The Djinn in my first-in-series book, Captain Wilder & the Dragon of Margundor, is central to the story in the novel. This creature lives in a bottle seemingly abandoned at some time in the past:
“There at the centre of the cavern, pitched at a slight angle in the sand and crumbling rock, lay a stoppered bottle about the size of a container for cheap spirits. I wondered if some wayward sailor or smuggler had left it at some time past. I stepped forward for a closer look.
The closer I got to the bottle the more I could see that it was indeed the source of light. A frightening glow pulsed within, as though some living form inhabited the thing. Each time it glowed bright, the whole bottle seemed to grow, and the walls lit up even more.”
One of the original sources of inspiration for the Djinn of Captain Wilder & the Dragon of Margundor is a story called The Bottle Imp. It comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of the same name.
The story is about a man and a magic bottle that grants the owner’s every wish. However, the power of this sorcery has horrific implications as it ultimately imperils the soul of its owner. For a sinister reason I won’t divulge here, passing the bottle on becomes the focus of every owner once their wishes are granted. Not so easily done, though, as the task becomes exponentially harder with each new owner.
Stevenson is one of my all-time favourite writers, and this story really affected me when I first read it many years ago. I’ve re-read several times since and it’s never lost its impact. I thoroughly recommend checking it out, especially as it is available in the free domain. I give some links below if you want to explore the story of the bottle imp further.
As to my own writing, I’ll be posting more on the Kickstarter project for the cover redo for the first book in the Legends of Animarl series – Captain Wilder & the Dragon of Margundor – later this week, all going well. I’m investigating different options for printing the map of Animarl at the moment, with parchment and canvas looking pretty good right now 🙂 Anyway, as I say, more on this later.
So, Stay Tuned and Stay Well!
Erron
Now, here are those Bottle Imp links:
1) An excellent short coverage of the story in ‘Literature Wiki’ (spoiler alert – it gives the ending!):
2) Here’s the story in pdf:
The Bottle Imp by Robert Lois Stevenson (copy in the public domain)
3) Here’s the story in audio (also a public domain file):