Do you have any side stories about the characters?
I have a whole side book!
Now, when writing fantasy, it’s traditional to have magical items in your story, and I have a magical book. In my demon kingdom of Eriis, the humans are barely remembered enemies who haven’t been seen in a generation. Rhuun, the demon prince, finds an old book in the back of his family library, and is thrilled by descriptions of humans and the human world—horses! Rain! Birds! And something called chocolate. He studies this book until (he thinks) he understands the human world inside and out. Well, it turns out to be an old-school romance novel called The Claiming of the Duke, and almost everything he thinks he knows about how humans behave is wrong.
I excerpt this novel generously through The Sand Prince, and when I was waiting for edits of the second book (The Heron Prince) to come back, I decided to try to write the whole thing—and I did! The hardest part was taking the very over the top and lurid quotes—which were written in stone as it were, because The Sand Prince had already been published—and turn them into plot. It’s a fairly short and rather dirty book that I’m extremely proud of, and it’s available right here. You’ll learn where Rhuun gets the nickname he uses while visiting the human world, and why he insists on calling Lelet a ‘wench.’ I’d never written a romance novel before and those writers get all my respect—it’s hard! Here’s the very first excerpt:
Let us begin," said the Duke. "Talk to me of this wench. Is she fair? And if she is not, is her father a wealthy man?"
"The family has much land, and the girl is…. young."
The Duke smiled, his teeth straight and white in a face darkened by many long rides on his great horse, Mammoth.
"You may send for them."
-The Claiming of the Duke, pg. 5
Malloy Dos Capeheart, Little Gorda Press (out of print)
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