Questions 3 and Looking Back at ‘Warlord of the Forgotten Age’

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

When I reached Warlord of the Forgotten Age, I felt both happy and sad.  I’d spent nearly 15 years working with these characters.  Now, it was time for me to give them their final adventure.  The temptation to find a way to continue was there, but it would have been to the detriment of the story.  Sometimes, an author needs to accept that it’s time to retire some characters.  This really did help me realize that I need to be able to let go, which is a lesson I keep reminding myself.

This story involves the champions going to face Baron Kernaghan in the Chaos Void, meeting their destiny, realizing that free will still plays a factor, and having the biggest battle of their lives.  I had to give everyone moments to shine and show off all that they’ve learned while making sure the Baron was still a threat.  I couldn’t have them trounce him with ease or stand on par with him without breaking a sweat.  This is an immortal who was once a god and still makes the gods nervous.  So, I took my time writing all of the battle scenes and deciding on how one would blend into the other.  Adding downtime to show characters who were away from the actual combat, but still involved, was another piece that I had to juggle.  A fun challenge for the finale.

Warlord of the Forgotten Age had two major headaches though:

  1. The first was figuring out the final fate for all of the heroes.  I didn’t want everyone to have happy endings or sad endings.  I wanted to create a mix.  I also wanted all of the heroes to lose something over the course of the final battle.  Whether it be their lives, body parts, sanity, or powers, I didn’t want any of the champions to reach the end unscathed.  So, I needed to sit down and make several scenarios for each one and choose as the story progressed.  This way, I could see which ending would work best as the battle progressed.  Only one was slated to die from the start and another slated to live in some fashion.  So, the rest, including a handful of supporting characters, were up in the air for a while.  Kind of nerve-wracking for someone who likes to know exactly where he’s aiming.
  2. The other headache was figuring out who would be the one to get the final blow on Baron Kernaghan.  I didn’t like the idea of everyone hitting him at once in some ‘power of friendship’ move.  Nothing was prepared for that to happen.  Everyone would do their part to weaken and defeat him, but I needed to figure out who would be the one to end him completely.  That would determine how the end of the battle played out as well.  Every champion had a good reason to get the killing blow too, so I couldn’t say that one definitely should get it over the others.  Almost reached a point where I was going to flip a coin or pull names from a hat, but I figured it out.

Nothing I would change about Warlord of the Forgotten Age.  I’d be afraid that any changes I make would be done so to be nice and timid.  That would just hurt the story and future Windemere adventures.  So, it is what it was meant to be.

Question time!

  1. How do you feel when you come to the end of a series?  (As an author and/or a reader)
  2. Do you prefer happy or sad endings for characters?
  3. What is a piece of advice you give someone about ending a series?
Posted in Legends of Windemere, Questions 3, Warlord of the Forgotten Age | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

When Your Hero Hides Their Face

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Dredd

This week’s topic stems from months back when I kept stumbling onto short videos and articles about the ‘Halo’ TV series.  First, I had no idea there was a series based on the ‘Halo’ games.  Second, the whole thing was about how they removed Master Chief’s helmet, which was never done in the games.  It created a big uproar among fans and that’s as far as I went with my exploration.  Mostly because it reminded me of my generation’s ‘helmet removal’ moment.

Long ago, there was a comic character named Judge Dredd.  He was judge, jury, and executioner in a dystopian city.  It was a dark science-fiction series with a hero whose face was never seen.  The helmet was always on and that was one of the reasons so many people enjoyed him.  A sense of mystery was added to the character as well as a subconscious urge to put yourself in the his place.  Without a face, a reader might be more likely to picture him as a version of themselves.  Stan Lee mentioned something like this when asked why Spider-Man had a full body costume and mask.  He said it was so that people would never know what he looked like, so people in his world could all connect to him.  Not the same as Dredd though since he was more of a vehicle for the reader to plaster themselves onto.

