No Dragons Press

Episode 6: “Addie Hears Something Strange”

Show Notes

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Six, where I read chapter 6, “Addie Hears Something Strange.” (If you want to skip the intro and go right to the chapter right around 3:05.)

Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening!

On Location in Myrick

So, this past weekend I actually went to visit the town Myrick is based on. A friend and I just kind of drove around town for a while, scouting out places where Addie might like to hang out and where her house might be and stalking the No Dragons Press offices (though unfortunately there was no Tristan sighting).

I did get a pretty cool shot of the street sign on the intersection of Madison and Twenty-Fourth, and you can even see a bit of the bluffs rising up behind it, although they just look like hills:

Then we wove around through the real bluffs, which are brilliantly green right now and really amazing. (I’ve added a few pictures to the show notes, so you can take a look at nodragonspress.com/podcast and check it out.)

The Bluffs: Addie’s Childhood Home

It made sense to me that Addie should have grown up in the bluffs, always with this view of looking down on the city below and seeing it as something separate. She’s got this view of the world where it’s like she wants to be a part of it but also prefers to stay separate—even when she’s just hanging out, she’s separate from other people, like even at a bar she’s either working or perpetually feeling like she’s just stuck her foot in her mouth. And she is definitely making plans to separate herself from Bradley.

She’s basically a weird girl who doesn’t really know what she wants, which is pretty typical, and I like that she has these special places she can visit whenever she wants to escape, up in these basically rocky, elevated green forests with sight lines of all the places she goes in real life.

Send Me Your Questions for Emily Ruf!

Coming up very soon here, I’m going to be bringing Emily Ruf on the show, the artist of the No Dragons Press series, so we can talk a little bit about how we got started on the project together and how she approaches coming up with a new piece of art every week.

If there’s anything you’d like me to ask her, definitely send me your question: you can reach me on Twitter at @nodragonspress, or check out nodragonspress.com for more contact info. thanks!

Well, that’s it from me! Remember, you can always find archived episodes, show notes, and links to the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series at nodragonspress.com/podcast. And if you know of anyone who might be interested in the show, be sure to let them know where they can find it.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy No Dragons Press, a High Fantasy Adventure: Book One, Chapter 6: “Addie Hears Something Strange.”

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re listening, be sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast to learn more about our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, and tune in next week for another episode of No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Podcast. Have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 5: “Addie Makes a Choice”

Show Notes for Episode 5

Hey, everyone! Welcome to the show.

So, a lot of scary things going on this week, again—a lot of uncertainty, a lot of people trying to tell you we’re broken and we can’t be fixed. Let’s just keep moving forward, and keep respecting each other as individuals. Everyone has their own story, and it might not be the one you expect, so let’s keep an open mind about each other and be kind to the people you encounter, OK?

High Fantasy = HIGH + FANTASY

So, I know we’ve spent a lot of the story just hanging around the No Dragons Press building in the tiny Midwestern town of Myrick. And the “high” aspect is pretty clear by now, but since you may be wondering, I thought I’d take a few minutes today to talk about where this alleged “fantasy” part kicks in.

Hopefully you have a pretty clear sense by now that something is about to happen, something that involves Tristan’s secret door to the basement.

Now, this isn’t a total spoiler, but in case you’re starting to get a little antsy for the shape of this thing, keep in mind that one of the most critical characteristics of the traditional “high fantasy” genre is that the story takes place in a world that isn’t our own. And while it’s gonna be a few more weeks before shit really hits the fan, you’re definitely going to start seeing some of those pieces coming together really soon, so that’ll be really exciting.

In the meantime, today’s chapter skips forward a few weeks, and it starts off a little more reflectively than some of the others. You can think of this as kind of the calm before the storm, when Addie still thinks she has a little bit of control over her life. She doesn’t, of course, but she thinks she does.

No, really, I know what I’m doing…

So, I was talking with some friends the other day about Lost and the Battlestar Galactica reboot—you know, other shows like that where you either suspect or know that the writers really didn’t know if they’d be canceled and they may or may not have had an actual plan for how the thing might end if it had the chance to.

That’s not what’s happening with No Dragons Press. I’m actually completely finished with book one, which is what you’re listening to now, and I’ve got books 2 through 5 outlined, and each book is novel-length. So don’t worry, you’re in good hands, I will not leave you with a ton of open questions and just suddenly slap an ending on it and call it a day, promise.

Have I mentioned I love fantastic leggings?

So, I have to mention this because I’m still absolutely tickled by Emily’s surprise for me this week. If you follow me on Instagram at @nodragonspress, you already know that I have a bit of a love affair with fantastic leggings. Most weeks, my artist Emily and I meet up and discuss the chapter, see what about it really calls to her as something she wants to depict—and she usually suggests something I’m not expecting and it completely blows me away, like the map of the galaxy in last week’s chapter.

This week, I don’t even remember what we decided on initially, but I got a message from Emily saying that she hopes I don’t mind but she took the artwork in a slightly different direction than planned this week, and would I mind if we made a bit of a switch. Immediately followed by another text saying: I’m going for it.

The result is of course amazing, and, as usual, way cooler than what I had imagined—and to top off the surprise, she put Addie in a pair of my own favorite leggings. It was so much fun to see this happen, and it’s a great reminder for me to just listen to the creative process as it’s happening, and if something feels like it isn’t working and some other option seems way more interesting, it probably is.

