my furniture, and we recover almost the entirety of my library from the storage pod – into next week.

From a logistical standpoint, that’s not a disaster. I’d almost prefer to have a free day or two between Carpet Day and Moving Day, so we can pre-move a few items and get things set up for the big effort. Even better if there’s a weekend in there, so I can focus on getting my house in order without having to juggle my day job too. Still, pushing all these dates to the right (again) means there’s no time left for creative projects to hit good milestones before the end of the month.

I have managed to get some creative work done in July: some world-building work for the Danassos setting and a few thousand words of new prose for the novel Twice-Crowned. None of that has amounted to enough to roll out to my patrons, though.

Meanwhile, I’ve found it almost impossible to make any forward progress on Architect of Worlds under current conditions. It really needs my full workspace and all my research resources on hand. So if Moving Day isn’t going to be until next week, and it will probably take me one or two days to unpack enough to get back to work on Architect . . . well, that means that July will have been a dead month with respect to that project.

So this is, unfortunately, my best estimate for my patrons and readers: there will be no updates for the month of July, no charged updates for any project and no free update for Architect of Worlds.

We are approaching “back to normal,” and I anticipate being able to get back to all my creative projects on a more typical basis in August. I sincerely hope I get no worse disruption to my home and creative work for a long time . . .

Status Report (15 July 2023)

Status Report (15 July 2023)

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We’re making progress on getting the basement (that is, my living space, home office, and creative headquarters) repaired after last month’s flooding incident. The current state of play:

  • Furniture and almost all of my personal goods, including the bulk of my library, moved out.
  • Foundation repair and installation of a new drainage system and air-quality system complete.
  • Water heater replaced (this wasn’t on the critical path, but the old one was a few years past its warranty date, so better safe than sorry).
  • Replacement drywall hung, holes in ceiling left by plumber during emergency repair patched, everything trimmed and spackled and ready for painting.

We have painters scheduled to come in on 19-20 July, and the new carpeting should be delivered about then too. I’m hoping we can get the new carpet installed sometime between 21 July and 24 July. At which point, we’ll be ready to call the movers to bring back all my furniture and help us move all our goods back into the house.

Current best guess is that I’ll be able to call the move finished and release the storage pod we’re renting by about 26 July. At that point, at least, I’ll have my bed back and will have my workstation set up in its usual place once more. Unpacking all my books and games, and otherwise getting everything back to normal, may take some time beyond that.

Unfortunately, I am not making much progress on Architect of Worlds during this period of disruption. I’ve tried to do a few pages, but my current work area is very cramped and some of the physical materials I’ve been using are hard to deal with at the moment. I’ll keep at it, but I suspect the best time for me to forge ahead with that will be after that 26 July milestone.

Fortunately, there’s a solid weekend at the end of the month. I plan to get some minor creative work (notably my book review for July) out of the way over the next week or so, so I can focus on Architect editing and layout for 3-4 days at the end of the month. I see a good chance that, together with what I managed to knock out before the disaster, I should have enough new layout done to permit a free update for my patrons. Expect to see that by the end of July.

Meanwhile, I’ve been carrying out an interesting experiment with respect to my Danassos setting. I thought of a way to model some specific elements of the setting’s back story, and the results have been very interesting. Some revisions are underway to my “historical timelines” document. I doubt I’ll have a new version of that ready for anyone else to see by the end of July, but it’s already suggesting some new stories for that setting, and I suspect there may be some revisions to the Twice-Crowned draft before I’m finished. More about that as it develops.

Planning for July 2023

Planning for July 2023

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Well, as all my readers are doubtless aware, we had a small disaster at my home: some combination of a groundwater intrusion through the foundation, and a burst pipe, ended up flooding our basement. Since that’s my living quarters, telework location, and creative office . . . yeah, this was a big disruption.

So here’s the critical path for the next few weeks:

  • At the moment I’m standing watch while a crew of emergency movers finish clearing out our basement.
  • Tomorrow is the 4 July holiday, and we’ll probably be finishing up a few items and hauling out a fair amount of trash.
  • We have a crew coming in starting on 5 July to do foundation repair and install a new (and considerably upgraded) drainage system. That’s likely to take up to two weeks, so figure about 19 July to get that done.
  • We plan to take the opportunity to replace the water heater. May as well eliminate one possible cause for another water-based disaster in the future. Not likely to take more than a day.
  • Then it’s a matter of patching, priming, and painting drywall and replacing the entire carpet. Not likely to take more than a couple days, if we can coordinate the work efficiently.

Best guess, in the last full week in July I’ll be able to call the movers to bring everything back and help us unload the POD in which my entire personal library is now sitting. Of course, then I’ll be faced with the task of unpacking everything . . .

I do have my computer set up in the living room, so I expect to be able to make some progress on the Architect of Worlds layout, do a book review for July as usual, and maybe push a few other items forward. In particular, I suspect I will be able to release a free update for Architect late this month for my patrons.

Circumstances are not exactly conducive to major progress, though, so (unlike most months) I’m not going to set out any specific milestones for July. Look for a Status Report or two as the month moves along.

Echoes

Echoes

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While I continue rooting through my basement, boxing up the last scraps of small items I don’t want to discard, I’m coming across some interesting items.

Back in the 1995-2005 timeframe, I kept many handwritten notes in small notebooks. At the time a lot of my creative thinking happened at the office, or in other places where I didn’t have access to my computer or the Internet, so handwritten notes were very useful. Apparently I still have all of those notebooks, salted away on low shelves or in boxes that haven’t been opened in many years; very few of these got water-damaged in the recent disaster. So, for example, just today I found:

  • An extensive set of notes titled “Life after Steve Jackson Games,” in which I started planning an independent creative career. Most of that plan doesn’t seem to have survived contact with reality, but a few of its features do seem to have been implemented.
  • Huge piles of notes from when I was helping to develop setting material for GURPS Traveller, including the Interstellar Wars setting. More piles of notes that eventually went into Transhuman Space.
  • My own version of the Aldebaran Sector for Traveller, along with a contract (never completed) to write a GURPS Traveller sourcebook titled Grand Frontiers.
  • Notes and hardcopy of the rules for the Game of Empire system I developed for realm-level play in Traveller. This is the game that I refereed for a bunch of GURPS Traveller fans about 2000, developing a ton of background information (including months’ worth of Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society news items) for the Solomani Rim.
  • Notes for a new generic RPG system. Apparently I was already thinking in terms of developing my own rules mechanics so as to publish game material without running into licensing issues. Probably never going to be developed now, but still interesting.
  • Notes for a realm-management game set in Bronze Age Greece. I think this did get deployed in a GURPS campaign I was running back in the day, although one of my players reacted so badly to the system in its first session that the campaign disbanded almost immediately afterward.
  • Extensive notes for at least three genre settings. One these eventually gave rise to my first complete original novel (the unpublishable one). Another looks very much like an early version of my Human Destiny space opera setting. A third was a fantasy setting I had forgotten about entirely and might now think about revisiting.
  • Extensive musings on philosophy and theology. I’m almost afraid to re-read these in detail. I’m a cheerful solitary regarding such matters, so it doesn’t concern me that my ideas aren’t in lockstep with any extant school of thought. Still, I suspect the me of 2023 might find the me of circa 2000 kind of hard to take.

Quite the treasure trove. Hard to say whether any of it will ever see the light of day again – it’s not as if I don’t have enough creative work to do already – but it’s still interesting reading. All of it’s going in boxes to be preserved.