March 2021 Dispatch
Kyell Gold
I’ve been writing all month, mostly on Price of Thorns. We’re just over two weeks from when our first lockdown started (it was St. Patrick’s Day here!) and at the time I didn’t believe we would be locked down for a year. We’ve adapted—maybe a little too well. I’m jumpy around crowds of people now, which doesn’t bode well for the first furry con back. I’m sure we’ll get used to being around each other again, given time, but I think I’ll be wearing a mask in large groups for a while yet.
If you live in Texas, I hope you’re doing okay and that all your pipes are intact! If you want to help Texans in need, check out Feeding Texas (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/peoplefirstfeedingtexas). There are lots of other charities doing good work, too.
Return From Divalia (over on my Patreon) is done! I’ve got a couple other books to get done, and then I’ll work on getting art and edits for RFD. Look for it to be published in book form probably early 2022. Next story on the Patreon will be “Squeak Thief,” about a posh rich college mouse who needs to go find a jaded fox to help him steal something. If you want to get in at the start of this story, the first part will go up March 3, and you can subscribe for only $5/month!
Ty the Knot, the sequel to Ty Game, is also being serialized on Patreon but not through posts. To avoid piracy, every month I send people a message with a link to the part in the dropbox. If you sign up now, we’re well into the book, but drop me a note and I’ll catch you up at least back to the beginning of the most recent part.
My fanfiction writing streams have gone pretty well! I’ve been doing them Tuesdays around noon PDT for 60-90 minutes, and intend to continue them into September. Keep an eye on my Twitter or follow me on picarto.tv (https://picarto.tv/KyellGold) to be notified next time I stream. I’m now working on a Pokemon fanfic with sex in it and I’m having a lot of fun.
Streaming shows: The second season of Hilda (Netflix) is just as weird and charming as the first one. It ends with a cliffhanger omg!
I finally got around to watching Broadchurch (Netflix) and I really liked it. David Tennant and Olivia Colman have great chemistry together and everyone in the town feels like a real person. The second season is a bit scattered but the third pulls back together.
I’m also watching Sneaky Pete (Amazon Prime). Giovanni Ribisi, who I mainly knew as Phoebe’s brother on Friends, is fantastic as a con man hiding from a powerful criminal (Bryan Cranston, who also executive produces) by taking the identity of his prison cellmate Pete and going to meet Pete’s long-estranged family. Things get complicated fast, but we get to enjoy Pete’s quick thinking and experience with confidence games. I like con man stories (and this is helpful for Squeak Thief research) and I’m having a lot of fun with this show.
Dude, Where’s My Pack? is currently available from FurPlanet! The e-book is on baddogbooks.com and will be on the other sites probably the first week of February March.
The fourth and final Calatians book, The Revolution and the Fox, is out! It’s on ArgyllProductions.com and available on all major retailers. If you liked the series please do leave reviews and tell your friends!
Audiobooks: If you don’t have an Audible account yet, check out my new Soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/user-710305036-429996600), which has samples and links to all my audiobooks. Those links help me get extra money especially if you use them to sign up for a new account. Savrin has been slowed by the pandemic (having everyone home always leaves less time for recording), but once Love Match 1 is up, we hope to get Titles and Ty Game out as well! Dude, Where’s My Fox is now available as an audiobook too!
My FREE book of writing advice called Do You Need Help? is on baddogbooks.com right here: https://baddogbooks.com/product/do-you-need-help/
Appearances in 2021
My full list of upcoming appearances is at http://www.kyellgold.com/contact.html, recently updated (or soon to be updated).
Megaplex has been postponed, but I have been told that they would like to keep the same GOH slate into 2021. I don’t have any other plans to attend furry conventions in person until then.
Spotlight: No spotlight this month
Excerpt: Here’s an excerpt from The Price of Thorns:
Oigal shuffled through the papers to a small pile, where he picked up and tossed aside several parchments. “Now, the story of Glaedrigdal, let me see.” He scanned one parchment, dropped it, and picked up another one. “I know that that is an ancient name for something but I don’t remember quite…is it Galadal? No…ah! Here we are. Glaedrigdal is an ancient name for Lake Beatrice. I believe it was one of the kings who named it for his daughter a long time ago. Now how did you come to know the name ‘Glaedrigdal,’ I wonder.”
Nivvy tried to think of a legit reason he would know that name. “I heard it from a very old friend of mine,” he said finally as Oigal sat back in his chair.
“She must have also heard it from a very old friend,” Oigal said. “It’s been Lake Beatrice as long as I’ve known it. That paper mentioning Glaedrigdal comes from my predecessor. But the story of Lake Beatrice is even older than that, so I presume it was first told about Glaedrigdal, as it was then known.”
“He’s really good,” Zein chirped up. “You’ll see. I haven’t even heard the Lake Beatrice story but it’s got to be good.”
“I’m afraid I don’t tell it often, partly because Lake Beatrice is quite a way from here, but also because it isn’t, in fact, one of the better stories. It mostly explains the existence of the lake. But I will tell the most interesting version of it.”
Quite a long way didn’t sound like it was going to be easy for Nivvy and Zein to get there, but maybe “a long way” meant something different to people who weren’t hawks. Anyway, he only needed to know where it was, not the whole song and dance behind it. “Do you know where it is?” Nivvy asked.
“In a very general sense,” Oigal said. “As the story goes, it was a long time ago and a long way away from here, in the foothills of the northern mountains. There was a valley, and a kingdom in the valley, and a king who ruled the kingdom.
“For many years, the land was prosperous. Bouli, the god of fire and smithing who lives in the mountains, smiled upon them, and they made obeisances to him. He gathered into this kingdom some of the finest workers of metal and the finest cooks in all the world. It was said that in this kingdom, the poorest beggar’s meal was finer than that of a king in any other city.”
