I’ve always heard that most actors enjoy playing villains. It’s kind of fun to write about them, too. Fictional villains, that is. Not real ones.
https://leeduigon.com/2016/06/15/how-bad-should-your-villains-be/
Note to those who really want me to unravel Obann’s glorious past: Some of that will be done in Book No. 11, The Temptation, so please stay tuned.
Hi, there! I’m Lord Reesh, the villain in the first four Bell Mountain books–and, if I do say so myself, a jolly good one! Oh, boy, wait’ll you see me get what’s coming to me!
Ah, but you can’t see that unless you read the books. And it’s only nine days till Christmas. Do you catch my drift?
These books, especially the ones with me in them, make fantastic presents for friends and family. And they’re so easy to get, even those simpletons on the Obann High Council could do it. Just click “Books” at the top of the page, and you can order any title either directly from the publisher or via amazon.com. Whatever that is. We don’t have it, where I come from.
If we were all in Obann, I could simply order you all to buy the books and sic Judge Tombo on you if you didn’t. You don’t want anything like that to happen!
![The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain Book 4) by [Duigon, Lee]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518K2jLcIUL.jpg)
The folks at The Chalcedon Foundation, who publish my books (www.chalcedon.edu/ ), got quite a charge this morning when they looked on amazon.com and found The Cellar Beneath the Cellar selling for $2,900 and change per copy.
“I should’ve held on to more of Lee’s books,” said one. “Is this some kind of money laundering?” asked another. “And to think you get can my autograph on Ebay for only $30,” remarked our president.
But that was only some of the fun. Amazon had priced The Glass Bridge at $1,471.48 (48 cents?) and The Last Banquet at $689.59. When I checked a little while ago, a used copy of The Last Banquet was priced “from $556.96.” From? You mean it gets higher?
Please don’t tell me anyone has volunteered to pay those prices.
By now, except for that little hiccup with Banquet, amazon.com seems to have rectified the errors. One of our editors thought maybe my books had been swept into the Trump boom. If only!
But I guess y’all better glom onto The Throne before the price goes up. Again.
To be a writer, you have to be a reader first. And don’t stop reading, either.
The books that capture your imagination early in life will always be with you. What you want to read about will shape what you choose to write about.
All About Strange Beasts of the Past flicked my imagination switch. I was only seven years old when it came out, and nine or ten years old when I read it. Roy Chapman Andrews, the explorer who first found dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, wrote several of these Allabout Books. His All About Dinosaurs I read over and over again until it fell apart. Strange Beasts I kept checking out of the library.
Andrews had a gift for making prehistoric worlds come alive. In practical terms, he used this gift whenever he had to schmooze J.P. Morgan into funding another expedition. When he wrote for children–well, as far as I was concerned, it was just like being there.
Everybody knows about dinosaurs, but I got really into prehistoric mammals, especially the gigantic hairy ones. Strange Beasts introduced me to creatures that have inhabited my dreams ever since; some of them now inhabit my own Bell Mountain books. Andrews’ “Beast of Baluchistan” appears in The Thunder King just in time to rescue the city of Obann from being sacked by the Heathen host. The saber-toothed cat, seen on the cover of Strange Beasts, features in the climax of The Last Banquet. The saber-tooth’s prey, the giant ground sloth, makes cameo appearances in several of my books. I haven’t yet found a place for the spectacular “Shovel-tusked Mastodon” of Strange Beasts, but I expect I will.
Books were a big deal in our house. My mother was a reader, and filled several large bookshelves with her favorites. I took after her in that department: I just could never get my fill of stories! History and science, in my view, also counted as stories.
But nothing could ever top the creatures I met in Roy Chapman Andrews’ books.
P.S.: Andrews was widely believed to have been the real-life model for Indiana Jones. To that I must say “Pshaw!” Andrews’ adventures were real.
P.P.S.: For some reason which I can’t remember, as a very young child, I formed the expectation that my Aunt Betty, a nun, would somehow provide me, someday, with my own woolly mammoth. Please don’t ask me to explain this. She did try–gave me a vaguely mammoth-shaped little furry something which, I am sorry to say, did not quite live up to my expectations. But she did try, and for that she gets full marks.
