no kitchen sinks, though

[swan_tower]

Since I just put Chekhov's hang glider into this story, I thought I would share with you guys some of the items scribbled down in my notebook, on the page designated for Cool Things What I Intend to Put Into the Second Dragons Book:

• talking drums
  
• griots
  
• witchcraft
  
• blacksmiths
  
• leeches
  
• malaria
  
• poisons/hallucinogens
  
• waterfall island
  
• guard dragons
  
• masks
  
• iron/gold/salt/ivory
  
• booby traps
  

And some other things that would be too spoilery to share.

Mind you, Isabella is looking over my metaphorical shoulder and objecting strongly to my classification of malaria as a "cool thing" (she's no happier about the prospect of me replacing it with yellow fever), but narratively speaking, it qualifies. :-) (Confidential to kurayami_hime: at least it's not the plague!)

I'm still working on stringing all this stuff together into a book, rather than a collection of things I think are neat, but hey. There are worse ways to build a novel than throwing awesome bits of setting at the page. (It's more or less how I built several of the Onyx Court books, and that seems to have worked out okay.)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That's an intriguing list.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'd like to think so. :-)

[novalis.livejournal.com]

If you would like to talk to someone who has had malaria, I can recommend my friend amalthya (also on Twitter under the same name). I'm still really looking forward to _A Natural History of Dragons_!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oooh. I may take you up on that!

(I hope you don't know anybody who has had yellow fever.)

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

Malaria is TOTALLY a cool thing.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

So long as we aren't the ones who get it. :-)