Senta Bly, the most powerful sorceress in the world has disappeared and no one knows where or why. What happens to Port Dechantagne and Birmisia without her protection for four years? Wizards with all sorts of their own agendas descend on the colony, and the citizens must cope the best they can. A Plague of Wizards is book 8 in the Senta and the Steel Dragon saga.
A Plague of Wizards is now available for preorder at Smashwords. The ebook will be available in wide release on October 28,2006.
Senta Bly, the most powerful sorceress in the world has disappeared and no one knows where or why. What happens to Port Dechantagne and Birmisia without her protection for four years? Wizards with all sorts of their own agendas descend on the colony, and the citizens must cope the best they can. Nineteen-year-old Iolana Staff lives the life of a famous author, far away in the capital city, but how does her friend Esther, the only Birmisian lizzie on the continent deal with human society? Meanwhile Iolana’s cousin Terra has made the journey to the lizzie city of Yessonarah, to learn what living in the palace of a reptilian king is really like.
A Plague of Wizards is available now for preorder at Amazon for Kindle. It becomes available October 28, 2006.
The Pell are spider-like creatures who live in a colony in the forests of Ecos. They range in size from a large tarantula to larger than a pony, the speak, and they eat any creatures they come across– including Amatharians.
Horrible alien monsters are of course a staple of pulp adventure tales and that is what I was going for in Amathar. The Pell make a brief but hopefully memorable appearance early in Princess of Amathar.
The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
Free at Manybooks.net
George Herbert Wells, along with Jules Verne, gave us many of the conventions of modern science fiction. The War of the Worlds has been made into two successful movies and it’s ideas have been used in countless stories and television dramas.
Four Amatharians waited for us within the room. The man who opened the door was the tallest man that I had yet met, something over seven and a half feet. Just looking at him frightened me. I could imagine how an enemy facing him felt. He was middle-aged, with streaks of grey shooting through his straight black hair. His hawkish nose and a large scar across one cheek, gave him the look of a predator. He was clad in the garments of a knight, though his tabard was fringed with gold trim; His crest was an eye with a flaming sun as its pupil. He was Reyno Hissendar, Norar Remontar’s uncle, and the chief of the Hissendar Trading Group.
The second fellow was equally impressive, though not because of height. He was a formidably muscular man with a piercing gaze and a tightly set jaw. His tabard was fringed with gold, and his crest showed a flaming sun within a circle. His bodysuit wasn’t black though, it was tan. I had seen Knights in other colors, Nicohl Messonar for instance, wearing the colors of a teacher. I later learned that tan was the traditional color of Archaeologists. He was Vandan Lorrinos, a highly respected member of the Sun Clan, and a fleet commander.
The third person in the room was a woman. She was a breathtakingly beautiful older version of Vena Remontar, or for that matter, of the Princess. She was just over six feet tall, with long straight black hair framing her beautiful dark blue face. She had the same stern look about her that I had found in Nicohl Messonar, and the same ability to seemingly look into a person’s heart. She stared at me with what I thought was a look of more than simple appraisal. She was the mother of Vena Remontar and the aunt of Norar Remontar, and her name was Mindana Remontar. She wore a bodysuit and tabard, but without the crest, indicating she was not a knight. Her bodysuit was dark blue, indicating her profession was that of biologist.
The final individual in the room, was the man for whom I had been summoned– the Overlord of the Sun Clan, Nevin Lorrinos. There was no doubt that he was Norar Remontar’s grandfather, for he was tall and handsome, with the same prominent features and the same noble bearing. He wore a great black robe with a golden crest above the heart– crossed swords over a flaming sun, the same crest that Noriandara Remontar had worn. I bowed low to him.
“Greetings knight,” he said.
“Yes,” said Mindana Remontar. “You have certainly wasted no time integrating yourself into our culture.”
Smashwords Alerts Notifies Readers of New Releases from Favorite Authors
Posted: 24 Aug 2016 12:37 PM PDT
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The page for Wesley Allison is: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/amathar
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I alway say I never read reviews and I try to never read reviews. But then I go and read reviews. Most of my books don’t have many reviews, because most of my books don’t sell that many copies. The robot books do, of course. So today, I did what I said I never do and read some of the reviews of His Robot Girlfriend: Charity. Pretty good overall, which is good, because I don’t want to feel like killing myself. Anyway, it does motivate me to get His Robot Wife: A Great Deal of Patience done.
With A Plague of Wizards out soon, I’m posting the chapter titles along with those of the earlier books in the series. You can probably spot some familiar themes.
