I have a confession to make: The Lost Kingdom was inspired by the call for submissions for an anthology other than the one it actually ended up in. here’s a litte bit more about that.
Publishing Details
The Lost Kindom is one fo the short stories in Missing Monarchs (Fox Pockets #4) from Fox Spirit Books [External Link], which came out in December 2014. So far, its available on Amazon as a Kindle edition [External Link] and on Lulu as a paperback [External Link] edition. It will eventually be up on Spacewitch [External Link] in an ePub format, I think.
Inspiration
Crossed Genres [External Link] had a call for submission (sometime ago) on “Super heroes”. They wanted stories about the less talented heroes, like the kind that made up The Mystery Men.
And I have a talent for finding things and finding the direction to go in. Not anything wonderful but enough that I don’t so much lose my place but lose the people I’m aiming for. (Having said that, I shall now get lost in several drastic and dramatic ways as the Universe teaches me a lesson in hubris.)
And I’d been toying with an idea related to the old fashioned idea of asylums and mental hospitals – I know the way I put things is totally unrealistic and has more in common with old stories that the present, or even what really happened in the past. But it was that idea of people who might not be neurotypical or sensible who were also put somewhere because it was the easiest way to deal with them rather than admit that their reality might actualy exist. I guess it’s a kind of tangent from Megan Lindholme / Robin Hobb’s Wizard of the Pigeons.
I put the things together and got The Lost Kingdom. Hopefully, I skirted the obvious pitfall of “mental diability automatically equals inspiring super power”.
Spoiler Notice
Just in case anyone wants to actually talk about The Lost Kingdom, it’s best not to read any comments below unless you’re prepared to read any spoilers.