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Smarter than the average horse

  I love some of the animal characters in the books I read. From the heroic nature of Dean Koontz’s goldens, through the tragic descent into madness of Stephen King’s Cujo, to the comic distractions of almost any pet, animal characters just add depth and breadth to any tale. Right now, I’m having a lot of fun with my MC’s horse in the epic romantasy series I’m writing. Brawn has a bit of faerie blood in him. He’s super-intelligent—a good bit smarter than the MC in many ways—and his frustration at not being able to communicate through speech makes for some interesting scenes. The following scene in A Verse for Witches was placed in the book after some back-and-forth with my editor on the pros and cons of making the horse one of the major characters. It was an experiment that--as she warned me it might--got out of hand. And now, more and more scenes are from the horse's point of view in the series. From A Verse for Witches, Chapter 1: Trevor stepped out from the shadows as the door...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 27: Getting to Know Erin Callen

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 (From the 01/23/2026 newsletter) 19 th Day of Snow Moon, 1219 th Year, Human Age of Magic … We are three days into our journey north on a trail that winds its way through the foothills of the Darinian Mountains. As we crest each hill, we are afforded an occasionally spectacular view to the east. Through the morning of the first day, that view was of the sweeping grasslands of the Plains of Saha’ar. But we soon made our way through a pass between the Darinians that dominate our view to the west and another range of mountains, the Faricican, that juts away to the east, separating the grasslands in the south from the Great Eastern Desert in the north. Since then, our vistas to the east are nothing but a vast palette of rolling dunes stretching to the far horizon, broken only by an occasional dense cloud rising from its surface. Erin tells me the clouds mask fierce storms that constantly shift the pattern of dunes, confounding even the most experienced desert travelers. Erin cla...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 26: A Distinct Turn of Events

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 From the December 26, 2025 newsletter: 16 th Day of Snow Moon, 1219 th Year, Human Age of Magic … It has been an eventful three days since my last journal entry. I have been so busy I’ve not had a chance to write, and I have much to record. I could not have been more wrong about the young woman who rescued me from the hyenas some five days past. She is not the demoness I thought her to be. Indeed, she is one of the most kind and caring humans I’ve run across, and I am grateful for my good fortune in being unable to escape my perceived captivity. In fact, I truly believe the Gods of Urgule answered my prayers when I found myself unable to run after managing to loosen the cords that bound my legs and torso. It turns out that the rack to which I was bound was no device of torture but a bed the girl had constructed, to which she had secured me so that I wouldn’t injure myself during the seizures I was apparently having in the first stages of recovery from my wounds. I found ...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 25: A Prisoner Once More

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 From the 11/24/2025 newsletter: 13 th Day of Snow Moon, 1219 th Year, Human Age of Magic … I am healing, and I feel much stronger than I did yesterday. But I am definitely a prisoner again. The red-haired demoness who continues to feed me and minister to my wounds has yet to discover I have freed my hands and arms from their bonds, but she has my legs and torso bound to this rack in such a way that I cannot reach the knots to untie myself. When she comes to spoon gruel into my mouth thrice daily, I feign delirium, and so far she has not tried to initiate a conversation. But I don’t know how much longer I can fool her into thinking I’m not well enough for travel. I am certain now that she is an agent of Mazuom’s, for I recognized the stylized royal symbol of Zemburith on her horse’s saddle pad. Undoubtedly, she is planning to take me back to her master as soon as possible. That would surely be the end of me. I’m running out of time. I must come up with a plan to escape. ...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 24: Demon Warrior

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 From the October 23, 2025 newsletter: The following is a corrected post from a month ago, taking into account a corrected translation from the High Elven in the original journal: 12 th Day of Snow Moon, 1219 th Year, Human Age of Magic … I’m alive. Whether or not that is fortunate, I cannot say. I should not have ignored my nose when I detected the scent of hyena before leaving the safety of my cave. Indeed, the beasts were concealed nearby. I’d gone no more than a dozen longspaces from the cave entrance when they came out of hiding and surrounded me. I managed to stun the alpha female with a throwing stone, and for a moment I thought I might escape. However, weakened from days without food or water, my legs gave way when I tried to run. I stumbled, and the beasts were on me in an instant. I tried to fight, but there were too many. I was about to be torn to shreds and eaten piece-by-piece when a fierce war cry rose from somewhere outside my field of vision. Suddenly, the...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 24: Apology

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 From the 09/19/25 newsletter: I need to issue an apology to my readers for possible errors in our previous excerpt. To explain, let me give you a little background. The story of the adventurous love affair between Erin Callen and Theon Alanis, chronicled in the Song of Tsing trilogy, has been pieced together mainly from three different sources. Two of them were originally oral ballads transposed into the written word thousands of years later by historians. The Illisandra, an ancient Persian epic about an antediluvian prince, contains accounts of battles in which the protagonist fought against a mighty king with a singing sword. The Orcanis Heraldanus , a somewhat disjointed collection of folk tales from across Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, has a number of versions of the affairs of both Erin/Theon and Shia/Mustava, plus related references to places like Azurith, Zemburith, and Arleanne. But the document that ties the stories together and links them with the activities of the...
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Goblin Diaries, Vol 24: Angel of Mercy

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 From the 08/22/2025 newsletter: 12 th Day of Snow Moon, 1219 th Year, Human Age of Magic … I cannot believe that I am alive. I should not have ignored my nose when I detected the scent of hyena before leaving the safety of my cave. Indeed, the beasts were concealed nearby. I’d gone no more than a dozen longspaces from the cave entrance when they came out of hiding and surrounded me. I managed to stun the alpha female with a throwing stone, and for a moment I thought I might escape. However, weakened from days without food or water, my legs gave way when I tried to run. I stumbled, and the beasts were on me in an instant. I tried to fight, but there were too many. I was about to be torn to shreds and eaten piece-by-piece when a savior arrived in the unlikely form of a human female warrior. She charged to my rescue astride a mighty steed, raining arrows of death upon the hyenas, killing half the pack outright and scattering the rest to parts unknown. The last thing I rem...
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