I have a German translation of a sample chapter from my first book, On The Rocks, and I am hoping I can find someone who can read German to give it a quick read and tell me how good a job they did translating the chapter. Even if you just know a German speaker can you ask if they would be will to read the chapter in both the English and the German to compare them for me.
Any assistance greatly appreciated

In other news – I have nearly finished Kyron the Invader and we are hoping for an early April release.
The editor will then attack Ostraya and I hope to be able to get that to Pam by late May or early June for a July release or earlier if things go quicker.
The Princess and the Gangsters is the next book which I will be starting next week I expect.

“I can see from your expression that you doubt, but it is true. My wife was from the island of Tainiou, and her family keeps up their contact with the old mainland states, if only on an irregular basis. We hoped our children would be magical, but alas, none of our four proved to be sorcerers. At least none of them died in the testing process.” He paused. “Hence my agreeing to train my sort of nephews. Actually, in truth, one is only the son of a second cousin on my father’s side, and the other is the grandson of my maternal uncle’s brother-in-law. Not even real family at all.”

This seemed to dispirit him considerably. Jason left the old man to his ruminations while Jason considered the information he had been given.

“So, am I right in saying that everyone on your world is a little magic, but the descendants of sorcerers have a higher chance of being affected by this broth?

“Yes.” Urasmian nodded. “It was only in the last thousand years that this effect was noticed, but it is true. The more magical antecedents one has, the better a person’s chances of becoming a sorcerer. And the chance of them dying seems to stay much the same so proportionally the magical families give rise to far more sorcerers than the ordinary population does.”

Jason nodded. Perhaps it was genetic. He supposed that the broth of the plant could contain some enzyme or something that alters a person’s genes, although he had never heard of such a thing on his Earth.

“Right. So, what about my world? Nobody here can do real magic stuff, at least as far as I am aware, but is that because we simply can’t or because we don’t have access to the broth?” Jason cocked his head a little to the side as he waited for the old man to reply.

Urasmian closed his eyes and mumbled something. Then he opened them again and smiled at Jason.

“It would seem that the people in this world are no different from those in my world. Well, you, at least, are no different. You have a very low magical glow, just like an ordinary person on my world would. That seems to indicate that if we gave the broth to enough people here, sooner or later, we’d find a sorcerer. Or at least someone who could be trained to be a sorcerer.”

Jason thought about this. He gathered from the names and the description that Urasmian had been referring to Santorini as the island where the plant grew. That island had blown up in a huge volcanic eruption in antiquity. On Urasmian’s Earth, people had discovered the plant before the volcanic eruption, whereas on Jason’s Earth, the magical features had not been discovered before the eruption, and the plant was presumably wiped out. Damn. Jason decided he was looking too glum and changed the topic.

“So, what’s next? You zap back there and surprise them?”         Urasmian glowered at him. Jason wasn’t sure whether it was from Jason’s glibness or, Jason suddenly realized, to his embarrassment, the fact that if it took two sorcerers to get Urasmian here, there was little chance the fellow could ever get back! But then Urasmian’s focus shifted to some point in the distance over Jason’s right shoulder for a few moments. Jason nearly held his breath as he refrained from saying anything to disturb the old man, who was obviously having an insight of some description. The man’s attention snapped back to Jason.

Better late than never

Jason thought of Herodotus and wasn’t convinced of the veracity of the story but then realized what Urasmian had so casually said.

“You really have dragons living near you?”

Urasmian nodded. “Oh yes. They have spread around the globe in all the high mountainous regions. They are quite the pest in some areas, although a good sorcerer or two can deal with them easily. Fortunately, although they were created by magic, they are not themselves capable of doing magic.”

He paused and seemed to focus inwardly on some thought that he didn’t share with Jason. He suddenly jerked alert again.

“Much knowledge gained over the centuries has been lost, rediscovered, and then lost again as far as I can tell. Sorcerers and historians try to conserve scroll books, but many are lost every year as people die, and their property is ransacked and sold off by uninterested descendants. Others are lost through accidental fires and deliberate acts of destruction, especially in wars. In fact, so much has been lost that I am surprised at how much has survived!”

“So, spells are in the language of the Keftios?” Jason asked to clarify what he thought was the case.

Urasmian nodded. “Yes. That is how it has always been done.”

“But you speak something else in normal conversation like this?” Jason was intrigued by the language difference.

