Cover design and typography copyright 2013 by Kevin L. O'Brien
Firestarter font distributed under a free use license by Jakob Fischer
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License Notes
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If you see any misspellings or typographical errors, please notify Kevin L. O'Brien using one of his online social networks. Thank you.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, including those based on the real world, are either products of the imagination of Kevin L. O'Brien or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Because some ebook platforms do not support special characters, certain words may appear misspelled, but this was done deliberately to avoid the problem of the platforms deleting the characters. Also, the LRF platform used by older models of the Sony Reader does not permit the use of links to external URLs, whereas the PDB platform used by Palm reading devices does not support any form of linking whatsoever.
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Table of Contents
Preface
The Jigsaw Dragon
About the Author
Other Books by Kevin L. O'Brien
Connect with Kevin L. O'Brien
Sample Excerpts
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Preface
The nice thing about writing for my characters Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, is that I can place them into any scenario I want. Specifically, I am not limited to contemporary tales set in a modern world very much like our own. As such, I have created four types of Team Girl stories:
Contemporary Tales -- Stories set in "our" 21st century world. These are the foundation stories which establish and develop them as characters. They include stories of the Girls adventuring in exotic locations, traveling to alternative Earths, and going back in time.
Dreamworld Tales -- Stories set in H. P. Lovecraft's Land of the Dreams of Men. Technically they are part of the "Contemporary" world setting, being as the Girls from the Contemporary tales appear in the Dreamlands tales. These are essentially low-fantasy, sword & sorcery stories.
Alternative Reality Tales -- These are stories set in other worlds, where the Girls are different from what they are in the Contemporary tales. These should not be confused with Contemporary stories of the Girls traveling to other worlds or going back in time, because while the alternative Girls have the same personalities, they are natives of the alternative worlds and lead completely different lives from the Contemporary Girls.
The fourth type of Team Girl stories is set in the milieu of an online role-playing game called Otherworld. Similar to World of Warcraft, only more family-friendly, people are able to play with or against each other, or by themselves, in a fantasy sword & sorcery world. These stories are also connected with the Contemporary tales, because about a year before they met in person, Eile and Sunny met in Otherworld and started playing together. Eile had created a fighter/thief named Braveheart while Sunny's persona was a magic-user named White-Lion. Though they never exchanged their real names, Eile did reveal that she lived in Denver, and when Sunny fled Indiana to escape people who were trying to kidnap her, she headed straight for Colorado to try to find Braveheart. They finally met face-to-face, and the rest is history. These stories are also meant to be low-fantasy sword & sorcery tales but with a gaming flavor. I myself played Dungeons & Dragons while in college, and I imagine it heavily influenced my preference for fantasy S&S genre stories.
This story describes one of their joint gaming sessions and sets the tone for future stories.