Raji Dorotez

The Warlord of Nedung Betar: Volume Two of the Mid-sea Chronicles Raji Dorotez

Publisher Marketing: This is the second Volume of the Mid-Sea Chronicles. Tiranu Shupari, Sun Priest/Magician, son of the King-of-Kings, finds himself the "guest" of a ruthless Warlord who is trying to play all sides against each other in the struggle for control of the Mid-Sea. Afraid to kill Tiranu and afraid to release him, the Sun Priest has to resort to spirit-walking and magic to survive. His faithful bodyguard, Barth Jarrow, remains in his company through good times and bad, but two characters have been added to his company since the first book, and before the book is out and they arrive at the abode of the Pirate King of Trelag Szuu, more characters are added, all colorful, all quite real. Carrying over from the first book there is Torq Baloong, the Barbarian pit-fighter who carries secrets with him that will not be revealed until the third book; and Tiranu's uncle and enemy, Taboor Shupari, who at the end of the first book is shocked into catatonia in the skirmish at the Temple of Tonotha-Ru at the end of the first book, but snaps out of it at the most inopportune moment. Later in the book there is Okko Punt, an Amazon who is tougher than most men, and her wife, Seyassa, who is beautiful and wants to have a baby, a situation which could be explosive. These two will play a bigger role in the third book, THE PIRATE KING OF TRELAG SZUU. And there's Captain Sitar Mossemos and his young wife, Azza, who works for the Warlord and has been charged with delivering his charges to Trelag Szuu, but he grows to prefer the company of Tiranu. These two characters will also be in the third book, but the author hasn't decided their ultimate fate. Their voyage south to Trelag Szuu proves to be anything but ordinary. Ancient cities come alive, mythical animals make appearances, and characters are fleshed out. What is real and what is not, like always in this series, are blended, and what looks like truth on one page may prove to be false in the pages that follow, only to become truth again in chapters to come. This is like no other fantasy series that has been published, is full of magic and spiritual truths, and mirrors our own world in many ways. Contributor Bio:  Dorotez, Raji Raji Dorotez, born in Virginia in 1947, was an Army brat from the moment of his birth. He spent most of his youth overseas in Europe, the Orient, and Hawaii shortly after it became a state. When he returned to the Mainland for the final time he was 17 and it felt like he was coming to an unknown country. His country moved to the Deep South just in time for the Civil Rights Movement, which affected him greatly. He spent one year at a Southern college before giving academia up to flee to the North where he got swept up in the Youth Movement of the 60s. He came to California in 1969 and has made it his home since. He is a long-time Gay and Pagan activist, but everything he writes is not Gay. He is the author of THE SCARLET WAND, Sex Magic For Gay Males; THE SCARLET PENTAGRAM, Rituals For Gay Males; the novel SPIRIT-WALK, about a shaman on another world who goes on a "spirit-walk" and visits this world five centuries from now and learns tolerance and understanding from his journey; and the BULLDOG series, about a biker who is killed by his old lady, but is too full of life to die and comes back as a ghost, wanting all the things he wanted when he was still alive. One is published now, but there will be at least eight in the series. This series, unlike his other books, is not for the faint of heart. Sex scenes are described graphically in the early books, but in the later ones, Bulldog begins to transcend and the books become more spiritual. Dorotez has created a web site for his books: www.rajidorotezpress.com. Check it out for free sample stories, new books he's writing, and old books he's digging out of boxes that he forgot about which he's willing to sell. Many of his earlier books, for example, THE SCARLET PENTAGRAM and RENEWAL CEREMONY are selling on-line by their current owners for much more than he originally sold them for. Enthusiastic fans have posted some of his earlier stuff on-line for free. As he was out of the loop for fifteen years while he lived off-the-grid on a remote hill in the Sierra Foothills, with no electricity, internet, nor flush toilet, many fans thought he was dead. But he isn't. He's very much alive and tells people he wasn't inactive during those fifteen years. He was writing story after story, novel after novel, and tucking them aside and going on with the next. Having discovered the internet, he is now busily editing and publishing all those things he wrote during his hermitage, and finding that they spurn more.