NOVRONIAN: nov-ron-e-on Pertaining to Novron
NYPHRON CHURCH: The worshipers of Novron and Maribor, his father
NYPHRONS: nef-rons Devout members of the church
PARTHALOREN FALLS: path-ah-lore-e-on The great cataracts on the Nidwalden near Avempartha
PATRIARCH: Head of the Nyphron Church who lives in the Crown Tower of Ervanon
PAULDRON: A piece of armor covering the shoulder at the junction of the body piece and the arm piece
PERCEPLIQUIS: per-sep-lah-kwiss The ancient capital of the Novronian Empire, named for the wife of Novron
PERCY BRAGA, ARCHDUKE: Lord Chancellor of Melengar, winner of the title of Grand Circuit Tournament Champion in Swords, the Silver Shield, and Golden Laurel; uncle to Alric and Arista, having married King Amrath’s sister
PICKERING: Noble family of Melengar and rulers of Galilin. Count Pickering is known to be the best swordsman in Avryn and believed to use a magic sword.
PICKILERINON: Seadric, who shortened the family name to Pickering
PLESIEANTIC INCANTATION: plass-e-an-tic A method used in the Art to draw power from nature
PRICE: First Officer of the Black Diamond thieves’ guild
RATIBOR: Capital of the kingdom of Rhenydd
RENDON, BARON: Nobleman of Melengar
RENIAN, BROTHER: rhen-e-ahn Childhood friend of Myron the monk
RHELACAN: rell-ah-khan Great sword that Maribor tricked Drome into forging and Ferrol into enchanting, given to Novron to defeat the elves
RHENYDD: ren-yaed Kingdom of Avryn, ruled by King Urith
RILAN VALLEY: Fertile land that separates Glouston and Chadwick
RIONILLION: ri-on-ill-lon Name of the city that first stood on the site of Aquesta but was destroyed during the civil wars that occurred after the fall of the Novronian Empire
RIYRIA: rye-ear-ah Elvish for two, a team or a bond
RONDEL: Common type of stiff-bladed dagger with a round handgrip
ROSE AND THORN, THE: Tavern in Medford run by Gwen DeLancy, used as a base by Riyria
ROSWORT, KING: Ruler of Dunmore
ROYCE MELBORN: Thief, one-half of Riyria
RUFUS, LORD: Ruthless northern warlord, respected by the south
RUSSELL BOTHWICK: Farmer in Dahlgren, husband of Lena
SALIFAN: sal-eh-fan Fragrant wild plant used in incense
SAULY: Nickname of Maurice Saldur, used by those closest to him
SENON UPLAND: Highland plateau overlooking Chadwick
SENTINEL: Inquisitor generals of the Nyphron Church, charged with rooting out heresy and finding the lost Heir of Novron
SERET: sir-ett Knights of Nyphron. The military arm of the church first formed by Lord Darius Seret, who was charged with finding the Heir of Novron.
SHERIDAN UNIVERSITY: Prestigious institution of learning, located in Ghent
SPADONE: Long two-handed sword with a tapering blade and an extended flange ahead of the hilt allowing for an extended variety of fighting maneuvers. Due to the length of the handgrip and the flange, which provides its own barbed hilt, the sword provides a number of additional hand placements, permitting the sword to be used similarly to a quarterstaff, as well as a powerful cleaving weapon. The spadone is the traditional weapon of a skilled knight.
SUMMERSRULE: Popular midsummer holiday celebrated with picnics, dances, feasts, and jousting tournaments
TABARD: A tunic worn over armor usually emblazoned with a coat of arms
TEK’CHIN: Single fighting discipline of the Teshlor Knights that was preserved by the Knights of the Fauld and handed down to the Pickerings
TENENT: Most common form of semi-standard international currency. Coins of gold, silver, and copper stamped with the likeness of the king of the realm where the coin was minted.
