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Lucas was an unassuming miller's son - loving, kind, but no one of special note until that fateful day. Come and join the good folk of the hamlet of Meadowfork in their struggles - both everyday and epic. There are wizards and things that go bump in the knight. There are grim curses, a glorious past, secrets and sorrows, triumphs and tall tales, endearing oafs, hilarity, noble steeds and villainous knaves. Everything from chivalry to chandlery as a new wizard finds his way! Set in the fantasy medieval barony of Westarbor.
Fun Fact: The way I've named the chapters is somewhat inspired by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" of which 'The Miller's Tale' is among the most notorious.
Side Dishes In writing 'Mayhem at the Mill', I especially liked to serve up little side-dishes to the main action - items such as frog-gigging, cow-tipping, and homing pigeons, to name a few. For 'The Artillator', I had to study up on the Persian flaw, the harp, Foucault's pendulum, and floriography. For 'The Equerry', there was taxidermy, rat-catching, the necrotizing process and many others. I often found the research into these assorted topics more enjoyable than the writing process itself! Fantasy is easy . . . Comedy is hard! I found that several of my initial drafts of some of the chapters felt flat. This was solved by making a conscious effort to infuse some humor. Part of the charm of the story lies in Lucas' sarcasm, Master Chadwick's love of puns, and the laughter that is pervasive throughout. I soon found out that it's just as easy to overdo items of a humorous nature and learned to scale it back a bit. Some chapters were fairly grim and difficult to chuckle up without ruining the mood, but I sought creative ways to lighten the tone. For example, I find it mildly humorous when a figurative saying is confused with its literal meaning such as when the miller keeps his nose to the grindstone. I also enjoy making reference to classic fairy tales and other stories from the period. Language I tried to keep the 'thee-ing and thou-ing' from becoming too thick. I like the flavor of it, and some characters are a little more steeped in it than others, but I strove not to get too pretentious with these novelties of speech lest they grow distracting. There are many good sources of archaic words and feudal terminology available to aspiring authors. I attempted to use these with care and to provide adequate context for the reader. You will soon find that I try to keep a PG rating overall, but do include a (little) bit of romantic tension and some off-color topics. There is also some rather brutal violence, but I do not believe you will find it to be gratuitous. Also, you may notice a lack of references to religion or deities. This is intentional. Despite the European knighthoods being so closely tied to Christianity, I wanted the story to have a broad appeal and to be inclusive and enjoyable to those of any faith while its characters demonstrate the results of adherance (or lack thereof) to Christian values. Lucas, in particular, has a way of sympathizing with and loving his enemies and can often change their hearts and behaviors in profound ways. Fun Fact: The 'old tongue' I use for the spell verbalizations is simply Latin. You can plug a spell name into a Google translation to get its literal meaning. Below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the magical spells used in this book:
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