Smoke billows from Castle Silverhill's laboratory
The Persistence of Poison cover thumbnail

Category: Chronicles of Wydoria

Posts about the Chronicles of Wydoria

  • Connecting with my muse

    Connecting with my muse

    “You seem to be of the opinion,” said Grimmon, “that thinking too hard sprains the brain.”

    He really does talk like that. Goblins can be just as pompous as the rest of us.

    “Actually,” I said. “I am thinking. I’m connecting with my muse.”

    I’d been writing all morning and was taking a break outside, leaning on the battlement at the top of the castle wall overlooking the moat, gazing at the world beyond.

    The tips of Grimmon’s ears wobbled. “Your muse? Don’t make me laugh. You’re not thinking, you’re procrastinating.”

    “I’ll have you know, the words have been flowing onto the page lately.” I waved my hand like I was conducting an orchestra. “And I’m pleased with what I’ve written.”

    “Yeah, right.” Grimmon sniffed and scuffed the sole of his shoe on a flagstone. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. What I wanted-”

    At that moment there was a loud bang.

    As one, we turned our heads to the building housing Castle Silverhill’s laboratory. A column of smoke billowed from a window, staining the clear blue sky a delicate shade of mauve.

    “Trewla!” I yelled, and ran down the steps to the courtyard below. A minute later, I was wading through the debris littering the laboratory’s floor, coughing as my lungs filled with smoke.

    “Trewla! Where are you?”

    “Over here,” she said, raising her head above a stained workbench and standing up. She was holding a dustpan and brush. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, and her face and clothes were covered in soot. “What on earth’s the matter?”

    “The explosion. I thought…” I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head.

    “Oh, that. I was just a little too heavy handed with the fairy dust. Nothing to worry about.” She patted down her hair.

    “Well, be careful next time.” If I sounded gruff it was due to the dust coating my throat.

    I felt a tugging at my sleeve, and looked down to see Grimmon gazing up at me.

    “Not now, Grimmon,” I said.

    “It’s important. I’ve got a painting for you.”

    And here it is: a scene from Daphne Mayne and the Goblin Quest where Daphne is crossing a magically created bridge over a chasm and the bridge’s guardian begins to materialise.

    The guardian materialising on the bridge of the chasm
  • The Chronicles Map

    The Chronicles Map

    A cold wind gusts out of the night and whistles along the battlements of Castle Silverhill. It spatters icy raindrops against the leaded windows and sets them rattling in their casements. Tentacles of grey mist ooze from the moat and drift around the keep, probing the ancient stones for cracks and crevices, openings it can slink through to chill the hearts of those inside.

    A movement catches my eye and I turn my attention to the painting I acquired decades ago, a work crafted in oils depicting the entrance to the dungeons.

    The brushstrokes move, showing the heavy door to the cells opening and a person of a rather unsavoury nature emerging. Down there, along with the rats and a peculiar luminous fungus, a goblin called Grimmon has made his home.

    You know how it is: you pop out to the shops for a loaf of bread and come home to find a goblin has moved into your cellar. Only, in my case, my cellar is less a single, dank room and more a warren of underground chambers, which I like to refer to as the dungeons. A vein on Grimmon’s temple throbs and he clenches his jaw whenever I call them that. He says it makes him sound like a criminal. Well, he might be for all I know.

    The view in the painting moves as Grimmon, a great leather-bound volume tucked under his arm, walks to the steps. He wipes the slime from his feet on a mat, not because I asked him to – he’s quick to tell me – but because he doesn’t want to expose the sentient slime to my unwholesome personage. With clean feet he trudges up the seven flights of stone steps to the floor where a dim corridor, ill lit by guttering torches, leads to the studio where I toil. I’m hunched over a board embossed with letters of the alphabet. A glowing flat rectangle of crystal, filled with words, floats before me.

    The goblin enters and brushes the wispy hairs of his forelock out of his eyes.

    “It is done,” he says. His gaze strays to the painting. But he’s too late. It reverted to a still life of a dead mouse and a wedge of mouldy cheese the moment he entered my studio.

    “All of it? The curly bits in the corners too?” I say.

    “Yes.”

    “Yes, what?”

    Grimmon frowns. “Yes, I’m finished.”

    “No.” I wag a finger at him. “I thought I told you to address me as Your Magnificence.”

    “I didn’t think you were being serious. I mean, what kind of conceited idiot calls himself that?”