This kind of came crashing down when the first ‘Judge Dredd’ movie came out in the 90’s with Sylvester Stallone.  It was campy and goofier than the dark source material, which could have been handled on some level.  The biggest issue was that they had Stallone and decided that you needed to see his face.  Now, Dredd was Rocky/Rambo/John Spartan instead of a faceless anti-hero.  The mystery was gone, which added to the changes of tone and general atmosphere of the world.  I believe the argument for this was the same I heard for Master Chief:

‘The audience will have trouble connecting to a hero if they cannot see their face.  So, the helmet had to go.’

Forget that both characters existed in a visual medium of comics and video games, so people were already connecting to them when they had helmets.  Forget that you already had Boba Fett with a fan following before the first ‘Judge Dredd’ movie and ‘The Mandalorian in recent history.  Basically, a decision was made to capitalize on an actor’s face instead of doing it for the story.  One could even argue that there wasn’t any faith in the writing to carry emotions without the actor’s face.  That’s a shame since helmeted heroes have been successful in the past.

Then again, maybe too many people have issues with a character whose face you can’t see or those who are listened to have issues.  You may have noticed that the picture on this post is ‘Dredd’, which was the 2012 ‘Judge Dredd’ movie starring Karl Urban.  He didn’t take his helmet off and it kept the dark, violent tone.  People who knew of the character beforehand praised it even if it had some flaws.  Those who didn’t know the character ended up complaining about various things, including that you never see his face.  It wasn’t even that they couldn’t get emotions or tone from Urban’s Dredd, but they were really upset that he kept the helmet on.  The movie didn’t do as good as it should have, but R-Rated action films usually have trouble.  Personally, I think TV stations suddenly showing the Stallone one drove some curious people away because they thought it would be the same thing.

There are difficulties with a helmeted character though.  At least in a visual medium like games, shows, movies, and comics.  Novels have an easier time because the author can reveal what a character is thinking or facial expressions beneath the mask.  The other mediums cut off either all or part of those expressions, so you lose an aspect of human communication.  It’s noted that 70-93% of how we communicate is connected to voice tone, facial expressions, and body language.  The words we use don’t matter as much as how we say them and act while speaking.  I mean, look at how the impact of an f-bomb can change depending on how you say it.

Personally, I think there are many ways you can communicate emotions with a character whose face you can’t see.  It can be a challenge, but there are other vehicles to use.  It would be like writing a character who is missing one of their senses.  You adapt your style and get them to interact with their surroundings in other ways.  I’ll be trying to explore this concept more during the week.

So, what do you think of helmeted heroes?

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Happy World Dracula Day!

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Saw it at the bottom of a holiday list and had to make a post about it.  Love these obscure holidays.  Definitely helping me out of a jam when I forget to make a Sunday post in advance.

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Goal Post: Almost Forgot This One

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

This week was so crazy that I nearly forgot to write this post.  Woke up at 6 am and realized I never took the time last night to do it.  This is what happens when I have a busy week and then Friday off.  I’ll share what I can because a lot of the chaos was drama that I can’t share here for a variety of reasons.  Mostly, I don’t want to anger certain people in my life who are working my last nerve.

Well, my parents left for a trip last Saturday, which means I’ve had the house to myself.  It means I had to do all of the house and yard work such as watering, vacuuming, dishes, mowing, and remembering garbage/recycling/lawn stuff pick up times.  This is on top of all the craziness of work and appointments, so I didn’t get a lot of relaxing until I was off yesterday.  Not that I didn’t spend most of Friday doing errands and chores, so I could enjoy my 3-day weekend with my son.  There really are times I feel like being convinced adulthood is cool and you have freedom was a trap that we need to stop feeding kids because they’ll just be disappointed.

