Origins Revisited: Gabriel the God of Destiny

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

By Kayla Matt

Weaver of Destiny.  Lord of Hell.  Father of the Song Casters.  The Tri-God.  This guy has a lot of names that I haven’t even discovered yet.  Now, it is awkward doing an origin for Gabriel because he’s all me and he was never in the game.  I decided to have the gods of Windemere act similar to the influential Greek Gods, so I began making a pantheon of beings who would pull the strings of mortals.  Their powers tend to be absolute and I can go as wild as I want with their description, so the challenge is always their personalities.

The first to be designed and flushed out was Gabriel, the god of destiny.  Somewhere along the line he gained the last of the black unicorns, the ability to cast magic by singing, and rule over Hell.  This was before he ever stepped outside of his one-page character bio in my notebook.  By the time he appeared in Beginning of a Hero, he was a force to be feared and respected.  I loved him and despised him at the same time.  His personality came about without any influence from me besides the force of my fingers on the keyboard.  It took me some time to uncover the nuances of Gabriel and much of that time was from inner conversations with him.  These conversations tended to make me feel like I had something in my head that was waiting for a chance to take over, but I couldn’t tell if he was for good or evil.

It struck me that a weaver of destiny wouldn’t be responsible solely for the heroes of Windemere.  He’d have to be in charge of the villains too.  So, I got the idea that Gabriel was playing an eternal chess game with himself and he was essentially blindfolded.  He never knew which side would win because he had to make space in his plans for freewill.  If he prevented freewill then a backlash could occur, which is how he went from mortal to god in the first place.  This fine-tuned his personality because he was always arrogant, but there were occasional undertones of sorrow and frustration that would slip out when his defenses were down.  Making a god have human qualities in his personality is very difficult when you’re still trying to push the fact that he is an immortal, ultra-powerful deity.

Gabriel is the one character that will have a hand in every Windemere story that I write.  Whether he’s a major player in events or simply shows up once to talk to somebody, he is going to get the most mileage out of my characters.  It’s only fitting considering he is the Master of Adversaries (gotta remember that one).

2023 Thoughts– Sadly, I did forget that last nickname.  I’ll have to use it the next chance I get, which could be soon since Gabriel does have a minor role in Darwin’s stories.  Can’t say I would change any of his origin or usage.  He was a driving force in Legends of Windemere and that created my on-going theme of ‘destiny vs free will’.  I originally thought it wouldn’t get further than the one series, but then I kept playing with the concept.  Gabriel became a bigger and more complicated character as well.  The best part is that he’s still growing.  Every series that he operates in should add more to his personality, evolution, and mystery.

Posted in Character Origins, Legends of Windemere | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Dreams vs Reality

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

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Reality- That’s a load of bull!

Dreams- I don’t know.  Seems to make sense to me.

Reality- You can’t touch dreams.  They might be in your brain, but you can’t really interact with them.  Most of your kind fade away within a few minutes of waking up.

Dreams- We still exist on some level.  That’s why many of us are recurring.

Reality- Things you experience are kept in memory too.  In fact, those things can be accessed to create all of you.  A person can’t dream of something they haven’t seen or experienced.

Dreams- Then, what about those who were the first to dream about dragons or flying?

Reality- Dragons from finding dinosaur fossils and flying from watching birds. Totally logic explanations.

Dreams- Funny that you’re talking about logic. My rules might not make sense outside of their specific dreams, but they stay the same . . . Usually.

Reality- Name one part of reality that makes no sense.

Dreams- Scientists debate water because some think hydrogen bonds do not fully explain its molecular composition.  Also, human males have their highly sensitive reproductive organs on the outside where they can easily be hit, squished, or sat on.

Reality- Well, nobody said evolution was perfect.

Dreams- People drive on parkways and park on driveways.

Reality- Stop it. You’ve made your point. Dreams are still nothing more than frivolous escapes from me.

Dreams- Everyone needs that at some point. Many of these escapes result in us understanding or altering you too.  A person had to have dreamed of exploring underwater before inventing the submarine.  A person had to dream about preserving food before finding ways to do so.  Dreams are where creation is born.

Reality- Well, reality is where action needs to be taken.  What’s the point of this conversation?

Dreams- As usual, this blogger wrote a note for a post and forgot the initial idea.  He’s faking it until he thinks he’s done enough.

Reality- You can stop now, buddy.

Dreams- Take a nap.

