DANE REDHILL 1
A Shadow In A Shady Country
(still being updated as we speak – last update 09 June 2014)
This is a landing page, specifically created on Computertaal because it’s easier to find through Google.
Once the books go live, this page becomes a site of its own. There is, however, already a WordPress site available as well: http://daneredhill.wordpress.com.
Author: Peter The Dragon
Dane Redhill, the series.
Pitch
This is it; the final curtain call. Here we split. Dad, Mom and my brother Josh will go their way and so will I.
When I cross the line between life and death, nothing prepares me for what I find at the Other Side. There is Paradise when I rejoin long lost friends. There is Hell when my parents’ family members fight each other as if their deaths depend on it.
Sitting right in the middle, I take useless courses. Dead people don’t need to know how to eat or drink and yet, that is exactly what I learn. All I truly want is to join my funeral to say my goodbye to my family. Yes: life is hard, especially for those who are dead.
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Extra Information
This story will most likely be enjoyed by people who read books such as Narnia or those written by Erlend Loe.
Readership: Boys + Girls
Age level: Teenagers
Estimated length: +74.000 words
Type of book: YA (Young Adult) – Fantasy
Main Story Line: What happens when a family feud started by the living, is continued by the dead? Five hundred years ago a wager ended badly for the Toddlers. Today Dane’s grandma demands justice in the Kingdom of the Dead. Dane Redhill, the son of a Toddler and a Redhill, is the only one who can solve this, though all he really wants is to join his own funeral to say his good-byes to his parents and brother.
What sets this story apart from others: The opening deals with the pain of losing someone, seen through the eyes of the one that dies – Dane Redhill. It continues to show that even as an individual you can make a difference.
Setting: It starts in a hospital room before it continues into the world of the Dead. There Dane Redhill visits the Summer Palace to meet his grandma, ends up in The Shelter (a school for good conduct) and goes to Yesenia where he boards a ship. It’s on that ship he has to fight his last battle with his nemesis if he wants to be able to go to his funeral.
Overview of content (chapter titles)
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Why this book?
There are books with similar subjects: Elsewhere (Amazon), The Probability of Miracles (Amazon) or Radiance (Amazon). There are more on this subject (life after death), but none of those ever touch death the same way Dane Redhill does. The beginning of the book takes you through the pain of losing someone. Being Highly Sensitive myself I wanted to bring this in a way that felt realistic, without overdoing it. To create a world that felt real, I added earthly conflicts in the ‘after-life’ which are usually only allotted to the living.
See Market Rationale.
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Beginning of A Shadow In A Shady Country
The echo of my dad’s voice sounds fragile in my hospital room, as if he fears my heart will stop beating when he speaks too loud.
“Dane?”
“He’s asleep,” Mom answers.
I’m not, but she can’t tell. No one can tell anymore thanks to the pain in my head. Six months ago I had a mild headache. Today I have a brain tumor which is killing me.
“I wish he wasn’t.”
That’s Josh – my younger brother. I can’t help but smile because it sounds so out-of-place if you didn’t know him. He’s the most talkative of us both and meant that if I wasn’t asleep, I wouldn’t be this ill and maybe had a chance to recover.
A door opens. I know from the squealing of its hinges it’s the door to the hallway. It sounds like a cat in distress, which is entirely different from the squealing of the bathroom door that sounds like a badly tuned violin.
You want to read more? Several chapters (7) are available on Authonomy.
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Background info (encyclopedia)
Map of The Shelter (where Dane is send to become ‘an angel’)
Map of The Kingdom (the land of the dead)
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Characters
Dane Redhill:
Age: 16
Birthday: March 15, 1996
Dead: May 7, 2012. Dies from a brain tumor.
Physical description: normal height for his age, a chubby guy with round cheeks, a pale skin, coconut brown hair and deep blue eyes. By the time he dies, he has lost his overweight.
Hometown: American Falls, US.
Type of home: a modern house with two floors. Since his parents are rich, it’s a big house with all the modern comforts.
Father’s name, background and occupation: Mark Redhill, born 12 October 1966. He’s CEO of the Dane Redhill Group, a group of companies in the technology / media sector. He has a very difficult relationship with his mother-in-law. The day she died, she called and he was home but he didn’t pick up the phone because there was nothing he wanted to discuss with her. He feels guilty about this, even though it has never been established that the mother-in-law died because he didn’t pick up the phone.
