Finished _Black Bottle_ last night

WOW. I just realized that due to the way Wix notified me, I erroneously re-replied to Allan's post of 3 years ago instead of noticing HD's post from an hour ago! Oh well. My bad. Carry on!

Wonderful. I'm glad the ending proved pleasantly surprising. That was the hope from the onset of both novels.

I would probably fail to answer most of your questions satisfactorily even if I dragged out my voluminous binder of notes from the composition period of the writing. What I can say is that early in book one, the leadership of the Witchocracy, which claims to know Sena best, assert that she knows nothing of love.

This is the assertion I set out to undo over the course of two books.

It was always my intent to "drive her crazy" or at least make her appear to go crazy and to become unreliable to the reader. Her foil of course was Taelin, who appears wholly sane and rational in the beginning, if somewhat fanatical. I wanted to invert these two characters over the course of the story so that their reliability, sanity and "goodness" did a mirrored flip-flop. It was also important to me to question the nature of goodness and love. I wanted the "bad guys" (witches) to be trying to save the world and the perceived "good guys" to be going along with a plan to destroy it. I wanted the reader to feel torn.

This is all foundational to answering one of your questions (I will agree to answer two of them).

It was my belief as I wrote the books that Nathaniel's mistake was that he did not believe Sena was capable of love/altruism/self-sacrifice. As most people do, he assumed she was like him. Because Nathaniel did not envision that Sena would willingly sacrifice herself, he assumed his victory was guaranteed.

The other question I consent to answering is that I always drew on the demi-lich trope first produced in the spare sentences surrounding Acererak. When I wrote the books, I never filtered the fiction through a game system and to say that Nathaniel was a demi-lich would be dishonest in the same way it would be dishonest to say that Puff the Magic Dragon must have been a Green Dragon. However, if I were now to attempt to retrofit that fiction into my ongoing campaign, Nathaniel Howl would likely, yes, be a demi-lich or some variety of similar entity.

Thanks for reading. And now...back to working on the Ravens Fell campaign!

:D

So glad you liked!!!

That review is so funny!! When I got to the end of Black Bottle, I was so stoked that I jumped out of my chair and screamed "YEEEAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!" like I was Rick Flair.

Maybe I am a tad more excitable than the average literary critic...

Yeah, this https://www.dropbox.com/s/k7khyddh9h55eze/language%20tree.BMP?dl=0 should take you to my languages for the Atlath.

Characters in my game often interface w/ Old Speech, Ilek, Naneman etc.

Father's day suuuuuuuuhked for me so hard. My daughter Ella just left the Wed before to live w/ grandma for benign reasons (proximity to boy friend among them). Anyway, I'm happy to be back to work today and not thinking about it.

Enjoy the chart!

Hi again Anthony---

In my campaign, the places are a big deal, occasional historical references, Gringlings as a race, the chemiostatic sword as an item (see COBA), etc. But I haven't attempted to turn Nathaniel Howl into an NPC for example.

That makes sense, both from your earlier comments and those here. Do you leverage the languages from the novels in your games too?

My premise from the beginning, was to write the story of a character that everyone believes knows nothing of love, but who at the end shows that is not true. I think most people who read the book are dissatisfied with Caliph, because they think the story is about him. But the novels are not his story. They are Sena's; Caliph is just a big part of her evolution.

Yes, that became clear to me in Black Bottle, although I imagine that it started somewhere in The Last Page, too (I read them almost back-to-back, so I don't really differentiate the two).

With Black Bottle in particular, it was important to me that whom the reader believes is crazy, is actually sane; and whom the reader believes is sane, is actually crazy. Furthermore, I wanted those fighting for the world's salvation to be classifiable as "evil" in any serious discussion of the topic; and those trying to destroy the world (Sena) to have some defensible position as "good".

That dynamic definitely came through as the acceleration into the finale for the novels built!

My muse led me away from novels and back to games.

I've enjoyed both, and am very glad that you've found your way back to AD&D!

Allan.

PS - I hope you and your family had a fine Father's Day too!---on Saturday, the boys and I spent the afternoon at The Arcade filled with Missile Command, Robotron, Joust, Qix, Tempest, Galaxian, Ms. PacMan, Cenitpede, Frogger, and more, along with some pinball too---The Machine/Bride of Pinbot, Addam's Family, Star Trek the Next Generation :)

Hey, Allan,

Congrats on finishing the novel. If I were to elevator-pitch the end of the book to someone, I'd just tell them that everyone dies. Caliph and his daughter are translated into a new existence, but everyone else essentially winds up dead. While it's pretty clear Sena could come back at some point beyond the limits of mortal time, she too therefore, is about as dead as dreaming Cthulhu.

I admit that I don't generally have answers for most questions re. the books b/c I prefer to let the words alone deliver whatever impression you're left with. Good or bad. One of my favorite reviews of all time is this one here. Tl;dr: "This is a completely depressing book with no redeeming virtues." It's just so wonderful how people see things differently, isn't it?

Years ago, when my first fans and haters were forming lines, I realized how consumerism has driven blockbuster products ever more toward the number one, eternally best-selling flavor in the world: vanilla.

When your project costs $300 million usd to make, you have to make vanilla to earn it back and be profitable. But when you are cottage, and you are doing a thing for yourself first, you can do whatever you want, please only yourself, and give critics the finger.

The novels are certainly abstruse in many areas. And for better or worse, it's intentional. While I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my early years playing D&D inspired many aspects of the novels, they truly are their own thing, a proper departure from all things RPG. Therefore, I don't know what Nathaniel would be in gaming terms. Clearly a demi-god, not wholly omniscient, and also clearly not able to beat Sena out. Is he undead? Perhaps. Again, I've never put any kind of game stats to characters in the novels.

In my campaign, the places are a big deal, occasional historical references, Gringlings as a race, the chemiostatic sword as an item (see COBA), etc. But I haven't attempted to turn Nathaniel Howl into an NPC for example.

My premise from the beginning, was to write the story of a character that everyone believes knows nothing of love, but who at the end shows that is not true. I think most people who read the book are dissatisfied with Caliph, because they think the story is about him. But the novels are not his story. They are Sena's; Caliph is just a big part of her evolution.

With Black Bottle in particular, it was important to me that whom the reader believes is crazy, is actually sane; and whom the reader believes is sane, is actually crazy. Furthermore, I wanted those fighting for the world's salvation to be classifiable as "evil" in any serious discussion of the topic; and those trying to destroy the world (Sena) to have some defensible position as "good".

I've been rewarded splendidly, with an apropos polarity of reader opinions, which I think is so fitting for this book (both of them smashed together). I feel bad that it didn't make Tor a ton of money, because they took a chance on it. They might have known because of the representative adherents and detractors inside Tor, back when they were squabbling over whether to buy and publish it! In the end, the wonderful thing about Tom D. is that he's not about making sure every publication is best-selling vanilla. I met him at the Tor party at World Fantasy Con in Columbus 2010 where he told me, "You write a hell of a book."

When Tom Doherty tells you that to your face. I mean. That's it. You don't need to get rich, or have a million fans. And if anything, even if you don't amass a huge audience, it gives you the courage to keep doing what you're doing, following your muse.

My muse led me away from novels and back to games.

Cheers and happy Father's Day.