Guest Post: A Game of Books (The Tower in the Mist by Deby Fredericks)

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

The Tower in the Mist

Mages vs. Amazons vs. Giant Badger vs. Tyranny

Zathi’s job is to capture renegade mages, but Keilos isn’t like any other mage she’s dealt with. Her drive to bring him in only leads them deeper into a cursed forest. Together, warrior and mage will face deadly beasts and grapple with decisions that compromise every principle. Until they stumble upon a place of ancient, forgotten magic. Zathi must choose — allow Keilos to claim it, or kill him once and for all.

Pre-Order it on Amazon!

Charles often tells us how his Legends of Windemere series got its start as a role-playing game while he was in college. I am here to confess that I, too, wrote my book because of a game.

In my case, it was the video game Dragon Age. I have all three of the series, and I played them back-to-back-to-back-to back from September, 2017 to the end of March, 2018. Okay, maybe I was a little obsessed.

The series is heavily focused on a core conflict between Mages and Templars. As in many fantasy settings, mages are feared by the public who do not have magic. The solution was that the main church, or Chantry, decreed that all mages should be imprisoned in Circle Towers. There they are guarded by Templar warriors who have absolute power over them. The potential for abuse is obvious, and the violence between Mages and Templars is a theme throughout the games.

Much as the games riveted me, I was frustrated by the false binary of Dragon Age. My characters were always arguing for more options than life-in-prison vs. mages-running-amok. Surely there was a better way! The Tower in the Mist was born from that frustration.

During my intense immersion in Dragon Age, I virtually stopped writing. Every inch of my writing mind was jammed with Dragon Age. There were times when I was afraid that my career was over. But, guess what? My writing career didn’t come to an end. Six weeks after I finished my playthrough and took a break, I started a novella. As a matter of fact, it’s this very novella, The Tower in the Mist.

In it, I share my own interpretation of Mages vs. Templars. Now, I want to make it clear that this isn’t Dragon Age fan fiction or any sort of licensed tie-in. I’m a novelist. I can do my own world-building. I created the land of Skaythe, where evil mages oppress the commoners, and I created the Minstrels who try to change their world through alternatives to violence. But if I hadn’t played Dragon Age first, I’m sure I would be working on different projects today.  

If you like Dragon Age, swords and sorcery, or epic fantasy with a heart, I hope you’ll venture forth to find The Tower in the Mist.

Author Biography

Deby Fredericks has been a writer all her life, but thought of it as just a fun hobby until the late 1990s. She made her first sale, a children’s poem, in 2000. Fredericks has six fantasy novels out through two small presses. The latest is The Grimhold Wolf, released by Sky Warrior in 2015. Her children’s stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Boys’ Life, Babybug, Ladybug, and a few anthologies. In the past, she served as Regional Advisor for the Inland Northwest Region of the Society of  Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, International (SCBWI).

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Nyte vs Nytefall: Yes, Clyde Is an Asshole

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

I think I explained this situation before, but it relates to the location naming theme of the week.  The vampire kingdom cities of Nyte and Nytefall were created a little by accident and me being clumsy.  I had come up with War of Nytefall as a series title to replace ‘Realm of the Night’.  Then, I wrote Legends of Windemere: The Mercenary Prince where Mab debuted and talked about the city of Nyte as the Dawn Fang capital.  Yet, I made Nyte the home of Xavier Tempest instead of Clyde . . . So, why was his place the capital instead of wherever Clyde called home?  In fact, why was the city called Nyte instead of Nytefall considering the title?

Answer to Question 1:  Nyte is the city that the Dawn Fangs talk about publicly and allow the mortals to know about.  They speak of it as their capital even though it’s more of a decoy.  The real capital is Nytefall, which is really difficult to reach and known only to a handful of non-vampires.  That covers that oops and it fits the secretive nature of the Dawn Fangs.

Answer to Question 2:  Nytefall is the island city that Clyde created for the Dawn Fangs and he named it to piss off Xavier Tempest.  Yes, I know it’s difficult to have a series where the two main locations are so similar, but this made too much sense.  Clyde is a big enough of a jackass to do something like this.  It means whenever someone says Nytefall, Xavier may briefly consider his own kingdom losing the war.  It’s a name that can catch in the noble’s throat and hurt his pride.

