Category Archives: “Princess of Amathar”

Princess of Amathar Names

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Princess of Amathar has only one human character. All the rest are aliens of one type or another. One alien character is Malagor. He is a rather wolf-like fellow and the name just seemed to fit. For the Amatharians, I created long complex names that would look good, but would be difficult to pronounce aloud. I wanted them to sound vaguely french, because my main character had described their language as sounding that way. So my Amatharians became Norar Remontar, Vena Remontar, and the title character Noriandara Remontar. For the only human, my main character, I needed a name that implied heroic exploits and also to fit in with a plot twist, it needed to begin with the letter A. Alexander was a natural fit, though I don’t remember if I decided upon this before or after I wrote a major college paper on Alexander the Great. For a long time he didn’t have a last name, but I finally named him after a young lady I was working with (as I worked my way through college) whose last name was Ashton. So Alexander Ashton was born.

Writing Princess of Amathar

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My first novel was Princess of Amathar. I originally thought up the story when I was a teenager. It was not a particularly brilliant plot, but was like the adventure stories that I enjoyed reading at the time. I wrote the first chapter several times over the years, but never got much farther. Writing a novel is really hard if you haven’t done it before. Just continuing takes a great deal of will power. About the time I started college, I made my last attempt to begin the book. I expanded the beginning while writing other things (mostly fanfic, which thankfully because no one ever heard of the internet in those days, never saw the light of day). I worked at it sporatically for years. After I got my first job teaching Junior High English, I began to share my writing with my students as I encouraged them to write, and they in turn encouraged me to keep going. It still took a long time. Then, when I was about 75% done, I began to share my writing with some of my teacher friends. With their feedback, I finally managed to finish. It was about eight years from start to finish, and this was only 93,000 words. Four fellow teachers helped me revise the book. When that was done, I was so proud that I immediately sent it off to a dozen book publishers. I recieved a dozen rejection letters. I stuck the manuscript away and forgot about writing for a while. Then one day I mentioned my book to a coworker, who suggested I check out Lulu and self-publish Princess of Amathar, if just for myself and my friends, family, and students. I did. I self-published it. Then a funny thing happened. I felt like I could write another novel and a new story just popped into my head.

Princess of Amathar – Now at Barnes and Noble

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Barnes and Noble is working to get their ebook site up and running properly, and at least now they have Princess of Amathar available as an ebook. You can buy it for $1.59. Of course, you can simply follow the links on the right for the same thing.

Princess of Amathar – 25% Off

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To conclude that Amathar details series of posts, here is a discout coupon for all you ebook readers out there. Get 25% off by entering the coupon code when you purchase Princess of Amathar in ebook form. Here is the code: HK94L. Good until November 11, 2009.

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 29 Excerpt

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“Stand where you are!” a voice shouted from nearby.
Out from behind a nearby shrub came an Amatharian warrior, carrying a light pistol which was leveled in our general direction.
“Put your weapon down,” said the Princess. “I am Homianne Kurar Ka Remiant Noriandara Remontar.”
“Of course you are, Princess,” replied the warrior. “I recognize you now, as well as Kurar Remiant Alexander Ashton. It is such a great pleasure to see you. I am Remiantar Kolbin Perrenios.”
I am not ashamed to say that I rushed forward and gave the fellow a great hug. It had been such a long time since I had seen any other person besides the Princess that I had almost given up hope of ever doing so. Kolbin Perrenios for his part, though he did not shy away from a friendly greeting to me, was far more interested in looking at the Princess. Not that I blamed him, she was incredibly beautiful, even having journeyed across the wilderness. She of course, remembered where she was better than either the swordsman or me.
“What are you doing way out here?” she asked.
“Our battle cruiser sustained heavy damage during the assault on Zonamis. We were forced to crash land a short distance from here. I have sentry duty in this area. Come, I will lead you back to the encampment.”
It was not quite a mile from where we had been found to the site of the crashed cruiser. The great ship, its cannon still pointing skyward, lay upon the plain like a vicious dog who had been run over by the wheel of a car, it’s back broken but its teeth still curled back in a snarl. Around the remains of the vessel, in military formation, were numerous tents, and beyond those, fox-holes and make-shift battlements. Hundreds of Amatharians were going about their business in the camp, chopping wood, repairing mechanical equipment, stacking supplies, and cooking meals.
As soon as the crew members of the ship caught site of Noriandara Remontar, they began to crowd around us, and by the time we reached the great mass of the battle cruiser, we had a sizable group of onlookers with us. Though they were clearly excited to see their princess, they became silent when Norar Remontar stepped from the hatch of the vessel and looked upon his sister for the first time since I had met him. The grandson of the Overlord rushed forward and lifted his sister in his arms and spinning her around in the air. Then, setting her down, he pressed his dark blue cheek to hers and began to weep.

