As usual, here is your warning that this story has cursing, sex (not graphic), innuendo, and violence. It’s my Rated-R action adventure called Derailing Bedlam. This is the fourth outing (third official) for Cassidy and Lloyd, so feel free to click on one of the two covers to see how it started. Each one is 99 cents!
Cover by Jon Hunsinger
Cover Art by Jon Hunsinger
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Getting people — and kids, in particular — to read and write has long been a passion of mine. You may remember my post, Reading Tricks for Kids of Any Age, originally written for Mom’s Favorite Reads.
Well, I recently came across an article by Abigail Elijah of Knowledge Isle with 20 tips for developing your kid’s writing skills which inspired me to write up a new post, this one on the subject of getting your child to write. I hope you find these tips useful!
Seven out of ten children find writing particularly challenging. What can we do to support them and help develop their writing skills?
One of the most important things you can do for your kids’ writing skills, is to encourage and develop their passion for reading.
Writing is different than speaking. Abigail…
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Welcome to another edition of Lisa Burton Radio. The only show that brings you interviews with the characters you love.
I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and my special guest today is Tisha, a dancer and mage from the dark land of Skaythe. Prepare to be enchanted! “Welcome to the show, Tisha.”
“Well met, friend.”
“What can you tell us about your brand of magic?”
“I belong to a small band on minstrels who draw upon vitalis, a power born of the sun and life itself. By movement and dance, I focus vitalis into my casting. Ever since I was very young, my drive has been to heal all sorts of wounds. That is why I travel with the other minstrels. My dance draws the people away out of their sorrows and gives them hope for the future.”
“I love how you draw power from dancing. I’ve known…
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This is going to be a challenge. Giving tips on a character type that I really don’t get along with? Strap in your popcorn and let’s see where this wild ride takes us. All tips are spontaneous with the minimal amount of thought . . . Also, fueled by sleep deprivation even though I got a full night of sleep prior to this. Whatever.
Great post breaking down a trilogy system.
Hi gang! Craig with you again today. I’m in the middle of writing a trilogy, so take this info with a grain of salt. I’ve done my homework, and I want to share some of that here today. The topic is the “classic” trilogy.
You know as well as I do, that any three related books can be called a trilogy. Did you know there is such a thing as a classic trilogy and it has a pattern? Patterns are good for authors. We don’t always have to do the same thing others have done, but knowing about the pattern helps you elevate your game.
You might be thinking, “Yeah, yeah. Craig is the speculative fiction guy, so we’re going to talk about The Lord of the Rings.” Nice try, but we’re not. LOTR was actually one gigantic, whoppin’-big novel that got chunked up for publication purposes.
When I…
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Art by Jason Pedersen
Fizzle is probably the most popular character of Legends of Windemere. He isn’t a champion, but he might as well be in the eyes of some readers. It reached a point where I was getting requests for a Fizzle book. This is when I tried some ‘Fizzle only’ scenes and I realized that I couldn’t go for very long with him as the central character. As popular as he is, the little dragon worked best as a supporting mascot and occasional timely rescue delivery service. Now, who or what is Fizzle in more detail for those who haven’t read the series?
In the first book, Luke Callindor meets this small dragon (called a drite) with red dragonfly wings, a really long tail, hallucinogenic/sleeping gas breath, powerful magic, and the speech pattern of a small child. That last trait is because he learned trade-speak from a child, so this improved a bit over the course of the adventure. Fizzle is the guardian of Visindor Forest who decides to travel with his new friend because he wants to be of help. He has never left his home before, so he is very curious, especially when it comes to his favorite food. This would be apples and some comedy happens surrounding the fruit. He acted as a secondary caster and a stealth operative when he could. As cool as that sounds, his main role was to be used when I needed a non-champion agent to settle something. This is because he was the main Non-Player Character of the DM in the original game, so he was really stuck in that roll.
