Originally, I thought I'd write everything down in a single volume, but I quickly realized how silly that was. I would need at least a trilogy. That was also silly; the outline has now expanded to a full eight volumes, and I'm still cutting stuff away to save space! Who knew there was so much material?
"In the Company of Dragonslayers" introduces the two primary protagonists, Cora O'Banion and Cuauhtérroc, a yin-yang sort of unlikely coupling. Cora is a bit of a spoiled little girl, naïve and unsuspecting, who leaves home in a rebellious snit to experience the glamorous life of vigilantism. In contrast, Cuauhtérroc is a hardened savage from the untamed equatorial jungles in search of a massive army to return vengeance upon his sworn enemies. Along the way they pick up a variety of characters and stumble their way into the midst of an assassination plot and political coup.
What they don't know certainly will kill them.
The title is perhaps still a work-in-progress. It represents the beginning of the series and is not subtitled. If the book is a success, subsequent volumes will be subtitled under this, as you can see on the "About" page.
At the time I started writing there was not even the germ of a plan to publish, so I hardly paid any attention to format, flow, continuity, style...or word count. When finished, the first draft of weighed in at a whopping 805 pages (6"x9", 1-in margins). I eventually printed all of that on 202 sheets of paper and hand-bound it, wrapped it in leather, and gave it to Sam, my brother-in-law, as a Christmas gift. But it would never do as a serious novel; it simply had to be cut--no, that's not sufficient--it had to be axe-murdered. Today, this book has been trimmed to a modest 560 pages, and then cut in half. And it's still too large for many publishers. I'm still working on reducing it down to a manageable size without losing the flow and value of the story or characters.
What an exciting, nerve-wracking process this has been!