Guess War of Nytefall: Ravenoushad one more promo left in it. Well, it’s October, so I’m focusing on monsters, which makes this a perfect time to explain a piece of the overall story. This would be what is called Desirae’s ‘Babies’. I’m going to have to explain this without spoilers, so bear . . . bare . . . Bayer . . . work with me.
Desirae’s greatest power is that she can turn anything into a Dawn Fang. You have those made by the fang, turned by Clyde’s blood, forged by a ritual, and born naturally. Now, you have Desirae’s children that she creates in her laboratory. She can have them work autonomously or control all of their actions from any range. Given that she always has something or someone to do, she prefers to have them follow implanted orders. That is if she isn’t making the creature for fun and wants to use it for something like arena fights, selling, or just releasing it into the wild. They’re a vast variety of critters that she lovingly calls her children. She’s very sad for a bit when she has to destroy any.
Now, when I say she can turn anything into a Dawn Fang, I mean anything as long as it was alive. So, she can’t transform undead. For example, she has vampirized harpies quiet often. This is a flock of winged predators that each have their own abilities. Desirae doesn’t pick their three abilities either. She only turns them and sees what happens afterwards. If they won’t work out then she either destroys or rebuilds them. She can also free them from her control and turn them back into their original state, but that isn’t a preferred method. In her mind. her children are either on her side or need to be eliminated because they could reveal her business. That and they’re monsters, which means an adventurer could kill them and find evidence of her if they do the right things to the bodies. Best to have them under control where she can self-destruct the corpses if she needs to.
The ironic thing is that her babies are a threat to Clyde’s plan. While regular Dawn Fangs are able to hide themselves and stay out of trouble, monstrous versions are going to stand out. A griffin with fangs that drinks blood and is strong in the sunlight? The chances of such a creature perfectly blending in with a flock isn’t very high. Desirae tries to keep her babies on some kind of leash, but she can’t always remain aware of them. Accidents happen and she does her best to control the flow of information about their existence, so she’s almost running the same plan alongside the Nytefall one. Of course, Ravenous shows that she may be getting in over her head and these creations are a big part of it.
Will these return in a later book? That depends on if Desirae does. For now, enjoy them in their debut.
The above words, spoken by none other than J.R.R Tolkien, have been taken as sage advice by many an accomplished – or budding – fantasy writer who felt inspired to create their own world. While Tolkien, like many others, has been lauded for his incredible imagination in bringing places like Middle-Earth to life, it’s worth noting that the creation of these worlds is not something done from scratch. At least, not exactly.
What I mean by this is that there is a – let’s call it a tethering – of the fantasy world to the real world. For instance, if you have a look at some of Tolkien’s hand-annotated maps of Middle-Earth, you will see he has made reference to things like The Shire being on the same latitude as Oxford. You can see the logic of doing this, as…
Hi, SEers. John, with you today. I was reading a few Facebook and Twitter feeds the other day and was quite surprised to find several writers talking about how discouraged they are with their writing. It almost seemed that I was wading through a locust storm of dissatisfied folks. Maybe it was just that since they seem to be everywhere, they came to my attention. It was clear that these folks were somewhat new at writing.
There were some consistencies that jumped out of the postings that I had read. Here they are separated into five general areas.
The primary complaint was about time. Since most writers also have full-time jobs, this complaint is pretty real.
The second item was about productivity. Many of the people talked about missing word or page targets.
The third area was what I call extrinsic annoyances. Husbands, wives, kids…
Instead of doing Teaser Tuesdays, I’m going to do some Halloween-y Questions 3 for the month of October. I hope people have fun with it. Don’t worry if you have to take a break from reading War of Nytefall: Ravenousto answer. I totally understand and look forward to your review. People still write reviews these days, right?
Since I always talk about vampires, I’m going to jump to the other side of the fence. We’re going with lycanthropes. Some may be scratching their head at that term, which is generally used for werewolves. *waits for older people to do their Marty Feldman impression* In fantasy, it can be used for other types of cursed shape-shifters such as were-tigers, were-rats, were-vultures, were-clowns, etc. I actually have a long list of lycathropes for Windemere, which were created by Yola Biggs the Chaos Goddess after she got drunk at a party. In fact, they are the reason she was exiled from Ambervale and hunted by the other gods. Now, let’s get to the questions.
What type of lycanthrope would you be if you could choose? (Keep it to real animals. I can already hear at least one person whisper were-dragon.)
How would you prepare for the change?
Would you try to find a cure or make the best of your situation? Why?
So, I was thinking of a fun way to promote my vampire books for October. Interviews never work. Teasers are always being done. A standard promo post didn’t really appeal to me since it doesn’t even get much when the book debuts. So, I’m just going to have fun myself and hope people give the series a try. For the next couple of Mondays, I’m posting music videos that I feel connect to each of the books. Maybe in topic, but mostly in tone and atmosphere.
