When the Magic Drifts Into the Words

Yesterday I was writing a chapter of my current novel, “Heart of a Dragon.” I have been reasonably faithful to the outline, though some of my planned chapters split and reproduced into more chapters, and a few of the ways that I’d envisioned things coming about didn’t work as well as new things that occurred. I even had a werewolf intrude at one point that was wholly unplanned, but none of those was quite the magic I’m talking about.

My protagonist is a magician. Not pulling rabbits out of hats magic, but real magic. He believes there is a balance in the universe, and when something shifts too far because of carelessness, or greed, he works to right that balance. Over a very very long period of time he’s collected the books and manuscripts associated with power. Magic, voodoo, lycanthropy, the lore of the undead, rituals and spell books. He is high-tech now, keeping much of the data on scanned files in a a water cooled data array…indexed and equipped with the latest in character recognition and translation technology.

Anyway…that’s all background. When I outlined this book, I knew that he and his partner / lover / associate would need some protection at one point. I provided them with a pair of particularly odious talismans…oily, distasteful to touch…but effective. What I never thought about was what those things really were. Where and why they came into being.

Yesterday, writing the twenty-fifth chapter of the book, Donovan’s magic leaked into my words. As I wrote about him translating a particular old manuscript, I could see where it came from. I suddenly KNEW what those talismans had to be, and why they worked as they did, and what their purpose was – even why they’d found their way to San Valencez, California at just the right time…and into just the right hands.

I love writing at times like that…when it feels new and amazing, and the words are things I’ve found and recorded – coming to me from that writer’s radio broadcast in the cosmos and flowing through my fingers. That was the point where this book came fully to life for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now…onward into corrupted Voodoo ceremonies, gang wars, and dragons…

Starting to love my own book.

-DNW