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Saying Goodbye to a Writer’s Notebook (and More)

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Hi, SEers. You’re with Mae today, and because it’s almost Christmas, my post is a simple one. Do you get attached to your notebooks? I’m talking …

Saying Goodbye to a Writer’s Notebook (and More)
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The ‘Earth Pig’: Aardvark

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

First, Aardvark apparently comes from the Afrikaans word ‘erdvark’.  This means ‘earth pig’, which I think is a cool nickname.

How to explain an aardvark?  Well, it’s a burrowing mammal from Africa that is mostly active at night.  It is an insectivore and it finds its food using its long snout to sniff them out.  They are listed as ‘least concern’ and can be found in the southern 2/3’s of the African continent.  So, what are some fun facts?

  • Aardvarks are afrotheres, which is a group of mammals with living members that either live in Africa or have African origins.  Other members are elephants, golden moles, tenrecs, manatees, and more.
  • They are also considered a living fossil due to their genetic makeup staying relatively unchanged for 50 million years.
  • Their tongues can be up to 12 inches long and are used to get into termite and ant nests.
  • Aardvarks avoid rocky terrain because they need to make burrows for home, child-rearing, and protection.
  • They eat about 50,000 insects a night.
  • They swallow their food whole and grind them up in a muscular area of its stomach, which is similar to a gizzard.
  • Aardvarks rarely drink water, but get it through the food they eat.
  • A female aardvark is pregnant for 7 months and can only give birth to one pup at a time.
  • Babies are weaned at 3 months, leave home at 6 months, and can start breeding at 2 years.
  • Aardvarks have four toes on their front feet and five toes on their back feet.
  • While people imagine them to be small, they are actually around 7 feet long and can weigh from 130-185 pounds.
  • Their burrows tend to be 30-40 feet long.
  • Abandoned aardvark burrows are used by other animals such as snakes, owls, warthogs, and wild dogs.
  • Aardvarks have poor eyesight, but they have most olfactory turbinal bones of any mammal and a highly development olfactory lobe.

That covers a lot, so let’s get to the pictures and videos.

Posted in Animal Posts | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Goal Posts: I Survived . . . Did My Arm Fall Off?

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

The big victory was that I finished writing Darwin & the Beast Collector.  I had a lot of trouble with the finale since I had Darwin leave the area a little too early.  That had to be fixed and then the ending had to be more solid.  Just don’t know how it came out because it doesn’t have a hard ending like most of my books.  It’s kind of a soft parting between the surviving characters.  No foreshadowing for the next adventure.  Just a ‘well, that adventure is over and now we go our separate ways’ type of thing.  I mean, it works for the characters, but my desire to be epic isn’t letting this go.  Guess we’ll see what happens when I edit it in a few years.

That was pretty much the only writing I could accomplish.  Never got to my notebooks or preparing any blog posts.  Parenting, work, and the ‘life event’ took all of the oxygen out of my lungs.  I was lucky enough to get to bed at a decent hour and sleep, which is getting better.  Still ended every day on the verge of collapse and didn’t bother touching any shows to relax.  Just ended every weekday crawling into bed around 10 PM, hooking myself to the CPAP, and passing out.

I think a big factor was Monday and Wednesday.  Some of our life skills students were helping out at evening events with our coffee cart.  They needed support, so me and the other life skills TA went back to help.  That meant I handed my son off to his mother, wolfed down Taco Bell (Monday) or leftover dumplings (Wednesday, and drove back to spend 2 hours a night with our students.  It was really one who helped out and he had such high energy after a long day.  No idea how he does it, but keeping up with him helped my energy levels.  Unfortunately, it meant I crashed when I got home.  7 hours of sleep wasn’t countering the high level of activity.

The week ended with a big field trip too.  I was out of it and fought to keep up, which took most of my energy.  All I had left was the power to drive to the sleep doctor and get checked out after being on CPAP for over a month.  Blood pressure is normal, apnea events are within normal human parameters, and the fatigue I feel is simply sleepiness instead of utter exhaustion.  Probably take a few more months before the fatigue issue improves.  Discussed me not being able to sleep within Zzzquil, but I can’t try to ween myself off that until holiday break.  That might be part of the drowsiness problem, but not a big one.

Another thing that put a damper on the weekend was that the ‘life event’ took a fairly big step forward.  At least, it did from my end.  It also let me get a bunch of pent up stuff out, which left me emotionally exhausted.  Still don’t like the situation and have very little control over it, but I may have gained a bit more of the reins this week.  Hard to say until the next ‘life event’ round.  I’m going to be spending the next two months getting my psyche’s bell rung though.  Fingers crossed that I make it through, which I probably will even if I’m a little chomped on.