    He’s nettled me, but I conceal it with a huff which I hope he’ll interpret as me brushing his insult aside because he’s not important enough for me to be concerned about what he thinks.

    It’s stalemate and for the space of half a dozen heartbeats we stare at one another.

    “Look, do you want to see it or not?” he says at last.

    “Oh… um, yes. Please.”

    He thumps the book down on my desk and opens it at the page he’s been working on.

    And here it is:

    Map of Wydoria
    Map of Wydoria
    Map of Wydoria

    This map of Wydoria is designed to be printed on A4 paper, or to be viewed on a screen.

    It shows the Land of Wydoria, shut off from the rest of the world by an enchanted Hedge, along with its major towns and cities, and the location of the home of each of the evil rulers of the country, together known as the Consistorium.

    Also lookout for the Elvish city of Luillan to the north of the Hedge, and the route Aleihra’s travel-spell took when it started carrying Daphne and the elf from Daphne’s village of Feybridge to Luillan.

    Published: April 10, 2022
  • The Hounds of Magic

    The Hounds of Magic

    Daphne Mayne and the Hounds of Magic cover

    Just when Daphne thought she could forget about magic, that it had nothing more to do with her, an elf crashes into her life and turns her world upside down.

    The elf – a girl Daphne’s age – needs the power of the Wightstone to save her people.

    Reluctantly, Daphne agrees to help, but their journey quickly becomes treacherous. Pursued by the Consistorium’s Hounds of Magic, the two girls face danger at every turn.

    To make matters worse, the Wightstone loses its power, Daphne’s magic disappears, and she falls ill with a mysterious sickness. The pair rely on their courage and wits to survive as Daphne’s condition worsens, and the hounds of magic draw closer.

    Now, the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of an elf whose strength and intelligence are all that stand in the way of the forces of evil. Will she save both Daphne and her people, or will darkness triumph?

  • Whale of a time

    As the days grow cooler here in the southern hemisphere, whales are returning to the waters around Cape Town. During the summer months it’s rare to see a whale in these parts, but come autumn their blows are a regular sight off the coast.

    I was fascinated to see an unusually shaped whale blow a few days ago. Instead of the normal single jet of what looks like steam erupting from the water, there was a twin, v-shaped jet.

    Thanks to the power of google, I’ve learned that this is the blow of a Southern Right whale. Southern Rights average 15m (50 feet) in length and weigh a bathroom-scale-denting 60 tons.

    As I stood watching, I saw more and more twin blows in the same area, sometimes more than one at a time, which meant there must have been a whole load of them. They were too far away for me to see their backs when they surfaced, but I felt privileged to have witnessed their blows all the same.


    Chronicles of Wydoria progress

    While working on the next Chronicles of Wydoria book, Daphne Mayne and the Hounds of Magic, I took some time out to paint a scene where Daphne stands before the Castle of the Consistorium.

    I find it helps me focus better on a story when I’ve created some artwork to do with the story or the series. I don’t always put the pictures I create on my website because they are often just quick sketches, but I went the whole hog on this one and created a finished piece.

    Castle of the Consistorium

    I use Affinity Photo for my book covers and other artwork (it’s a fraction of the price of Photoshop and it’s a one-off payment rather than Photoshop’s monthly subscription model). There are tons of tutorials and other resources on the web for Affinity Photo too. You can even follow a Photoshop tutorial and, with very little effort, work out how to complete the steps in Affinity Photo.

    I’m not affiliated to Serif (the creators of Affinity Photo) in any way and don’t receive anything for promoting them, it’s just that I like the product very much.

    Soon I’ll have to get around to adding a dedicated section for Daphne’s world on this site!

  • The Goblin Quest

    The Goblin Quest

    Daphne Mayne and the Goblin Quest cover

    Desperate to save her dying brother, Daphne enters a forbidden forest to find rare berries that were said to hold a cure.

    But her mission of mercy takes an unexpected twist when she is seized by goblins who force her to join them on their secret quest.

    Daphne struggles to keep hope alive as she and her kidnappers clash with trolls, slavers, and monsters. Escape isn’t easy. Even less so when the goblin’s quest takes her into caves filled with deadly traps.

    With her freedom slipping away at every step, and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Daphne tries to cope with a bewildering magic power emerging inside her, and to find the strength and courage to prevent the goblins fulfilling their evil quest.

    Fans of Magemother, His Dark Materials, and Eragon will love this coming-of-age, epic fantasy featuring fast-paced action, magic, mystery, and adventure.