L. James Rice's Blog

The bones of the Official Sundering the Gods Wiki is up and ready for people to contribute to. It’s very much a work in progress and always will be, but there is a lot of information already available. With the helkp of 5 readers, we’ve already got chapter summaries for several books, and the groundwork for a comprehensive list of characters, places, and things is in place.

Head on over to www.stgwiki.com to check it out.

A rough draft of the City of Aprelêu as imagined by cartographer Kate Moody, who will be working on my city maps from now on, or until she gets sick of me. The map will be at a level of detail appropriate for print, meaning focused on a district-level view rather than detailing individual buildings. The city is located in the deep south of the Gorotan Penninsula (seen on the eastern portion of the second map posted here) and will be a major story hub for the Contessa of Mostul Ûbar and in both Sundering the Crowns and Sundering the Tempest. Eventually, this will have several layers, including the undercity.

Enjoy!

I came across this artifact of Eve of Snows and thought it. might be fun to give folks a different perspective of the novel. The immediate response a friend of mine had is one many people will probably share: Dear God! That’s how you planned out the book? Ummm, no. Eve of Snows was either published or close to it at this point, I don’t recall, but the point of this project was to reverse engineer the story, so to speak, by how each scene/chapter altered the standing of the characters and the overall story.

Would I ever design a story this way? No, but it was interesting to see how the story was constructed from this point of view of external and internal value shifts during the events in chapters. The concept was to make certain that every chapter performed, never entering and leaving a scene at a stasis.

It was good fun, but I’ve never done it for a book again, probably because I tend overkill in this regard. With no problems found, the exercise turned out more satisfying of intellectual curiosity than useful. Take a gander, and if you’ve any questions or comments, feel free to fire them my way.

Greetings one and all! While I was working on the Contessa and Dark Cloud Dancing, Kindle decided to open Vella, an opportunity for writers to offer their work in a serial format. Seeing as the publishing date for the Halfbreed Contessa and Dark Cloud Dancing are up in the air with finishing, editing, and marketing to publishing houses, I decided to take advantage of Vella and work on something I figured I would never get around to writing: The Prequel to the Sundering the Gods Saga.

For those who may not recall, The War of Seven Lies takes place soon after the Great Forgetting and sets the table for the events in Sundering the Gods (and all the Sundering Sagas). In these pages you will meet Ivin’s ancestors and notorious Lord Priest Imrok Girn who first translated the Codex of Sol.

The second and third episodes should be available within the next several days. I hope you all jump onboard and enjoy the journey, it’s going to be an adventure in more ways than one!

—L. James Rice

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/e...

Main Gauche.

The Main Gauche is an offhand dagger (aka parrying dagger) most often associated with rapier fighting, and frankly, it's just pretty cool... and all kinds of frustrating to use when you are not ambidextrous! It would take a lot of practice before this weapon was more useful than not for me. This particular example is an antique, but not an original... Hello! Originals go for $5000+. It is a Victorian era replica based on a Spanish design, so oddly enough, I was able to pick this one up for less than if you were to buy one forged yesterday. Bargain shopping for toys is the way to go! The blade is just under 14".

In the Contessa of Mostul Ûbar, we will see many more rapiers and main gauche, as the sword carrying culture of the Gorotan favors dueling weapons and smaller sidearms for their city streets in comparison to the arming sword and ax wielding Silone from the northern wilderness on Kaludor.

I picked this up around twenty years ago for two reasons. First, it looks cool. Two, I was considering using it as part of a cowboy outfit to do historical black powder cowboy shooting with a group known as the NCOWS. Anyhow, I got this relatively cheap (if memory serves) because it hasn’t a maker’s mark or anything else to date it accurately. It is hand forged and still retains what I assume to be an original piece of rawhide still intact. Once in hand, you can tell how well-crafted the knife is just by the way it sits in your hand. Whether you were fighting for your life or chopping through underbrush, the handle style provides an awesome grip for hacking with almost zero chance of it flying from your hand. The balance is also notable. The broad end of the blade takes what is a short weapon and turns it into a cleaver for hacking rather than a draw-cut, a sort of hybrid between ax and knife while retaining the ability to stab. There is no evidence of a maker and so no way to know where it was made, but folks I’ve spoken to suggest it is civil war era, possibly southern… but! No way to know.

It hasn’t made a specific appearance in the Sundering Sagas yet, but it will.