Mother’s name, background and occupation: Laura Toddler, born 22 April 1970. She has two other brothers, one younger, one older. Her father drank more than was good for him but survived her mother and later died in a freak accident, probably due to alcohol abuse. She’s unaware of what happened the morning her mother died, but her marriage with Mark is at best flawed. She puts all her time in her children.
Position in family: one younger brother, Josh.
Character trait: He’s rather naive, often acts on what he’s told before he thinks those ideas through and believes in the goodness of people.
Relatives: He loses his favorite uncle (Bupi, see later) at the age of six.
Attitude: He’s rather positive, even when he knows he is about to die. He has accepted his faith, though when he actually dies he believes he’s still alive and somehow got healed. It takes a while for him to see what really happens. He has a strong connection with his father, to whom he looks up. He wants to do the right thing, but often jumps in a bit too unprepared.
Hobbies: reading books and comics and playing with his computer. He loves the bands his father looked up to: e.g. Queen. But he’s also into dub-step and other modern music styles.
Grandma (L. Toddler):
Age: 58
Birthday: February 4, 1937
Dead: August 31, 1995. Dies from a heart attack.
First name: Lizzy
Physical description: 5,18 feet. She is slender, with bright chocolate brown eyes and mid-length blondish hair, obviously dyed. She wears make up; a lot of rouge and a color that brings out her eyes. Even her clothes look impeccable, with every ironing line well visible. She obviously finds it important to take care of herself.
Hometown: American Falls, US.
Type of home: a tiny house (2 bedrooms, 1 living room, a porch, a kitchen and a cellar) where she lived since her divorce.
Parents: Father died rather young, leaving her mother to look for her three children on her own. She was a very strong-willed woman who often changed things in the house of her youngest daughter because she felt it was better that way.
Position in family: She is the youngest. There is an older twin, a boy and a girl. She has little contact with them. She’s the grandmother of Dane and Josh, the mother of their mom. Her relationship with her son-in-law is not very good. She has the same problems with the partners of both her two other sons.
Character trait: She knows she’s different, she simply doesn’t know why. She hates it, too, and feels she has to be better than everyone else if only because she wants to fit in. Today she would be diagnosed with autism (never mentioned in the book), but in her time no such diagnose was made. Her brother and sister have the same issues. Also, her father wanted her to have the best scores possible. If she didn’t get those, he slapped her with his belt. Her mother was strong willed and always knew better, too. So to blend in, she feels she has to be perfect and the only way to become perfect is to close her eyes for her own errors. She knows what others do wrong – and she will point that out at length, especially to others. To make it look as if she’s perfect, it starts with little white lies told to her partner and children. Later on she hides her own errors behind others, claiming that she can do them too because someone else did them to her. The view she has of herself is one where she helps whenever she can, asking nothing in return. In reality she’s unable to help anyone because she’s unable to feel or understand their emotions and needs and she does hand out bills by telling others how much she has done for them/him/her.
Background: Five hundred years ago the great-great-grandfather of Dane’s dad ‘stole’ the family fortune of a Toddler. Ever since she discovered her daughter dated a Redhill, she has made sure Dane’s dad knew about his ‘criminal past’ . It is assumed she got a heart attack and tried to call her daughter, who wasn’t home at the moment. Dane’s dad was, however, but seeing the phone number on his display, he ignored the call. That evening she was found dead (in the kitchen, not near the telephone).
Attitude: She’s rather negative, points out all the wrongs others do and is unable to feel compassion. Each time someone says something that puts her in a bad light, she feels ‘ hurt’. She will dramatize these moments and use anything else said by the others to explain why she feels hurt and wants you to apologize. She has an ill feeling towards all Redhills, so when Dane arrives and blows up her Death Day Party, she’s convinced she has to eradicate the Redhill part in him. The only way to do that, is to send him back to school. Her school.
Hobbies: Knitting, dancing, buying clothes. She loved one-night-stands when she went alone on a holiday, even when she had a friend (her ex-husband cheated, so why couldn’t she?).
Christobald de Monte Rouge:
Age: 47
Birthday: June 21, 1512
Dead: December 1, 1559. Dies of the flu.
