Well, I did these for War of Nytefall and people seemed to enjoy them. Needing to give Teaser Tuesday a break, it might be fun to do my other series. Here we have 3 songs that make me think of Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero. Enjoy.
This one was an obvious choice. With Luke Callindor determined to be a hero like his ancestors, this was a song that I played a lot. He wants attention for it too, so the parts where people are being told to watch seem to work.
I went old-school for this one, but I really wanted a song about friendship. A big part of the story is Luke Callindor making new friends and them helping him with his adventure. He learns that he can’t do things on his own, which sets his mindset for the rest of the series.
I wasn’t sure about going for an anime song right out of the gate with these, but this one kept coming to mind. The anime is ‘My Hero Academia’, which involves a young man and his friends training to be superheroes. This is a song that the girl you see in the picture wrote and song for a festival to make the other students happy. It’s about being a hero and that really works for this book.
This is kind of carrying over from the ‘rules’ of writing posts from last week. It got me thinking about this blog and how people perceive it. Not the promotional stuff or the comedic things like Ye Olde Shoppe. I’m talking about when I do craft-based subjects like settings, characters, and world-building. Some people enjoy them and we have a good discussion. Others don’t pay it any attention because they think I only talk fantasy, so it doesn’t concern them. Like and move on with nary a second thought or even a full read at times. Is this the case?
I’m going to delve more into this in December with a few Monday posts where I show connections between fantasy and other genres. I’m doing Romance, Horror, Mystery, and Science Fiction. I’m still seeing if I can switch something else in for that last one because it’s usually paired with fantasy. The point of these is to show how there is overlapping between genres. Advice you get in regards to one genre could be modified to help with another. At the core, every story has the same focus and components:
Characters
Setting
Plot progression
World-building
Author style
For example, I may write a post about how you have to consider the weapons that a fantasy character will use. A halfling shouldn’t be carrying around a giant hammer without magical support and an ogre would look silly with a child’s dagger. You may look at this as it being only about fantasy and ignore it. Only this is really about character description and associated abilities. In a sports story, a really short guy probably can’t dunk a basketball. In a romance, a girl wearing heels would not be able to go charging after a taxi with ease, especially on a busy NYC street. Now, we’ve added location and setting to the mix. By taking the essence of my ‘character and weapon’ advice, you can see how any character requires that an author consider what they are physically capable of doing in a situation. It might be cool, but that doesn’t mean it will work.
That isn’t to say all of my posts can be overlapped with other genres. Magic is definitely a big fantasy thing and talking about how to design such a system is fairly niche. You can look at it as a way to create an energy/life force system in a science fiction story. Yet, you really can’t go much further than that. Again, it depends on the story. It can still trigger something that you might want to try out.
I guess a big piece of advice I’m giving, which kind of counters some stuff from last week, is that you should at least listen. Mull over what you’ve heard and see if there is anything that you can take for your own genre. Sure, your serial killer stalking Elvis impersonators won’t be hurling lightning bolts. She might be sneaking around in a way that requires building tension and suspense like one might create in a stealth or hunting scene. The suspense is for two different sides of the hunt (horror = those being snuck up on; fantasy = the one who is sneaking), but it can still be carried over. Heck, even those two things in the parenthesis aren’t true because you can flip the perspective. All I’m saying is that you never know where you’ll find a nugget of wisdom that will help you. Although, don’t assume every nugget is gold and you should add it to your basket. Some of them can be hardened mud balls.
So, what do you think about genre overlapping? Is it a thing? Have you ever taken something from one and used it for another?
Ivy Panda has created a World Map Timelapse of the spread of the English language from the 5th century to date. You can watch it in its entirety below or click on the links to jump to a specific time period:
Hello SErs. Harmony here. As promised, here is part nineteen in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.
If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links at the end of this post.
So, here’s Part Nineteen: How to link your eBook and Paperback edtions.
There are two areas where you will need to link your book editions:
On your sales details pages
On your KDP dashboard
If you have the same information for both formats, then Amazon should link your book details (sales) pages automatically within a few days of publication:
I was going to do something more interesting. It was going to be about mental health and the current state of things. Just to think of others. Then, the week got rough and I didn’t have the mojo to delve that deep. Couldn’t decide on a poem or a prose post either, so I’m leaving it for another weekend. Instead, I bring you some funnies (all found by a Yahoo Image Search):
Pure honesty: I’m writing this right before I go to bed Friday night.
