Greetings folks, this entry on the blog is actually part of a group promotion I’m doing with a bunch of other Speculative Fiction authors from Kboards.com. The gist is the introduce new and prospective readers to out characters and by extension our books. Each week, a new author is taking the wheel with a Sunday blog post.
Before me was William D. Richards and his character, Nem Aster, laying down some sweet old school hero’s journey action in a world of warring empires.
I’m going to do things a bit different for my turn because most of my readers already know quite a bit about Ru and the World of Ere from my perspective. For this post, I’m going to let Ru himself take over and answer.
Vaal: You ready Ru?
Ru: This is supreme foolishness, but if I must, I must. Be warned, I will not suffer foolishness lightly even form you, O Creator.
Vaal: Fair enough. Let’s start.
What is the name of your character? Is he fictional or a historic person?
Ru Brakar: Fictional? Fictional?! By my blood, how you you insinuate that my existence is a falsehood simply because I do not exist on the same plane as you, that the histories of my world are different from yours. I have lived this wretched half-life for more than five thousand years, you blistering peon. By all rights, I would be a historical figure if not for the circumstance of my world ending to birth your ‘World of Ere.
Vaal: Yes, but objectively, I made you up. By the dictionary’s definition, you’re fictional.
Ru: If you insist on adhering to that vapid tome for your grounding in linguistics, then yes.
Vaal: Moving on then…
When and where is the story set?
Ru: The setting is a world called ‘Ere’, a place of civilization on the razor edge of savage and powerful nature. The people live with the threat of mighty, nigh-unkillable spirit beasts and ruthless bandits assailing their settlements and the specter of some three hundred years of continual war beginning anew.
In the face of this, they have grasped for every advantage. First and obviously most importantly, they have elevated the art of magic to a science, as pervasive and widely available as this ‘electricity’ thing the Creator speaks of in his world. Even the most ignorant child knows how to conjure at least a handful or water or light a tiny flame.
Less importantly in my infallible opinion, they have also embraced the low sciences of chemistry and engineering, ushering in an age of steam power and firearms. A mistake if you ask me, giving the power of a mage to a crass and feckless commoner.
Vaal: Please stay on topic, Ru.
Ru: Fine. The body of this tale takes place in the thirty-sixth Year of the Thirteen Nation Accords, which ended the aforementioned centuries of futile war between shattered peoples. It has roots far in the past, from the Hailene War of Ascension, some five hundred years before from whence my master originates, to the burgeoning city-state where I was born over five hundred years ago.
Mostly however, the first book of the saga takes place in a dustbowl town on a now-arid floodplain beset by bandits. If you are reminded of ‘The Seven Samurai’ or ‘The Magnificent Seven’, I am certain the deeply original Creator has no idea what you’re talking about.
Vaal: Hey!
Ru: Next question.
What should we know about him?
Ru: Heh. Where to start… I am known as the Rune Breaker. To the world at large, that name is given to e legendary weapon only the most evil beings would dare seek to command. The reality is that I am that weapon; bound by the most intricate spellwork ever conceived to serve whosoever swears to wield me with my awesome powers.
What powers do you ask? I am a shapeshifting master, capable of taking the form of any living being I see and making use of all their physical abilities. In addition, I am a prodigy with the magic that controls other magics, vox, and through it, I command overwhelming amounts of mystic power, backed with my vast knowledge of spellworking.
In the past, I have made and unmade empires.
Vaal: And now?
Ru: Ugh. And now I have been bound to my one hundred and eighth master: a naïve whelp of a girl named Taylin. She is a hailene, one of the winged people of Ere: Angels whose history is cast in enslaving those they deem lesser and impure. Aylin was one of the impure and where a life of slavery should have broken her, it has galvanized her damnedable sense of civility and morality. My diametric opposite.
What is the main conflict? What messes up his life?
Ru: Are you deaf? I just told you? My ‘master’ doesn’t want a slave. She ties to treat me as an equal while curbing my desire to see all things burn. I am wasted.
Oh yes, there is a literal demon stalking us—Immurai the Masked, who would surely be a blight on the world should he command my power—but Taylin’s softness and unwanted kindness is the greater hindrance to my existence.
Vaal: Really? She asks you nicely not to act like a psychopath and treats you good and that’s worse than the demon who is more evil than you are that’s out to get you?
Ru: I believe that is what I said, yes. ‘Acting like a psychopath’ is all that is left to me thanks to this crow-eaten that ties me to Taylin.
Vaal: I think this question was really more about the main conflict of the book…
Ru: If that’s the point, then you should have made this post about Taylin. I’m sure she’d say something about saving that worthless village or the other things I understand would be regarded as ‘spoilers’ for Book 2. But no. You asked me to do this, and my conflict is with the link and Taylin’s thrice-cursed hero complex.
I mean really, she won’t even let me slaughter the bandits’ horses. What is that.
What is the personal goal of the character?
Ru: Was this your attempt to change the subject?
Vaal: Yes, Very much so.
Ru. Bah. My goals are as they ever are: the find a way to undo the spell that ties me to my masters and failing that, to exterminate anything that raises my ire in way unkind.
In the meantime, I bide my time learning new and more complex spellworks and attempting to avoid this thing the Creator calls ‘Character Development’. My name is on the cover of the tome, but this is Talyin’s story—let such fates befall her as I quite like who I am.
Vaal: We’ll see about that, wizard boy.
Ru: Odds, bods, hammer and tongs! If you were not the weaver of my ultimate destiny and the one who may one day finally end my imprisonment if not my wretched eternal life, I would burn you from existence with fire so hot, you would fade from memory.
Vaal: Good to know you get that you can’t exist without me. We’ll see how you feel about that after all that Character Development.
Ru: Existing isn’t that important to me, you know.
What is the title of the novel and where can we find out more?
Ru: The first book of Rune Breaker is A Girl and Her Monster, a tome that my simple-minded creator, who is clearly a smith of words not numbers, has made free to read on a variety of ‘electronic’ reading devices. For the impatient who do not wish to read one book at a time, it is collected along with the other three books of the series as Rune Breaker: the Complete Saga.
Vaal; Oh, and don’t forget that the sequel series Soul Battery is coming out this December!
Ru: Sequel?! No one told me of a sequel! I have my body ripped and blasted to shreds a half dozen times in the first one—what in the Seven Interlocking Hells are you going to do to me in this one?!
Vaal: You get to fight the Ere equivalent of a T-rex in the first book.
Ru: Carry on then.
Vaal: Also available this December: Winterscoming: A Rune Breaker Holiday Special
Ru: Holi– A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL?! YOU MOTHERLESS PIECE OF–
And So…
Next in line for the hop is dystopian author, S. Elliot Brandis (Facebook | Amazon)
