by Ramy Vance
“You know about the Dark One?”
“Course I know about the Dark One. Seen him since he was a little baby. Seen him grow old. Seen him tear a thousand realms apart. Kind of an ass.”
“Do we win? Do we finally beat him?”
“You mortals always ask the wrong questions. Takes the fun out of life. Anyway, you’re talking about this moment, right?”
“What about Dawn? And Lindsay? Can you at least tell me if they live?”
“Nope. The most I’ll tell you is that some nerd someplace ends up writing a miniseries about them.”
Reality fractured again, and Dakota was watching the writer’s conference in Craig’s cottage. “This it?” the turtle grumbled.
“It’s the 20Books conference,” Dakota exclaimed. “That’s it.”
“All right. Just step in the pool and Wizard of Oz the whole thing. And do me a favor. Don’t let that clock fall into some other asshole dragon’s hand. You keep a good watch on it.”
“Me? What am I going to do with it?”
“I don’t know, but keep track of it. All these alternate timelines get confusing. You don’t want an evil version of yourself coming back to haunt you. Oh, and one more tip. Don’t worry about the whole fucking with the past thing. Never really changes anything. Time just keeps on slipping. Now, get the fuck outta here. You interrupted my nap.”
Dakota looked down at his feet. There was a pool of water in front of him, and he stepped into it. The water was very warm, as if it were a bath that had started to cool. “There’s no place like 20Books. There’s no place like 20Books,” Dakota said as he clicked his heels.
Dakota was trying not to nod off during the writer’s conference. Craig was going on about something, and he just couldn’t find it in him to pay attention. He was daydreaming about what it would be like to go on an adventure. How it would feel to be living something instead of just writing about it.
He wondered if he was the only writer who ever had thoughts about that. The job Myrddin had given them all to seed the world with the idea of a fantastic magical realm was good work. Important work. He knew that. But he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to actually be out there fighting.
Just as Dakota’s eyes started to get heavy, there was a loud crack like an oak tree being split in half. It caused him to jump up, yelp, and knock over his paperwork. He leaned over to pick it up, and when he looked up, nearly everyone in the room was staring at him. Dakota watched their eyes move back to a man who was standing on the table.
That man was Dakota, only he looked older. He was grizzled, and his beard was heavy with little flecks of gray. The older Dakota wore a green ranger’s outfit and had a longbow slung over his shoulders. His hood was pulled so low you could barely see his face, but Dakota knew who it was. He knew deep in the pit of his stomach, and he was in awe.
Another loud crack and the older Dakota turned around. A portal opened in the room, and a balor stepped through it. The balor looked as if it were about to speak, but before it could utter a word, the older Dakota pulled around his bow and launched an arrow into the balor’s head.
He drew his daggers and leapt forward, slamming them into the balor’s chest. They both toppled through the portal, and the man closed it behind him as he tumbled through to his death.
All the writers in the room sat in silence. Dawn looked at the younger Dakota, as did Lindsay and Robyn. They shared glances with each other and smiled without knowing why.
Craig cleared his throat and pointed at his PowerPoint presentation. “That was mildly interesting. Now, back to what I was saying—”
The door of the conference room burst open, and Tao sprinted into the room. He looked around, obviously confused. The Tao that was sitting at the conference table also looked very confused. Neither of them spoke before the Tao that had just entered the room fell over, dead.
Craig sighed and walked over to the dead Tao while the living Tao commenced to scream and freak out. Craig knelt and checked dead Tao’s pulse, confirming that he was deceased. “Lead poisoning, it looks like,” Craig explained. “But this timeline still has a Tao…and it looks like everyone is accounted for.”
Tao was standing and pointing at the dead body, screaming, “Why the hell am I dead?”
Craig waved away Tao’s concern. “Don’t worry about it, Tao,” he lectured. “You’re alive, and that’s what matters. We mustn’t spend too many of our days worried about how many alternate versions of ourselves are doing well or not. Also, in the future, I would suggest staying away from number two pencils.” Craig pulled out a wand and waved it over the dead Tao’s body, which promptly disappeared. “Now, back to business. We have books to discuss!”
Craig returned to his presentation as if nothing had happened. All of the writers felt a vague uneasiness in the air, but they couldn’t remember why. It was as if something had just happened, and they had already forgotten. After the presentation, during the lunch break, they exchanged story ideas, and every so often, someone would say they had the uncanny feeling that someone had just walked over their grave.
Epilogue
The cavern was dark and cold, with the heat of the dragon gone. Lindsay sat in a pool of gore, the dragon’s body broken open and seeping onto the ground. She was covered in blood, both her own and the dragon’s. There was an arrow in her shoulder, and she groaned when she tried to move.
“Not every day you get to kill a dragon.”