Amathar – Meznarks and Oindrag

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The Meznarks and Oindrag are two races of beings who lived in the great hollow world of Ecos long ago. Although the Amatharians study them, they don’t know exactly what they look like because both races are extinct. They in fact, wiped each other out. Being young and idealistic when I came up with the story of Amathar, I wanted to showcase two such mutually homicidal races as my own little bit of commentary on the then present Cold War.

We had not walked too many miles when Noriandara Remontar called to me. As I looked up, she pointed to a large object in the sky. I thought at first that the object was an Amatharian or Zoasian battleship, since it was about the same size. It was not one of the air vessels. It was instead a floating city. While the bottom was far from smooth, with openings, windows, and protrusions, the top was a jagged skyline of tall buildings shooting up toward the noon day sun.

“Have you ever seen a floating city like that?” Noriandara Remontar asked.

“No,” I replied. “You?”

“I have heard of them. They were built long ago by the Meznarks, contemporaries of the Orlons. They built hundreds of floating cities and sailed all over Ecos, until they angered a race of beings far away known as the Oindrag who hunted the Meznarks down and destroyed them. There are numerous artifacts from a fallen Meznark city at the Tree Clan Museum in Amathar, but I don’t think anyone has ever come across a city still in flight.”

“Are the Oindrag still around?”

“I believe they are also extinct.”

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 28 Excerpt

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There were six more of the monsters standing around me, and they lunged for me as a group. I swung my sword through the body of the closest, while pushing the next back with my left hand. I recoiled as I felt the thick coating of slime which covered the thing’s body. At that moment, three others rushed forward and I was knocked back against the tree. I began hacking with abandon, chopping here and there into the bodies of my attackers. This caused them to step back a few feet. At least those who were still able to step back did so. One was lying on the ground unmoving, and two others were flopping around as they tried to get back to their feet.
While they took a moment to decide who would be the first among them to die, I prepared myself for their next assault. When they lunged forward, I jump up, tucking and rolling forward, to land behind them. Then with a spinning cut, I decapitated two in one blow. When I say decapitated, I mean that I sliced off at least the top half of what I would call the head, for I repeat it was difficult to say just where the body ended and the head began. There was no neck. The single remaining unscathed amphibian turned toward the river, and it was with fierce satisfaction that I noted none of those who remained would ever swim again. I ran after the last remaining man-frog, the anger born of being taken from peaceful sleep into bloody battle hazing over my better judgment. I could have easily overtaken the flopping limping gate of the slimy entity, even with out my gravity enhanced speed.
Before I had gone more than two steps, I stopped in my tracks. Stuck into the ground was Noriandara Remontar’s sword. I pulled it out of the ground and looked at it. It was quiet. There was no sign of the soul within, and I felt my heart ache, even though I knew this really signified nothing. The soul would have been quiet even if I had been using it in battle. The soul only awaked when used by its chosen knight. I put the Princess’s sword in my sheath, and continued.
My scum-covered adversary was gone, but I knew approximately where it had entered the river. On the bank were a great many tracks. This was apparently both the point of egress and entrance. The water here was fast and deep. Before I could think too much about it, admittedly something that is usually not too much of a problem, I took a deep breath and dived in.
The water was not too cold, though the temperature was lower than the air had been. I swam deeper and deeper– the river was far less shallow than I had supposed. I reached a level at which my ears began to hurt. The water was muddy though well lit by the noon-day sun. It seemed to me that I was able to hold my breath longer than I had whenever swimming on my home planet. Perhaps this was due somehow to the gravitational conditions of Ecos, or perhaps it just seemed that way because of all the adrenaline pumping through my system. Still, I was just at the point when I thought that I would need to surface for a breath, when I noticed an opening in the rocky bed of the river.
I swam down into the large hole and discovered a tunnel, which went downward some twenty feet and then turned. I realized that I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to last much longer, so I returned to the surface and took several deep breaths. I then hyperventilated for ten or fifteen seconds to fill my blood with oxygen. Now I was as ready as I could be. I dived back to the bottom of the river only to find that I had been swept down stream. I tried to go against the current, but it would have been impossible even had I not been encumbered by equipment and clothing. In the end I was forced to swim to the shore and walk upstream to the place where I had jumped in and do it all again. This time I went right to the bottom and into the submarine passage. At the bottom of the shaft, I gave myself a strong push off the wall and into the tunnel, and then swam for all I was worth. I didn’t know how long that passage might be, for I suspected that the creatures that regularly used it, while air breathers, were able to remain submerged for a long time. It was certain that they were far better designed for life under the water than I was. It wasn’t long before I was wishing that I had taken off my boots.

