The Dark Beast
by Dave Maruszewski
GENRE: Children's, Chapter Books, Middle Grade
BLURB:
Recently knighted squires Raven, Romda, and Ravai are tasked to help a nearby priest. However, this simple errand turns into much more. They cross paths with the Dark Beast. After that brief encounter, they soon realize the Beast’s plans to destroy an entire town. They journey to this town, meeting residents who tell large tales about the Beast. How much of stories are true? The three will find out. The Dark Beast is coming.
Buy Link:
The book is on sale for $0.99 during the tour.
Excerpt:
Raven’s cut is not deep, but that doesn’t make it hurt less. Raven pulls out his short sword and slices the man. The man falls to the ground immediately. The others pull out their blades. Raven hits his foe on the wrist, knocking the blade loose. The man grabs his hand in pain and turns around to run. He finds Ravai standing directly in his way. He takes one punch and knocks the man out.
Paces away, both Romda and the leader are now on their feet with swords out. Romda can parry everything that the man can throw. However, his aggression pushes him closer and closer to her. She pulls back and stumbles over some debris on the road. This gives the leader a chance. He thrusts his sword toward her abdomen. She blocks it at the very last moment of opportunity. The leader gets so frustrated that he kicks at her and connects. She falls to the ground again.
The leader starts his approach again. This time he does not get any closer. Instead, he feels Raven and Ravai gang-rush him. He’s on his back in less than a second, now feeling the weight of them smashing down on and knocking the breath out of him.
Now, two of the four are winded and in pain. Another is knocked out. The last has a serious wound across his ribs. They don’t put up much of a fight but surrender. As they round them up, now Raven, Romda, and Ravai do the circling. They tell the captives to put up their hands.
Ravai tells them sternly, “Keep them up in the air the entire time we walk. If I see them drop we will assume that you are attacking again.”
They do as they are told. They are led past the other citizens, both the good and the bad. They are embarrassed. Many in the crowd are relieved.
Raven leans over to Romda and says, “Look at that guy’s arm.”
Romda looks. At first she notices nothing peculiar. Then it hits her. She sees what Raven means. It is a mark on the forearm that she has seen before. In fact, not too long ago. It was on the driver of the caravan, a symbol of the Dark Beast.
Interview with Dave Maruszewski
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
How I became involved with the Dark Beast might get me into trouble, so I’ll keep this at the top level. At the broader level of epic fantasy, I used to read these stories as something that I could get away with for a book report. So, one of my first book in this genre was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I think The Hobbit was in there somewhere and some books that I memory lost due to my age.
I transitioned to comic books pretty young which had this subject but more of a fringe area. I think when I started playing video games later in life, I saw the majesty of this writing. I’d even look through these Dungeon and Dragons texts to understand the religions and creatures. This led me back into reading fantasy as fiction narrative.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
As far as the plot, I thought that it would be neat to have a story be made of smaller stories, but all connected. So, I had characters tell stories of the past. I think this went reasonably well.
What was the hardest part of writing this book?
This was a labor of love. I think that sitting down and getting the anxiety out might be the hardest. Once I started writing, I think the worst was ending it. I wanted to make an easy to read book, so keeping it shorter was important. I had an idea of how many words that I wanted to hit, and not go beyond that. I ended up exceeding that number. At the end I was like, “I have to end this somehow.”
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
At first, it was the ending. I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve at the final showdown, and it was fun to steer towards that. However, as I wrote, the interactions between the people took over my fascination, including banter between the main characters. Creating the dialogue was a lot of fun, especially when it wasn’t straightforward. Having offbeat or snarky characters made it unpredictable, even to me, to where the conversation would lead.
Were there alternate endings you considered?
Yes, but not as you might not like I had totally different outcomes. It more revolved around my side characters. What would happen to them and how much would I explain in the first book.
Can you share some stories about people you met while researching this book?
I did most of my research on the web, so I didn’t get the pleasure of meeting a ton of odd characters. I think that I met more people once I decided to publish. I really needed help. It is very involved.
Fortunately, there are a lot of authors out there. Many are willing to help. I just asked as many questions as I could until I got that “How can you know so little about this?” face. That usually ended the questions.
What genre of books do you enjoy reading?
You would think it would be fantasy but that makes up minority of my books. I read a lot of diverse pieces. I would say that I read a fictional book maybe 1 out of every 3 or 4 books. Then, I tend to lean towards fantasy or hero-driven stories.
I like biographies and autobiographies, preferably of more modern people. I find regular people very interesting. I just finished a book by Bruce Campbell. It was more entertaining than most fictional worlds. It is also surprising whose life I’ll find more interesting. Some person who you never notice on TV or radio ends up having a very intricate life full of interesting intereactions with other people.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Dave Maruszewski is blessed with a great family. He was originally inspired to write stories by his wife and son, when they encouraged him to put his bedtime stories on paper.
His stories are created from an accumulation of experiences from careers/backgrounds as a physicist, engineer, teacher, artist, video game designer and software developer. He strives to develop stories with sound moral values that will be enlightening as well as entertaining to youths and adults.
In between writing stories and running his own company, Digital Tumult (DigitalTumult.com), Dave enjoys video games, watching internet videos and hanging out with his family.
6 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Sounds like a great book.
Thank you for having me!
Was there any research required for any aspect of your story, and if so, did you enjoy the process?
nice interview
That's interesting that fantasy isn't your favorite genre to read. Thanks for sharing more about you
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