TERLANDO BAY: Harbor of Tur Del Fur
TESHLORS: Legendary knights of the Novronian Empire, greatest warriors ever to have lived
THERON WOOD: Father of Thrace Wood, farmer of Dahlgren
THRACE WOOD: Daughter of Theron and Addie
TILINER: Superior side sword used frequently by mercenaries in Avryn
TOBIS RENTINUAL: History professor at Sheridan University
TOLIN ESSENDON: Son of Brodric, who moved the capital to Medford and built Essendon Castle
TOMAS, DEACON: Priest of Dahlgren village
TORSONIC: Torque-producing, as in the cable used in crossbows
TRENT: Northern mountainous kingdoms
TRUMBUL, BARON: Mercenary
TUR: Small legendary village believed to have once been in Delgos, site of the first recorded visit of Kile, mythical source of great weapons
TUR DEL FUR: Coastal city in Delgos, on Terlando Bay, originally built by dwarves
UBERLIN: The god of the Dacca and the Ghazel, son of Erebus and his daughter, Muriel
URITH, KING: Ruler of Ratibor
VALIN, LORD: Elderly knight of Melengar known for his valor and courage but lacking strategic skills
VANDON: Port city of Delgos, home to the Vandom Spice Company, which began as a pirate haven until Delgos became a republic, when it became a legitimate business
VENLIN, PATRIARCH: Head of the Nyphron Church during the fall of the Novronian Empire
VERNES: Port city at the mouth of the Bernum River
VILLEIN: Person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord
VINCE GRIFFIN: Dahlgren village founder
WARRIC: Kingdom of Avryn, ruled by Ethelred
WESBADEN: Major trade port city of Calis
WESTBANK: Newly formed province of Dunmore
WESTERLANDS: Unknown frontier to the west
WICEND: why-send Farmer in Melengar who lends his name to the ford that crosses the Galewyr into Glouston
WINDS ABBEY: Monastery of the Monks of Maribor near Lake Windermere in western Melengar
WINTERTIDE: Chief holiday, held in midwinter, celebrated by feasts and jousts
WYATT DEMINTHAL: Onetime ship captain, father of Allie
WYLIN: why-lynn Master-at-arms at Essendon Castle
extras
about the author
After finding a manual typewriter in the basement of a friend’s house, Michael J. Sullivan inserted a blank piece of paper and typed It was a dark and stormy night, and a shot rang out. He was just eight. Still, the desire to fill the blank page and see where the keys would take him next wouldn’t let go. As an adult, Michael spent ten years developing his craft by reading and studying authors such as Stephen King, Ayn Rand, and John Steinbeck, to name just a few. He wrote ten novels, and after finding no traction in publishing, he quit, vowing never to write creatively again.
Michael discovered forever is a very long time and ended his writing hiatus ten years later. The itch returned when he decided to write books for his then thirteen-year-old daughter, who was struggling in school because of dyslexia. Intrigued by the idea of a series with an overarching story line, yet told through individual, self-contained episodes, he created the Riyria Revelations. He wrote the series with no intention of publishing it. After presenting his book in manuscript form to his daughter, she declared that it had to be a “real book,” in order for her to be able to read it.
So began his second adventure on the road to publication, which included drafting his wife to be his business manager, signing with a small independent press, and creating a publishing company. He sold more than sixty thousand books as a self-published author and leveraged this success to achieve mainstream publication through Orbit (the fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group) as well as foreign translation rights including French, Spanish, Russian, German, Polish, and Czech.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Michael presently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife and three children. He continues to fill the blank pages with three projects under development: a modern fantasy, which explores the relationship between good and evil; a literary fiction piece, profiling a man’s descent into madness; and a
medieval fantasy, which will be a prequel to his best-selling Riyria Revelations series.
Find out more about Michael J. Sullivan and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net
interview
When did you know you wanted to be an author?
I was really young, no more than seven or eight, and a friend and I were playing hide-and-seek, and I found a typewriter in his basement. It was a huge black metal upright with small round keys. I completely forgot about the game and loaded a sheet of paper. I swear, the very first thing I wrote was: “It was a dark and stormy night, and a shot rang out.” I thought I was a genius.
When my friend found me, he was clearly oblivious to the value of the discovery I had made. He wanted to go outside and do something fun. I thought about explaining to him that I couldn’t imagine anything that could be more fun than what I was doing. I looked at the blank page and wondered what might come next: Was it a murder mystery? A horror story? I wanted to find out; I wanted to fill the page; I wanted to see where the little keys would take me.
We ended up going alley-picking until my mother called me for dinner. Alley-picking was the art of walking down the alley between the houses and seeing if there was anything cool being thrown away that we could take for ourselves. I had hoped that someone was throwing away a typewriter—no one was, and I went to bed that night thinking about that typewriter, thinking about that page and that first sentence.
What made you start writing? Were you a big reader? Did you ever add to that first sentence?
I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I hated reading in my youth. The first novel I tried was a book called Big Red, which was about a boy and his dog. I was on my way to my sister’s farm and would have nothing to do for four hours. This was before DSs, DVDs, VCRs—before all the entertainment acronyms. It was also before Sirius, and I knew that twenty minutes after we left Detroit there would be nothing but static on the radio—hence the reason for the book. I finished it out of a sense of perseverance rather than enjoyment. When I was forty I wanted to be able to say, “Yes! I read a book once! It was excruciating, and took half a year, but by god, I did it!” Then whomever I was speaking to would look upon me with awe and know they were in the presence of a learned man. The reality was, the book was boring and put me to sleep.
Then I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I loved them in a way I never dreamed it was possible to love a book. When I closed the last page of The Return of the King, I was miserable. My favorite pastime was over. As I mentioned before, this was before all those letters, before Xboxes and PS 2s and 3s, back when television had only three stations and cartoons were something shown only on Saturday morning. I went to the bookstore with my brother looking for another series like that one and was dismayed to come up empty.