This comes from O.P. in Australia, originally posted on my “Playground Player” chess forum on http://www.chessgames.com . I have his permission to post it here. I have edited it slightly, only because it’s so long. Here goes:
I’ve finished “The Last Banquet” and found this fourth installment to be a most enjoyable read, just as I did the first three!… You continue to come up with fascinating new characters and the further development of your existing characters from the previous books is ingenious.
The obsession of Lord Reesh with the past Empire is an intriguing sub-theme throughout the series.
“But to be free, we must have power. Power to feed ourselves, regardless of the vagaries of rain and drought and frost. Power to go where we wish to go, when we please, regardless of how far away the destination, regardless of the weather. Power to channel human labor, and direct it. The men of the Empire had such power. So must we.”
I wonder to what extent the old Empire, and its demise, is a commentary on our own society.
Orth is an interesting counter-point.
“Folly, Orth thought. You collect bits of rubbish from the ruins of the Empire and treat it like fine jewels, and you delude yourself. If the men of that age were so great, why is there nothing left of their greatness but useless pieces of trash? Why did they perish? You say they flew through the air, and sailed the seas, and spoke to one another over great distances as if they sat across a table from each other–but did any of that save them? Where are they now, First Prester? Why should we try to emulate a civilization that has utterly died out?”
Orth develops into a compelling character. He is pathetic and cowardly, yet retains a residue of conscience, which only emerges when driven by his fear of “the dark angel” with the slaughter weapon. His reaction to the human sacrifice, in contrast to the cynicism of Lord Reesh, is particularly stark.
Your treatment of the various animals throughout the series is particularly heart-warming. Cavall is so reliable and the addition of Angel was a nice touch for Helki, who preferred “the company of hawk and hound”…
Wytt’s importance in this book, as in the first three, cannot be overstated. The little hairy fellow becomes more captivating with each book.
“Wytt leaped out of her arms and chattered loudly. He snatched up his little sharp stick and brandished it over his head and started dancing all around…He made a squeaking noise that was Omah-laughter.”
You really do bring him to life with your remarkable writing.
The finale of this book, as with all of them, is very dramatic! Of course I won’t give anything away, but Chillith’s last stand before the Thunder King, “You are delivered into judgment!” was spine-chilling!
There’s more, but O.P. says he’ll post the whole thing on The Last Banquet amazon.com page. There’s a lot of praise here that is very gratifying to me–but I’ve posted this not to blow my own horn, but in hopes that some of you out there, after reading the review, will want to read the book.
No. 8, The Temple
Okay, I have permission; so here’s the cover blurb for The Throne, Book No. 9 of my Bell Mountain series. Most of the editing is finished, we’re waiting for the cover art by Kirk DouPonce, and I hope we can get it published in time for Christmas. But first, the blurb:
The Thunder King has been destroyed–or has he actually reappeared in Obann’s greatest city, to claim it as his prey?
In city and in forest, the boy king’s loyal servants struggle to preserve his throne. But it will be a long journey home for King Ryons and his army, while ambitious and unfaithful men scheme to take away his kingdom.
Nothing in the city of Obann is what it seems to be. Evil masquerades as good, while good must hide behind a semblance of evil. The king’s chief spy poses as the usurper’s trusted adviser–but will he be able to find the help he needs to mount a successful resistance?
For God has chosen Ryons to be king, and Ryons’ people must find friends in unexpected places.
Join the heroes of Bell Mountain as they fight for Ryons’ kingdom!
So there you have it, and I hope it makes you want to read the book when it comes out. And if you’re interested, but haven’t read any of these books yet, start with No. 1, Bell Mountain.
![The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain #7) by [Duigon, Lee]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/618jW2HsDUL.jpg)
Fantasy fiction is awash with “heroes” who make everything look easy–especially the writing of fantasy. The Clever Thief With the Heart of Gold, The Roistering Barbarian, and the ubiquitous Invincible Female Warrior: please, No mas, no mas! I mean, what kind of a chucklehead do you have to be, to believe in such protagonists?
