Author Q and A

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Fizzle by Alison Hunt

For those that missed the last two Sundays, I came up with a way to promote Do I Need to Use a Dragon? before returning to work/school.  That would be gathering questions and answering them on this post.  Feel free to ask other questions in the comments if you think of something and I will add it to the post at the first opportunity.

Enjoy and thank you to everyone who submitted.

  1. “Life provides more or less time in certain phases. I tend to have more since my children are grown. Do you see your self returning to the publishing rate of an earlier era one day?” (From C.S. Boyack)I’d love to say that it will happen, but I don’t know.  For those that don’t know, I used to publish 3-4 books a year.  I doubt that I will ever get back to that rate.  Back then, I had more money to use towards cover art and more time for writing/editing.  My divorce knocked me down emotionally and made it that I had to reprioritize both my finances and time allocation.  So, publishing became harder to pull off.  I’m still writing, so I might have a year or two when I can release a bunch, but it will be rare.  I guess I don’t want to get my hopes up too.  Doesn’t help that sales are terrible since I lost most of my supporters in the wake of the divorce news.  So, it’s hard to justify the money and time I put into publishing.
  2. “*squinting suspiciously* Just exactly how many notebooks do you have, sir? And can you explain more about how they help you organize your ideas and your writing?” (From Deby Fredericks)I have about 26 notebooks, but I’m fairly certain a few got lost over the course of various moves in my life.  These notebooks go back to 10th grade too, which was 28 years ago.  They catalogue everything I’ve come up with and allowed me to flush things out when I couldn’t get to book writing.  The human mind can only hold so much, so I always felt that I needed to maintain Idea Books to make sure I could always return or at least repurpose things.  It’s come in very handy in recent years since my memory has been fairly shaky in general.
  3. “Is there a trope you think is overused or misunderstood in fantasy?” (From L. Marie)This is a tough one because I think there are cycles.  Whatever ends up being popular gets overused.  Currently, I feel like the ‘flawless hero’ trope is being overdone.  I don’t know why there’s a sudden swing towards heroes who are superficially flawed, but really near perfect.  Maybe it’s just what I’m seeing in popular culture, so it could be less prevalent than I realize.As far as misunderstood, I’m going to go with the ‘Chosen One’ trope.  In the past, I think this is what led to the perfect hero.  Yet, I remember a lot of old stories where the chosen hero still suffers and struggles.  This changed and now people see the trope as that of a character who never stumbles.  People end up hating this idea and flipping it on its head, which muddies the water even more.  I always thought that the Chosen One concept meant it was a person destined to step into a fight, but not always have it easy or win.  There used to be a sense of isolation or even questioning of ones own decisions that came with this concept.  Don’t really see that very often, which is a big reason why I play around with destiny and free will in my own stories.
  4. “Do you think you’d write another book of short stories with Ichabod Brooks?” (Another from L. Marie)For those who don’t know, I wrote a fantasy short story collection called The Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks. The titular character is fairly popular on the blog.  He’s an experienced adventurer who takes jobs for money because he has to put food on the table for his family.  So, there was a very blue collar feel to Ichabod as well as him showing his age with aches and pains.  I’d really like to write another collection of short stories with him, especially since I have a list of other adventures.  The original plan was to have a few collections with Ichabod in the same vein as the old Conan stories.  Sadly, the popularity of the character never resulted in great sales and then I had limited time to write.  This forced me to put all of the smaller projects on the shelf until later.  Maybe far into the future when I have more time and money, I’ll revive Ichabod who has a better chance than my dystopian characters.
  5. “Of all your stories, do you have one that stands out as on that you enjoyed writing the most?” (From John W. Howell)

    That is a tough question.  I know it might come off like a dodge, but I can’t pick any that I enjoyed writing more.  All of my books had some fun challenges.

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Flawed Characters – Part IV

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Hello SE friends, Gwen with you today. Over these last couple of months, I’ve posted about creating Flawed Characters. We’ve considered Post …

Flawed Characters – Part IV
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Another Day of Asking for Interview Questions

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Art by Alison Hunt

As I said last Sunday, I wanted to help promote Do I Need to Use a Dragon? before I go back to work on Tuesday.  This is the second day of asking for any questions that will create an interview post.  They will be answered on tomorrow’s blog post.

So, what can you ask?