Check it out here:

Well, I think that’s it from me—I hope you enjoy chapter five! If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you, just head to nodragonspress.com for contact info, or you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram at @nodragonspress.

And hey: if you like what you hear, tell a friend! Because I had to rate this podcast “explicit” due to the the F-bombs and the marijuana thing, I don’t have the biggest outreach right now, so your word of mouth is definitely appreciated, and it is definitely the most powerful way for me to reach more listeners.

Thank you so much for your help, and thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Five: Addie Makes a Choice.

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re listening, be sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast to learn more about our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, and tune in next week for another episode of No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Podcast. Have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 4: “Addie Considers the Multiverse”

Show Notes

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Four: Addie Considers the Multiverse. (Chapter 4 begins right around 2:24.)

Show notes:

Hey, everyone.

Look, it’s been a really sad week, especially in Minnesota, where I live. I just wanted to explain why I’m not making much of an intro this week.

If you’re listening to an archive of this show, it’s early July 2016, and just somehow this week doesn’t feel right to talk about anything else as if it’s important. and nobody really quite knows what to do with all this anger and outrage or how we’re all going to move forward together.

I live in Minneapolis, just a few minutes from where Philando Castile was pulled over and shot to death by a police officer in front of a four-year-old child and denied medical attention. Nobody really quite knows what to do with all this outrage and how we’re going to move forward together, but we need to start taking better care of each other. We need to start seeing each other.

There’s so much we can learn from each other and share and experience if we’re not busy being afraid and focus on what we all have in common: being with the people we love, enjoying delicious food, talking about our day, and sharing our hopes and our fears, telling our stories. Let’s keep reminding each other to treat the things we don’t understand as opportunities to learn.

OK, so that’s my announcement. I suppose this week’s artwork is pretty on message too: it’s a map of the galaxy with our little tiny place in it called out with a little “you are here” thing. It’s actually only incrementally related to the chapter, but it turns out it has everything to do with everything, so it’s totally cool that my artist Emily picked that out as the thing she wanted to draw. This is what I love about working with her, and I hope you guys have had a chance to check out the artwork at ascraeuspress.com. I’ll also leave you a link in the show notes at nodragonspress.com/podcast.

Well, I think that’s it from me! Thanks for sticking with me and I really hope you enjoy Chapter Four: Addie Considers the Multiverse.

Hey everyone, thanks for listening! You’ve just heard Chapter Four: Addie Considers the Multiverse. Tune in next week, and in the meantime, be good to yourselves, be good to each other. Take care.

No Dragons Press

Episode 3: “Addie Sneaks a Smoke”

Show Notes for Episode Three

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Three: Addie Sneaks a Smoke. (Chapter 3 begins right around 3:00.)

Hey guys, I hope you’re all having a great  weekend. I just got back from a music festival, and I have already had more than enough weekend for one weekend – as you can probably tell by the sound of my voice!

Luckily I prerecorded the chapter earlier this week, so it should just be the intro that sounds a little rough; thanks for bearing with me. (I did a lot of yelling.)

Weekly Illustrated Fiction

I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series we’re doing at Ascraeus Press. I know I mentioned it before, but I wanted to clarify a few things about the structure of this thing and how it relates to the podcast and No Dragons Press as a whole.

I think we’re all clear now that No Dragons Press is the title of my High Fantasy series, and Ascraeus Press is the publisher, so that’s awesome. So what I’m doing is reading one chapter per week from my upcoming novel, which is Book 1 in a planned five-book series. Don’t worry, I know we’ve seen a lot just one single building, but things definitely change soon for Addie, so, you know, don’t get too comfortable in the No Dragons Press building.)

So, the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series at Ascraeus Press is really exciting in general because we’re committed to giving you one never-before-seen chapter per week,  for free, before I publish my book, but it’s also really exciting to me personally because I get to see what this world I have created looks like to someone else, which is a ton of fun. My illustrator Emily [Ruf] is amazing and totally gets what I’m doing, and the process of someone else reaching into my brain and pulling something out and then showing it to me is so cool.

We also have really fun work meetings, generally over beer. In a recent meeting about the Weekly Illustrated Fiction artwork, we were talking about holding back from doing characters in any sort of detail, at least for a while, and kind of leave it to the reader to decide what people look like, but we knew we had to see Addie before too long, even just a little bit, and I’m really happy with the artwork.

Awesome New Artwork from Emily Ruf

I’ll add a link in the show notes so you can check it out, but in case you can’t check it out right now, I’ll just briefly explain Emily‘s artwork this week: Addie’s got her hood pulled over her eyes and this absolutely magical cloud of smoke is coming out of her face, and it looks amazing. You can check it out at ascraeuspress.com and I’ll add a link to the show notes at nodragonspress.com/podcast.

Well, that’s it from me this week! Stay out of trouble, you guys, I’ll try to do the same, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Three: Addie Sneaks a Smoke.

 

Hey guys, thanks for listening. Make sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast for a link to the Weekly Illustrated Fiction thing, and also the podcast episode one, and you can listen to all the archived episodes there, too.

Thanks for sticking with me, you guys—take care!