Over 2000 years ago, after the conclusion of the Great War between Angels and Demons, contact with Earth by the surrounding worlds had been arrested. That is, until Chip found himself summoned through the barrier.

After being attacked by a dragon, held prisoner by the Angels, suspected of murder, Chip learns he has an affinity for controlling or “speaking” to plants.

Rather than remain a prisoner, Chip tries to run away, following the omens of Faith, the most dangerous, complicated, maybe-not-fallen Angel in the city of Heaven, possibly all of Eden and its surrounding worlds. Long before Faith is able to forge Chip into a warrior who can protect himself, the fate of the Angels ends up in his shaky hands.

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Dim Speak is available at Smashwords and Amazon.

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A few words about my first novel:

The seeds for Dim Speak were first sown more than twenty years ago as I came out of high school; long before angels and vampires were cool. I have spent the last three years weaving these ideas into my first novel. Sadly, this puts me too late to be a trend setter, and I am now stuck following the trend.

Dim Speak is a fantasy parody. Non-derivative, both in the sense that it is not a parody of another work and it doesn’t spoof for the sake of being silly. I try to write all the “gags” in the context of a serious story, which from time to time, does not take itself seriously. Again, that’s the point, because one of my goals in this work was to write a parody of life itself. We can’t take it seriously all the time, or we’d all just go bonkers.

My two biggest influences, not surprisingly, come from my teenage reading. Piers Anthony and the first eight or ten Xanth novels, along with another dozen or so of his other books. And Robert Asprin, primarily, with his Myth series, but also his Phule series. Alas, both of these authors loved their puns, while I loathe puns. They’re what finally made me give up on the Xanth novels; too many puns running around. Dim Speak has exactly one intentional pun, the fahders. Anything else is accidental.

Asprin was somewhat less prolific with puns, allowing me to read just about everything he wrote. His Myth novels, while a whole lot of fun, suffered from consistency. Though, anyone who has read these stories knows that wasn’t the point. At their core, the Myth novels were about friends and their relationships with each other. I find the friendship between Aahz and Skeeve to be one of the most influential in my real day-to-day friendships. Those are the type of relationships I personally seek.

Using my own voice, I tried to land this story squarely in between these two authors’ works. I like to think Dim Speak is serious in the way most of the Xanth novels are serious and fun in the way the Myth novels are fun. Most importantly of all, this story is about the friendship between Chip and Faith. Because these two characters are of the opposite sex, naturally there will be an extra layer of sexual tension, at least for Chip, but my ultimate goal is to create a friendship between two characters as deep as the one between Aahz and Skeeve. I hope you find this story as fun and as enjoyable as I do.