Purer honesty: I’ve had a few drinks before tackling this. I’m not drunk, but I’m in a drowsy state.
I guess I could have waited for the morning, but I wanted to do my biking and dive right into Do I Need to Use a Dragon? (Fantasy Writing Tips) once I decide to get out of the warm bed. Cold mornings have made things really difficult. Having a weighted blanket makes it even crazier. I make it a point to roll out immediately to use some mouthwash and then I get back in on top of that the weighted blanket. It isn’t a perfect system, but I haven’t been late to work. Not that trucks and a game of ‘which gas pump actually works’ didn’t try their best. Yes, this will be rambling.
Work was crazy and I think every day managed to top the previous one. (That grapefruit-flavored beer isn’t sitting too well.) On top of this, my son went back to his issues with eating and I had to get creative with helping him. There was also parent-teacher conferences, taking my friend out for his 40th birthday (That was the drinking), and a few odd days. It really feels like this week was determined to cram as much bizarre and wild into it as possible. I’m exhausted. Keep zoning out on the music too. Right now, I’ve got this one going:
Seriously though, I realized it’s hard to have a panic attack when I barely have the energy to remain conscious. It was either right after I put my son to bed or I talked to him on the phone that I just crashed on the bed. Got through a few ‘Yu Yu Hakusho’ episodes, but ‘His Dark Materials’ came back on. Took me longer than I expected to get through the one episode. Introduced my son to the original ‘Animaniacs’ too before he had to go to his mom’s place. As you can tell, my week has been primarily work and cartoons. I really do wish I had more to report, but that’s just how it was.
In the writing arena, I think I’ve gotten a better idea of what I’m doing. I won’t touch the next series for outlining until Do I Need to Use a Dragon? is done. Think I’ll actually use beta readers for the fantasy tip book. The truth is that I started it 2 weeks ago and freaked out over the intro. Writing about myself is stressful and I realized that I wasn’t hiding behind a character, so the real me was coming out. Flaws and all, so I began to doubt the project. That’s why I couldn’t touch it until I put out the intro as a teaser on Tuesday. Thank you to everyone who said that they liked it. Writing it like blog posts felt natural to me, but also a risk. Couldn’t tell if I was being unique and quirky or just being stupid. I’m going to keep it going and see what happens. Maybe it will be shorter than expected. This weekend and the upcoming days off will see me making major progress on this project, so maybe it will be a summer release. Just need to figure out the cover and inside art issue.
Really don’t know what else to talk about here. Next week is Thanksgiving, so it’s a short work week. I don’t know if things will be busy or not. I’ll be writing whenever I can. Be really cool if I manage to finish this project before 2021. It’s possible since I spent two years writing notes and thoughts on each of the 70 topics. Won’t hold my breath because it depends on my mojo. Also, if New York keeps getting messy with covid, I could end up being home again. That helped finish War of Nytefall and it could help here. I feel lost overall these days, so who knows what will happen.
A bubble of thought
That drives pen to paper
And finger to key
Is the first step
To a world of freedom
And coiling restrictions
*
Voices ring out
Do this
Not that
Follow this
And follow that
One negates another
*
Rules are learned
Some will work
While others fail
You focus on the losses
Because the voices
Only see the faults
*
As time moves on
You learn your trade
Developing a voice
To call your own
And drown out
The ear-less gatekeepers
Last week, I posted the last section of Immortal Wars: The Summoning. It’s been running since January and I was kind of hoping it would make it to the end of December. If for no other reason than I don’t know what to do on Thursdays for the rest of the year, so I’ll have to think of something. Anybody have a book they want to promote? I could just make it random Questions 3 about this year or something simple.
I should think back to this experience, but it was surreal. To be honest, I only scanned through the old book. There was too much of a temptation to clean it up before posting and that wasn’t what this experiment was about. I wanted to put my first book up here totally raw and untouched from what it is. Compared to how I write now, it’s definitely clumsy and inconsistent. The chapter section lengths and pacing is all over the place to the point of comedy. I really do hope people didn’t read this thing and think it was what I do now.
