Like all eight year old boys of Hedonian citizenry, Demacharon is taken from his mother's arms to train in the navy, and for the next ten years he is taught discipline, and ways in which to kill more efficiently. He later moves up in rank, from a lowly oarsman to captain of his own vessel. After a number of... Continue Reading →
The Nomad is a love story, a mythical tale of heroism and enduring faith, parts Odyssey, parts The Arabian Nights. Like the Greek hero, Odysseus, Dynotus is twenty years from his homeland, searching the desert for Sali---the woman he loves---who has been taken as a slave. It is rife with fantastic locales, mythical monsters, and epic bloodshed, all set against the endless sands of the Sahara.... Continue Reading →
So, I've been having this problem with fiction lately. The last eight books I've read have been about philosophy, religion and physics. It's gotten to the point that my wife told me last night I should have been a physicist (really, I'd be clueless). But whenever I pick up a novel, I can't get into the... Continue Reading →
The old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover" is somewhat inaccurate, IMO. A better saying would be, "You shouldn't judge a book by its cover." Either way, people will judge things by appearances, at least at first. We do it all the time, though most people are ashamed to admit it, so as not to... Continue Reading →
Words can be highly volatile, explosive even, and yet we rarely stop to consider their power. Use them incorrectly, and you can get yourself killed, in a bar, for instance; or in the face of a religious fanatic. Words also have the capacity to heal. Consider the consoling effect of a eulogy, the world shaping sermon of Jesus... Continue Reading →
Dear Editor, The Princess of Aenya is a fantasy adventure reminiscent of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and Michael Ende's The Never Ending Story, with a little bit of Song of Ice and Fire injected for good measure. It stands roughly at 125,000 words. What’s the story? She is known for her arresting beauty and mismatched eyes. One is turquoise, like the greater moon, the other is violet,... Continue Reading →
Everything seems impossible until you do it. When I was a kid, I often dreamed of going to the post office with a large stack of printed pages to drop in the mail, to await a response from a publisher. If rejected, I would do it again, and again, until someone out there finally recognized my... Continue Reading →
I was surprised the other day to receive feedback for, “The City of the Drowned,” a novella I wrote back in 2006. Never fully completed, I abandoned the story for a number of reasons, namely, because it was originally intended as a sequel to “The Dark Age of Enya,” which I was no longer promoting, and secondly, because I felt I had moved on as a writer. The rewrite, “Ages of Aenya,” I am told, is vastly superior. Still, it’s great to receive affirmations of your abilities, even for something that is incomplete and written long ago!
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Hedonian trireme at sunrise
Finneas Ryder
Book Review
Short Story
The City of the Drowned
Nick Alimonos
2006
I was excited to receive this short story to review this month. I had read some of Mr. Alimonos’ work before, but admittedly it was just in bits and pieces and I had never completed any of his full works. It was not because I didn’t appreciate his style or concept, it was because I wasn’t allowing myself time to read for pleasure. Well let me say this off the bat, that was a huge mistake on my part.
I have to say that the science fiction and fantasy genre has always been one of my favorite styles of writing. I enjoy the true escapism that the genre allows the reader when it is well thought out and written. The City of the Drowned is a perfect example of this. This piece…
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Today, I have finished the book I talk about in this post, “The Princess of Aenya,” after two and a half years of work! It is roughly 123,000 words. For the most part, I am happy with the way it turned out.
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After 14 years, I am ready to work on something entirely new. Although my current novel, Ages of Aenya, was started in 2006 and written from scratch, the characters and the basic outline originated from The Dark Age of Enya. As you can imagine, fourteen years is a terribly long time to wait for a new book, and an even bigger age gap when you consider I was 24 and now 38. In 1999, when I first posted the short story He-Man fanfic, The City by the Sea, which became The Dark Age of Enya much the way Fifty Shades of Grey started as a Twilight fanfic, I was still single and living with my parents. Today I own a home, a business, and am married 12 years with daughters ages 3 and 8. When I created Xandr, he was my age…
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The Art of Storytelling 
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