Who are Wally and Baxter?

I want you to meet the characters from my novels. I want to tell you all about their flaws, their hopes, their fears, and their unusual abilities.

I don’t want to spoil too much, though. It proves an act of balance to describe my characters in partial detail.

My series, Diaries of Darkwana, offers a massive roll call. It seems appropriate to begin introductions with my protagonist, Wally Cook, from the first book in the series, Daughters of Darkwana.

I will tell you that Wally never shows up again. Daughters offers his only appearance in the entire series. I will not, at this time, spoil the reason why (assume nothing).

Wally Cook seems, at first glance, a slob and a hermit. He writes novels and hides, alone, in his cabin in the middle of nowhere.

A troubled past haunts Wally. I won’t spoil that past here, as it provides a big surprise that puts together, for the reader, many of the puzzle pieces found in Daughters.

I will tell you that Wally wants redemption for a “wrong” he committed (whether or not he honestly stands guilty of anything will remain the readers’ call).

Wally fails to grasp that he cannot accept redemption until he first forgives himself.

Daughters follows Wally’s journey to discover this truth—and save Earth and another world called Darkwana from an evil dictator and his army of supernatural assassins via the aid of a clan of magical, anthropomorphic foxes blah, blah, blah.

Wally possesses a unique talent. He enters, when he sleeps, the dream worlds of other people. Wally even possesses the power to bring people and things from those dreams into the real world.

All worlds in Diaries exist as the dream world of someone called a Dreamer. While most of us dream scattered nonsense with little to no correlation between sessions, Dreamers always return to the same dreamscape, which evolves even in the Dreamer’s absence, while that Dream remains awake.

Special Agent Baxter of the FBI, the antagonist for Daughters, exists as a Dreamer.

Baxter, in his dream world, Darkwana (filled with creatures, objects, and characters from Japanese mythology), serves the tyrannical and terrifying dictator, Vasuki.

I will not tell you anything about Vasuki or his queen. Big surprises, there.

When Baxter realizes what Wally can do, he kidnaps him and forces them both into a chemically induced coma—so that Baxter may present Wally to Vasuki as a Gateway through which Vasuki may move his army (the Merchants of Chaos) from Darkwana onto Earth.

If Baxter succeeds, Vasuki will enslave humanity.

Baxter foresees a future in which humanity destroys itself. He believes that to save us, he must enslave us. Only Vasuki’s “leadership” will prevent our destruction.

Baxter tells Wally that countries will not wage war once they all cower beneath the same flag.

Wally, on his own quest to redeem himself for his past mistake, escapes Vasuki’s castle (constructed of golden gears and smog-spewing pipes) and wanders into the heart of Darkwana with a plan that anyone else would recognize as foolish.

Baxter afterwards hires a team of supernatural assassins to hunt Wally and return him to Vasuki's castle.

However, Wally makes allies . . .

I will, over the next few weeks, introduce Wally’s new allies and enemies.

Thanks for reading.

Daughters of Darkwana received a sweet, succinct review, which you can read here, http://www.thebookeaters.co.uk/daughters-of-darkwana-by-martin-wolt-jr/

I publish my blogs as follows:

Sundays: Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Mondays: Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

Tuesdays: A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

Wednesdays: An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Thursdays: Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com