Senta and the Steel Dragon Chapter Titles
Brechalon
The Voyage of the Minotaur
The Dark and Forbidding Land
The Drache Girl
The Young Sorceress
The Two Dragons
The Sorceress and her Lovers
The Price of Magic
A Plague of Wizards
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
Captain Nemo and his crew sail around the world on a mission to end war among the surface nations. Predicting nuclear submarines and world war, Jules Verne’s classic is well worth a second (or first) read. I first read it when I was about ten, having bought a tiny little paperback version at the grocery store for 25 cents. You can download it free at Manybooks.net.
The Following is a bit I may or may not use in the next Astrid Maxxim Book. In any case, I’m not getting started on it until I finish the next robot book, so I thought I would post it here.
A large chart on the boardroom wall compared Maxxim Enterprises’ competitors in space. It displayed each company name as a three letter code, it’s current plans and goals, and then compared how many launches each had made and thus far. It read as follows:
| BOE | ISS Transport/Satellite | 0 | |
| BLH | Suborbital Tourism | 0 | |
| SRN | ISS Transport | Orbital Tourism | 0 |
| SPX | ISS Transport/Satellite | Exploration of Mars | 8 |
| VGL | Suborbital Tourism | 0 | |
| MAXXIM | ISS Transport/Satellite | Orbital Tourism | 15 |
“It’s pretty clear who our real competition is,” said Roy Dillanson.
“Yes, it’s pretty clear,” agreed Carl Maxxim. “It’s not a surprise to me, since our friendly competitor here is also CEO of our biggest completion in the electric car industry.”
“Still, we’re way ahead,” said former US Senator Charles Bentlemore. “We’ve had almost twice as many launches and we have a waiting list of nearly ten thousand. That’s pretty impressive since we’re charging twelve times as much as our friends planning the suborbital flights.”
“Yes, but our space planes are too expensive,” Dillanson pointed out. “To recoup the cost, we’d have to fly each one nearly five hundred times.”
“That’s because they were not designed to fly rich people around the world,” said sixteen-year-old inventor Astrid Maxxim. “We should leave that to those that want to fly tourism. The space planes are for more.”
“We’ve had this discussion before,” said Bentlemore. “What you’re proposing isn’t realistic.”
“Look, it’s simple,” said Astrid. “Werner von Braun spelled it out in the fifties. First you need a cheap and efficient launch system. Our space planes are expensive to build but cheap to fly. Second, you need a space station, as a destination and a launch point. Third, you need a space dock, where you can build the vehicles and tools you need to explore the solar system.”
“You forget, my dear,” said the former senator. “The purpose of this company is not to explore and discover. The purpose is to make money.”
“Astrid hasn’t forgotten anything,” barked design chief Dennis Brown.
“Maybe I should have said ‘explore and utilize’,” said Astrid. “I won’t say exploit. Remember the settlers at Jamestown. They came trying to make money with their toehold in the new world. If it hadn’t been for John Rolf smuggling in tobacco, the settlement of America might have been set back decades. Now imagine that those settlers had come to Virginia with their own railroad, fortress, and machine shop. How much quicker would our America have come to be?”
“Bottom line it for us,” said Dillanson. “How much are we talking about?”
“Including the boosters needed, and the lauch costs, as well as the design, construction, and deployment—Seven hundred fifty billion dollars.”
There were more than a few gasps around the room.
“That’s insane,” said Bentlemore.
“There’s no way to raise that kind of capital,” said Dillanson. “It’s more than the market capitalization for the whole company.”
“Actually, it’s not,” said Maxwell Bauer, reading information from his phone. “We’re up thirteen and a third today. Somebody leaked the subject of this meeting.” He shrugged and smiled.
“We’ve got to stop thinking small,” said Astrid. “It’s time to leapfrog these other guys. They’re not the real competition and neither are the Russians. We’ve got to be ahead of the Chinese. They’ve got big boosters. They’ve got the beginnings of a space station. They’ve got a rover on the moon. Now they’re working on their own space planes.”
“Why don’t we just buy the ISS?” asked Carl Maxxim. “The government is begging someone to buy it. We could probably get it for a dollar and few promises.”
“To do what?” shouted Astrid, jumping to her feet. “It’s a tiny space lab with room for six. I don’t care how many inflatable bounce houses they attach to it. We have to think bigger!”
“All right,” said CEO Kate Maxxim. “This is a straight up and down vote. Do we allocate five million dollars for feasibility studies and planning.”
“I vote yay,” said Bauer.
“Yay,” said Martin Bundersmith.
“Nay,” said Dillonson.
“Nay,” said Bentlemore.
“I abstain,” said Astrid.
“I vote yay,” said Dennis Brown.
“My vote is yay,” said Penelope Maxxim.
“I vote yay,” said her brother Carl Maxxim.
“The chair abstains,” finished Kate. “The motion carries.”
City of Amathar 