Excerpt

....Houdini shrieked and spun in the air, arching his back and tucking one wing so that he did a full twirl end-over-end before leveling out and flaring his wings to catch the strong thermal rising from underneath them. Ivan balanced lightly on his back, gripping the griffin's sides with his knees and his hands resting on the powerful wing joints between Houdini's shoulder blades. The brief loop made his heart jump into his throat with excitement, and then it immediately plunged into the pit of his stomach as Houdini beat his wings and used the rising thermal to send him spiraling upwards into the sky.
"This is life," Ivan thought, watching the world unfold beneath him. He could see all the way to the distant mountains, with vast stretches of unbroken green creeping from the mountains all the way to the distant horizon. He could see the camp--a tiny dot far below him--and the shimmering surface of the lake; no bigger than a silver dollar. If he listened close enough, he could hear the clang of the second-years' swords as they trained in the camp, the flutter of a bee's wing in a field to the north, and even the steady creak of the trees growing. The world was alive, and it was his kingdom--his and Houdini's.
Ivan twitched one hoof against the griffin's side, and Houdini responded by leveling out at the edge of the thermal. A heartbeat later, Ivan felt the brief moment of weightlessness as the griffin tucked his wings to his sides, and then they were diving, the world screaming by them like an animal and threatening to pluck Ivan from his seat.
His eyes streaming, Ivan grinned into the teeth of the wind, every fiber of his being charged with energy and life.
He was a creature of the air, and there was no one on this earth that could stop him.


Ivan and Houdini are part of a larger cast of characters that have never actually managed to make their way into a book. Someday, but not yet. They've simply been sitting in my brain, developing over time and growing their own characters. The cast is mostly composed of not-quite-humans; Ivan's a faun, along with his sister Thorn (they're always arguing about who's older, but you never find out), and Houdini and his twin Ziggy are griffins. They're all part of a tribelike community of half-humans and creatures out of myth, living on the edge of human civilizations. Most of the community is half and half--fauns and centaurs, but there's a few odd characters: Flanagan, the shapeshifting phooka, who's been around for over seven hundred years and hasn't matured a bit in that time; Ivy, a human girl who wandered into the society and decided to stay; Will and Mag, two winged people (married); and a lake serpent named Lulu. 
Now every cast of good guys needs suitable bad guys. I've brought in some creatures from myths all around the world to act as the arch-nemesis of this raggle-taggle band of characters. We have the naga--snake men from Hindu mythology (generally low-intelligence, but armored by hard plates of scales and equipped with a venom-secreting tail); Greek harpies (giant, hag-faced vultures, in this case with poisonous claws as well); and of course the supreme evil masterminds, the demons (shapeshifters like Flanagan, but not limited to a set amount of shapes). 
This set is sort of my idea test course. If I like a concept, I run it through these people and see how it works. Chances are, characters in this group will have personalities similar to those in the book I'm writing (personalities range everywhere from mild and timid to wildly obnoxious), and I'll be able to figure out how someone will react to a situation. 
One day, I imagine all these people and ideas will eventually come together into one huge, fantastic story that will basically epitomize my writing career (though I wouldn't stop trying to best my latest work). In the meantime, I leave you to ponder the snippets that I offer, and to wonder....