  1. Nothing personal, which should go without saying.
  2. Ask me anything about writing, my stories, blogging, and whatever else that doesn’t step into my private life.
  3. Ask one of my characters something if you’ve read the books or caught them on the blog.  This can include anyone from Legends of Windemere, War of Nytefall, Bedlam, Ichabod Brooks, and anything else that I might have mentioned here.  Always up for an improv challenge.

If you gave me a question last Sunday, but came up with another then feel free to add it to the comments.  Be happy to get a few good ones.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

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Goal Post: Summer Break Is Pretty Much Over

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

The title really says it all.  The school year starts for staff on Tuesday.  That gives me today, tomorrow, and Monday to rest up.  Not a lot of time.  Means I need to stop sleeping in as well because cutting that habit cold turkey is brutal.

This week didn’t have a lot of excitement.  I had my son until Wednesday night, so the previous days were spent doing things together.  With the Finger Lakes trip behind us, there wasn’t anything too big for us.  A trip to the Bronx Zoo on Monday was the most exciting thing we did.  The rest was Pokemon Go trips, watching anime, and hanging around the house.  I used some of our time talking to him about starting high school after Labor Day.  It’s a big step, so we’re all nervous.  He won’t be back with me until the night before he starts too, so there won’t be much time to have a big sit down chat.

Guess a few things were cool at the zoo.  They have a new area where you can feed budgies from seed-covered sticks.  We gave it a try and I had no luck.  My son got two of the birds to come to him.  Unfortunately, it was hot and we got to this place by early afternoon, so they were already well fed.  Smaller kids running around and screaming didn’t help.  One saw my son getting the attention of a budgie and rushed over to jam his stick in the poor bird’s face.  Decided it was time to leave and continue wandering the zoo after things got too rowdy.  These are the best pictures of the trip that I had on my phone:

Wish I had more to share, but it’s been a lot of hanging out and doing basic things around the house.  With everyone being gone for a while, I had to take care of a lot of cleaning and yardwork.  Got back into cooking too, which was a challenge only because I’m trying to eat healthier.  My son doesn’t need a diet, so I had to cook things that both of us liked, but won’t pack on pounds again.  Things are harder with him gone since I’m not doing 2-3 hour walks for Pokemon Go.  Hopefully, I can keep myself below 230 and start getting it lower.  Sucks that my best attempt at weight loss was actually a medication reducing my appetite.

After my son went to his mom’s on Wednesday, I took Thursday to visit a friend.  Not a really long drive, but I got up there in early morning because we had a list of movies and a TV show we wanted to binge.  I didn’t get home until late evening either.  Ended up having a great salad for dinner from this place my friend suggested.  As far as entertainment, we watched ‘Street Fighter II Animated Movie’, ‘Batman: Mask of the Phantasm’, the newest animated Resident Evil movie, and then we finished by binging all 10 episodes of the ‘Twisted Metal’ series.  That last one was surprisingly good.  I don’t know the lore since I never really played the games, but I had fun watching it.  Made me want a second season even though I don’t have Peacock as a streaming service.

I didn’t get to do any writing until Friday.  Even so, it was only two sections of Darwin & the Beast Collector.  Took such a long break from the story that I needed to get back into the groove.  My hope is to get 2 sections done every day until I start work again on Tuesday.  Then, I’ll try to get 1 section done each day, except Thursday, and do another 2/day over the 3-day weekend.  This would get me through 5 chapters without killing myself.  That leaves 5 more, which I can possibly finish by the end of October.  I think my days of doing 3 sections a day are behind me until I can get my various health issues under control.

Speaking of health, I finally have my sleep apnea consultation on Thursday.  That’s why I don’t expect any writing to get done.  If it’s the same as the one years ago, I’ll need to use a home device to check my vitals while I sleep.  This typically requires 8 hours, so I’d be going to bed around 9.  Not sure if that’s feasibly with the early wake up, which means I might have to do it the next night.  Really putting a lot of hope on this diagnosis since nothing else seems to be working out.  I’m definitely not getting a good amount of sleep at night since I wake up groggy and feeling sick.  Takes about an hour to feel human and I sometimes find that my oxygen levels are low at the start of the day too.  I’ve bought so many devices to help with this problem.  Now, I’ve got a blood pressure machine, an oximeter, an oil diffuser, and an air purifier.  Fun!

What are the goals of the week?

  1. Keep eating healthier.
  2. Write more of Darwin & the Beast Collector.
  3. Get things ready for returning to work.
  4. Prepare supplies for my son going to high school.
  5. Mow and water the lawn.
  6. Bike 4-5 miles a day since I can’t go walking.
  7. Sleep apnea appointment.
  8. Work on jigsaw puzzle when need a writing break.
  9. Cook dinners . . . For one.
  10. Get haircut later today because I look like a balding hippie.

