Dawn of a New Day:
Stan! Brown Continues Nearra's Saga in Dragon Day
By Michael G. Ryan
Stan! Brown (who does, indeed, have an exclamation point in his name) picks up the broken pieces of Nearra's party in Dragon Day, the latest Dragonlance: New Adventures novel due this March. And readers are in for more than few surprises as the rem1aining party members become even more scattered, meeting new friends and enemies, some of whom have quite a history in the world of Krynn. . . .
The Dawn of the Story
Dragon Day, the sixth book in the Dragonlance: New Adventures series (and the second book in the Dragon Quartet), picks up right where Ree Soesbee's Dragon Sword left off. The party is devastated after the loss of Elinor, Maddoc, and Nearra. When asked if this was a hard place from which to pick up, Stan! said that it was a pretty difficult spot. "On the other hand, because it was now beyond their ability to deal with the greater plot of Asvoria and Nearra, I was able to focus entirely on the problems facing the characters. Ree had the hard part -- she had to write about the death of a popular character. I, on the other hand, got to detail how the other characters deal with the situation."
From the start, Stan! knew that he wanted Dragon Day to be about dealing with the terrible loss they faced. "These are all relatively young characters, and I imagined that this must be the first time in their lives that they had to deal with such heavy emotions. It's hard at any age to deal with the death of a friend, but it is most difficult the first time because you have no basis for comparison. You have to deal with the situation without any idea of what the pain and disorientation will be like or how long they will last. I wanted this book to be about how the heroes deal with such a difficult problem, and I wanted it to feel real." He also wanted to show how they faced the future.
New Faces, Different Places
Because the remaining characters -- Catriona, Davyn, and Sindri -- are separated from one another fairly quickly, Stan! could expand the world quite a bit and introduce other characters, some new -- and some old and familiar. He reminisces how, at the end of Dragon Sword, it seems like their quest is over. "The characters have a chance to stop and think about what they've been doing these past few months. They also get to ponder what they want to do with their lives. Since Temple of the Dragonslayer, they have pretty much been running straight from one adventure to the next. This is their chance to take a breath and think about where they want to go next."
This kind of constant activity draws them closer together throughout the novel series. "Through their adventures," Stan! states, "they have become very close friends, and they don't want to lose the bond they share. Still, they are each individuals with specific goals and ambitions, and the quest they've been on has taken them away from those goals. Now they have a chance to go back to their old lives, to their old aspirations. The question is, do they want to?"
The problems facing these characters are the kinds of problems that we all face in our lives, Stan! goes on to say. "Once we finish something, what should we do next? When we finish high school, should we go to college? Should we live close to home and friends or go someplace farther from home to meet new people and see new things? What sort of job should we get? What if it turns out we don't like the decisions we've made? In some ways, the heroes in Dragon Day have it easier -- they have relatively clear choices. In real life, sometimes the scariest, most overwhelming situation is one where you can choose to do ANYTHING you like."
In addition to these core characters, we have the very interesting Adyn Thinreed, a cleric of Paladine, who seems to be on an interesting journey of his own. Though Adyn isn't really Stan!'s favorite character, he has a few reasons as to why a reader might think that he is! First of all, Adyn is the only central character that Stan! created for this book. "As a writer, you always feel more familiar with the characters that you create." Stan! states. "I like Sindri and Cat and Davyn, but I had to think about them a lot before I was able to internalize their mindsets, and even then I had to keep working at it all the while through the writing process. (And as Nina Hess, my editor, will tell you, in the first draft I sometimes slipped and got it very wrong.) Adyn was all in my head, so I couldn't get him wrong -- I just had to remain true to his voice."
Stan! also portrayed Adyn as a very emotionally balanced character. "In many ways he's supposed to be an example for Cat. He has very strong principles and tries to live up to them no matter how desperate the situation is. He's on his way to take his clerical vows, so he has set a goal and is about to achieve it. He stands by his friends even in the toughest situations. I'm sure it seems as though I like him the best -- he's made up almost entirely of positive qualities. In many ways, Adyn is the type of person I would like to be but, like Cat, I'm struggling with my own weaknesses and imperfections."
Finally, Stan! feels that because Adyn is a new character, the reader is a little more interested in finding out about him. "That means that he gets slightly different treatment than the established characters. I wanted Adyn to feel as real and as important as the others, and that meant giving him a little extra emphasis. Actually, when I thought him up I imagined that he might be a good addition to the group -- the sort of person who might travel on with them after this adventure is through."
Catriona's Viewpoint
A good part of the book is from Cat's perspective, particularly given the guilt she feels over failing to protect the party and upholding her code. In fact, Stan! points out that almost half of the book is from Cat's point of view, and the other half is from Sindri's perspective. When thinking about writing from Cat's point of view, he "feels that perhaps Cat's seems more prominent because it is one that we can easily imagine ourselves in. I think that most readers can remember a time when things in their lives didn't work out, and it felt like it was their own fault. We know what it feels like to carry that sort of guilt and self-disappointment with us as we try to start our next project." Stan! felt very comfortable with Cat's point of view because of this. However, the first draft presented him with an initial hurdle to jump. "While writing the first draft, though, I must confess that Cat was the hardest character for me to internalize. She is so relentlessly demanding of herself, and I just wanted to forgive her. [laughs] If she was my friend, I'd want to tell her to give herself a break. She works so hard and she never lets herself enjoy the successes she gets -- she's just worried about the next challenge that's coming up."
Stan! feels that Sindri's perspective is also fairly universal. "He's just trying to ignore all the difficulties and distractions that life has thrown in his path and concentrate on achieving his goal. I think it's just easier for the reader to get distracted, too, and not connect as deeply with Sindri's perspective because as a kender his outlook is pretty much always so optimistic. But he faces quite a few situations that I think the readers will find familiar as well -- dealing with other people's preconceived opinions about you, overcoming rules that don't really make much sense, making new friends in a strange town."
A Familiar Face Revealed?
Stan!'s novel has a surprise guest appearance by a classic Dragonlance character, and you may recognize this character instantly. When asked about how this character came to appear in the novel, Stan! first mentioned how he is big a fan of series fiction, including novels and television shows. "And one of my favorite things is when characters you know show up again out of the blue," he said. "I like when the characters from Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer would cross over for an episode or two. I like when Spider-Man swings across the skyline in an issue of the Fantastic Four. It makes me feel like the setting is more real."
And his view of Krynn and experience with the world certainly makes guest appearances such as this easy enough for him to do. "I think about the world of Dragonlance as though it is one big world. When characters leave at the end of a book, they don't disappear -- they have other adventures, or maybe they just go home and relax for a while. When it makes sense, I like to let these characters walk 'on screen' for a little bit. It just so happened that this made sense."
While he doesn't want to give too much away about Dragon Day, he does reveal a bit about how this well-known character comes into play. "I had to get the characters into a specific geographic place and this guest star character just happens to live there. Also, Sindri needed some help in order to get past a roadblock that was in his way, and for several reasons it made sense that this character would help him when most people wouldn't."
To Stan!, this opportunity was more than just a way to add a bit of oomph to the novel. "Some people may say that I did this just for the excitement and nostalgia value that the guest star brings. But really I thought it would be fun and that, most important, it made sense. Also, it gives me a chance to tip my authorial cap to a character that I truly admire."