This is a duo post, both inspirations and toys. When I was finishing up Eve of Snows (first draft) I spotted these on a website that sells antique weapons and armor. For the most part, I don’t buy anything, but I like to browse around the photos because I just think old weapons are cool. These two axes caught my eye, and the next thing I knew, Pikarn (The Wolverine) was rewritten to include two axes like these. The thing I found interesting about the axes was that they had steel shod butts (photo #2) that when unscrewed revealed points (photo #3). Basically, they doubled as walking sticks in Eastern Europe (Ukraine area) .

It is believed they were used in the Carpathian Mountains (circa 1850), where the spikes on the end would be handy for walking on ice and snow covered trails. But of course, it isn’t hard to imagine that these nasty little spikes could be turned into a weapon right quick, providing the user with the ehopping edge of the head as well as a nice blunt when reversed, more than capable of handling an uppity peasant, as well as a puncturing spike to expand your capabilities in a melee against man or beast. There aren’t any Colok in the Carpathians, but there were wolves.

The Waster

Today’s installment will kill two birds with one stone. I get to play show and tell and answer a question I’ve been asked a few times by folks reading the Sundering the Gods Saga, in particular by those first encountering the term in Eve of Snows.

What the heck is a waster?

The waster is a wooden sword used for practicing combat. It ideally carries the same approximate dimensions and weight as the weapon being trained, but is far less likely to damage armor or the person beneath the armor. I own a longsword waster for practicing longsword combat—full disclosure, I do not do that often, but wish I did—while I bought a main gauche (parrying dagger) for my daughter Ashlee when she was little because like Bilbo with Sting, it worked as a sword for her!

These are awesome toys, and I only wish I had something like this when I was kid hunting orcs and trolls in the local creek with a sword crafted from a stick wrapped in electrical tape. There was a reason my sword back then was named Black Death, the electrical tape was black. Happily, I did have some yellow tape for the handle.

And here a couple of photos, visual aids if you will.

Next Up! Author Toys Meets Inspiration: The Wolverine’s Axes.

My daughter’s sword from when she was little, the Main Gauche.

My 2nd Degree Black Belt daughter standing beside the waster Long Sword.

Alu and Kinesee

Alu and Kinesee have been in my head for many years, but their characters have been influenced by my real world. 

In their original incarnation they were just the daughters of a fisher who are orphaned by the Shadows of Man, and they struggle their way through until reaching higher stations. However, real life intervened in the creative process somewhere along the line. My wife and I have adopted two girls, and out of nowhere, Solineus ends up adopting Alu and Kinesee right in the middle of my writing. First, it made total story-sense, but second, it allows me draw further on the emotions of a protective adoptive father without going Liam Neeson on anyone... yet.

The characters themselves are different from their real-world counterparts, although the sisterly love and bickering are spot on (and underplayed thus far). There are also some basic personality traits at play: Alu is a bit of a mother hen, and Kinesee prefers to remain a child. In the real world, however, Kinesee is a second degree black belt and the sword lover instead of Alu... but, really, both are warriors to one degree or another.

As Whispers of Ghosts continues to develop, I expect to see more personal entertainment value in the interaction of these two characters, and then someday... the real-life sisters can read the books and see how much of themselves they see in these two characters.

A father’s love... or Revenge? 

FEVER SNAKES

The fever snake is mentioned in Eve of Snows, but the little darlings don’t make an appearance until Trail of Pyres, along with the Daevu. For those of you haven’t read ToP yet, I don’t want to hand out much in the way of spoilers, but it’s safe to say that a person would wonder how there are snakes in a frigid climate. Better yet, just what brought these critters into being?

The answer goes back to the early 1980s, when friends of the family created and patented a little toy called the Snow Snake. Their idea was to market this simple, but rather adorable, furry snake (they also wore little hats) at Colorado’s ski resorts. This little snake had a legend that sort of made them the gremlins of the ski slope.

If you were skiing down the mountain and fell for no reason... blame a snow snake for tripping you.

Many years later, as I first started writing the chapter “Bones for Songs” and wondered what sort of little creature might be around... Bam! The fever snake was born, and there was no doubting its connection to the decades old legend of the Snow Snake. Aside from this connection, I loved the idea of the fever snake because it raised questions and hinted at the very magical nature of the world in a subtle, organic way.

That said, fever snakes are not cute, don’t wear hats, and the word mischievous could be replaced with nasty, but their origins still lay hidden in the cute, furry buggers known as snow snakes.