Running The Bases’ guest this week is David F. Berens. David is a fantasy and tennis author. What’s the silliest writing idea you’ve had–that worked!? This first and maybe silliest idea that turned into a really great sequence in Dragon Reign is the idea of using a really simple spell to turn a Red Dragon pink! It was so fun to explore how this enraged the dragon and removed the fear of the dragon from our heroes. It also became a hook to turn this dragon into an ally with the mage who turned him pink at the end of the book – which becomes a significant plot point in the sequel. We see you’re a tennis pro, how does …

My first fantasy novel, Dragon Reign – Book 1 of the One Prophecy, began its life in the form of a novella called Dragon Tails – Or Warriors Roasting on an Open Fire. Its sole purpose was to record the adventures my friends and I were having in our weekly role-playing games. All I wanted was to preserve for posterity the storyline that we were living out because it seemed unique, funny, exciting and entertaining! As I got further into recording this story, I found that my biggest challenges came from character development and plotting. While plotting was mostly in the hands of our game leader, the players were in control of their characters. So, when writing these characters, it …