About Where All Roads Lead by Devon Richards
Having crossed the kingdoms since the end of the Orc civil war, seeking gold wherever its scent took them, Captain Arnath and his band of treasure raiding scoundrels find themselves in a life-altering predicament. Their latest escapade in pursuit of gold nearly kills them all, leading them to think that perhaps they have aged-out of the adventuring business and perhaps it’s time to move on to another.
They decide upon opening a traveller’s outpost, one unlike any other they’d known. One where adventurers can train for their coming quests, under the experienced eyes of their hosts. Little do they know that under the grounds of the outpost they are refurbishing lies a treasure that carries an ancient curse, one connected to their own past adventures.
Before long, our heroes find that their chosen quiet life has thrust them into the greatest, most harrowing adventure of their entire lives. Filled with lovable characters, romance and plenty of action, “Where All Roads Lead” is about the quest within all our hearts – Finding a place to call home.
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Author Bio:
A resident of Toronto, Canada, Devon Richards has lived in many places across Canada throughout his life. Having learned to read at a very young age, Devon soon found in school he had the ability to write, to create stories of his own. Often in grade school and middle school his assigned short stories were read in front of his classes.
By the time he was 20, Devon and a friend wrote and submitted 2 spec scripts to “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. While not accepted by the show, the screenwriting experience opened the doors to a lasting career goal – That of Film and TV writer.
Newly moved to Toronto and completing his first screenplays, Devon thought to give acting a try and began working as a Background Performer in the many productions shot in and around the Toronto area. During the early 2000’s, Devon worked on many prestigious productions under the creative eyes of Carl Franklin, Helen Shaver, Jon Cassar, Joel Silver, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Len Wiseman, Steven Spielberg and Guillermo Del Toro to name but a few. (Watch the series “Flashpoint” and “Rookie Blue” and you’ll see Devon in nearly every episode.)
Over the course of those years, Devon continued to write and eventually scored a couple of screenplay options in Hollywood. He had also been hired by fledgling producers to create tailor-made scripts and edit existing ones. All the while, many story ideas were percolating that he thought perhaps were not suitable for the big or small screen. So, it was decades since his initial academic successes with prose writing that Devon Richards returned to the form.
His first novel, the fantasy-adventure “Where All Roads Lead”, started out as a short story. Like all good concepts, the idea of a typical adventuring party deciding to hang up their swords and go into business tickled the back of his mind for the months that followed, and soon Devon was expanding on the story that was to become the first chapter of the epic novel.
Devon Richards’ All Roads Adventures, which begin with the novel “Where All Roads Lead”, take place in a wholly imagined fantasy world. Though many of the familiar tropes of modern fantasy writing are there, many others, things Devon Richards felt were entirely unnecessary for good story-telling are left out. Within the stories, you will find elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, myriad creatures and pockets of hidden treasure, as you would in the many traditional fantasy stories going back to Lord Dunsany and even earlier. What you won’t find are persons, towns, rivers etc with a multitude of names that change over the ages, or many monikers they are identified by certain races, etc etm. While the four kingdoms that the stories take place in are indeed ancient, and have forebears before them, all with their own history, the utterly unnecessary side-tracking into those histories simply never takes place in any of Devon Richards’ books without concrete relevance to the story being told.
Another way Devon Richards sought to alter the foundations of fantasy writing was to allow his characters to age. When we first meet Garthe the mage, (pronounced Garth-uh) he is 9 years old. In the next chapter, years later, he is 17. Arnath and his companions have been on the rough, adventuring road since the war 20 years ago, and very much feel the pains and pangs that come with getting older. The aging process is a part of life in this world. Another human aspect of the stories Devon Richards has incorporated in is allowing his characters to have sex lives. Rather than the traditional chaste/chivalrous/Victorian romances all-too-often presented in the realm of fantasy writing, the characters express their desire for each other as openly as we do in our world. Truly, what fun is a fantasy world wherein you can see the occasional dragon flying around but everyone is too emotionally frozen by some unspoken code or by honour or by who-knows-what to couple-up or go to bed together? Devon Richards firmly believes that the fantastical, child-like wonder we experience when reading fantasy should not extend to the characters within those worlds – If the character is not a child, why would they act like one when they meet someone they like? The answer is simple – They don’t have to. There is no rule written anywhere that says that courtships of the characters in the fantasy genre have to be as long and epic as the other quests the characters go on.
In these hybrid Epic/Cozy tales, we meet Arnath and his band of treasure hunting scoundrels, just as they are at a major crossroads in their lives. For near 20 years after first meeting during the Orc civil war, our heroes have been adventuring across the 3 kingdoms, seeking hidden pockets of treasure, long-forgotten by the passage of time. But it is time that catches up with them, and their latest adventure nearly kills them all. After a heartfelt discussion around the fireside, Arnath and his companions decide to settle down, take what little gold they have and go into business – to hang up their adventurer’s swords forever.
Fate has different ideas in store for them and their swords are not stowed away for long. Kroman’s Town, the forgotten, out-of-the-way town they choose to settle down in, might just have an ancient curse on it and Arnath and his companions are the only ones who can stand ready to defend their new home.
So begins a series of stories that will center around Kroman’s Town and the Traveler’s Outpost Arnath and his companions build there. Sometimes sprawling and epic, sometimes mere humorous inter-personal interludes, The All Roads Adventures has something entertaining for readers of all ages.
Drawing from years of experience in the post-punk underground, Devon Richard’s “The Damon Black Mysteries” are a different kind of Noir. In the lengthy tradition of Noir writing, our detectives have always had a chip on their shoulder, a reason to think the world is a crummy place and this prevailing attitude helps them get to the heart of the mysteries. In the case of the greats like Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, their detectives were veterans of World War I or II, and had seen enough of the ugly side of human nature to sniff out when something rotten was going on.
In the case of Damon Black, he learned from his pre-teens onwards, the time when punk and new wave styles came to Canada, that the message being pushed in the media and in schools, “Be Yourself”, was an absolutely lie. Having been bullied, ostracized and beaten just for his alternative hairstyles in his teen years and witnessing how the perpetrators were never punished and even encouraged in some cases, hardened Damon’s worldview. If “Always be yourself” was a lie, what else about the platitudes we built our society upon were merely accepted as icing to cover over a far more sinister side of human nature?
Unafraid to peak into the dark corners, armed with his grim world-view, a knowledge of photography and a 9mm Beretta PX4 Storm Sub-Compact, Damon Black takes on cases that revolve around the underworld he knows so well, often acting as a consultant for the police.
Two collected short stories, “Two Shots: The Damon Black Mysteries” are online, available to purchase on all platforms.
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