Lindsay looked up. The voice had come from Dawn, who was limping over to her. Dawn was covered in open wounds. She was hardly able to walk, but she was smiling brightly. She took a seat next to Lindsay and opened her HUD. “Here, this should help,” she said as she handed Lindsay a potion. They sat in silence for a little bit, sipping their potions and letting the curative effect take hold. “You know, I thought when Dakota left, we were going to suddenly just be back at the conference. Guess that’s not how time travel works.”
Lindsay tossed the potion bottle to the ground and groaned again as she felt her wounds healing. “Not in a real time-travel story,” she countered. “Nothing’s ever that simple. I have no doubt that Dakota took care of things, though. Or at least some version of things.”
“Sorry you didn’t get to go back to your books.”
Lindsay shrugged. “No, it’s all right. I’ve been thinking about this since we first got here. I just didn’t know until I saw the dragon. This is what I want.”
“Same here. I’m glad there’s a version of us out there writing, I guess. That’s what it would be, right? An alternate timeline or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Dawn nodded. “Well, I’m glad they’re there, and I’m fucking stoked that we’re here. Bringing the fight to the Dark One on both sides, right? Living the adventure we’re writing.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
A rumbling came from somewhere to the left of the cave. Dawn struggled to get to her feet and pulled out her daggers. Lindsay did the same before looking at her wand. She sighed and shook her head. “All out of juice, I think,” she muttered.
A dragon’s roar came from the other side of the cavern, and a small black dragon sauntered into the light. Another dragon followed on his heels, and there was a third at his side.
Lindsay smiled, and the tip of her wand sparked as she leaned against Dawn for support.
“Oh, good. More dragons.”
Author Notes Ramy Vance
October 18, 2019
Death of an Author: Killing Them Was so Much Fun
As an author, I’ve killed. A lot.
I have stories where trolls have been burned to ash by dragon fire, krampus’s have met their breastfeeding end and ogres have been bludgeoned to death by Stew’s massive, ahh, appendage (I’m, of course, referring to the climactic scene in Middang3ard’s Never Split the Party).
But never have I had the visceral, giddy satisfaction of killing too many people I know.
It all
started with the premise… What if everything Tolkien, DnD, Milton, etc wrote was real, and their works were preparing humanity for that harsh reality?
And then we expanded to: What if all the indie authors Michael and I knew were in on the conspiracy?
We started to think about that, considering how fun it would be to have a novella starring all the authors we admire so much…
And so I started to reach out to everyone I knew with the following message:
Michael Anderle and I are doing something a wee bit different and we're wondering if you’d like to die in one of our books.
I should probably give you more information…
It’s called Middang3ard (check out our promo video: https://bit.ly/31rgSnE).
The premise is this: What if writers like Tolkien and games like DnD were actually primers to prepare humans for the coming war between the various races?
You can check out the book here (https://amzn.to/2YR5y2m)
And here’s a quote from Dakota Krout that puts the whole series into perspective:
"It's about time the truth is told about the MMORPG games and other fantasy tales. They weren't flights of fancy, but manuals on how to fight in a magical world. A magical world just a portal away. Get your gamer gear on you N00bs, class is in session."
- Dakota Krout, author and lead agent for the Humanity
Preparation Program, GameLit Novels department
The reason we’re reaching out to you is because we’re writing a novella starring other ‘agents’ of Middang3ard. In other words—other authors prepping humans for the coming war.
Since your main genre is part of that prep work, my question is - would you like to be an agent? And if yes, how would you like to die? (Don’t worry, you’ll come back to life at the end of the story…)
We got some interest peeps agreeing to this and some hilarious deaths.
Let me know… your glorious death awaits you
I reached out to just over 20 authors and not a single one of them said NO. I guess we author types have a morbid fascination with death … even our own.
In fact, they all came up with their own death scenario that I did my best to work in. (I’m particularly proud of how I killed Tao Wong.)
Everyone was such a great sport about it and I’d love to encourage you to read more of their stuff.
Here’s our WALL OF HEROES:
Martha Carr
Orlando Sanchez
A.L. Knoor
Nazri Noor
John P. Logsdon
Derek Murphy
Ramy Vance
Bryan Cohen
Tao Wong
Matthew Sylvester
Andries Louws
Craig Martelle
Chris Fox
Mal Cooper
Jonathan Brazee
Craig Falconer
Kevin McLaughlin
Michael Anderle
Gerald M. Kilby
Jonathan Yanez
Dan Willcocks
AND, OF COURSE, THE MAIN HEROES OF THE STORY:
Dakota Krout
Dawn Chapman
Lindsay Buroker
Robyn Wideman
And if you’d like to read more Middang3ard stories, Never Split the Party is a great starting point!
(And please check out the preview of book one following Michael’s author notes.)
Author Notes Michael Anderle
October 21, 2019
Thank you for not only reading this book but checking out the Author Notes here in the back!
For a lot of these author notes, I’m telling the story of my life with little snippets of what is happening to me at that moment in time. (Flying over the Atlantic coming back from the Frankfurt Book Fair as I write these.)
