Dreamtime Fantasy Authors Presents: 10 Facts About "Dangerous" by Morgan Smith

Enjoy an excerpt of "Dangerous" by following the hyperlinked text!

1 – I never take the straight route in stories, I guess. I know the theme was meant to encourage lots of swords and sorcery stuff, or at least, courage and derring-do of some kind, but, well, I wound up finding my own definition of “dangerous”.

2 – My novels are based on a lifetime of research into medieval northern European countries/cultures, but I’ve been encouraged by other writers and readers to incorporate other, less “white-bread” settings and characters. This one is based on nomadic tribes in North Africa and the Middle East.

3 – The city of Huna, which is where Sami, the main character, is headed to, will undoubtedly make an appearance in a novel someday, because flash fiction (which I do as a kind of writing exercise, like musicians practice scales) revealed that:

“Huna is an old city, made up of twisted, narrow streets, crowded with the ghosts of long-dead rogues and heroes. At every corner, there are the shivering memories of past sins and forgotten glories. You don’t visit Huna, it visits you, like the demon that sits on the footboard of your bed and tells you how worthless you are.”

4 – I actually have a very hard time writing short stories – much harder than writing novels, really. Apparently, I need a lot of room for error.

5 - I used to be an archaeologist. Sometimes, it shows.

6 – I had to do a lot of reading and research for this story. I mean, I travelled across North Africa and the Middle East, all the way to India, back in the 70s, and I worked in Ethiopia in 2015, but there’s a lot of history and nuance about these cultures that I needed to understand before I could write about them, even if I was creating a fantasy version of them. 7 – That’s the thing about fantasy: if it isn’t grounded in solid fact and reality, the reader will simply disbelieve, and that’s fatal.

8 – Sami as a character is one of my favorites. She’s so darned determined….

9 – Did you know that back in the earlier part of the 20th century, there were tribes/family-based groups traveling all over Afghanistan and southern parts of the USSR, a pastoral herding culture stretching back hundreds, if not thousands of years, and that they were far more egalitarian and less gender biased than some parts of Europe and North America are right now? They still existed, when I traveled there in ’74. Very interesting people, and much given to random hospitality. They were excited by the fact that this teeny Canadian girl knew how to spin yarn on a drop spindle – apparently, this made me good marriage material!

10 – Dreamtime Damsels and Fatal Femmes is a charity anthology! As with Dreamtime Dragons, the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors continue to support the Abbington Ferret Refuge in Northamptonshire, England.

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If you found these facts interesting, be sure to look for "Dangerous" within the covers of Dreamtime Damsels and Fatal Femmes, by the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors!

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