Synopsis
This short, breezy fantasy epic is all about one small castle with a small group of defenders, all struggling to hold off against massive waves of infantry and siege warfare from an invading nation. Within the small castle is a relic - half of the mysterious Dark Stone - which the evil King Dorrel covets above all else. After waiting for years, he launches an all-out invasion on the nation of Tennence, slaying their king and subjugating the kingdom. One paladin - Seth Chamberlain - collaborates with the wizard Rellore and the garrison of Myriam Castle to muster a defense. For weeks, the small garrison uses all their might, wit, magic, and strategy to ward off waves of enemies. In the midst of the combat, Seth falls in love with a witch named Harmony, which strains the tension among the garrison even further.
This novel is briskly-paced with lots of combat and action, scenes of war, drama, romance, magic, and more.
This novel contains quite a bit of graphic violence. Cursing is mild and there's one sex scene that doesn't go into too much detail. I would think that teenagers and young adults can handle it, but for all intents and purposes, it's meant for mature audiences.
Background
This novel was originally drafted in 2002. At the time, I visited Helmsley Castle in England, where they had a medieval reenactment to demonstrate how medieval life, combat, and warfare would have occurred. This included some fighting demonstrations with daggers, swords, clubs, and bows. Among the things I learned, it was mentioned that castle garrisons were not all that big at all: small groups of men could fend off against huge odds using the natural defenses, strategy, terrain, weather, and resourcefulness of a castle. Sieges could linger on for months like this, and history is full of cases where small groups of men had to fend off against attackers.
In high school, I learned about the different tactics used during siege warfare. The objective was to force a surrender through attrition; attackers would surround a castle to block it off from the rest of the world. They could raze all the surrounding farmlands and villages, further separating the castle from resources. Attacking armies used to use all manner of siege weapons to take down a castle wall or gate. Catapults and trebuchets would not only hurl stones, but could also toss filth and cadavers into a castle to spread disease. Siege towers were built as moving towers on wheels, allowing infantry to gain access to the castle's ramparts and interior. Siege ladders could do the same. Battering rams could knock down gates. However, defenders had the ability to throw anything they had at their enemies: rocks, hot oil, etc. Castles were often designed to deflect catapult bombardments, usually by making the towers rounded. Gatehouses served as a highly effective killzone by trapping enemies in between gates and providing vantage points for archers to shoot down on them. In any given battle, the weather and terrain can affect how armies approach a castle, or how effective the defenders are.
For the battle of Myriam Castle in the book, a whole plethora of these techniques are utilized, in addition to equipping the attacking army with grappling-hooks, and granting liberal use of magic among the defenders. It took a year or two to draft this novel. In 2004, I attempted to get the book published through an agent; it went so far as getting edited by a company called My Saint Is An Editor. I backed out of a contract with the literary agency, after doing more research and finding that the agency didn't necessarily guarantee results. The book remained in my files for the longest time while I kept busy with my day job and worked on various other projects; only within the past few months did I manage to put the finishing touches on the book by doing more editing passes and getting the graphics finalized.
I drew up maps on MS Paint originally, and they were always rather plain and dorky. Last month, I posted a contest on Freelancer.com for graphic artists to take my maps and make them better. After a number of great entries, I picked Sandra Sreckovic's entries as the winner. Her work is featured in the first few pages of the book, showing in stylish detail how the lands of Tennence and the Realm of the Allied Kingdoms are laid out.
I published the book through Amazon and Createspace. It took a matter of days to format the book properly, for both print and kindle. Even though I could probably hire an artist for really good cover art, I opted to make my own cover using a photo I took a few years ago from a MacBeth play in Ripley Castle. It was a picture of a man sitting by a tree, with a sword sticking up from the ground; I used Corel software to make it black-and-white, to blur out much of the background, and turn the photo into a type of pencil art. Amazon's cover art software had a theme that cropped and framed the picture with black on the top and bottom of the cover. This is probably not the best cover in the world, but I felt it was eye-catching, and I did it for free using my own files.
Inspirations
This was the first fantasy novel I attempted, but I had plenty of influences to draw upon at the time.
I've always been a fan of films like Braveheart, which may have subtly influenced my imagination to begin with. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was newly-released at the time, so watching the Battle of Helms Deep was quite the inspiration for writing a book based entirely on a siege. The film The Craft gave me the idea to include four witches in The Garrison, with each one representing a different natural element. I tried to replicate the events of the novel using the level editor for the video game Warcraft III, but I could never get the scripts to work all that well. I got to admit that King Dorrel may have been inspired by Arthas in the Warcraft series.
While writing, a few pop songs (primarily Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" and Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful") and a lot of orchestral music provided some ample inspiration (especially the film scores for The Lord of the Rings and Requiem For a Dream). For some odd reason, Enya's brief track "Epona" is one of the tracks I attribute the most to the project; I think it's a very lovely melody and sound that matches up well with the book's setting. You can listen to select tracks that inspired me on 8tracks.com.
That's just about all there is to the novel. It's not the biggest or best thing I ever wrote, but I think it came out well and it is something I'm proud of. I hope you'll give it a chance and enjoy it.
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