“Yes. We speak the tongue of the Hellandios who spread out and conquered most of the world, bit by bit. Even the Zhongquin were defeated and taught to speak Hellandios eventually. They lacked the sorcerers to stop the armies that ravaged them and eventually succumbed like everyone else. Over time the Hellandios conquerors are slowly being absorbed into the local peoples in many areas despite the magical families trying to keep their bloodlines pure. In a lot of areas, it is hard to find anyone who is purebred Hellandios. Some people set great store by having pure Hellandios lineage, you understand. Most of us are just happy to have some Hellandios blood.”

Jason considered this. “So, you have magical families then?”

Urasmian waved a hand to acknowledge this. “Yes. Not that magic isn’t found in practically everyone, understand. If enough people are given the broth to try, then sooner or later, you’ll get a trainee sorcerer. On the other hand, the long-established Hellandios families that arose from the conquered Keftios, before spreading out to conquer first the lands surrounding the Middle Sea, and eventually, the whole world, make an effort to try and keep magic within their own ranks as much as possible. And those bloodlines have a higher incidence of Sorcerers than normal people do. It has been noted for centuries that the children of magical parents, even if neither parent is actually a sorcerer but merely the son or daughter of one, have a higher chance of proving to be sorcerers themselves. Amongst the very old families still living in Keftu and Hellandu, the chance of getting a sorcerer is sometimes as much as one in ten, or so it is claimed.”

Jason was puzzled by this because even if the broth was doing something to people, presumably to their brains, which then allowed them to do magic, surely it wouldn’t be an inheritable genetic change. Would it? Very strange. But Urasmian seemed certain of his facts.

Sorry this is late people:


“The destruction of Theru combined with the damage to Keftu and the death of Drathmios left an opening for the people of Hellandu, who swarmed the island and overthrew what was left of the Keftios government. Eumanix decided to avoid contesting the invasion and moved to Rhodu, where he began testing the broth on people. Most simply became various degrees of ill. It really does make a good purgative. Perhaps two or three in a hundred died, but he found a daughter of a local healer who developed magic. She was only in her teens at the time, but she knew the language of the Keftios, her family being part Keftios, and he taught her the basics of magic as were known at that point using his remembered observance of Drathmios.”

He paused and studied Jason. “The Book of Sorcery ends there, but he wrote down many of the spells Drathmios developed and which are studied to this day by students of magic. In fact, it is traditional that once a student has mastered the letters of the language of the Keftios, then his first task is to transcribe his own copy of the Book of Sorcery.”

Jason shook his head in amazement. Both at the magic stuff, he still wasn’t entirely convinced about, but also at how texts could not only last that long but be faithfully copied time after time.

“I find it interesting that this information has lasted for so long unchanged. Not many stories have come down to us in this world from so long ago without many mythological additions to the point where it is hard to tell what is based on fact and what is a total fabrication.”

Urasmian nodded. “Apart from the Book of Sorcery, it is much the same in my world. We have many tales of famous sorcerers and sorceresses and the fantastic deeds they accomplished, the ferocious monsters they fought or in some cases, made, and such. A lot of the stories are simple fabrications, although many have a kernel of truth. Then again, many describe real events, exaggerated or conflated with other events but at this distance, it is very hard to discern the truth of any of them. Very often, the time they were supposed to have happened is contradicted by some other version of the tale, or indeed, by some other tale that told of something else happening at the time of the first tale. Of course, the observed results of some of the tales lend a certain verisimilitude to this one or that one. The dragons living in the Stoney Mountains to the east of Shcathor come to mind quite forcibly.”

“Dragons?” The word translated in his head as dragons anyway.

“Yes. They are large flying lizards that were created, so the story goes, by Horanios the Terrible as a dying curse upon Emperor Huan when the Huan armies overran the territory claimed by Horanios, and the three court wizards of Huan overwhelmed him. According to the historian Petrocales, who traveled to the court of the descendent of Huan about three hundred years after the event, that is how dragons came to be. The story goes that Horanios had a collection of lizards and bats, and he somehow used magic as he was dying to merge the two types of beasts together and thus created the dragons. How true the story is, at three hundred years remove, anyone’s guess, but Petrocales went out of his way to check the sources of the stories he recorded. I have copies of a couple of his scrolls in my library.”

“So, can you get back if it took three of them to send you here?”

Urasmian smiled smugly again. “My two sort of relatives are not as strong as me, and it needed both of them to attack me with combat spells to overcome my shield. Then the third person, Drexos, was the one who managed to stun me once my shield went down. Even though the stun spell didn’t work properly, it was enough to keep me befuddled. Otherwise, I could have disrupted their spell or even killed them.”