I did manage to finish typing in the hand edits for Darwin & the Halfling Hunt then print out Darwin & the Avenging Elf.  Won’t be able to tackle the latter until next weekend because there’s a lot to do this week.  Still, it was some progress in spite of having so much else to do.  The flickers of free time I got during the week were used to make July and August blog posts.  I’m hoping to get those mostly done soon in order to free up the summer for editing on top of work.  Yeah, I’m doing the summer session, which means I get 1.5 weeks of break before it starts and after it ends.

Unfortunately, I got very little fun time with me son this week.  Monday was a big homework day and Tuesday was only slightly better.  Me having to do all of the cooking and cleaning impacts this as well.  I’m trying to juggle it all, but him getting distracted by certain people and things ends up throwing everything off.  So, I’ll be sitting there with a finsihed dinner while he’s stuck on the phone or still trying to do homework.  This all adds to my frustration since my son and I don’t get a lot of downtime with each other these days.  It’s primarily homework and then other people end up scrambling to spend as much time with him as possible before he’s back with his mom.  This really eats away at my morale and mood.

With cooking, I’ve been trying 6 new recipes and I’m going to add a slideshow to next Saturday’s post with all of the meals.  This includes the tried and true ones I’m sticking with, but not the take out.  So far, I’ve tried 3 of the new recipes and only one of them has been a disaster.  The other two have been highly successful, so I hope the other 3 follow in their footsteps.  Tonight, I’m going to try to make ‘Restaurant Style Chicken Lo Mein’, which is going to be work intensive.  Put all of the non-frigerated ingridents on the counter last not and there’s a lot.  Probably the biggest recipe I’m going to attempt and one that I won’t be repeating very often if successful.  Fingers crossed.

The only other big event that I can talk about is how our students did with the Unified Basketball Championship.  Our team was undefeated for the season, but this was a difficult game.  The Life Skills students had a big field day trip earlier, so they had already spent about 3.5 hours in the sun and heat.  So, they were tired and reaching their limits when the game started.  The adults who were on the trip weren’t doing much better and the other team showed up to win.  It was a physical game, but our students won 31-30 to clinch the championship.  Really proud of them for working hard, keeping it together, and showing good sportsmanship.  A well-deserved win and nice highlight of a difficult week for all of us.

The next three days are going to be spending time with my son.  Helicopter landing and event in the park this morning then haircuts before Pokemon Go.  Tomorrow is a Pokemon Go event and then we have dinner with my sister, brother-in-law, and neice.  Monday is going to be relaxing and possibly more Pokemon Go if he still needs to get things done, but maybe someone will have a BBQ for the holiday.  After that, it’s back to school, work, and appointments.  Can’t say I have anything exciting planned beyond finishing those blog posts and making some dinners.  Trying to finish a puzzle in order to clear the table for a summer of big Lego sets.  Probably need to decide if I’m doing a solo trip to Oswego in August too.  Kind of scared about doing a long drive on my own.

Okay . . . My computer just crashed and had to reboot with no explanation as to what happened.  Monday might require getting a new machine.  Let’s get to the goals and put this post out there.

  1. Spend time with son this weekend.
  2. Possibly buy new laptop.
  3. Get haircut.
  4. Cook dinners to avoid starvation.
  5. Puzzle time.
  6. Pokemon Go time.
  7. Work on summer blog posts if computer functional.
  8. Sleep when possible.
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A Post-Apocalypse Bucket List

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

I thought it would be fun to write a small bucket list if I ended up in an apocalypse scenario.  That is if I survived the initial disaster.  I’m making two versions though:

Not Having a Child Charles (Fictional Me)

  1. Loot and complete all of the big Lego sets I’ve wanted to do.
  2. Visit Yellowstone National Park.
  3. Learn archery.
  4. Lose weight and gain some type of physical conditioning.
  5. Kill a zombie.
  6. Check out the San Francisco zoo.
  7. Visit the Georgia aquarium to see the whale shark.  (Pray nobody has eaten it.)
  8. Catch up on One Piece.
  9. Get a sturdy bicycle to bring along while I snag cars for most traveling.
  10. Finish all of my idea books.

