The Once Upon a Bookshelf website in the US recently posted a blog about Dragons in Western Literature and listed their Top Ten books with dragons.

The Hythrun Chronicles finished up at #9. Wow! And my dragons weren't even real dragons but demon-melds made to look like dragons.

How cool is that?

1. J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit. Originally Published 1937.
2. C.S. Lewis’s The Dawn Treader. Originally Published 1950.
3. Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story. Originally Published 1979.
4. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Fourth book in the Harry Potter series. Originally Published 2000.
5. Obert Skye’s Pillage. Originally Published 2008.
6. Beowulf. Written at some point between the 8th and 11th century.
7. George R. R. Martin’s The Ice Dragon. Originally Published 1980.
8. Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess. Originally Published 1980.
9. Jennifer Fallon’s Hythrun Chronicles. First book in series is Medalon. Originally Published 2004.
10. Shanna Swendson’s Damsel Under Stress. Third book in the Enchanted, Inc series. Originally Published 2007.

That's pretty seriously good company I'm in there....

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One of the first things you need to learn, if you want to survive life as a published author, is that you can't please everyone. Trying to, will make your head explode. Worse, it'll make you write crap.

Writing crap is bad, as a rule.

So... the inevitable fallout of not pleasing everyone in this day and age, is they feel compelled to email you and tell you about it. Trudi Canavan will vouch this this. She often gets weeping emails from angry teenagers threatening her with grevious bodily harm for how she ended her first series.

And occasionally (although not nearly as often as poor Trudi, I am happy to report) I get someone emailing me, telling me I got it wrong, too.

Now, the nice people, take the time to ask why, rather than just blast me for being the scum of the Earth and ruining their entire lives by killing, saving (*enter your own verb here) their favourite character. Who is a figment of my imagination, BTW...

I received such an email yesterday from Grace (Hellooo Grace!), about the ending of the Demon Child trilogy and decided that because it was politely written, and seeemed genuinely concerned, rather than just telling me I'm a horrid evil bitch, I'd answer it.

I then decided to post the answer here, because I do get asked this occasionally and I thought you guys might be interested in the answer. The bold bits are quotes from the email. Don't read on unless you know, or don't mind knowing, how the DCT ends.

*SPOILER ALERT*

The story is mine to tell and end how I wish, and I really don't need to justify it to anybody. If I did, there would have been another chapter on the end explaining it all. LOL

I agree that Loclon deserved it, but by ending the book this way, R'shiel leaves our minds as a vengeful, cruel-hearted monster, just as bad as the Overlord she destroyed. To end it so cold seems inhumane to me and it left me disappointed with the conclusion. I was just wondering if you could respond to this maybe; explain your reason for ending it this way?

The whole point of great power is the isolation it brings with it. R'shiel's entire journey is one of learning you can't have your cake and eat it too. It would be nice to have a happy home life, 2.3 kids and happily ever after, oh, as well as the power to level mountains, but it doesn't work that way. R'shiel is unique, and that was the hard lesson that she had to learn. I was aiming for a logical conclusion.  A happy ending would have seen me hammered by a whole bunch of other people for turning an agent of devastation into Pollyanna.

We were all looking forward to Loclon's demise, I know, but this cruelty of her utter unrelenting to his begging, as a way to finish off the book, it made me doubt the whole trilogy, wondering 'is this seriously how it ended?? The ending was very unsatisfactory to my tastes.

Interesting that you don't mind him dying, just that the suffering was unpalatable, and that it was R'shiel who dealt out the justice:)

With R'shiel being a distant, cold hearted beast...

The Demon Child was always going to be a monster. That's what everybody was afraid of. And the reason Brak got so mad at the gods about what they were doing to R'shiel was their "tempering"— which made her suffer to make her stronger — would inevitably rob her of her humanity. That's what happens to people who suffer the sort of trauma she did. They don't live happily ever after. They go into the therapy for years.

I wanted to make sure people realised there are consequences to lot of things - trauma, rape, torture. It is a particular bugbear of mine that fantasy writers (and both genders are guilty of it) will rape a female character in chapter 5 and by chapter 7 she's over it completely. It doesn't happen like that. It scars you for life and seriously screws you up. To expect any other outcome is naive.

Not to mention that R'Shiel couldn't really possibly do that to Loclon--unless there's a god of the Malik's disease-because it would hurt the Harshini and she doesn't possess the kind of power to Create a disease in someone.

Of course she could do it. In addition to being seriously screwed up by now (see previous answer) R'shiel is the only being alive with the ability to wield the power of all the gods and not be constrained by the Harshini inhibition on violence. She can do and create — or destroy — anything she wants. That's why everybody feared the creation of a Demon Child so much. And the Harshini are immune to disease. It wasn't going to do a thing to them. Besides, Loclon was on the island where the sufferers were quarantined. There was no danger to anybody else.

I mean, you could have even added some snippet at the end of her getting Mikel back or talking to the Goddess of Love or anything other than this?

No. If I ever get around to writing the sequel, Mikel come back. In fact, I quite deliberately left that loophole open for that very reason. I'm just not ready for him yet.

The SFX site has a really interesting blog entry up today about prequels and how bad they can be.

I have to say, I generally agree with that sentiment, even though I've written a prequel series.

The SFX blogger, Steven Gaythorpe, remarks:

In my opinion prequels are worse than sequels because they pervert the narrative journey of a character. The narrative journey is how characters get from the beginning of their story to the end. When you create a story you are supposed to select the most significant and interesting event in a characters life and write about that. So a prequel is just a story the writer didn’t think was interesting enough tell the first time.

This is so true and the reason I picked different main characters for the Wolfblade trilogy to those in the Demon Child trilogy. R'shiel and Tarja's story was told. I could play in the same world, but I had to find some new playmates for the story to have any legs at all.

I probably won't write another prequel series*. The last one just about made my head explode. Besides, having your ending predetermined makes it difficult to sustain the tension of the narrative. In the same way that flashbacks mean you know the characters in peril are going to survive, prequels have an assumed sense of security about them which makes it hard to rattle the reader.

There is a reason, you know (other than me being a wannabe serial killer) that so many peripheral characters who seem important, meet grisly ends in the Wolfblade trilogy.

I had to do something to keep you on your toes... hehehe

The full article is here.

*note the careful use of the word "probably" rather than "never"... As Sean Connery was famous for saying "never say never". LOL

Q1: Will there be a sequel to the Tide Lords?

A1: Not at this stage. Because of the US release schedule, the full Tide Lords series will not be out until 2011 in North America. I can't really do anything until after that date, so I'm not going to think about it for a while.

Q2: Are you dying of cancer?

A2: No

Q3: Will there be a Demon Child sequel?

A3: I used to say "one day" and then changed that to "maybe", but I'm leaning these days toward "probably not". I started writing the Demon Child in 1996. There have been a lot of words since then, and I have visited many other worlds. It's harder than you think to go back.

Mind you, I'm sure, if Tor, Orbit or HarperCollins ask me for a sequel series, I'd be happy to consider it, so you need to harrass them if you want one.

Q4: When will Knights of the Tarot be released?

A4: There is no Knights of the Tarot. This was the working title of The Chaos Crystal. It was changed about 3 years ago, but the message doesn't seem to have filtered through to some online booksellers.

Q5: Are you sure you're not dying of cancer?

A5: Quite sure.

Q6: What's next?

A6: The Rift Runners series. Stay tuned for details. As I predicted earlier, I wrote a synopsis, sent it off and yes, my agent sent it back and told me to fix it.

Q7: Is it true you're dating a movie star?

A7: No. However, now I've started the rumour, let's see how long before it's doing the rounds on the net:)

Assuming of course they haven't already started circulating my obituary... LOL

The DGLA will be presented for the very first time in 2009 for the best Fantasy novel of 2008. The award will be given to a work written in the 'spirit' of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy.

And, they want YOU - the readers who love the genre to VOTE to decide who makes the Short-list!

I'm, of course, hoping you'll vote for Wolfblade, because... well, you're here and presumably you haven't come to visit the JF website because your dentist is away and you need to feel something painful:)

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN UP TO VOTE!
If you become a Member, howevr, the DGLA will send you Bulletins to let you know how the Awards - and the plans for the Award Ceremony - are progressing.

Also, Members can post in the FORUMS, where you can discuss the Nominated books to your heart's content. AND, one lucky Member will be chosen at random to WIN A SIGNED COPY OF ALL THE BOOKS ON THE SHORTLIST!

VOTE HERE!