He paused and sneered. “Definitely killed them. Ungrateful scum. I gave them the chance to become sorcerers as well, giving them a lot of training, and this is how they repay me!”

Jason considered this information and noticed something.

“You gave them the chance to be sorcerers? How?”

Urasmian grinned. “Ah. With no magic here, you don’t know, do you? Ha!”

This seemed to amuse him. He studied Jason for a moment and then smiled.

“Well, the story goes like this. Some three and a half thousand years ago, on the island of Theru, there was a plant used locally for chewing. It had a limited waking dream effect.” Jason understood he meant it was mildly hallucinogenic. “Then, one day, it was discovered that boiling the leaves briefly made them into a good purgative that helped heal stomach upsets quite well. Most people were violently ill after drinking the stuff but almost always recovered from the original illness within a day or two. The story goes that when one of the local Keftios nobles fell deathly ill, his wife started boiling some of the leaves but was interrupted, and the leaves boiled for nearly two hours. Their servant, who was tasked with refilling the pot with water, continued on with that task, mindlessly following the last instructions of the mistress while the mistress was otherwise engaged. Because her husband was so ill and she was feeling poorly herself, she decided that both of them needed to drink the concoction regardless. Both she and her husband became violently ill, and she died. Her husband, however, recovered after being sick and weak for many days, and his name was Drathmios. The broth that killed his wife made him the first sorcerer.”

 “Three and half thousand years is a long time for such a record to exist,” Jason stated carefully.

Being a history major, he could think of very few stories from fifteen hundred BC that had come down as clear as that. Some official things, such as the tablets of Hammurabi, had survived it was true, but most stories had devolved into the mythical and the very unlikely, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Urasmian sighed. “It is part of the training in learning the language of the Keftios that the account of the founding of Sorcery must be studied. The Keftios had a large empire in the middle sea, and the advent of magic provoked a civil war between the government and that first sorcerer, Drathmios, along with the small band of warriors which he had raised. He swept ashore on Keftu, where they found that none could stand against his magic, and he conquered the empire. But that success was short-lived because soon after, the island of Theru exploded, and a giant wave swept over most of Keftu. It is assumed Drathmios was asleep at the time, like most of the people on Keftu, and drowned. The warrior Eumanix happened to be on high ground with a pot containing a cutting from the magical plant, and this allowed magic to survive. The explosion obliterated all the other sources of the plant, which grew solely on Theru. He wrote the first account and passed it on to his successors.”

Kyron the Invader is next (April hopefully)
My editor is going to finish Ostraya after she finishes Kyron so it can be handed to Pam Uphoff before publishing – hopefully in June or early July
The Princess and the Gangsters will follow
Then Taroniah at Bay followed by Kyron the Rescuer
These two will be followed by The Kelad Onslaught – the next New Federation book
The Taroniah at Risk and Kyron the Savior
By rights they should be followed by the next Princess book but I thinking I switch to my new Time Travel series involving a guy shipwrecked on the Maine Coast by a storm like the one in the movie The Final Countdown only he gets deposited in the 12th century in time to meet the Welsh colonists of Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd and his brother Rhodri. Madoc returns to Wales to gather more people and supplies but is never seen again.
The 21st century American – Rick Metsov – finds a medieval motte and bailey type wooden fort besieged by the local natives.
I am open to a vote for the next Princess book or the first book int he time travel series – let me know which you’d prefer…

Urasmian cocked his head slightly to the left while he considered this information and possibly Jason’s request. He didn’t really believe this shit, did he?

“No magic. Hmm.” He stared off into the distance for a moment, then his eyes re-focused, and he became alert again. “No. It is too strange here. I will return to Shcathor and deal with my enemies!”

He paused and smiled at Jason. It was the smile of a shark or perhaps a crocodile.

Chapter 2

Tales of elsewhere

“There are three of them. Garnios, his cousin Klimnos and that idiot Drexos. The three of them thought that by acting together, they would be strong enough to take me, and in truth, they were right, just. Mostly because I wasn’t expecting the attack, and they managed to get a spell through that sort of stunned me.” He paused and shook his head, looking more rueful than angry.

“Then my stupid sort of nephew mucked up the spell they used to transport me here. Because he was bound to me magically, he couldn’t kill me outright nor could he consciously help someone else do it. But they came up with this clever idea to transport me fifty klidak or herakios out over the ocean while I was stunned. Because the world is curved, I would have then fallen into the ocean from a great height, and if that didn’t kill me outright, then the stun spell would stop me from using magic to save myself, and I would consequently drown unless someone came to my assistance, which would be unlikely that far from shore. The whole plan was pushing the limits of the magical bond, and it may still have resulted in harm coming to him if I had actually died. I am not sure.”