That isn’t to say Fizzle is hardly used in the series because I slipped him into scenes as much as I could. This became much more essential when I saw how popular he was. I couldn’t give him his own book, but I did rewrite all of the outlines from Volume 5-15 to have more Fizzle. In the game, he went into hibernation for what would be the 4th volume adventure, so I kept that to give myself time to rethink him. Drites sleep for several weeks to come back stronger and the heroes were heading back to Visindor Forest anyway. I had it that Fizzle was gifted with extra ‘strength’, which only appeared in two forms. One was more obvious than the other:
Perhaps one of the best uses of Fizzle is that I used him to ask questions about the world I was building. I began this tactic with Luke Callindor, but it switched to Fizzle since he was out of his forest for the first time. Since I write in present tense, I can’t do flashbacks and info dumps of history are clunky. Having characters ask questions is one of the best ways to do it, so I used Fizzle for this when I really wanted to share something. That didn’t mean he understood either, but the information came about. I did try to do some social commentary when he ran into a homeless child in the sewers, but I don’t think that worked as well as I planned. It would make sense for a creature living in the wild to be confused about how the ‘civilized’ beings let a child suffer, especially when he’s seen beasts adopt abandoned children. Sadly, I really couldn’t get beyond a conversation between him and Luke Callindor about it because it didn’t fit the tone of the book. (I think I’ve gotten better at putting serious stuff into my books though.)
A side-note that isn’t much about his origins: I really wish I knew of a way to make Fizzle plushies. I’m sure those would sell or work great as swag. Haven’t had any luck finding a way to do it.
Ronita Mohan is becoming one of this blog’s favorite guest bloggers—and with good reason! Her posts always have great book marketing tips and ideas. Today, she explains the best ways to market your book this holiday season.
Ronita is a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic and design platform. She is an avid reader with an interest in mystery fiction, history, graphic novels, marketing, and diversity. Twitter: @Venngage
The holiday season isn’t just about snow and families and giving gifts—it’s also a great time for marketing your book.
We have some top tips for holiday book marketing—including what to post on social media and include in newsletters—so you can improve book sales and reach customers well into 2020.
How are your fans and audience going to know that you are participating in the holiday season? A…
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This is going to be another post that depends heavily on personal limits, standards, and perceptions. A person may be self-righteous to one group while totally acceptable by another. So, I’m going to try to avoid specifics here. It’ll be a general overview of the character throughout the week. Now, what is this type?
These are characters that act morally superior to others whether their ideals are unfounded or not. They can be very judgmental, egotistical, and occasionally narcissistic towards the rest of the cast. Many times, you will find this associated with religious paths, but that’s basically low-hanging fruit. Nobility too. The truth is that anyone can be used as a self-righteous character if they are written that way. For example, a character who grew up poor can act this way because they feel they have suffered so much that their world view is the only true one. People might have more sympathy for them or agree with them, but the self-righteousness is there.
As you can see, this is typically defined as a ‘negative’ trait because it’s demonstrated with a high level of smugness. They don’t listen to opposing views or change their opinions unless they are rocked entirely to the core. Most times, an author will have these characters either break, grow through great suffering, or turn traitor. This sounds like what you can do with any character, but the difference here is that nearly everything revolves around this self-righteous path. If you write one with it at a low level then you can develop a different arc, but this attitude taking up the forefront is something that needs to be handled. A lesser version could be them targeting one specific character as inferior and developing the friendship instead of having them anger everyone.
Within the group dynamic, these characters cause tension and it can be a challenge to make them gel. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it can help everyone grow, but readers are quick to turn off to the self-righteous figures. We don’t like being judged and have a limit on how much we can view others being judged. Oddest thing is that people are able to do the deed more often than they view it or are subjected to it. This makes me wonder if we turn on these characters so quickly because we either see ourselves or recognize a negative force in our lives when they act out. It’s a psychological layer that makes the use of such a character even more difficult.
Personally, I get annoyed by the self-righteous characters. They push my buttons far too quickly, so I have a hard time writing them. My instinct is to make them suffer and shed this trait soon after they appear. This ruins the characters and can jeopardize the entire story, so I only use them when I know they will work.
So, what do you think of this character? How about in real life?
Ciao, amici! I wanted to discuss idea generation today. I’ve always known this was a possibility (and maybe I’ve even subconsciously done this before), but after a long discussion—and subsequent project assignment—at work, I thought I’d bring it up here.
At work, we’re all doing an exercise where we’re given a very generic outline to write a story in our genre. This is for two reasons.