There was nothing to read. I sat in my room, miserable. I made the mistake of telling my mother I was bored and she put me to work cleaning the front closet. I pulled out what looked like a plastic suitcase.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“That? That’s your sister’s old typewriter. Been in there for years.”
I never finished cleaning the closet.
Can you tell us about your background in writing? Where did you go to college? Do you have an MFA?
Usually this question comes from aspiring writers, and they always look disappointed when I tell them the answer: I never took a class in writing or English, beyond those required in high school. I never read a book on creative fiction. I never went to a seminar or a writers’ conference. And I didn’t attend my first writers’ group until after I had published my first book. What I know about writing I taught myself.
My family didn’t have the money to help me pay for college. My father, a crane operator at Great Lake Steel, died when I was nine, and after that my mother paid the bills with the money she made as a gift wrapper for Hudson’s department store and my social security checks (that stopped coming when I turned eighteen). Still, I was pretty good at art and received a scholarship to the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, but it ran out just after my first year. I did manage to land a job as an illustrator/keyliner, though. Then kids came along and my wife made more money, so I stayed home. I was twenty-three.
By this time we had moved to the remote northern corner of Vermont, literally over a thousand miles away from everyone we knew. I had lots of time on my hands, particularly when our daughter was taking naps and the idea of trying to write a publishable book rose to the top of my consciousness. I was teaching myself to write by reading books. I went to the local general store (yes, just like in Green Acres) and looked for the books with the golden seal indicating they were Nobel or Pulitzer Prize winners. These were not the books I would normally choose to read. At the time, I was into Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, and Frank Herbert, but I was trying to learn—so I figured I should learn from the best, right? I purposely forced myself to read widely, especially the stuff I did not like. They were the ones that always won the awards, the abysmally boring novels with paper-thin plots and elaborate prose.
I would pick a particular author, read several books by them, and then write a novel using what I had gleaned from reading their books. I didn’t just write a short story—I wrote whole novels, then rinsed and repeated with the next author. I found something in each writer’s style, or technique, that I could appreciate, and worked at teaching myself how to do what they did. In a way, I was like Silar from the television series Heroes, where I stole powers from other authors and added them to my toolbox. From Steinbeck I learned the transporting value of vivid setting descriptions. From Updike I found an appreciation for indirect prose that could more aptly describe something by not describing it. From Hemingway I discovered an economy for words. From King, his ability to get viscerally into the minds of his characters … and so on. In addition, I wrote in various genres: mystery, science fiction, horror, coming-of-age, literary fiction—anything and everything. I did this for ten years.
My writing improved with each novel. I finally wrote what I thought was something worthy of publishing and spent maybe a year and a half trying to get an agent before I finally gave up. Ten years and untold thousands of hours is a long time to work at something and achieve at least what I thought at the time to be nothing. Ten years, ten books, a ton of rejections, and not a single reader. It was time to give up this pipe dream.
So how did you “get back on the horse” as it were? What got you to start writing again?
It was years later; we had left Vermont and were living in North Carolina. The kids were old enough for day care and I went back into advertising. I had been a one-man band running an advertising department at a software company, and then I left that to create my own advertising agency, where I was the creative director. As to writing novels, I had vowed never to write another creative word.
Years passed, and my second daughter, Sarah, was struggling in school. She’s dyslexic, which makes reading difficult. Not being good at something means it isn’t any fun. So I got her books—good books—books I loved: The Hobbit, Watership Down, Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicles of Prydain, and that new book that I was hearing about—that thing about the kid who was a wizard or something … Harry Potter. It was sitting around on a table one afternoon. Beautiful, brand-new book—I’m a sucker for a pretty book. I cracked it and started reading and was transported. What I liked the most was how easy it was to read—it was just plain fun.
I started writing again, but this time for the sheer fun of it and with the hopes of making something for my daughter that would help her to like reading. I wasn’t writing in anyone’s style. I was done trying to make the great American novel. I just wanted to enjoy making something I would like to read. Still, the authors I had studied were there, lurking beneath the surface. When I wanted to paint a vivid setting, Steinbeck was whispering in my ear. When I hunted for a special turn of phrase, Updike lent me his hounds, King gave me a road
map into the characters’ heads, and when I wrote a run-on sentence, “Papa” scowled at me.
Why did you decide on a series instead of writing a single book and adding sequels after?
It may seem strange, but two of the biggest inspirations for the Riyria Revelations were the television shows Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The thing about them that I found fascinating was the layered plots. B5 in particular was amazing in that the entire five-year series was mapped out before the first episode was shot. I think this might be the first, and only, time that’s ever happened. Yet it allowed for the unique opportunity for viewers to watch episodes and look for clues to the bigger questions that were hinted at from time to time and in small doses. In addition, Straczynski—the show’s creator—layered his plots, something that was mimicked to a lesser degree in Buffy. This really impressed me, and I wondered if it could be done in a book series. So I actually mapped out the entire series before writing it. I was never making a series of books, but rather one long story in six episodes.
You use a lot of humor in your books; talk to us about that.
Theft of Swords Page 61