(Update: So, something has occurred and altered the weekend plans.  Can’t get into it.  Writing won’t be going on like I had hoped.  Not until Monday night at least.  It’s not ideal, but I can’t focus and need to socialize for my own well-being.  A friend is staying over as well.  Oh well.  Some things take priority.)

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Did I Gain Confidence writing ‘Do I Need to Use a Dragon’?

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

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I’ve stated before that writing Do I Need to Use a Dragon? was a challenge in a variety of ways.  One of them was my confidence.  I questioned if I had any right to release a book on writing when I’m an indie author who barely sells anything.  That plagued me throughout the process.  So, did my confidence grow by writing and publishing this book?

I’d love to say yes, but I can’t.  Don’t think I can give a no either.  Part of me still feels like I’m a fool for voicing my opinion.  That part will always be there.  Can’t take it back though, so I have to accept that I wrote and published the book.  This self-analysis is going so well.

At the very least, I have a better understanding of my own viewpoint when it comes to writing and being an author.  Do I Need to Use a Dragon? helped me pinpoint my strategies and aspects of my style.  This does give me a little confidence when outlining and planning stories.  Not sure it made a dent in how I’m feeling when I actually write things.  I routinely have imposter syndrome whenever I finish a section of a Tales of the Slumberlord volume.  That doesn’t sound very confident.

This is a really difficult question to answer now that I think about it.  Confidence isn’t something that you gain and keep forever.  It rises and falls depending on your progress, mood, and life.  I actually started working on Do I Need to Use a Dragon? back in 2019 in terms of planning.  The pandemic is what gave me the time to write the book along with the final volumes of War of Nytefall.  That amount of free time made me feel like I did in the old days even with the doubt about the overall project.  This could mean that I gained confidence during the writing stage.  It didn’t really carry over to the editing part, especially when it took so long to publish.  Plenty of times I thought about scrapping the whole thing even after I was done.  Again, we aren’t seeing a ton of confidence in my thoughts and actions here.

A better question might be if I’m happy with the finished book.  That would be a yes because I put a lot of myself into it.  The advice and opinions I gave are mine, so I have to own up to them.  This doesn’t always translate to confidence, but I accept what I said and don’t make excuses.  Might make clarifications at times since I don’t always get my points across to every person.  Still, I’m happy with how the book came out and wouldn’t change anything.  In fact, editing was scary because I kept worrying that I would rewrite the entire thing and trap myself in an endless loop.

True confidence in myself will come and go over time.  It might depend on how people react to this book too.  Honestly, I may have more emotional investment in Do I Need to Use a Dragon? than any of my fiction books.  I’ve stated that it makes me feel a little exposed and vulnerable.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone to see that my confidence will be affected by responses.  Not sure if I should say that out loud.

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A Discussion on Book Titles – How Do We Select Them?

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Photo by Karim Ghantous on Unsplash Hello SEers. John is with you today. I hope you are looking forward to the weekend. I know I am. Today, I’m going…

A Discussion on Book Titles – How Do We Select Them?
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Poetry Day: Fear of the Unclaimed

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

(This poem is both simple and needs an explanation.  Way back, people in this house would open a water bottle and start drinking. Then, they would leave it on the table for a day or two.  They weren’t marked, so people would get confused on if it was an old bottle that they forgot about or someone else’s.  Normally, the water would end up going to the plants.)

They hover over the bottle

The one without a label

Not knowing who began the drink

And failed to leave their mark

Accusations fly as if the end is near

Their world is crumbling fast

None are brave enough to taste

For fear of germ or guilt

Panic begins to settle in

Until I wander in from sleep

Without a word I grab my drink

Ignoring growls and mumbles

As I take my pills and start my day

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Never Be Intimidated By Other Authors

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

 

Princess Bride

I’m going to start this topic off with a story.  This is something that came to mind a lot while writing Do I Need to Use a Dragon? because it touches on confidence.

I think it was around 2003 or 2004 when I signed up for a local author class.  It was the first one I attended and was going to help people improve their writing skills.  This was right after I finished the first draft of Beginning of a Hero, so I wanted to learn how to improve what I made.  I was one of 4 students with the other three being a young woman interested in romance writing and two older women who wanted to start writing books.  I had graduated from college with a Writing Arts B.A., so I talked shop and had some confidence.  This ended up intimidating the two older women, who ended up leaving the class before the final session.  It was stated that they left because they were intimidated by my skills and experience, which made me feel bad.  I was trying to share what I knew and thought, which was very little at the time.  Yet, I had a finished manuscript under my belt and that seemed to be a source of intimidation.