This work exercise goes hand-in-hand with an idea generation technique I’ve shared with my writing circle for some time: take any story premise and create your own…
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DnD Phoenix
I bring this thing up a lot because I keep wanting to figure out how it will work and always come close. Then, I wander off because of more urgent projects. At this point, it feels silly to give the winding origins of ‘Project Phoenix’, which is becoming aptly named. This thing has repeatedly risen from the ashes in my head. To sum up:
It went from its own world with one series to having multiple series then to Windemere and then back to Super Earth and then limbo and now it’s kind of back to Windemere with about 9-10 series/one-shots under its umbrella.
Now, these are superheroes, which I first began designing back in the late 90’s. This is before the big boom and saturation of superheroes, so I felt okay keeping them on Earth and away from Windemere. Now, I keep fearing that the genre will be fairly dead by the time I get to this arena. It’ll take a long time since I have to get through Clyde, Sin, and Darwin first at the very least. For all I know, the genre could die and be coming back by the time I show up.
Anyway, that is the big reason I’ve moved them to Windemere. Having superheroes in my fantasy world felt like a fresh idea. Magic can help explain it and there is a big event where the magic plane merges with the physical one. I never had anything really happen there, so having these heroes and villains emerge would work. Yet, I still wanted it modern, so I’m keeping the idea that they angered the gods and were sealed away in mortal forms that were constantly reincarnated with no memories. The series will start when a handful of the central heroes (Mylrixians) are woken up and it starts a chain reaction. With the Law of Influence now around, the gods can’t do anything and Windemere is going to have a new breed of mortal . . . And that’s where I get a little stumped.
The problem is that I can’t pin down how to make it work. I have tons of heroes, which I’ll get into later. Every time I tackle this idea, one new piece sticks and the other additions fall away. So, I’m currently at doing this in a short story collection format. Some series will have multiple books, but each one will have 10-15 short stories. Let me touch on it now and see what I’ve got.
Project Phoenix
This is the flagship, which I have at 6-7 collections. The heroes will be awoken and establish a Mylrixian community in the first book from what I can figure. I don’t know what else to do here since I would lack a central villain. It could be that each story shows one of the heroes coming to grips with their awakening since this includes the hero who went mad and tried to start a war. Another is male, but knows that he used to be female and that causes some adjustments.
Other collections were: ‘Rise of Villains’, ‘New Generation of Heroes’ . . . And then I find that I lost my notes. The overall story typically goes that a powerful villain is showing up for a big showdown, which leads to another finale series. That would be a final book where preparations are being made. I considered another that involves a race to find the once mad heroes reincarnated son. The issue with those last two ideas is that they might not be short story friendly.
Savior
This is my solitary hero who will have 4-5 books. I have a better idea of what to do here since he hasn’t changed much. It starts with a gnome being in a city that has been overrun with villains. He finds a suit in his new apartment and sets out to be a hero. The original concept had the first two books being with him, the third being a new one, the fourth being an event to claim the mantle, and then a finale with whoever wins that. Not sure what the original will do though.
The tough thing is the third book because Savior actually began as a character in ‘The Mutant Wrestling Federation’ that my friends and I made in college. I enjoyed seeing my friend play him so much that I felt like he needed a series. It ended up being the ‘second’ Savior doing the wrestling and the first one was somewhere else, so I need to decide on if I’m going to to have the third one in this series do something similar. I don’t have the MWF here, but I do have the ‘Ninja Never Wins’ competition (not real name) and it could be him being involved in that. Except for one problem:
Ninja Never Wins
This is a 6 book series that follows 6 competitions. Each one is created by a champion who works for this company. There are different rules with it being Regular, Magical Medals, Weapons/Death Match, Women Only, Teams, and Grand Tour. I made it to be a spoof on fighting games, so it makes very little sense at times. New characters are in every book and I had a fun idea of making brackets. The fights are made from drawing names from a hat and I roll dice to figure out winners, so I don’t have a plan until that finishes. It’s a goofy idea that probably shouldn’t be near Savior . . . I can’t even tell if this would be a fun thing to do. Maybe have it in the same arena as ‘Bedlam’ where it’s a silly thing?
OKAY! I just realized how long this is getting. I think I’m going to stop here for now with the overview and 3 of the ideas. The other 7 can be mentioned next Sunday. To be honest, one of them involves one of the core heroes, two might get absorbed into that ‘New Generation’ idea, and I can’t figure out what I’m doing with another. So, next week may be a bit easier. It’ll also be right after Thanksgiving, so people may still be in food comas.
Legends of Windemere 