Thursday, June 6, 2013

The Dragon Gem: Chapter One Commentary

Alright, I don't have a ton of time for this with my family vacation coming up tomorrow, so I'll pretty much do what I did in the last blog and post some little facts about the Dragon Gem, this time pertaining to Chapter 1: Come on, It's Only a Game.


  • I wanted to start the book out with a little action to draw the reader in, but also give the reader a good feel for Korin in the first few pages.  Korin's obviously the hero, good, but flawed.  I wanted that to come across naturally by putting him in a dangerous situation (Nothing pulls out a character's personality more than great loss or danger in my little ol' opinion).
  • Korin was also the name of one of the protagonists of my first novel(the unfinished The Secret of the Kolari: Book One of the Broken Cycle Saga).  He had a twin in that novel.  Korin was planned to die at the end of the first book after appearing to be the good guy and his twin, Kris, the bad guy.  I guess I used to have a little George R.R. Martin in me . . . on a much smaller scale.
  • The story begins in the city of Geeron, the same name as the village that The Secret of the Kolari started with.
  • Brennor was originally intended to be a recurring character, almost as comic relief.  He was going to show up through the book several times, bumbling his attempts to retrieve the gem back from Korin.  I quickly scrapped that idea; it was a bit sitcom-y and though I try to put a decent amount of humor in the book, I thought it was going a bit far.  Therefore he only makes one more appearance, albeit in a more realistic and logical fashion.
  • At first, the chapter was written with Korin chasing after the black-cloaked gem thief, chapter 2 consisting of a chase through the city.  I scrapped it in order to move into the story a little quicker.  I felt that two major action pieces in the very beginning with no plot progression would make this a Michael Bay movie . . . er, would lose the reader's attention.
This chapter was a lot of fun to write, and with it under my belt in the 2nd ed., I really like how it flows (the 2nd ed. version can be found here.   I'm nearly a fourth of the way through the 2nd edition edit/rewrite now, so progress is being made, even if slowly.  I also have a new project that I'll be releasing later this year which I'll be announcing very soon.


Hope you've enjoyed these little tidbits, and if not, here's a cute picture of my son to make up for it :)

"Daddy says buy The Forgotten King!"
Note: Jonas never actually said this, but feel free to imagine he did.

Brian Beam

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