However, these notes are going to be about encouraging any of you to consider writing books and selling them yourself.
It might just change your life.
My life is a lot of work, but I’m BLESSED to be able to do this. I’m the leader of a bunch of people who do great work and help change lives, if not daily, than at least weekly. The changing of lives might be simple…
We name a character in a book after a fan, and they appreciate it. The change might be bigger. Some of our readers have taken up the challenge and written and published their own books, learning how to tell stories and advertise their work.
And pocketing money for doing it.
For some, it isn’t life-changing but it pays bills and makes the month go a little easier, with income left over. For some, they work hard (and with some luck) make enough income to replace their normal salary.
I thought it would take me writing twenty books to make $50,000 in a year. I found out (from others) that you could make $50,000 on four.
(I didn’t, but hey, it can be done!)
If you want to find out if becoming an Indie author might be for you, check out the 20Booksto50k® Facebook page and answer the questions (as an author-to-be). It’s Free.
Read the FAQ, type some words. Did you enjoy the story you wrote? If not, try again to tell the story YOU want to, and see if you can read it again in a day or two, and really like it.
If you do, you might be onto something.
Perhaps, you will make the six-figure a month income. It is possible, you know.
I’m not the only one doing it.
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Want more Middang3ard?
Check out this preview of book one!
Chapter One
Today the Expansion would be announced, and Myrddin Emrys felt an emotion he hadn’t experienced in nearly three thousand years.
Nervous.
It was nearly ten o'clock at night, and the guests were beginning to trickle into the auditorium. Dignitaries and delegates from across the world looked around with disappointment.
This was where Myrddin Emrys, the richest man in the world, had summoned all the world leaders? They had expected something grand. Something awe-inspiring.
Instead, world leaders—all of the world’s leaders, to be precise—were welcomed to a plain-looking theater with stark white walls.
Sure, the desks were labeled with the names of the countries and sovereignties, but the placards were a simple white, with the dignitaries’ names hastily written in black marker.
Still, they entered.
Such was the respect most of them carried for Myrddin. Or maybe it was respect for the game he had created: the virtual world of Middang3ard, where over seventy percent of the world’s population—the world’s voting population—spend the majority of their day.
As the last few entered, the auditorium quickly fell into a silence as close to death as possible for over two hundred breathing bodies. They waited in anticipation for Myrddin to enter.
Most of them, that is.
“Where the fuck is he?” growled the newly-elected US President.
One of his security guards hurriedly bent over and whispered something in his ear. From the look on the President’s face, he was being scolded. Whatever the guard said, it worked, because the President sulked back into his chair, pouting as he waited.
Myrddin Emrys shook his head as he watched them from backstage through the disturbed surface of the water in his scrying pool, which was set in a giant black cast iron cauldron.
The cauldron not only showed him what was happening, it also revealed what was being felt by the leaders. The ancient sorcerer was hit by a wave of emotions that were a mixture of confusion, anticipation, and fear.
Today, Myrddin thought, I’ll finally get to see if all my centuries of planning and preparing have paid off.
He doubted it. He doubted anything could prepare them for what would come next.
He had hoped there would be more time, but in the last six months, the Dark One had become far more aggressive, conquering one world and destroying another. Whatever the Dark One’s plans were, they were accelerating, which meant Myrddin had no more time
to prepare.
He needed to act now.
Earth needed to act now.
Waving a hand over the scrying pool’s surface, he watched as the faces of the dignitaries blurred together into a massing of black figures marching, converging into one shape—a black amalgamation that stood to the height of a tower.
Orcs, trolls, ogres, and all manner of the Dark One’s forces were amassing. Soon they would overrun Middang3ard.
The real Middang3ard.
And when Middang3ard fell, Earth would soon follow.
The old wizard had protected his home and fellow humans for as long as he could. He had also prepared them for a war of magic and mythical creatures through games, stories, and legends that most humans believed to be make-believe.
He had prepared them as best he could through his game, something that VR uniquely allowed.
Through the game, millions of humans had learned how to swing a sword, cast a spell, and navigate the complex inner workings of the real Middang3ard.
But was it enough? No, of course not. A game was just a game. The real thing was…well, real.
A fact, humans would learn quickly enough.
But if Earth was to survive the Dark One, he needed soldiers to come to Middang3ard to fight the Dark One’s forces.
He needed adventurers. Heroes.
Human heroes.
Perhaps then, and only then, could they stop the Dark One from invading their home. That, too, he doubted, but better to fight and try than submit and die.
However, to get any of that, he first needed to convince these world leaders that the threat was real. To make them understand that they needed to commit resources—serious resources—if there were to be any hope of defeating the Dark One.
That would take time, and tonight was just one step. But while these human leaders were taking their time committing their forces, Myrddin would start to recruit his own army.