Tend to think about this a lot, which I hope keeps me humble and careful in the way I talk to other authors.  I know I’m not good enough to intimidate others, especially in the indie author world.  Heck, I barely have the confidence to call myself an author these days, but I still feel like I have to be careful.  The last thing I want is for my presence and attitude to be the thing that stops a person from writing.  Really hoping everybody feels that they want to be a welcoming figure for new authors.

Did I ever really figure out how not to intimidate others?  Not really.  I try to listen more than I talk and get a feel for what the other author is saying.  This makes me reactive and less likely to go ranting about my own ideas.  At least, I try, but sometimes the conversation slips.  That’s the best that I can come up with, but it also leads to me not letting the other person know what I’ve done.  This happens a lot at work where people I’ve known for over 4 years still stumble onto the fact that I’ve published books.  Probably different when you’re working in a field that isn’t writing, but it means I don’t really out myself as a creative type.  Though, this might be more out of shame for not making a career out of writing my books.

Honestly, this is still a really strange event and topic for me.  Prior to that class and ever since, I’ve never felt like I was better than anyone.  Even during the class, I was routinely made to feel like I didn’t know what I was doing.  This was the one where I was told to change Luke Callindor to a different name because Luke Skywalker existed and everyone would think of Star Wars.  So, I had my confidence and thoughts routinely rocked during this experience.  To think that I intimidated someone while I was starting to question if I had any business writing a story is surreal.

I’m going to open up the floor to others though.  Have you ever intimidated another author by accident?  What do you think is a good trick to avoiding that kind of situation?

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Loglines

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Ciao, SEers! We’ve been discussing famous authors and their styles. So far, we discussed apps that compare our writing to famous authors (find that …

Loglines
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Teaser Tuesday: Should I Use Destiny?

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Charles Yallowitz

Art by Alison Hunt

Very few tropes are as common in fantasy as the destined heroes. This motivation has existed since the days of mythology and continues to be used today. Authors find twists and variations on the concept of destiny and fate, but it tends to boil down to the same thing. The hero is on a path that was chosen for them by a greater power, which brings up the question of if they are in control of any of their actions. Needless to say, readers and authors have railed against the concept. Does that mean it should be shunned and ignored? I’d be a hypocrite if I said yes since the God of Destiny is a major player in my stories. In fact, Legends of Windemere is all about destined heroes . . . Of course, there’s more to it than that, which I will get into after we go over ‘Fate vs Free Will’.

This has been a debate for years if not decades. It shouldn’t be surprising since the concept of destiny has been overused to the point of ultra-cliché. Audiences see the use of destiny or fate or being chosen by a higher power as a cop out by the author. Why does the hero go on this dangerous adventure? Well, they don’t have a choice. More importantly, it goes against our desire for freedom, which is shown through free will. Readers want to connect to the characters and destiny can be a glaring obstacle.

After all, if destiny exists in our world, then it’s not something we’re aware of or fully grasp its influence. This is different than in fantasy where it’s stated as a known force on the characters and plot. Either the heroes are told directly or the audience knows they are reading a story about fate. Even revealing this in the middle or near the finale of a story can have negative effects. This is because we don’t live in the times of older stories where destiny was accepted. It comes with a lot of baggage now.

The biggest problem with using destiny is that it removes the sense of control a character has on their own life. Readers will question every decision and action the hero makes because they aren’t seen as having freedom.

This is extremely true when they are successful or a convenience happens. Every victory is seen with the lens of there never being any other option. Failures are considered to be destiny forcing the hero to go in the right direction instead of a legitimate mistake. Once this factor is introduced and shown to be the major motivation of a character, it leads to many inferences that revolve around there being no threat of defeat. How can a destined hero lose before the finale? It’s hard to believe even if they routinely make mistakes. In fact, I would say that makes it worse because it shows that the heroes can fail upwards. If a loss doesn’t cause them to fall off their path, even a little bit, then it’s not seen as true. Readers will see it as an empty ploy meant to make them believe that destiny isn’t at play here.

While failures in a destiny-driven story are viewed with suspicion, there is a plot event audience’s rarely see coming . . .

Follow your destiny or choose of your own free will to buy a copy of Do I Need to Use a Dragon?

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