Then again, not many bothered to keep up or give it a chance. Got a few messages from people saying they weren’t interested and they would be skipping the posts. Guess I should say thanks? I’ve never really understood what that tactic is besides trying to get the author/blogger to change course. Kind of passive aggressive there. Anyway, I totally get why people wouldn’t touch it. The posts were difficult to read if you take it seriously and some of them were huge. Surprised any people made it through . . . Most of those likes are reflex, right? Oh well.
Now, I come to the next decision. Immortal Wars: The Summoning went to an On-Demand Publisher and got a small treatment. You might have noticed that editing stopped halfway through. Part of that is because you get a certain amount of changes for free and the rest require that you pay money. So, I had to pick and choose the typos that I fixed because I couldn’t afford to go above the freebie level. So, a book I wrote in high school that didn’t get any professional overlook and I never published, so I don’t even know if I edited it would be really raw . . .
Do I spend Thursdays in 2021 posting Immortal Wars: Light, Blood, & Tears? It’s about the same length, but I don’t remember anything about it. Once the first book failed to sell, I junked the whole thing and never looked back. I vaguely remember them going back to Earth for something and maybe a museum. Anyway, what do people think? Should I do it all again?
For that matter, what did people think about this posting of my first book in general? Did you see anything that may have carried over into my other books? From the outside, does it look like I’ve changed a lot or a little in terms of being an author? Yeah, these are personal questions, but this was a very personal event. Might as well ask them.
With such a maze out there, we can never tell what we should or should not do until we attract someone’s wrath. I’m here to give you a few tips to navigate this maze with the least amount of stress.
You see what worked for that author? Don’t expect it to automatically work for you. This goes for writing, editing, promoting, and everything. Just a guidelines fits the story of a guy whose blog you follow, doesn’t mean it’s exactly what your story needs. So, don’t alter your only copy to try it out and then find that it makes your work feel unnatural to you.
Just because a person is quoting a ‘rule’, doesn’t mean they actually know what they’re talking about. Some of them picked it up in a seminar or reading a tip book without actually putting it into practice. They quote it like scripture, but then start talking about how they plan to use it in their own story . . . once they get around to writing it because it’s still in the planning stage. So, consider the source of the criticism and their own experience before you take things personally.
As soon as the person says ‘Stephen King’, brace yourself for #2. It might not go that way, but that tip book I mentioned tends to be his.
If an author comes to you with ‘rules’ and they are polite about it then it’s a good time to listen. Presentation is everything and the effort put into being gentle with the advice is a sign of two things. One is that they care about helping you instead of regaling you with their own knowledge. The other is they have put some real thought into how their experience can relate to your story. It still might not work, but this means you can have a conversation.
Nobody knows how to write immediately, so there will be some ‘rules’ that you find will work for you. Don’t toss everything away and stick to your original guns that you created in high school. You might not really know how commas work. You might have a problem with info dumps. There are always weaknesses that need to be shored up, which some ‘rules’ can help with. Just don’t jump down every rabbit hole that is presented to you.
Do your own research. Depending on the words and opinions of others can push you in THEIR direction with YOUR story. They don’t understand exactly what you’re going for, especially in a series. They might not even know your genre, so they talk in a fairly general idea. Story Insert:
Long ago, I went to several writing seminars and local experts with Beginning of a Hero. They all gave me what I thought was good advice and I tried to use it all. The thing is that none of them were fantasy authors, so it was all general. None of them were authors of a series or even fiction too. I nearly destroyed my idea because I followed all of this advice without doing my own research. In fact, the only time I ran into a fantasy author during this time, he told me to stick to it and continue building my world. That’s it.
This means that you need to compare the advice you get to the research you do and the path you want the story to go. Otherwise, you can destroy your story and any passion you had for the craft. After all, if you genuinely ‘kill your darling’ and it isn’t able to be revived, an author might not try again.
This sound stressful to you? Well, I said these should help with creating the least amount of stress. That doesn’t mean none. In fact, the hardest period of an author’s life could be the beginning. You don’t have confidence or experience, so you look to those who have that. Some may take you under their wing while others try to change you into a copy of themselves. There are a lot of minefields for an author trying to find their style, path, and voice. The declaration of ‘rules’ makes it a lot harder, so just be wary and you’ll make it through.
Image courtesy of bigstock.com 
Legends of Windemere 