I would rather pattern my heroes after the heroes of the Bible, like Moses and Abraham, Peter and Paul–heroes who had to accomplish some exceedingly difficult things, and who keenly felt the difficulty, but nevertheless did what they had to do because they had faith in God and tried their level best to obey Him, whatever the cost.
They weren’t supermen. They couldn’t rely on really great kung-fu, powerful magic, super-powers, or any other kind of unlikely boons the writer might bestow on them. And their own personal flaws created more difficulties for them. Think of Moses pleading with God to get someone else to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and losing his temper when God had him strike the rock to bring out water. No, these weren’t supermen at all. But they got the job done in the end.
When I had the girl, Gurun, in the opening chapter of The Last Banquet, swept down from the north by a storm, to land in a country that was very strange to her, I had no idea that she would go on to be a queen–and a most reluctant one, at that. She can’t even ride a horse without the fear of falling off in front of everybody. None of this was her idea. She wants to go home, but can’t. But what she does is to follow the path upon which God has placed her, in spite of homesickness, and fear, and the very strangeness of it all–without the slightest idea of what her faithfulness and perseverance have come to mean to those around her.
It’s not what Gurun does, but what she is, that matters.
So if you’re writing fantasy, lay off the cliches and let your heroes and heroines be ordinary, believable people who aren’t showing off, aren’t acting like caped super-heroes in a comic book, but are just doing what they do because they have to.
Let your heroes be what we should be–and would be, and will be, if we only keep the faith.
The famous “surgeon’s photograph” of the Loch Ness monster: posted here solely for your enjoyment.
No, not this month. Ran out of gas today, and won’t quite reach 4,800–although that does set a new monthly high for this blog.
Six months ago I would’ve thought 4,000 hits a month just about impossible. So the next plateau is 5,000, and I’ve come close.
This blog is just about the only advertising I’ve got for my books.
Please, if you haven’t heard about my books, take a moment to click “Books” at the top of the page and have a look. No harm in looking!
As I try to prepare myself to write another book, once the Lord provides me with a beginning of some kind, by re-reading all the previous books in my Bell Mountain series, I’ve just about finished Book No. 4, The Last Banquet.
That book had its genesis in a most unusual and vivid dream that I had, one night.
I dreamed of a teenage girl living in Iceland, a thousand years ago, who one fine morning had a desire to go fishing. She took her father’s boat and went out on the water. She caught a couple of nice cod, but then something very big and very strong bit down on her hook and made a fight of it. She needed all her strength and all her skill just to keep it on the line, and was concentrating so hard on doing it that she never noticed the sky filling up with storm clouds.
Finally her line broke, and so did the storm. Darkness and heavy rain blinded her. Ferocious winds seized the boat and made it race across the waves. There was nothing she could do to turn it. At any moment she expected to be sunk and drowned.
How long the storm held her, I couldn’t say. But just when it seemed it was going to go on forever, it stopped. The sea grew still as glass. Thick fog covered everything. The boat was full of water, having sprung several leaks. She fought to bail out the water, but it was a losing battle.
And then the fog was whisked away, and the sun came out.
And the girl stood up in her boat and looked on wonders that she never could have imagined–great, towering buildings all along the shore.
Modern buildings.
***
And that dream, with very few details of it modified, became the first chapter of The Last Banquet; and the girl, Gurun, is featured on the cover of Book No. 7, The Glass Bridge.
I just absolutely love this aspect of my work!
I’ve been trying to find you a video of one of my all-time favorite prehistoric animals, Uintatherium, and the best I can do is this old soup commercial. Actually, this Uintatherium looks pretty good, although its size is, shall we say, greatly exaggerated–unless it’s the mob of hungry humans who’ve been downsized.
This is the critter, the sight of which causes Lord Orth to lose his mind in The Last Banquet. It also caused me to lose track of 17 or 18 Temple servants, but my editor fixed that before the book was published.
Uintatherium was about the size of a full-grown rhinoceros, with a huge rectangular head full of horns, knobs, and tusks. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I hope you will, too.