This song really does appeal to the defiant nature of Clyde even though part of the character is that he doesn’t stand alone. Whenever I hear this song, I think of a powerful and deadly monster too. Thank ‘Prince of Persia: Warrior Within’ for that because this song is what played every time the Dhaka showed up. You couldn’t kill this thing and it would take you out in one shot, so all you could do is run and go through the obstacle course until you escaped. Very stressful, so I twitch whenever I hear this song.
Solely for the title and maybe because I love the song. With this series being where the Dawn Fangs debut, it is also the one where Clyde decides on his dream. He wants his people to live among mortals and that requires acting like them. So, Dawn Fangs are learning how to be ‘human’ starting now.
Wait. Am I using a slow, romantic song for a vampire series? In fact, people who see what I usually post are probably surprised that I went anywhere near anything that isn’t loud song. Well, this is a good one for Clyde and Mab. The two tend to stand by each other all the time. It isn’t shown more than how she spent 50 years believing he was still alive beneath the ground and that he would return. Works perfectly.
I do this every year and I usually aim for later in the month, but I think I’m going to try to set the mood for the month by doing it now. This time I’m going to try to pick less obvious ones since I always do ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Monster Mash’. I think I’m going to save ‘Thriller’ for a special post right before Halloween too. Mostly because there is a story behind my fascination with it. Enjoy.
Imagine my surprise when I jumped on to make a quick post for tomorrow about the ‘Trick or Treat Bonanza’ going on all month, which I’m a part of. What do I see? This white void with no personality and the interface of a handless, all blade ginsu knife that’s covered in acid. First of all:
WHY DOES THE CALENDAR GO FROM MONDAY TO SUNDAY INSTEAD OF SUNDAY TO SATURDAY?
Yeah! It’s small and petty, but calendars don’t go that way. If I’m scheduling something for Sunday, I will look to the far left of the calendar. NOT THE FAR RIGHT! Oh, and thank you for putting a ‘classic editor’ option on the bottom that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Not unless I want to upgrade to a business account for $201 extra bucks a year. I have the classic toolbar here, but I’m still writing in such a sterile, white void that I can feel my soul leaving my body. Facebook did something similar too. Was there a memo that went out saying humans do better when there is less color and personality to what they’re looking at? I think I saw something about ‘distraction free’. The fuck were the distractions here? The toolbars and menus that I actually used? Were those really nothing more than decorations that I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to, WordPress? Please tell me that aliens took over and thought this was a good idea because no functional human would think this is an upgrade. Removing color is what the sun does to pretty things, which forces us to throw them in the garbage. There’s no word count on these posts either, is there? Oh, it’s the ‘i’ in a circle that I have to go out of my way to click on, which is totally NOT as big a distraction as glancing down at the bottom of the screen. You know, this white void is even worse than I realized. I’m getting a headache as I write this. When I looked away, there were black spots in my vision for a few seconds. Think this sets off some light sensitivity, especially when I’m starting out. Utter nightmare!
Well, I didn’t expect that rant to happen, but it had to be done. Honestly, I’m writing this on Thursday while my allergies take a break from slowly suffocating me. Damn pollen. It’s really bad because I was inside for most of the spring and summer, so my resistance is down. This is not the year to have a sniffling, coughing issue while working in a school. Not to mention I keep checking my temperature to be safe, including one genius move when I did it 5 seconds after drinking a hot cup of tea. It was 100.4 on two thermometers and I flipped out until my dad got the forehead one to work, which said I was fine. I mentioned the tea, realized what had happened, and walked back to my room in shame.
Work was busy with a lot of people needing to use the testing center. My years of being a cubicle monkey is helping with keeping the paperwork side of things organized and problem solving as I go. I’m still enjoying the time I get with the students who keep me on my toes. I think some of them (or all) have each created their own game with me to see what reaction they can get. This is what makes me really happy to be there because these kids are so amazing in their own unique ways. Helps the day go faster as well, which is always a plus.
My son is back as of Saturday and he’s been keeping me busy. Monday was Yom Kippur, so I was fasting while he was munching away next to me. 9 hours of playing ‘Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’ with him helping out when my fingers were tired and we were in an easier section. He still goes charging into bad guys, but this is a game where that gets you hurt. Hit points and limited lives are foreign to him unless they’re done like Super Smash, which doesn’t help here. Aside from this, it’s been all schoolwork and homework. The latter made a big jump, so afternoons were all work and no play. We get the weekend at least with some pumpkin stuff being tossed into the works.
