Guest Blogger

Drum roll please, Ladies and gentlemen of the blogging world, I humbly present to you guest blogger, Rival Gates!

Quest for the Red Sapphire:

Former General Linvin Grithinshield is summoned home from the Goblin Wars after his father’s disappearance to run the family trading empire.  Soon his mother is murdered and he is on the run with a price on his head.  As a faceless enemy pursues him he must seek out the mythical Red Sapphire.  In a world with enemies from without and within, he must set out with dragons in the sky and cutthroats all around to fulfill his destiny or die in the attempt.  
Some people turn to drugs or alcohol when life gets rough and things look gloomy.  It is their way of escaping reality.  I began writing as my own way to escape reality.  Writing had been a favorite hobby as a boy.  When times for my family became difficult, my mother suggested I pour my thoughts into creating a story rather than dwelling on the negatives in my life.

It was a wonderful idea.  I created my own world with my own characters and my own rules.  Soon the short story became a long one.  Then it became a book.  Next I planned a series of books to be written.

The main character of Linvin is one I created from my ideals for what a hero should be.  He should be strong and intelligent but have his own flaws that get in the way of his greatness.  Linvin is a character you can care about as he is ripped away from his family at an early age.  In a similar way, I was sent to live with relatives for a time when my family was short on food.  Linvin learns lessons through fights.  I was tormented on the playground at school and fought nearly every day just to survive.  I learned and hardened myself just as Linvin did.  Later Linvin must take up a quest to make his life complete.  I had to move beyond childhood and make a life for myself.

Is Linvin the same as me?  I would definitely say not.  He has traits that I do have, ones I aspire to have and ones I am glad I do not have.  Linvin is a marvelous protagonist.  As I said before, he is really someone you can root for in the book.  You cannot have a successful book without having characters readers can invest themselves in during the story.


I hope this helps.

Rival