Physical description: 5,39 feet. , He’s handsome, with a wide and open face in which he often tries to drown a mischievous chuckle in a curly beard and moustache. He wears a long, off-white linen Elizabethan shirt, a Medici ruffand has a girdle with a fire breathing dragon with spread wings (the same one used in the Redhill Group company logo. He wears front buttoning pants extending to knee level. Knee-length stockings with low-heel and low cut leather brown shoes finish his outfit.
Hometown: Albi in the Languedoc, France. He was Duke there.
Type of home: a castle before he moved to England and ‘won’ the Hibaldstow estate.
Married to: Elise Saint-Martin, seen as one of the most beautiful women of her time. He had 4 children. He’s Dane’s great-great-grandfather from Dane’s father’s side.
Why did he escape to Engeland: After playing a game of cards with the king of France, he won. The King, unable to accept that, claimed he cheated and send out his troops to arrest the duke. A close friend at the court informed him in time and Christo together with his wife and four children escaped first to Antwerp before they embarked on a trip to Engeland. When one of his children fell ill, he asked help from an old friend. That old friend first send him away, until he met Elise and fell in love with her. When Irwin Toddler (the friend) is drunk, he proposes a game of cards. The winner will get everything: Elise + the Hibaldstow Estate. Because of his ill child, Christo cheats.
Character trait: He doesn’t take life too serious, unless others are involved for which he feels responsible. He is very loyal when family is concerned and as such his battles with Dane’s grandma begin. Trying to get even for what she did to Dane’s dad, it finally grows into a conflict that encompasses the entire kingdom and gets him expelled.
Attitude: Life is fun. Don’t ever take yourself too seriously, others will undoubtedly do that for you. He knows he made mistakes and he’s prepared to pay a price for that. But don’t ever try to hurt people that are important to him.
Hobbies: He’s a master in sword play. He loves adventures and when he was a King, he often went on journeys to discover the world beyond.
Bupi (Fredegand Redhill):
Uncle of Dane Redhill. Priest.
65.
He’s open minded, peace loving and tries to do the right thing. He lives by his profession, loves to read and tries to solve the feud in a way where both parties can step away from it unharmed. He is however realistic enough to know that once in a while you have to stand up. He accepts other views, even when they differ from his own.
Frank Dillinger
Criminal, even when he was alive.
43.
He’s the head of the Haunted – the army used by Dane’s grandma to maintain in control. He lived as a criminal and in dead he hasn’t changed a bit. He’s formal, always gets his way and if he doesn’t get his way, he takes what he feels is his anyway. He has a very dark personality aimed at pleasuring himself.
Cecilia ‘Cecil’ Rook
Old crush from Dane.
15.
Died due to a car accident. Posing as a boy, she’s in reality a girl (something which is shown at the end of the book). After Frank Dillinger suspects something, she’s the one to help Dane escape from the Shelter and win back the ship together with him. She does the things she does because she has no other choice.
Grandpa
72.
He drinks more than is good for him. He also cheated on his wife, but generally Dane sees him as a very positive person. He has a lot of vices, but in the end he helps Dane escape.
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Next book
DANE REDHILL 2 – Wanderer of Dreams
When Dane Redhill and Cie Rook escape Dane’s funeral, they end up in the home of a ten-year old boy. His parents are in the middle of a legal battle after a dirty divorce. Will Dane be able to save both himself and the kid? Or will this all end in a family drama? This book will handle suicide and everything attached to it.
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Is that all? Only 2 books?
Of course not! After 2, number 3 arrives. In this book we dive into the Kingdom and finally set things right. After all, Christo de Monte Rouge wanted to show the truth and that truth can only be shown when they talk to Irwin Toddler. Since Irwin returned to the world of the living many times over, the only way to find out who he is today is to get in touch with the Oracle. Apparently, When they finally reach the Oracle, he tells them that Irwin Toddler is in the Kingdom as well. So they set out to meet him, not knowing that he is much closer than they thought.
You want to know who he is? I can imagine, but in order to find out, you will have to ask me. You know the way.
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Any other plans?
I have many. For the advanced course of ICL I am presently working on a new novel: CHILDREN OF A LITTLE MIGHT. This is a single novel of a child with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) that saves the world because of his ASD.
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One remark of someone at a publishing title acquisition:
Peter,