Charles with Son (Real Me)

  1. Finish watching One Piece.
  2. Establish a safe home until we are able to travel.
  3. Travel to various tourist spots.
  4. Get him a dog he isn’t allergic to.
  5. Find a way to get to Japan.
  6. Eat pizza for most meals.
  7. Buy son a water bed.

Really isn’t easy to make the second list because I feel like I’d need my son’s input.  Also, parenting would mean I’d be focused more on his survival than doing whatever I want.  Keeping a child alive in the post-apocalypse doesn’t really allow for a lot of selfishness from what I can tell.

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Writer’s Self Care – Health

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. (Yes, I posted twice this week due to a scheduling rearrangement.) This is the last in my series of posts …

Writer’s Self Care – Health
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Poetry Day: Into the Textbook Fray

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

(I believe this was written when I was going to go back to school for medical coding.  It didn’t last more than a semester because of what happened.  Too many people going for it, so there was a job saturation.  Also, ran out of money to take the courses AND afford the textbooks.)

Here I go
For the third time
Buying textbooks
And dreading tests
Ignoring the difference
Between now and then

 

The first time was a party
With constant breaks
To stay on course
I aimed for all my dreams
Writing prose and poems
For the sacred grades

 

The second time was fun
More serious than before
Out to prove myself
Before I step before a class
Stopped by a sudden air
That ate my goal alive

 

Now I try again
Fighting for the grade
And holding home together
In hope of gaining steam
Within a world of shots
And badly written files

 

I sense a change
That this will be the last
I become the absent father
The distracted husband
For our future’s sake
No matter how much it hurts

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7 Tips to Having Fun in the Post-Apocalypse

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Last Kids on Earth

As I said, we tend to go dark with post-apocalyptic stories.  There’s the desire to show the struggle to survive and shadowy side of human nature.  Life is cruel and ruthless, so the story needs to be too.  So, how do we make a story with a protagonist who is making the most of life and enjoying it?

  1. Optimism is a good personality trait for a character like this, but there’s a limit.  You don’t want them to deny the state of the world.  Instead, they are looking at the benefits such as having more freedom and being able to live their life.  The danger and possibility of death are acknowledged.  Yet, these characters retain their desire to live every day instead of falling to fear.
  2. It helps to make them brave and give them abilities to survive.  These can be physical traits such as athleticism, endurance, or great aim with guns.  You can go with mental such as high situation awareness, strategic mind, or knowledge for completing various survival tactics.  There needs to be something that allows these characters to believe they can survive and actually do it.
  3. These protagonists can be loners or social.  It doesn’t have to be one or the other like some people think.  A loner may see that as a better way to survive and not have anything stopping them from enjoying life.  The more people in a group, the more responsibility and work can occur.  Social heroes might see having others to join them in fun as a way to justify their existence.  It isn’t enough to live their life, but they want to have people around to see them do it.
  4. Connecting to #3, these characters can possess a level of selfishness.  At least for the beginning of their adventure, they may see living their life as the most important thing in the world.  Believing they could die at any moment amplifies this.  For example, Akira in ‘Zom 100’ prioritized getting cold beer and a big TV over other supplies at the start of the zombie apocalypse.  This changed as his adventure continued, so he learned to balance responsibility/caution with working on his bucket list.  So, selfishness is a good starting flaw.
  5. While you can make their successes rather incredible, you do need to make them somewhat believable.  By this, I mean them living their life cannot be easy with no real threat.  They have to be enjoying life in spite of the world being a dangerous hellhole, which means risks, near disasters, and them not always depending on luck.  You can still have them luck out of situations at times since the world isn’t as predictable as it once was.  The problem is if they depend entirely on luck and the universe always provides a well-timed solution beyond their control.  Part of them living their life is that they control their situations too.
  6. If there are zombies, make sure they’re actually a presence.  Yes, humans are dangerous too, but a character having fun in a zombie apocalypse can lose its charm if the zombies are barely seen.
  7. Failure without death is possible.  These characters are optimistic and living their lives, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to disaster.  They still need things to go wrong at times to make them learn.  A few of their desires might be detrimental to others, so they need to realize that those wants aren’t worth pushing for.  Their world now has no limits, laws, or boundaries, so personal ones must be made.  One of the strongest ways to have a character establish them is by making a big mistake and living to learn from it.
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Words That Pack A Punch – Part 4