(Gets lost among the blocks . . . Wait . . . Where did the second block come from? If I could transform into Clyde, I’d get my vengeance.)
I didn’t get any writing done, but I’m a part of ‘Trick or Treat Bonanza’ for this month with the last two ‘Nytefall’ books being a part of it. If I can figure out the block thing then I’ll post more about it, but this is testing my patience. Nothing else happened with writing though. War of Nytefall: Eulogy is inching along, but it’s more of a mystery than an action book, so I have a lot of talking and searching parts. The last chapter I did was entirely around Clyde having doubts about his own abilities because things are falling apart. I’m about to hit the part where the body count jumps and all the secrets are revealed too. Barring any other things going on, I could feasibly write 4 chapters during the next time my son is with his mom. Probably be 2 though. Wait . . . Columbus Day is off, so that gives me an edge. I’m really just talking to myself here, huh? Allergies and exhaustion are taking their toll.
Dang. I forgot to ask if I could mention something here, so it’ll have to wait until next week. Let’s see. Did I mention that I built a chidori for my son’s Kakashi costume?
The costume was store bought and the first thing he did was strike the Chidori (lightning attack) pose. So, I had to make one before he came back from being with his mom. Not that bad considering my artistic ability isn’t very good. Aside from all that, I’ve been watching ‘D.Gray-Man’ and finally hit episodes I hadn’t seen before. That’s really it for this busy week. Time for the list!
Goals of the week:
Enjoy time with son when I can get it.
Work hard when I have to.
Hopefully finish the last short story outline for a future collection.
Continue cursing block editing. (I guess the phrase is now ‘if it ain’t broke, made it bland as fuck’.
Watch more D.Gray-Man.
Try to put the usually music video at the top of this post. Can I move the blocks?
Get the allergies under control.
Write more War of Nytefall: Eulogy. Should be higher, but you never know. Almost time to return another cast, I guess.
Here we are in 2020 and it’s time for Monster Maker Fun. I’ll admit that I didn’t get many volunteers this year, but it’s been crazy. This isn’t the easiest thing to figure out too since it can put you on the spot. All we have are 3 strange, made up words donated to me by a volunteer and I turn them into monsters. To start this mad scientist event off, we have 3 critters from L. Marie. Thank you for always giving me such fun challenges.
Bibitless
These light blue birds are found off the coasts of arctic regions where they can blend into the snow and sky. They are the size of child’s fist and would only make for one bite of food, but that is enough for the predators of the region. The Bibitless need to constantly eat since the only land once a month to lay eggs on the underside of glaciers. This requires a lot of energy, which they get from diving into the ocean. Being too small to catch fish, they snag protozoan and occasionally snatch tiny pieces of meat off larger animals. It is never enough to be noticed. Since the Bibitless needs to maintain such a level of energy, eating it gives a predator a charge of nutrients. Yet, don’t think you can catch one and save it because the meat rots within minutes of being exposed to the air. As for the eggs, they hatch within a week and the baby is already able to fly.
Haboggatling
A lumbering ogre found in the Rehkruth forest, this creature always travels in mating pairs. These partnerships are formed for life and designated by a swamp that shows images of who will be together. Parents bring their child to the holy swamp at the age of four and every year afterwards until a pairing has been made. Once two Haboggatlings have been shown as partners, they must go off on their own. This holds true even if they are children. While we may think this is dangerous, these ogres are nearly ten feet tall and strong enough to throw full-grown trees one-handed by the time they are three. Their flat noses are not very strong, but their large ears and prismatic eyes make up for the weaker sense. Traditionally, Haboggatlings are seen wearing the pelts made from the first creature they killed as a team. Any humans who have come across the beasts have been scared away by their mournful wails, but there have been no reports of deadly encounters. This makes many wonder if there is something in their past that makes them scared of humans.
Ogolithe
This creature has two large feet with no toes and rubbery soles that allow it to hop around its mountainous habitat. While its legs are muscular, its body is scrawny and it has no arms. Atop its neck, the Ogolithe has a bowling-ball sized eye with a protective lid that comes out of a circular cap on the top. The color of its skin and the lid are mottled to help it blend into its rocky surroundings. If a predator appears and it cannot leap away, it covers its eye and remains still until it thinks the danger has passed. Not having a nose or ears, it can only guess at what is going on when it has effectively blinded itself. Some believe that it can sense some vibrations through the ground thanks to their sensitive feet, but it’s clearly not enough. Many scientists have witnessed Ogolithes revealing their eye when a predator has been standing still for extended periods of time. Nobody is sure how these creatures get nourishment, but the most popular theory is that it absorbs whatever particles get into its eye’s membrane. Due to them being endangered and prone to optical aneurysms when stressed by captivity, none have been caught for serious examination.
Legends of Windemere 