(Novel) The Dragons Eye Diptych - published 2017

There is gold at the end of some rainbows. Gold beyond imaginings.

This is a story about dragons and aelfs, why you should not believe everything you hear, and the value of friends. 

The Dragons Eye Diptych

A proofed collection of the Dragon Eye stories has now been finalised and will be published shortly. The diptych contains Volume One (the original Braided Tale) and Volume Two (the Eye of the Storm), and will include maps, drawings from the Canberra artist Indya.

For fun (and to learn how books are constructed) I am binding and placing in hardback the proofed versions.

I have combined the original stories into a single book:
The Dragons Eye Diptych

I have tentatively decided to build a second diptych:
The Black Dragon Diptych
Volume 3: The Shape (est 2017)
Volume 4: Running (est 2018)

In the meantime, I have built a hard back out of the (loose leaf) final proof.

(Novel) The Dragons Eye Diptych, Volume Two (Eye of the Storm)

Some chase the gold at the end of rainbows. Gold beyond imaginings and dragons.

But, you cannot kill a dragon. You cannot resist the touch of a dragon's smile, eyes or words. You should resist it with every ounce of your being.  But in the end, all you can do is not become one.

This story was written in the G+ stream, a strong collaborative space and the best place in the world to write.The original story was told to me as a child by Catherine Victoria Edmonstone. It is now a published novel.

Aelf Beacon

Artwork for the  beacon used to attract the Black Dragon in the Dragons Eye series.

Characterization - (Crest) Pau, Te-Ulf, Te-Unt, Cascade, An-Ulf, An-Unt, An-Ymt, Finch, Mist

This is a characterisation post about the Dragons Eye story line  briefly outlining some of the Crest characters.

Characterization: Terrorfar

We live in a wonderful time, now assured that near and far stars have world orbiting them, some with worlds orbiting within a habitable zone. Within tantalizing reach is the Centauri System consisting of multiple stars locked together, and at the time of writing at least 2 planets circulating one of the small suns, Alpha Centauri B.

So You want to play with magic?

Couldnt resist. This photo might have been slightly digitally altered.  
Image: Tiger with Excíte of Thaurissan.

Eye of the Storm

Storm and Waylander - c Indya 2015

Characterization - (Wraiths) Belle, Wander, Growl

This is a post about the Dragons Eye story line briefly outlining some of the wraith characters.

Characterization - (Humans) Bob, Kathy, Storm

This is a post about the story line briefly outlining some of the human characters.

Characterization - Dragon-kin

This is a post about the story line briefly outlining some of the dragons.

In the universe of this story, nine life-bearing worlds are connected and share common genetic backgrounds. While each world has distinct flora and fauna, and intelligence, a common thread exists between all.

Dragons Eye - Attribution within G+

This is a short post to thank all of you for helping me complete writing the story I started out back in mid February.

When I started, I had an old story from my great aunt in mind. It was a simple story, half-remembered, with one or two twists. Expanding it has embellished it beyond all recognition, and for that I blame you all.

Visualization: Gliese 710, Farsigh and Heterotopia

This is a post about the Dragons Eye story line briefly outlining star system Gleise 710.

I have characterized Gliese 710 as consisting of a small dim star with a planetary system including a large ringed gas giant - called Farsigh.  Around Farsigh is a series of large moons, including a water-world, unnamed in the story, but which I call Heterotopia in my drafts.  

Characterisation - Dark Aelfs

This is a post about the Dragons Eye story line briefly outlining some of the aelf characters.

“And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.”
― Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

A little while ago I spent a little time on this photograph for a friend who is undergoing cancer treatment, and who knows the little aelf, Teathyme .

Dragons Eye: Visualising the Yellow Dragon Lair

The lair is loosely based on Marble Arch, a remote location in the Duea Wilderness.  A small creek has caved a cave system, with one large chamber created by a roof collapse.

The location itself is stunning - the creek full of tree ferns.

Dragons Eye - Timeline

In a yarn, a story of the bush told around a fire, it is common for there to be many voices. One voice may start the story, telling what the person knows. Others may take over and finish the story. While others may question and probe the story with “what ifs” and “what happened before”.

This story is told that way – with the voice changing. Initially, I start with two main voices, Pete and Anthem. To emphasise the personal point of view, their names are not spoken until late in the work. Towards the end of the story, other voices emerge, particularly Kathy.