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Welcome back, SE’ers, to another edition of using power words in place of more common telling words. Today’s word is HELD. Here are a couple of …

Words That Pack A Punch – Part 4
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Questions 3 and Looking Back at ‘Path of the Traitors’

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Charles Yallowitz

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

How to explain Path of the Traitors?  This entry into Legends of Windemere is the third of the added trio.  The other two helped me with Yola Biggs the Chaos Goddess and Delvin Cunningham.  This one is where Trinity the Chaos Elf Queen gets a spotlight that she really deserves.  Of course, this led to a bunch of other events that fixed up a few other issues.

The main reason Path of the Traitors was a surprise entry was because I didn’t expect to keep Trinity in the series for as long as she did.  I really expected to kill her off earlier, but she acted as a great foil/rival/frenemy/something with Nyx.  They made each other grow enough that I felt she deserved her own story.  Her existence changed the chaos elves too, so that added to the eventual creation of a redemption book for Trinity.  I now had my evil elves being slaves to the real villain and their heartless Queen being a villain in order to prevent her people from being wiped out.  Having this side-story get more attention and grow leading into the last volume couldn’t be resisted.

Since Trinity didn’t have her own group and I wanted her to have a companion, I created Quail the Mapper.  This was a chaos elf who was raised by gnomes.  He became a jumping point for me to introduce more about chaos elf culture and Windemere history.  His job is called ‘Mapper’, which is exactly what you would think.  He travels the world to rewrite the maps since things are always changing.  Through Quail, I got to show more of the Frost Barrens and introduce other regions.  He wasn’t much of a fighter too, which made him unique since I tended to give all of my characters combat abilities up to this point.  This put more on Trinity’s shoulders.

There were three (four?) other allies, but the other one (two?) that stood out is another long returning character.  Since he left the series, I had be slipping Nimby (Luke’s first best friend) into the background.  He would either really show up or be noted in some fashion, but he was around.  Being able to bring him back and set him up to be a part of the final battle was something I didn’t think I could pull off.  Yet, I did it and he brought another character along . . . the Lich possessed part of his body.  So, I got to do this little comedy duo between Nimby and the Lich while making them both effective and work towards their own redemption.  I did fear I was going too far with the redemption arcs, but Trinity, Nimby, and the Lich all had a little twinkle of possibility.  At least in my mind.

Path of the Traitors had a timeline challenge too.  Events had to wrap up in time for the survivors to be involved in the battle.  Yet, they started right after Ritual of the Lost Lamb, which meant I had to either write in a delay of the champions or have this book run alongside the final volume.  I went with the latter and had to throw in a few events and interactions to show how things were playing out.  They were more for myself than the audience since I wanted to make sure I had the timeline right in my head.  Not sure if a reader would notice Trinity getting to the final battle too early or late.  Better safe than sorry and it doesn’t hurt anything.

I’m not going to wonder if I would change anything.  This book was a surprise joy to dream up and write.  The outline helped, but it was a lot of flying by the seat of my pants in terms of details.  I changed stuff a lot, especially when a character I introduced on a whim to handle one event got adopted by the group.  Starting to notice that this happens a lot in this series.  Oh well.

Some questions to consider:

  1. What do you think of redemption arcs in general?
  2. If a character knowingly does evil to protect others, can they ever earn redemption?
  3. How would you handle having a body part possessed by a mouthy, undead wizard?
Posted in Legends of Windemere, Path of the Traitors, Questions 3 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments