Author Website Essentials

Joan Hall's avatarStory Empire

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. Several months ago, I wrote a post about making your blog user friendly. If you missed that post, you can click here to read it. Today, I want to talk about essentials for your author website.

Yes, as a professional author you need a website. Now, before you cringe or think you can’t afford one, it can be the same as your blog. Your website is your site. A place to sell you, or rather, your books.

Remember, first impressions are lasting impressions. First, you should purchase your own domain name. If possible, your author name with the dot com extension. If that isn’t available, there other alternatives and new extensions being added frequently. I’ve tried for years to purchase Joan Hall (dot) com, but I’m not about to pay thousands of dollars, so I went with (dot) net. I don’t…

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Immortal Wars: The Summoning Part 39 #fiction #throwback

(Previously on Immortal Wars.)

(Again, we shall revel in my teenage originality.  Everyone groan in unison.)

Disclaimer: Immortal Wars was the book I came up with and wrote in high school.  I hadn’t even hit college by the time I wrote the first two books.  That means I hadn’t developed my style yet, wasn’t good at self-editing, and the story was fairly basic. So, you’ve been warned that this is the ultimate author throwback segment for my blog and will show my author origins.  FYI-  I put the first book (The Summoning) through a Print-on-Demand publisher and the second one (Light, Blood, & Tears) never saw the light of day.  Enjoy!

“Could they possibly make this trip any harder,” says Infinity to a dead alien that resembles a hammerhead shark with arms and legs.  This alien is the tenth strange guard that the immortal has been unable to avoid.  The villains certainly know where he is by now and that makes him nervous.  Infinity runs through an open door and finds himself standing in the middle of a vast jungle.

“Oops.  I definitely think I made a wrong turn.”  The Earth guardian turns to leave, but the door swiftly closes with a soft swishing noise.  He tries to open the door, but he finds that he is locked in this humid greenhouse.  It is a few feet of steel that his telekinetic powers can only put harmless dents into.

“Welcome to my jungle!” yells a booming voice from high above the guardian.  When Infinity looks up, he sees a huge creature towering over the orange palm trees.  The thing has a humanoid body structure as well as a thick, fuzzy tail that slowly swings back and forth in the damp air.  Glowing orange fur covers the giant’s legs and torso, but there is no hair on its immense, black arms.  The alien’s head resembles that of a wild boar with huge tusks of gray stone jutting out of his mouth.

“Who, or should I say what, the hell are you?” asks Infinity as he cranes his neck to look at the large creature.

“I am from the distant planet that used to be known throughout the cosmos as Awolic.  I was that world’s supreme leader until these small creatures, called immortals, kidnapped me and destroyed the entire planet of Awolic.  My name is Crol.  Who are you, little speck?” bellows the giant while picking Infinity up by his cloak.

“My name?  I am Infinity, the immortal Earth guardian.”

“An immortal?  I have a much better name for you, immortal.  What do you think of this new name?  Lunch,” laughs Crol as he drops Infinity into his gaping, fanged mouth.  The huge creature tries to swallow his still-breathing snack, but soon ends up spitting his meal onto the ground.  Infinity had skillfully blocked Crol’s esophagus with a quick telekinetic wall that prevented him from falling into the hungry alien’s stomach.  It also caused the large monster to start choking.

“Try some extra strength mouthwash, big guy.  Phew,” taunts Infinity as his body begins to sprout blue and white feathers.

“I’m going to smash you into a pool of red paste since I can’t eat you alive like I really want to.  The great Crol is not going to be beaten by a tiny speck of dust like you.”  Before the alien can lift his fist, Infinity changes into his giant bird form that stares Crol in the eyes.

“You were saying,” says the angry bird.  Infinity jumps on top of Crol’s boarish head and clutches onto him with his talons.  The bird cuts deep into the monster’s head with his razor sharp talons and pointy beak.  One strong peck gets Crol in his left eye and the bird’s beak comes out of the hole with amber blood on it.

“Get off of me!”  Crol grabs Infinity by an outstretched wing and hurls the bird into a nearby waterfall.  The orange-furred creature charges his enemy, but is soon reduced to ashes by intense lightning blasts that erupt from Infinity’s pure white eyes.

“Thank god that didn’t take long,” thinks Infinity while reverting back to his human form.  The only two sounds he can hear are the gurgling waterfall and an out of place noise that greatly resembles someone applauding.

“Bravo, guardian.  What do you do for an encore?” hollers Kilanus who is dangling from a low tree branch.  She doesn’t have her scythe or any other visible weapons, which gives Infinity a minor amount of relief.

“You?  How long have you been watching me?” asks the guardian while Kilanus drops to the ground.  She calmly leans against the smooth, blue tree and playfully smiles at Infinity.

“Long enough to see you easily destroy Crol.  The only reason he was kept in this fortified room was because he was considered a major threat to us that we could wait to take care of.  I think someone was studying him and getting poisons from his physiology.  I still can’t believe none of my family killed that ugly thing decades ago.  Psylon or Draveon could have taken that bloated, oversized pig out of action in their sleep.”

“Psylon and Draveon are your parents?  That doesn’t seem right.  You’re nothing like those two psychos.  At least not from what I’ve seen.”

“No kidding, handsome.  Adriana is my mother, obviously, and Hellax is supposed to be my father.  Actually, I believe that my real father was some mortal, who died before I woke up from my coma.  I mean, let’s face reality here.  Hellax is way too stupid to be my father.  I’ll have to remember to bring my lineage up with my mom after this whole bloodbath thing,” says Kilanus as she walks up to Infinity.

“Not that I’m complaining, but why are you not trying to hurt or kill me?” mentions Infinity when Kilanus seductively puts her hand against his chest.  The cascading waterfall softly drenches the two immortals and Kilanus starts to have a playful grin.

“Mmmm.  Your heart is beating very fast, bird boy.  Are you excited or nervous?  It doesn’t matter.  I have more interesting plans for you.  You are a lot better looking than your rough friend with the blond hair.  I’m really beginning to like you, Infinity.  And I’m not talking about liking you as a friend.  You are very powerful and have a lot of potential to be one of the strongest warriors in the universe.  Do you get my drift, Infinity?  Or, do I have to be a whole lot more direct?”

“Sorry, Kilanus.  I already have a serious, though annoying, girlfriend.  You’re not my type anyway.  You’re beautiful, but the psychotic behavior is a turn off,” stutters Infinity.  He backs up into the slick rocks behind the waterfall before Kilanus grabs him by his shoulders.  She passionately kisses him right on the lips before savagely kneeing him in the stomach.

“Frankly, I don’t care if I am your type or not.  I want you big time and I will have you all to myself.  As for your dear Hydrana.  I’m afraid she won’t be with you much longer.  My mom is dealing with that minor annoyance as we speak.”

“Let me ask you something.  It’s really just a simple, unimportant question.  Does this room have a glass ceiling?”

“Yeah.  Why would you ask such a stupid question like that when I hold your near and distant future in my hands?  Your choices are simple guardian.  You will either be killed by me or become my personal, obedient slave.  Either way, I will take pure enjoyment from what happens between us.  What does the ceiling have to do with anything?” responds Kilanus as she stares at him with hungry, blue eyes.

“Nothing,” Infinity says with a crafty smirk.  The Earth guardian quickly binds Kilanus with some telekinetic coils that are stronger than steel and levitates her off the ground.  He uses the rest of his power to create the strongest telekinetic blast he’s ever made.  This telekinetic blast sends Kilanus into the air with a sonic boom filling the room.  The screaming immortal crashes through the glass ceiling and sends glass shards raining down on Infinity.

“She is going to be really mad once she wakes up,” whispers the Earth guardian as he makes his way up one of the trees that reach the newly made hole in the glass.

“Finally.  The ceiling didn’t look too high from the ground,” thinks the brown-haired guardian when he leaps onto the warship’s curved roof.  He turns around just in time to see a heavy, spiked ball hit him in the head.  The painful blow doesn’t kill Infinity, but it gets the attacker’s job done.  Infinity blacks out as his assailant picks him up and heads toward the pit where all the villains are still impatiently waiting.

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War of Nytefall: Ravenous on the ‘Trick or Treat Book Bonanza!’ #vampires #Halloween

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

Check out War of Nytefall: Ravenous on the ‘Trick or Treat Book Bonanza’!  Grab a copy and start reading while you enter the big raffle that will be going on all month!

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War of Nytefall: Ravenous on ‘Trick or Treat Book Bonanza’!

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

Just wanted to let everyone know that War of Nytefall: Ravenous is one of two books listed in the Trick or Treat Book Bonanza today!  Check the whole event out and buy a copy to see what adventure Clyde is up to now!

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Monsters of Nytefall: Desirae’s ‘Babies’

Marcus Corvnius from Underworld

Guess War of Nytefall: Ravenous had 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.

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Basing Your High-Fantasy Towns and Cities in the Real World

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

map of Beleriand | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

I wisely started the map and made the story fit.

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…

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Five Tips to Feel Better About Writing Angst

John W. Howell's avatarStory Empire

Pixabay Image

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…

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Questions 3: Stay Out of the Moonlight

D&D Werewolf

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: Ravenous to 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.

  1. 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.)
  2. How would you prepare for the change?
  3. Would you try to find a cure or make the best of your situation?  Why?
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Songs of War of Nytefall: Loyalty

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

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.

First up, War of Nytefall: Loyalty

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.

See the book that I connected to the songs
Get War of Nytefall: Loyalty
On Amazon!

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Halloween Music Videos

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.

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