He stared off into the distance for a moment, obviously considering the matter.

 “Be that as it may. Their stun spell didn’t quite work as they had planned, although it rendered me insensible for a sufficiently long enough time for my sort of nephew to work through the transport spell and send me away. Stupid klutz. The Keftu word for a klidak is very similar to their word for the whole world, and he got confused. Probably panicking, trying to get the spell off before I regained my power when he saw the stun spell hadn’t worked properly. Your people know the world is round?” Jason nodded, not wanting to interrupt the old fellow. “So, once I sort of got my senses back, I ran through the spell dopey Garnios used and realized he had used the word for the whole world, Herakias, instead of the word for the distance herakios, and so I came here, fifty Herakias to the west instead of fifty herakios. And then one of those metal chariots hit me, which knocked me senseless besides throwing me into that spot where you found me.”

It took Jason a moment to understand what the old man was describing, and then he started when it sank in what the old fellow meant. Fifty worlds, Earths, whatever. Seriously? He’d read lots of stories about there being a Multiverse, with alternate Earths, but like, they were stories, you know. If it weren’t for his suddenly acquired understanding of the Greekish language, he wouldn’t have believed a word of the tale. As it was, he had to consider the truth of the man’s claims, even if they did involve magic and multiple Earths.

Sorry its late – Had to get an MRI and forgot all about this

“Foreigner, hey. So how did you end up next to mugged near the Convention Centre? Were you at ARCon? Do you have a phone? Where are you staying?”

His words gradually slowed down and got louder in the way people frequently do when talking to foreigners, although he had no idea why speaking like that would make it easier for people to understand. And yet now he found himself doing it anyway.

The old man shook his head.

“I follow you speak, I think. Not sure what say you.” He snarled. “Too old this for.”

At which point he muttered something in what sounded like a different language again and flicked his wrist in Jason’s direction.

“Now my speak, you learn.” He muttered in the odd accented broken English he seemed to have picked up just now. He then went back to speaking in the language that Jason thought sounded rather Greekish. He immediately became aware that almost imperceptibly, the gibberish began to become understandable words! What? Now Jason was spooked!

The old man smiled. “Yes, I can see from the look on your face that you are starting to understand what I am saying. It is a spell. A very complex spell that allows you to understand and also speak any language. It works best when you have a speaker of the language in your presence. The spell draws the information from the other person’s thoughts and transfers the understanding to your own brain. Reading is a lot slower way of learning. It is not perfect, but it works well normally. Your language had too many terms I did not understand, so I threw the spell on you so I can now talk to you.”

Jason choked. A spell. Right! Haha! He’d brought home a looney! But he found he could understand more and more of the Greekish language the man was speaking, which was very happening very quickly and kind of scary!

“A spell, eh? Are you a magician?” he asked.

Then he realized with a start he had used the same Greekish language the old man was speaking to ask the question. Shit! Could he still speak English?

“This is scary!” He muttered, trying for English, and was relieved when the words he spoke were obviously English!

He found he could change to the Greekish stuff just by thinking about it. Right. Now he was scared!

The old man grinned. “I am the sorcerer Urasmian. And I am a powerful sorcerer. I rule the city of Shcathor and the surrounding lands and have done so for many years.”

Yeah right. Perhaps the old man had taken a knock to the head and thought himself to be a character out of a fantasy novel. Except how did Jason account for now being to understand and speak the Greekish stuff? Hmm. Jason couldn’t stop himself from saying.

“So, how did you end up here?” He immediately wished he hadn’t sounded like a smart-arse!

The sorcerer glared but then shrugged. “Family, of a sort. Do you have sorcerers here?”

Jason shook his head. “No one who can really do magic. Lots of charlatans and believers in lots of silly gods and stuff. But no. No real magic. How do you become a sorcerer?”

He decided that bacon, eggs, and toast were a good mix and hoped the fellow wasn’t a vegetarian. He was just dishing up the bacon when he heard the oldster stirring in the other room, so Jason wandered in to tell him about breakfast and showering, as the smell was a bit overpowering. The stranger was looking around in a bleary-eyed manner, but then suddenly, he jerked upright and said something in a language Jason didn’t recognize. Jason shook his head in negation to show he didn’t understand before pointing into the kitchen and miming putting food in his mouth. The fellow studied him for a moment, stood up, wandered over to the doorway, peered somewhat warily into the kitchen, and nodded. Then pointed to his groin and raised his hands in the universal sign for a query.