Nivvy had been about to open his mouth to object, but the mention of Bouli stilled him. He’d paid for the story, so he might as well listen, and maybe he’d learn more about the god of fire whose priests had been keeping him captive.
“With these glories came scribes, of laws and of stories, and Bouli’s fire burned in all their works. And with them came great generals and conquerors. The glory of the kingdom grew so great that the last king believed that Bouli intended for their valley to be the center of a great empire. Under his orders, the kingdom amassed a great army and set forth to conquer the rest of the world.
“Their army came to Vir’aji. You know the place?”
“Heard of it,” Zein said, while Nivvy shook his head.
“Vir’aji is a great port on the Northern Sea, north and east of here. If I were simply telling this story to someone from Spire, you understand, the army would arrive at Spire and the story would go on. For someone from Copper Port, it would be Copper Port. But the first time I heard it, it was Vir’aji, and because the goddess Aji is the one to strike back, I believe it makes the most sense to say Vir’aji. You understand, yes?”
Nivvy got it; the stories were shaped to the listener. There was a time when he would love to hear a story of the glory of Copper Port, but those days were fairly far in his past, even the latter days he’d lived in that pit.
“The armies of Vir’aji were small, but the goddess’s spirit flowed strongly in them and they beat back the king’s army. Furious, the king instructed his army to destroy every temple to Aji that they could find, and his men burned a dozen of them. Then he retreated back to his kingdom’s valley to gather his strength and plan a new attack.”
Oigal leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But the goddess followed them.” He paused, and Nivvy’s fur prickled with the tension, even though he knew how this story ended. “The mountains that ringed the valley had glorious caps of snow, and Aji walked among them, looking down at the kingdom that had dared defile one of her temples. When the king sat in his palace, brooding over his failure, Aji gathered the snow from all the mountains. She sent it streaming down the mountain sides, and in an instant, as quickly as you might fill a basin from a well, the valley was gone. In its place was a bright white sheet of snow, sparkling in the sunlight as though thousands of people had not just been killed below it.”
Not too far from what he’d heard, although in this version the kingdom definitely deserved it. You didn’t go around defiling temples unless you wanted gods to be mad at you. Maybe this king Bella had been talking about had done some of that and that’s why she was able to drown the valley. The thought felt comforting, but in the way a coarse wool blanket might keep you warm: it was nice but it was too itchy to stay under for long. Thoughts could be itchy too, when he knew they weren’t quite right.
“When the people of Vir’aji sought out the attackers to find out what had happened, they traveled for days and never found a trace of the kingdom, but they found a beautiful lake and their king named it for his daughter Beatrice. And that is what happened to the kingdom that lies beneath Lake Beatrice.” He beamed at them. “Or, as you know it, Glaedrigdal.”
“Thank you!” Zein squawked. “That was lovely! Ooh, the image of that valley filling with snow. But I suppose they were wicked people and deserved it.”
Nivvy pushed aside the itching from that remark and asked, “People have seen it then? The city under the lake?”
“Oh, yes. Another name for this story is the Tale of the Drowned Kingdom.” Oigal nodded vigorously and gave a short laugh. “I have a list of places I would like to see before I die, and Lake Beatrice on a clear day when you can see the buildings below the water is one of them. But the list is longer than the hair on my chin, and I fear my remaining days are as short as the hair on my head.”
“We’re hoping to go there,” Zein said, “and when I come back I promise to tell you all about it.”
“You’re going to Lake Beatrice, eh?” Oigal beamed. “Oh, to be a hawk with the freedom of the skies! Or,” he looked down at Nivvy, “a weasel small enough to be carried by a hawk.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Nivvy said. “Got a spell to trade places?”
“Ha ha!” Oigal laughed. “Zein, I like her. She’ll make you a good companion.”
Questions From YOU
If you’ve got a question about my books or my writing—or anything else you want me to talk about—shoot me an email or reply when I ask for questions on Twitter and I’ll answer it here.
From Gabe: “Quick question, how do you make the audience care about a supporting character? I mean, like if something happens to that character in a supporting role, how can I make the audience care as much as I, the creator, do about that character?”
Here’s what I wrote about side characters in “Do You Need Help?”:
A lot of times you will bring in side characters simply to fulfill a role in the plot, to be “the guy who brings the hero to the enemy fortress” or “the woman pilot” or “the best friend who gives her advice.” This is necessary but often leads to flat characters if you don’t think about them more. Your story isn’t about the side characters, but they are still important to consider.
One way to look at it is to go through your story and imagine that the side character is a main character. What’s his story or her story? Why is he or she invested in helping or harming the main character? We know why our main character is going through the story (I hope you do, anyway!), because that’s the point of the story. But if you take the time to think about your side characters, you’ll find that they add life and three-dimensionality to your story and your world. When they become real people, their interactions with your main character become more real.
It will take more time, but especially in a novel-length work, it’s worth going through your character exercises with the side characters as well as the main. What are their goals? What was their childhood like? The more you know about them—things that don’t come out in the story—the more they will bring to your story.
How do you make people care about them? The same way you make people care about your main characters. You give them relatable wants.
Someone who wants to win a race isn’t necessarily relatable. Someone who wants to win a race to prove to their parents that their hobby wasn’t a waste of their time is much more relatable—even people who aren’t interested in racing can relate to the need to prove something and will be rooting with your character.
If you care about your characters, that should come out on the page in your writing. But be aware, too, that your readers will not necessarily all feel the same way you do. I’ve written characters that I thought were jerks and some people later told me that they liked them; I’ve written characters I liked a lot and heard readers tell me they couldn’t stand that character. So find the reason you love your side character, make sure it comes out in your writing, and that’s the best you can do.
Stay safe and wear a mask, y’all.