This coming week is going to be similar to last week, but without the evening events.  I have to make it through 3 weeks before I get to a break.  Hanukkah starts on Thursday evening, so I have to wrap presents on Wednesday.  Next Sunday is the big latke celebration for my family too.  Feels like all of the holidays are rushing forward and the end of the year will strike before I know it.  Can’t think of anything else big going on after this weekend either, so maybe I’ll get some rest.

Tonight, I’m going with my family to see the holiday lights at the Bronx Zoo.  Been a member for about a decade and have never gone.  Usually, I can’t get tickets in time because the weekends get messed up.  So, I’m happy to finally go.  Means another late night and a late dinner, but it’s worth it.  Won’t post pictures of it until January 7th when it’s over.  Don’t want to spoil it and I already have the Sunday posts set, so I’m too lazy to move stuff around. I’ll have Sunday to rest up even though it will probably be a Pokemon Go day.  Depends on how we do with homework today, but it looks feasible.  Reminds me that I should finish an online course I started as well.  Should only have an hour of that to go.  Far too many little projects left that I need to tackle and finish off.

Goals of the week:

  1. Wrap Hanukkah presents when son is not around.
  2. Parenting as usual.
  3. Get back to biking since this week was too crazy.
  4. Finish online course.
  5. Possibly start outline for Darwin & the Joy Path
  6. Do a few February blog posts.
  7. Really should finish that one character in ‘Phi Beta Files’.
  8. Improve sleeping habits.
  9. Probably have a life event thing that will turn up.
  10. Enjoy the holiday lights tonight.
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A Reflection on Authordom

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

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It’s been an iffy year as far as my writing goes

  • I managed to finish 2 volumes of Tales of the Slumberlord or whatever I’m calling that series.  Right now, I think I’ll just give it ‘Darwin &’ titles and leave the series title off.  Use it only for the ‘Other Works’ sections I put in my books.  What was I talking about?
  • I published Do I Need to Use a Dragon? this summer.  Sales weren’t . . . They really just weren’t since I can’t afford promos.  Considering the last book I published was War of Nytefall: Eulogy in December of 2021, I shouldn’t be surprised.
  • Minimal tinkering with other ideas.  Mostly, staring at the notebook that holds information on ‘Phi Beta Files’.

That doesn’t sound like a lot.  Sure, the first two are fairly big, but it ends up reminding me of the days I was writing 4-5 books and publishing 3-4 a year.  I was cranking them out since I was a stay-at-home father.  Not that I rushed them, but I had the time to really put some work in.  Without the same level of freedom, I’ve been reduced to a frustratingly slow crawl. Health problems and the ‘life event’ aren’t helping.

Internally, I think this was a tough year for me as well.  Putting a work out there brought on some old anxieties, which most authors can understand.  You never really know what’s going to happen.  Yet, it came with a dollop of imposter syndrome, which I’ve been struggling with since January.  This could be due to the exhaustion brought on by my sleep apnea being worse and causing me to have trouble focusing.  Still, I can’t stop myself from wondering if I’m on the wrong path.

Well, maybe not the wrong path.  It’s more that I missed my shot and now I’m toiling away in a dead end.  Not entirely my fault.  Over the last 5 years, I’ve learned of various people who went behind my back to sabotage my attempt at writing for a career.  That’s a fact that I’m still trying to reconcile because it comes with the possibility that these people managed to defeat me.  Won’t go into any more detail here since I don’t want anyone to make contact with these people.  All I can say is that knives were certainly plunged into my back and I mistook it for bad posture while writing.

This reflection is getting odd and maybe deeper than I intended.  This is probably because the only difference between 2022 and 2023 is that I published a book.  A single book that didn’t really sell.  That’s another issue I have with my current author life.  I lack the money, time, and energy to do the promoting.  So, all I can do is publish my book, announce it here, and hope for the best.  A few people have suggested joining an author group, but those always require that I read/review other books.  Again, we’re looking at a severe time and energy limitation.  It takes me over a week to get through a single manga volume, so a novel will take months unless I sacrifice my writing time.  In other words, I’ve pretty much been forced to isolate myself, which is a bad thing for an author.

