The Price of Magic: Didrika and Ernst Goose

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The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is just a couple of weeks away, so it’s time to start looking at the many characters in the book. Most have appeared in previous books. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Didrika and Ernst Goose are Senta’s cousins.  We first saw them in Book 0: Brechalon and in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur as babies.  In The Price of Magic we get to meet them as young women.  They are, in fact, two of the most popular young women in Birmisia.

The Price of Magic: Geert and Honor McCoort

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The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is just a couple of weeks away, so it’s time to start looking at the many characters in the book. Most have appeared in previous books. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Geert is Senta’s cousin.  We first meet him in Book 0: Brechalon, where he is selling apples to earn money for the family.  We see him again in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur, but they are separated when Granny, their guardian, dies.  Geert shows up again in Book 5: The Two Dragons, when he and his brother arrive in Birmisia to start a printing business.  At last, Senta has nearby family.

Honor McCoort, nee Hertling, is an important citizen of Port Dechantagne since its founding.  We find her in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur, a pillar of the community and city council member.  She is present in Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land, Book 3: The Drache Girl, and Book 4: The Young Sorceress, as she raises her two siblings, Senta’s friends Hero and Hertzal.  She meets young Geert in Book 5: The Two Dragons, where she plays a big part in Yuah’s story, but suffers a horrible accident.  We learn in Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers that the two have married, and we see them again in The Price of Magic.

The Price of Magic: Tait and Bertice Vishmornan

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The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is just a couple of weeks away, so it’s time to start looking at the many characters in the book. Most have appeared in previous books. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Bernice is Senta’s cousin, the oldest of the bunch.  We see her briefly in Book 0: Brechalon, and Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur, where we learn that she is marrying Tait Vishmornan, after Granny’s death.  He was a supervisor at the shirtwaist factory where she worked, and they adopted Ernst and Didrika, two other cousins, but had no room apparently for Senta.

In Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers, we learn second hand that the couple and their children have relocated to Birmisia, but we don’t actually see them.  But in The Price of Magic, we at last see Bertice again, and her husband for the first time.

The Price of Magic: Gyula and Melis Kearn

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The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is just a couple of weeks away, so it’s time to start looking at the many characters in the book. Most have appeared in previous books. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Gyula Kearn first appeared in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur.  He was a cook at Cafe Carlo, who made a sandwich for Senta.  He arrived in Port Dechantagne in Book 5: The Two Dragons to become a cook for Alwijn Finkler, having survived the torpedoing of his ship by Freedonians.

Melis is Gyula’s new bride, a MIrsannan girl.  Like most Mirsannans, she has brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes.  Also like most Mirsannan women, she is prone to wearing scandalous (by Brech standards) clothing and a gold ring in her pierced nose.

The Price of Magic: Kieran Baxter

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The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is just a couple of weeks away, so it’s time to start looking at the many characters in the book.  Most have appeared in previous books.  I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

We first met Kieran Baxter as one of the officers on the H.M.S. Minotaur in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur.  We don’t run in to him again until Book 4: The Young Sorceress, when he is marooned on a deserted island.  We know he’s there for years, because he’s only just been rescued when he meets Senta again at the end of Book 5: The Two Dragons.  In Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers, he is one of the aforementioned lovers, traveling around the world with Senta.

Baxter is one of the most important characters in The Price of Magic.  Only one other character is a greater player in this story, and I know what you’re thinking– it’s not Senta.

Preorder The Price of Magic for Kindle here.

Perry Rhodan

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If you’ve never heard of Perry Rhodan, check him out on Wikipedia.  In Germany, he’s like Star Trek and Star Wars all rolled up in one– hugely popular.  Back in the 70s, there were English translations of the first hundred or so Perry Rhodan adventures (out of nearly 3,000), and I was really into them.  I remember taking a cross-country trip with my family and stopping at every grocery store and bookstore and news rack in every town we stopped in, trying to piece together my collection.

Well, now a six-part storyline from the Perryverse has been translated and published and is available at your favorite ebook store.  I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to.  Ain’t nostalgia great?

The Price of Magic : On Its Way

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The Price of Magic - NewIt’s two and a half weeks until Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 7: The Price of Magic arrives on ebook.  I am doing the final proofreading, searching out any typos.  I’m kind of surprised that any could have survived this long.  The book has undergone many revision steps with the help of my writers group.

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 7: The Price of Magic is available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iBooks, and will be available December 4th wherever fine ebooks are sold.

New powers are rising in Birmisia. Far to the south, the strange lizardmen of Xiatooq are making themselves known. Closer to home, the new lizzie city Yessonarah finds itself rich in gold—gold the humans covet. As tensions rise, many in Port Dechantagne seem eager to teach the lizzies a lesson in humility. Fourteen year old Iolana Staff finds herself in the center of it all, as she is pulled between her conscience and the conventions of society. Unconcerned with the conflict between human and lizzie, sorceress Senta Bly prepares for her own war, unaware that events will pull her into a life and death confrontation with an old enemy.

Brechalon Characters: The Magic Wielders

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Spoiler Alert
And finally, we have our last characters from Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon.

Madame De La Rosa: Madame De La Rosa is a very old seer. She is an expert in divination, and it is she that Smedley Bassington comes to for information. This is her only appearance in the story.

Amadea Jindra: In Brechalon we meet Amadea Jindra as Madame De La Rosa’s apprentice. She is a major part of the storyline in Book 3: The Drache Girl. I’ll fill in more about her when I get to that book.

Professor Merced Calliere: Calliere is a brilliant scientist and inventor. He is Edison, Westinghouse, and Babbage all rolled intellectually into one, but his attitude is all Tony Stark. He is a happy go lucky academic, who is clearly smitten with Iolanthe, though whether she thinks of him as anything more than another resource remains to be seen.

That’s it for Brechalon. In a day or so, we’ll start looking at the characters from the new book in the series: The Price of Magic.  Some of them are the same.  Some are new.  But as it takes place 17 years after Brechalon, people and things are different.

Apple TV

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For my birthday a little over a week ago, I got several very nice presents from my family, including a new Apple TV set top box.  We’ve had the previous (3rd gen) for a while, as well as a Roku box in the other room.  Both of them are good.  The new Apple TV though has a potential to be much more.  It will all depend on what kinds of apps come out for it.  I’ve downloaded a few games, but mostly we’re still using it like the old Apple TV, which means we’re not yet getting our money’s worth.

Brechalon Characters: Flashbacks

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Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert
There are several characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon that appear entirely or mostly in flashbacks.

Smedley Bassington: Wizard Bassington appears mostly in flashbacks though he appears in the present in one chapter. Bassington is an important character in the series and plays a large part in Books 3 and 5. He is a paramour of Zurfina and he is a government wizard. He is also, as we find out, a great manipulator. I had a very clear image of what Bassington looked like. His appearance is based on Stephen King. I set up my copy of the Dark Tower to the author’s photograph whenever I was writing him. I had been carrying the name Smedley around for a while, and it just seemed to fit. He has his part to play, and plays it. I really enjoyed writing him in Book 3: The Drache Girl. He is a great foil for Senta.

Master Akalos: Master Akalos was the Dechantagne tutor, a cowardly little man, and not very important to the story. He is referenced once or twice, but Brechalon is the only place we see him, and that in a flashback.

Iphegenia Dechantagne: The mother of Terrence, Iolanthe, and Augie is murdered by her husband, as we see in a flashback in Book 0. I don’t think she is ever mentioned again, but she plays an important role nonetheless, in shaping the Dechantagne siblings. I love the name Iphegenia, and have always been fascinated by the myth of Agamemnon’s sacrificing her. I would have used the name somewhere, but it fits here.

Lucius Dechantagne: The father of the Dechantagne’s, he is only spoken of in the later books, having died some time before Brechalon, and having lived without facing real punishment for his wife’s murder, though it does cost him his standing in society and his hereditary title.

Jolon Bendrin: As we find out in book 0 flashbacks, Jolon Bendrin is a rapist. He is mentioned only briefly in book 1, but finally makes a satisfying appearance in the flesh in book 5.

Simon Mudgett: The man who was in bed with Iphegenia Dechantagne when her husband kills her. He is mentioned once more in the series. I pulled Simon out of nowhere, but Mudgett I have been saving for a while. The name comes from Herman Webster Mudgett (aka H. H. Holmes), America’s first serial killer.