Jason nodded and led the fellow to the small bathroom, which was on the ground floor, where he showed the old man the toilet. The oldster peered at it and looked back at Jason, causing Jason to wonder if he came from some third-world place as he seemed to not know what a toilet was. Jason lifted the lid.

“Do your stuff in here, and then press that button.” He explained, pointing at the button on the wall in front of the hidden cistern.

The old man looked unsure but nodded, and Jason left him and hoped he wouldn’t be cleaning feces and piss off the bathroom floor later. He finished organizing the breakfast and moved the food onto the dining table, added knives and forks, buttered the toast, and was just returning the butter to the fridge when he heard the toilet flush.

The old man came slowly into the room and saw the food on the table. He smiled happily, didn’t wait for permission, and plonked down in front of the nearest plate. He studied the utensils carefully, lifting up the fork and peering at it as though not sure what it was used for, so Jason sat down, grabbed his knife and fork, quickly sliced a bit of bacon off the half-length of rasher, then used the fork to propel it to his mouth. The old man smiled and soon mastered the same task, and they ate in happy silence for a few minutes. The glass of orange juice was apparently enjoyed as much as the bacon, and as they finished, Jason felt surprisingly satisfied that he had done a major good deed. Of course, he still had the problem of what to do with the old fellow, but hopefully, the strange man would now be able to direct him to wherever it was that he lived, or at least stayed if he was in town for the convention as seemed most likely from the attire the fellow was dressed in.

“So, where are you from again?” Jason asked after satisfying his immediate hunger pangs.

The man cocked his head questioningly, peering across the table, saying something Jason couldn’t make any sense of though it sounded Greekish. Sort of like how Portuguese sounded like Spanish but wasn’t.

Back from my Holidays partial make up post

About half the way there, he managed to swap sides to give his arm some rest before continuing the laborious trip back to his vehicle. The old man had sort of become more aware of his surroundings at some point and tried to walk but was so unsteady on his feet that hobbling along half-leaning on Jason proved to be the best method of locomotion they could manage along the wet and dismal streets.

At one point, some people came hurrying along the street, sheltering under a couple of umbrellas, but they studiously ignored Jason and his burden while passing by like ships in a stormy sea. The sleety rain finally started to ease off a little, just as they reached the underground car park entrance, of course! Jason had considered trying to continue on toward the shelter he knew was not too much further, but it was now so late in the evening, and he was feeling so tired, wet, and worn out that he decided to get home and worry about what to do with the old man in the morning.

The descent into the car park was surprisingly much harder than the slogging along the wet footpath, but once on the flat, the going proved much easier, and they soon reached his car. Jason manhandled the semi-conscious oldster into his old Mustang, and from that point, it wasn’t long before he was on the freeway headed home. The old man seemed to pass out once more as soon as Jason had positioned him in the passenger seat. He didn’t even try and get the seat belt on the fellow, and he had to give the old man a good shake to get him moving when they arrived back at Jason’s house. Well, his parent’s house, but it was his home.

With his parents away overseas and his sister at college, he had the place to himself and, after some careful maneuvering, managed to get the fellow onto the lounge in the family room at the back of the ground floor from which a door connected to the garage. The house was still warm from the central heating, which Jason adjusted back up a little after he had positioned the old man on the sofa there. By the time he came back from the heater controls, the oldster was sound asleep, snoring a little and looking very old and frail. Jason was so exhausted he gave up worrying about leaving the fellow alone in the house and retired to his room upstairs. A quick change into pajamas, a visit to the john after which he collapsed into bed and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. He awoke in the morning, and for a moment or two, he lay there still half asleep, but the call of nature soon had him up and into the bathroom. There he remembered his unwanted guest while doing the necessary and moved downstairs warily, in case his good deed was going to be punished. The old man was lying on the couch, seemingly still out of it, so Jason left him for the moment and headed into the kitchen to make coffee and think about breakfast. It was already light outside, but the sun was still not fully up in the now cleared skies that he could see out the back window, and looking at the clock on the microwave, it informed him that the time was a little after six. Ugg. He briefly thought about going back to bed, but as a rule, he was one of those people who, once he woke up, really woke up. Besides, he had the old man to worry about, and he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, regardless, he suspected, with a stranger in the house.