Overall, I don’t think this was a great year.  It wasn’t terrible, but there were too many let downs in terms of writing.  Do I Need to Use a Dragon? not selling more than 20 copies hurt a bit.  Me barely being able to write more than 3 pages on some weekends due to health issues.  The revelations I vaguely mentioned.  Realizing that I’m forgetting my unpublished ideas and have barely touched my notebooks.  All of this kind of combined to make this a ‘meh’ year.  2022 was nothing more than writing and I thought that was rough, but I still made progress with no emotional letdowns.  2023 saw me attempting to get back in the game and not getting very far.  Not sure how to entirely process that, but it could be that I have so much on my mind lately.

Will I keep writing and publish again?  Yes because I have more than half of Darwin’s adventures written.  I plan on releasing him into the world next summer or fall.  Maybe things will improve now that I have the CPAP machine.  My health was a major factor here, so getting that under control makes me not want to give up.  I mean, if I get back into healthy order and still don’t write then I’m an idiot.  I really need to take some time and get back to my notebooks too.  Guess I’m still toiling away in the shadows here, so the reflection isn’t leading to a surrender.  More like a tentative retreat into my hovel where I feel somewhat safe.

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Finessing Dialogue, Part 3

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

By Stephen Geez This wraps my 3-part “Finessing Dialogue” series. Catch up with PART 1, a short story that demonstrates the dialogue mechanics from …

Finessing Dialogue, Part 3
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Poetry Day: Gaudium

Posted on November 30, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

(This is one of my ‘personified emotion’ poems.  Started way back when I wrote ‘Fear’ in high school using this style.  I’d been doing a lot of dark ones, so I tried one for ‘Happiness’.  Didn’t like that word as a title, so I searched for an alternative.  Gaudium is the Latin word for joy.)

My existence is the source of all positivity.
I am blissful.

 

My blessing ebbs and flows with life.
I am fleeting.

 

The path to my power can be paved with light or darkness.
I am neutral.

 

My avatars are infinite in size and scope.
I am formless.

 

All humanity strives to retain my in their lives.
I Am Happiness.

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Reviews: The Precious Dreams of Authors

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Sadly, I think at least quarter of what I see for book reviews is basically what you see above.  Any 50% are ratings that don’t have any written reviews, which I used to dislike, but now I’m okay with.  As much as I want feedback, it’s just nice to know someone paid attention to what I wrote these days.  You take what you can get, right?  That seems to be how it goes.

Long ago, there was always a big question on how to get reviews.  I remember the following actions being taken:

  1. Review swaps between authors.
  2. Giving out hundreds of free books to get some reviews.
  3. Contests for someone to win a free book.
  4. Apparently, paying for reviews.
  5. Author groups reviewing each other.

There were probably more, but I don’t remember them.  Those were the big ones, but Amazon ended up making it dangerous to do so.  Either readers or hyper-competitive authors would report anyone who did these things.  Usually, the reviewer was stated as ‘friend or family’ of the author.  This would get the review removed and could even result in the author having their books removed from Amazon.  There were even times where the reviewer would be blocked from reviewing that author’s books ever again, which happened to someone who used to review my stuff.

The whole mess eventually resulted in nobody knowing what to do.  Smaller indie authors who didn’t want to get in trouble stopped trying to ask for reviews.  This meant we had to depend entirely one a reader doing it of their own accord without any prompting.  We all know that rarely happens, especially of the person enjoyed the book.  An angry customer is more likely to make noise than a happy one.  I did notice some of the authors who had massive fan-bases did okay, but that wasn’t surprising.  Even if they stopped giving away free books, they had still managed to lock in a solid support foundation.  Some of these fans wouldn’t even read the books they were reviewing, which is rather disappointing, but shouldn’t be a shock.  In the end, the quest for reviews seemed to be a fruitless one and it is kind of like that today.

One issue could be that people seem a lot busier these days.  So, reading books for those of certain ages takes a lot of time and effort.  This would mean that writing a review could be the furthest from a person’s mind since that’s extra time and effort.  Again, you might only get a reaction from someone who despised or adored your book.  We’re talking 1 and 5 stars, so the 2-4 stars that many people look at don’t show up very often.  Not saying to give an author a 4-star just to make sure the review is read though.  I remember that being a thing at one point and it caused a lot of authors to go down in their overall ratings, which people look at more than the breakdown.  Just can’t win and you can see how one issue can roll into another.

The more I try to think about this, the sadder and more confused I get.  So, what is everyone else feeling in regards to reviews?  Are they even worth tearing your hair out over these days?  Has anything replaced their role as a decent sales booster?

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Using AI Image Generators For Inspiration

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Greetings, SE’ers! Beem Weeks here with you again. Today, let’s talk a little about AI image generators! For those of you who follow the Story Empire…

Using AI Image Generators For Inspiration
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