Like the real world, none of the voices speak with knowledge of the entirety. To find out what is going on, every voice must be heard, but even then, not all will be revealed. In this sense, the yarn is a puzzle, and the interaction of voices the key to resolving it. 

The below timeline - from earliest to latest - may help place the story and voices into context.

Characterization - You (Anthem)

This is a post about the  Dragons Eye story line.

The story is told from a point of view - the second third roughly being from the point of view of someone originally referred to as 'You'. 'You', a female named 'Anthem', lives on the other side of the world from Australia and New Zealand.

In this story Anthem is the hero.

Anthem is not a common girl's name - a search suggests that 14 children were given this name last year. I chose the name because I wanted something that was unique but immediately familiar. The name has both military and religious undertones - but in common culture is fast attracting a meaning akin to a thematic anchor - someone you can trust to not move from base values.

I conceive of Anthem in human form as being competent, fast thinking and very, very fast. In an interview with Weasel she is able to recover Pete's phone through slight of hand. She outmaneuvers the Blue Dragon without raising a sweat. She sky-surfs at back of the Sky-Yacht. I conceive of her as willing to live in the moment, and to enjoy a sunset. In this regard her character and voice is an amalgam of people in the G+ stream who have interacted with the story (and other posts), from her perspective.

In Dragon form the aelvish call her the Weaver. I conceive of her as being very dangerous - drawn to the possibility of retribution and the violent exercise of dragon powers. The aelf Solstice, in kitten form, is able to deflect a descent to such catastrophe by keeping her awake in the final part of the story

Her occupation is not given, although it appears to be police or military intelligence. No familial references are given and she appears to live alone without pets.

Her association with Pete is casual. Initially attracted because he is a bit different, she has reason to quickly regret the interest.



Peter Quinton
Palerang
March 2015

Characterization - Me (Pete)

This is a post about the Dragons Eye story line.

The story is told from a point of view - the first third roughly being from the point of view of someone originally referred to as 'Me. 'Me' is an Australian male called Pete, age 40+ - a farmer living on the edge of mountainous wilderness in South East Australia.

There are some similarities between Pete and myself.

Pete has a tattoo on his shoulder, like me. Might be the same design. He has a farm with a truck. He has two cats. In supplying details about these, I have reached into my own life.

Similarly, Pete's past is a little like my own. Caught up in the student movements of the time, we were both responsible for organizing demonstrations and confronting police over the barricades to help change the world. We both later ended up working for the state and got given the hard job of changing the world because no-one else could be bothered. Pete's frustration about the premise of the student 'revolutions' is shared with me :)
"misplaced hope that when we got there, someone would be able to point to the chapter in those unrelenting political manifestos entitled “What happens next”. But, reality was, the writers never got there. “What happens next” has never been written, just dreamed."

The conscious similarity between Pete and me ends there.

In the story Pete and Kathy have an early relationship, which fails, is briefly rekindled and then they then loose touch until they re-meet as neighbors. The story hints that Kathy's child Storm may be Pete's child.

I conceive of Pete as being headstrong and manipulative. He has proven incapable of forming a stable relationship. He is willing to take risks without thinking issues through. He is unduly attracted to quick rewards and prone to making promises that cannot be kept. He is incapable of accepting the world as it is. On a couple of occasions, the book describes 'near happiness' end-states which he simply cannot see, and is happy to desert without thought.

The book does not describe Pete's present occupation other than to hint that he looses it during his period away from the farm, but actively seeks a replacement job on his return.

In dragon form, the aelfs call him the Painter. Both Pete and Anthem are capable of great destruction in such form.



Peter Quinton
Palerang
March 2015

Research: Experiments in story telling on G+

In early 2015 I spent some time constructing a story on G+.  This post records a couple of lessons I have learnt along the way.                                    

Self portrait, National Library Australia, Canberra, 2015 Enlighten Festival

Rainbows, Lightning and Travel

This is a post about the Dragons Eye story line.

In any book, the “technology” only works if it happens consistently. Travel between worlds is an important part of this story. Travel occurs before the mechanisms are described because I wanted it to be experienced before being rationalised.

The Nine Worlds

Experience: Belle via Bob: There are another eight worlds Belle knew of – all near and yet far. They are far away physically. But, they all overlap and there are small gaps between the worlds. Small creatures had been moving between the worlds at the gaps for eons.

Rationalization: Simply calling on some notion of overlapping or folding space is an insufficient explanation for instantaneous travel. In the early 1980s I haunted the Mount Stromlo Observatory briefly, copying by hand the Gliese catalog of nearby stars, to plug into an early 3D simulation of our nearby space. At that time I first wondered what a map of gravity and absolute location would look like, excluding time from the equation - and when I realized that this would tell us nothing significant unless the map showed situations of significant gravitational interaction. This might have real implications (eg the foreshadowed entry of Gliese 710 into our Solar System's Oort cloud might dislodge some existing orbits) but it might also have more subtle ones - creating enduring orientation of sub atomic fields within the relevant suns. For the purposes of the story, I have identified a number of systems that have or will have significant gravitation interaction with our own system as an, admittedly, pseudo-scientific explanation for the forms of travel set out below. I justify this as a way of drawing attention to the local bubble and the behavior of near stars, but I wonder if there is a germ of an answer to a more difficult problem here.

Rainbows

Belle via Bob: Small beings from one of the worlds punch holes between the worlds, enlarging them. They hunt for heavy and rare metals to support their technologies.
My great-aunt Victoria Edmonstone: She thought that they lived in red mushrooms in the deep woods. She was sure that they collect vast stores of gold coins and travel the sky using rainbows. They bury their loot at the end of their rainbows.

Not any rainbow. A normal rainbow flickers into existence as sunlight hits water vapor. They glow and fade as rain clouds clear the sky. The rainbows of the dark alfs emerge after fierce lightning storms, while the static electricity still hangs in the air, setting your hair on edge. Their rainbows come from the sky like meteors, hitting the ground with an explosion of light, leaving a faint rainbow trail as mist rises.


Lightning/Static Electricity

Belle via Bob: He said – Transfers between worlds happen in different ways. Belle said the most common was a short transfer from a little static electricity. In the park, to keep warm, I wear woolen sweaters and cheap rubber boots. The boots insulate my feet while I gradually build up a charge on my sweater. Watch.

Bob: He rubbed his sweater with a small rod from another pocket. This time, when he touched my hand, there was a short burst of static electricity. I jumped. He looked seriously - Once you know how to do it, it is easy to transfer right at the node. Eh.

Bob: I said – And the mobile? He said – It takes more much more power the further away you got from the node. Maybe the mobile helps. I don’t know.


Movement or Recreation

So what really happens in a StarTrek transporter?

My story hints, at a couple of places, that static transfers leave part or a copy of the person behind. Both Pete and Anthem, while travelling in the unstable zone have forms that interact in one or the other or, in a couple of cases, in both realms.  But those back on Earth sometimes perceive them to be in coma-like states and have moved them to a specific ward. The book has not explored this, although I played in parts not included in the final with the notion of the creation of a vegetative form on static transfer which remerged on return. I have never been completely happy with transporter travel in the StarTrek Universe - it never accounted for the loss of mass or the apparent murder of people each time they got transported. However, in curing one problem, it occurred to me a bit late that I had simply created a new lack of explanation at the receiving end. A more elegant solution is proposed in Stargate Universe - an option that I could not adopt.

While  was struggling with some of these issues, +Jennifer Solomonsen came to my rescue prompting:

Time in a worm hole. A belief in alternate realities that coexist with or around the time we mark here in this space. A sort of Donny Darco scenario of the mind and body. Physical body on another planet? Might happen. Edgar C. Burroughs certainly imagined such a thing in his John Carter series. I have always agreed with my elders on one key point. The universe is a very large place. I wonder what we would see from another perspective. Go tell your friends daughter your perspective.

There are a lot of ideas compressed in these five lines.  Firstly, Jennifer forced me to rethink.  The rethink eventually turned into a full night locked away in a noisy bar with a pad of paper and a couple of pencils and lots of cider.  In the story as it stands at present, this element of the story has not been well fleshed out - when I come back to it, this is something I would like to work on.  Secondly, Jennifer talked about perspective. This ultimately changed the way I wrote the remaining two thirds of the book. It was good advice, at exactly the right time.




Peter Quinton
Palerang
February 2015