A busy summer has come and is now going... and I've enjoyed a lot of great progress on the novel, finishing Chapter 7 just this weekend. Surely and steadily, this project is trudging towards completion.
Chapter 6 brought our main character away from the intrigues of Halls of Painted Heaven to the dangerous realm of Leng - a mythological staple of Dream-fiction ever since its introduction by H.P. Lovecraft, author of the legendary Cthulhu Mythos almost a century ago. Hundreds of authors since Lovecraft have referenced or twisted the murky details we suspect about "the plateau of Leng", that cold place perhaps in Dream from whence the strange men in their black ships sail. It was enjoyable to imagine my own spin on Leng, and I hope Cthulhu fans out there enjoy my addition to its legend.
Further details keep emerging about what our main character's true quest is, and the plot thickens insofar as complications develop - other, unknown forces have their own plans in motion, and Chapter 6 reveals a smidgen about who might be to blame for the calamity that befell the Halls of Painted Heaven in earlier chapters. No spoilers.
Chapter 6 was also a great opportunity to briefly reference a few characters near and dear to my heart - old player characters of mine and my friends from the Clinton J. Boomer Planescape game which is the bedrock upon which all of my other gaming experience proudly rests. Mostly that was a struggle of limitation - to keep from gushing about characters I know so well, remembering to keep them confined to what they need to do for this story, nothing more. My dear friend Kendall provided me some wonderful inspiration for the use of his old character (Maze, a dangerous, jesterly serpent-warrior).
Chapter 7 is the final bridge that brings my characters to the final battleground of the novel - the Coliseum Morpheuon. Moved from the perils of Leng across the slumbering sea by a fully weaponized space-whale (yeah, I said that) and a lobster-shaped submersible, Rube and Jax have had further opportunity to view the wonders of the Dream setting, and all the colorful weirdness that entails. I got to use Le Loup Solitaire - a character from my Faces of the Tarnished Souk series, also through Rite Publishing. His will not be the last familiar Face we see in the book; after all, since I have an entire stable of fully developed characters especially for use in Dream/Coliseum Morpheuon, I'd be a fool not to use them. I hope fans of Faces enjoy the cameos.
The next few chapters will be the great challenge, where I now have to do the heavy lifting of resolving some of the mysteries and revealing the many plots that have been grinding behind the scenes all along. Cue drumroll!
~ Matt Banach, author
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An excerpt from Chapter 6 of Lost in Dream:
“Capital mayhem!” Jax exclaimed, loud, right in my goddamn ear. He had risen to his feet, and was staring blearily across the way with a look of childlike awe. “What first-rate shenanigans are these?!”
“Covert operation. I really shouldn't say.” clicked the brass skull. “But thank you for asking.”
A man-sized ball of lightning shot down from the clouds, angling sharply just before it struck the city to skim horizontally across the rooftops, strafing foes and buildings with a heavy rain of sizzling white bolts. A series of explosions shook the ground beneath our feet, and we watched as the upside-down pyramid shuddered, tilted, then fell over with the terrible force of an earthquake.
“Covert?” Jax remarked, shielding his eyes from the ensuing cloud of dust and debris with his one big arm. “I just don't know what words mean anymore.”
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