From Embers (3 page)

If all that angst sounds a little melodramatic...well, there are two things to consider. 1) I was eighteen. If teenagers aren't melodramatic, they aren't conscious. 2) I was wrestling with some pretty serious but undiagnosed social anxiety. I've talked about that a little bit
on my blog
. It's nothing crippling, but just bad enough that I
hated
having to meet new people. And a move always meant meeting new people.

We'd barely been in Little Rock a week before my parents hosted a big dinner party to get to know some of the families from Dad's work. After enough whining and complaining, I convinced Mom to let me spend the evening hiding in my room. They told everyone I was sick. I was, in a sense.

But that's how I found myself trapped upstairs, feeling miserable and wrestling with a world in turmoil, and quietly worrying that it was all going to be just as bad all over again when I went off to college in August. I was also bored and stuck there for at least two or three hours before the last of the guests left. I didn't have a TV or computer in my room, but I didn't really need one. I grabbed my scribblebook and started writing a story.

I wanted excitement and conflict and drama right off the bat, and by some flash of inspiration, I decided I wanted to show a happy home life torn asunder (go figure). I wanted to show a stable, pleasant world turned upside down and torn apart. And that, quite honestly, is where the dragonswarm came from: a melodramatic teenager hiding from a dinner party.

That night, sprawled on my bed, I wrote the prologue. I ruined a perfectly pleasant spring day for dear Ms. Elsa, I established the premise of the dragonswarm, and then I rolled right into chapter one and
really
got down to business. Now it was a teenage boy's life getting upset as he was called away to study at a school that wouldn't be nice to him. The words flowed like water. It all came so easily. It still took months to write, but once I considered it done, I started sharing it with friends and family.

When autumn rolled around I went off to school and had a pretty good time, all things considered. After a couple years of training I did a handful of extensive rewrites on the story and stripped out some of the melodrama and most of the autobiography. I also cut the prologue, because it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual story.

Eventually I split that initial book into two volumes (which became
Taming Fire
and
The Dragonswarm
). Then much later (about a week before publishing each of those), I completely rewrote the whole thing from the ground up. And all that hard work was certainly worth it! I published
Taming Fire
and it built a massive audience in a matter of months. When I released
The Dragonswarm
it jumped straight to the top of the fantasy bestseller list. But there's very little in the published works that remains from the story I wrote in that scribblebook way back when.

That was more than a decade ago. And the funny thing is, I can't count how many times over the years one of those friends or family members approached me to ask, "Hey...what was that story you wrote with the baby riding on a dragon in someone's living room? I
loved
that one!"

That story was the prologue. That was "From Embers." With so many people so excited about the books, I thought maybe they'd like to see where it all started. So there you go. I hope you enjoyed it.

Sincerely,

Aaron Pogue

(December 21, 2011)

Daven Carrickson grew up as a beggar in the filthy alleys beneath the shadows of the palace. He's the son of a known thief, disgraced and despised. His only real talent is his ability with a sword, and his only real chance at finding honor or a home is a desperate dream of joining the King's Guard.

Then Daven receives a new future when Master Claighan invites him to study magic at the Academy. The wizard offers to make him into a new kind of soldier: a swordsman equally skilled with forged blades and mystic forces. It only helps that Daven has no home, no family, and nothing left to lose.

But when conspiring forces destroy the wizard's plans, Daven finds himself wanted for treason and murder. Hunted by a great black beast of a dragon, caught between the King's Guard and a rebel force led by a rogue wizard, Daven's only hope of surviving is to become more than he's ever dreamed possible.

Taming Fire
is the first book in the Dragonprince Trilogy. Approximately 110,000 words.

Aaron Pogue is a husband and a father of two who lives in Oklahoma City, OK. He started writing at the age of ten, and lays claim to more than a dozen finished novels, as well as a handful of short stories, scripts, and videogame storylines. His first novels were high fantasy set in the rich world of the FirstKing, including the bestselling fantasy novel
Taming Fire
, but he's explored mainstream thrillers, urban fantasy, and several kinds of science fiction.
Gods Tomorrow
represents the introduction to a long-running science fiction cop drama series focused on the Ghost Targets task force.

Aaron is also a Technical Writer with the Federal Aviation Administration. He has a degree in Writing and has been working as a Technical Writer since 2002. He's been a writing professor at the university level, and is currently pursuing a Master of Professional Writing degree at the University of Oklahoma. He also runs a writing advice blog at
UnstressedSyllables.com
, and is a founding artist at
ConsortiumOKC.com
.

Consortium Books is an innovative publisher with a unique mindset. All proceeds from Consortium Books sales are donated to an organization dedicated to injecting money into artists' pockets and art into the culture.

To learn more about the unshackled, free-thinking publishing world that is Consortium Books, please take a step through the looking glass:

http://www.consortiumokc.com/books/