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 27 Excerpt

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When Noriandara Remontar and I finally felt we were well provisioned enough for a relatively long sea voyage, we pulled the raft down to the water and placed all of our supplies on it. Then we climbed on. There was just barely enough room for us and our things, and it was impossible for both of us to lie down and sleep at the same time. It was planned that we would take turns paddling and resting. At first we both paddled to get away from the shore, and it was only after the edge of the water was only a dim line in the distance that we settled into our rotation.
The reflected sun on the water made the air a little warmer than it had been for us on the shore. At least that is my explanation for it, not being a meteorologist myself. It was by no means uncomfortable though. Indeed, if it had been a more comfortable vessel in which we found ourselves, I would have thought this the most pleasant of vacations. The water was cool but it was difficult to see down into it more than a foot or so. Perhaps this had something to do with the salt content. When the job of rowing became overtaxing, the Princess would remove her tabard and boots, and slide over the side of the raft into the water to cool off. I did this too on occasion, though more often I would simply scoop out a basket full of water to poor over my head. There was something unwholesome about an ocean with no fish. I had little problem swimming around in the Pacific Ocean near Catalina Island on Earth despite the fact that it is the summer feeding grounds for the Great White Shark– not that I didn’t think about them. At least there, they had plenty of sea lions and fish to choose from. Here in the fishless water, if some great voracious creature decided it was hungry, it didn’t have much from which to choose. The Princess and I were, not respectively, the main course and desert.
“How large do you suppose this sea to be?” I asked my companion.
“I do not believe it is much more than one hundred kentads (about two hundred miles),” she replied. “We should be across it before our food runs low.”
“How can you be sure?” “I am not sure. But I have a sense for these things.”

Amathar – Writing

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One of the ideas that I had about Amatharian culture was the imporance of writing and by extension of penmanship. I also liked the idea that their writing might have letters that looked like something other than abstract shapes. We usually forget that some of our own letters, in the distant past, came from pictographic writing.

The book was very much like the book of Amath’s teachings which Norar Remontar had previously shown me. It was a bound volume with a spine, and it had a cover made of leather. The pages were made of a material something like plastic. They were thin and they could bend like paper, but they had a strength far beyond any paper product. The entire book was written in Amatharian, which of course I was unable to read, but the lines and letters seemed to be laid out in a familiar fashion. As I had noticed, the characters resembling simple line drawings of stylized animals and other almost familiar images. After staring at it for a moment, I almost thought that I could see tiny predators ready to pounce upon their prey.

Princess of Amathar – Chapter 26 Excerpt

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Climbing down the ladder in the open air, to the landing platform two hundred feet below might have created problems for anyone with a fear of heights, but it was nothing compared to the trip from the platform to the ground on a strand of plastic cable. I am not prone to acrophobia, but was still unnerved. I thought for a moment that the city had gained altitude since we had come aboard, but quickly realized that this was not so, as the cables were still trailing along the ground at about the same length.
“I’ll go down first,” I said. “Follow me.”
I wanted to make sure that if she fell, I would have a chance to catch her, and likewise if I were to fall, that I would not knock her off as well. She nodded, and I started down. The climb was much easier than I expected. I had gotten used to the effect that the lower gravity had upon me when I walked, ran, or picked something up. I had forgotten that the same principles would apply in this situation, allowing me to lift my own body with much greater ease than I would have had I been on Earth.
About half way down the cord to the ground, I stopped and looked up to check on the Princess’s progress. She was some thirty feet above me and seemed to be having no trouble with the descent. I paused for a moment to look around and noticed for the first time that as we were climbing down one rope, something was climbing up another. About fifty feet away from our position, a creature was ascending. It was horrible looking. It was frighteningly ugly. It was the stuff of nightmares. I was thankful for the eternal daylight of Ecos, for to face such a thing in the darkness was something I had no wish to contemplate. About twice the height of a man, the creature was covered with slime-dripping green hair. Its upper extremities were half hands, half flippers and its lower extremities were even more flipper-like, with suction cups lining the interiors. Its face was nothing more that a large sucker with a stinger or a long tusk protruding from it.
“Amath preserve us!” cried the Princess, seeing the thing for the first time.
“Indeed,” I replied, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
“No, and I hope I never do again.”
The creature stared at us for several moments with its malevolent yellow eyes drilling holes into us. It then looked up and down. Then it attempted to swing the cord it was climbing, as if to, Tarzan-like, propel itself over to us. Quickly realizing that it would not be able to do so, it turned its attention away from us and resumed its task of making toward the hovering city.
“I hate to think of that thing preying on our flyers,” I said.
“Or the Kartags,” said Noriandara Remontar, and I agreed. I wouldn’t have turned that creature loose on a Zoasian.