The Sakamota Journals

This series started off as a gag between me and the real Wong Fo Lee, and was even an RPG2K project for awhile.  The idea was simple; take a simple fantasy cliche (i.e. a dragon kidnapping a princess) and twist it at both ends.  We started with the hero; sure, any knight worth his or her plate armor could stand and face a dragon, but where's the fun in that?  Originally, the hero was to be a simple crossing guard; you know, the guy who stands at school crossings and lets the children pass?  Oh yeah.  The idea of him guarding a tiny bridge in the middle of nowhere was clearly inspired by the excellent Mel Brooks movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the idea that the king was bonkers seemed quite reasonable.  After all, he was about to task a crossing guard to save his daughter.

The original hero was supposed to be incompetent, wholly incapable of performing the task, but as the story fell into place and revealed that the dragon and the princess were not the simple characters they were cast as, I decided to give him a little more ability.  The idea of an internet trained samurai struck me as funny; a guy who admires the samurai culture, but only the parts he finds comfortable.  He practices fighting with a katana, yet uses Streaming Arts. He wears a keikogi and a hakama, yet he sleeps on a normal bed.  As he would have access to holograms, he is actually good with the sword, yet he is still inexperiences.

Jimmy Olsen Sakamota (thus named because I figure one Jimmy Olsen should have some balls) had his stark counterpoint, however.  While Jimmy's study of samurai made him a thoughtful, skilled, and effective warriro even with a dull blade, Luminous Arc Skylad was essentially a joke on the standard JRPG hero.  Barely more than a kid, and wielding a sword far too large for him, Arc is brash, impatient, and not that skilled.  There is more to him than that, however; he is a student and junior researcher at the Wenapaj Center of Knowledge, and knowledgable about Kindred artifacts such as the blade.  Given the importance of Arc's 'sword' in the final book (as yet unwritten), his presence is not merely an annoyance.  Again, although seemingly ineffective, Arc is a friendly fellow, and a fierce fighter; he eventually develops a martial fighting style that uses the weight of his sword to fling him around.

This is largely a 'It's the journey, not the destination' story, as is its sequel, and I feel the enjoyment comes from the typical ragtag group of heroes interacting and trying to figure out what is going on with the dragon.

Also worth noting is that while A Dreamer's Knight goes all over Vinta, The Sakamota Journals takes place only in Wenapaj, the smallest sovereign nation on Vinta. I wanted to show that I could create a good adventure in both settings, and given that The Sakamota Journals is quite honestly my favorite series, I feel satisfied ... though not so satisfied that I'm not taking it out and giving it a little once over.  I was still in my over-descriptive phase when I wrote it, and would like a chance to catch some of the mistakes I've come to realize I tend to make.

One final note; I wrote the original draft for this story in a month, while working at Home Depot.  I'd go into work early, set up a small table in the back of the break room, and type away. I'd write at lunch as well, storing my little laptop in my locker in the meantime. While a lot of the story changed in editing, writing it was a blast.  I won't put the link up just yet (though a search on smashwords will still uncover the current version) as I am working on improving it, and would suggest you wait until I finish for the best version.