In this case, I did a creative spelling of a common word (Night to Nyte) that was in the older series title.  Then, I added ‘Fall’ as an afterthought and had to work that into the story.  I needed a reason for the similarities and used the personality of the protagonist to get the job done.  This is a lot of a back and forth in creating the location names, so it shows that you might not have everything until you’re coming to the end of the outline or first draft.

This even set up the two locations to be polar opposites in several ways:

  1. Nyte is found on the mainland of Ralian far from the ocean.  Nytefall is an island in the Cerascent Archipelago.
  2. Nyte is known to mortals and can be approached if need be.  Nytefall is a mystery and nearly impossible to stumble onto much less get to if you try.
  3. Nyte is a very dark, urban city that has a common architecture.  Nytefall is a sunny, tropical island with a wide array of building styles.
  4. Nyte is protected by a complicated barrier.  Nytefall is open to attack if people can find it, but it means facing Clyde.

All of this started because of the names.  So, have you ever doing anything strange with your location names?  Is there a funny story behind any of them?

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Author Inspiration and This Week’s Writing Links

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

Staci Troilo's avatarStaci Troilo

Ciao, amici! Another busy and beautiful week at the Troilo residence come and gone.

Our Easter celebration was low-key for us this year. At first, I felt bad about skipping some of our traditions. But then, the day came. The meal, though simpler than my usual holiday fare, was delicious. The love flowed as freely as the wine. We all missed my daughter, who couldn’t make the trip from college, but everything else was as it should be. And then it was over, and we all went back to work.

I’m still knee-deep in the sci-fi world. My first release is around the corner. I’m both excited and nervous. There were plenty of times I thought:

I like to read sci-fi and love to watch it, but maybe I’m not the best person to write it. After all, I wasn’t exactly a fan of my science classes in school. The…

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Derailing Bedlam: Courting of the Killers Part 1 #fiction #adventure

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

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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Continue reading →

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How to Write the Best “About The Author” Page Possible

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

Vacation writing inspiration | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books Look at me, world!

Writing a book is hard. Still, I’d rather write a 5-novel series than a book blurb. And when it comes to writing a couple of paragraphs about me, aka Author Bio, well, that’s when I really freak out! Why is it so darn hard telling the world a few things about us?

So, I was particularly happy when I discovered this excellent post on writing your About Me page. It comes from a surprising source–Elegant Themes, the makers of my favorite WordPress theme, Divi. Read on for some great tips on creating a killer Author Bio page, courtesy of Lindsay Pietroluongo!

Lindsay’s About Me Page

“If we’re gonna be friends, you should know that I re-heat my coffee as many times as it takes to burn my tongue, I only watch horror movies through my fingers and I seriously dislike elephants, although…

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7 Tips to Creating Fictional Location Names

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

Fictional World Map (Created by Dan Meth)

Continuing the topic of naming locations, I’m going to do my best to come up with some useful and humorous tips.  I only had to create one new place in War of Nytefall: Rivalry, so these are going to have to go outside of the new release.  Apelios doesn’t really give me a lot to work with either.  Here we go:

  1. Make the location pronounceable.  It may be funny to write one with only vowels or consonants, but you could lose a few readers if they can’t figure out how to say things.  It can help to have a pronunciation guide or mark it during the first appearance, so this is more of a guideline.
  2. Consider the terrain before you come up with the name.  You can only get away with naming a desert city after water once or twice before the joke gets stale.  The founders would have to be aware of these things too.  A person who has lived in the clouds for eternity won’t have a good chance of knowing what a worm is, so they probably wouldn’t use it to name a town.
  3. Use real world examples for your fictional ones to help get the creativity flowing.  This can really help with natural territories.  Rocky Mountains, Great Barrier Reef, Grand Canyon, and other locations in our world are fairly simplistic.  You would be surprised how many places can be named by how they look.  It can easily be chalked up to an ancient traveler being awed and not that creative.
  4. If you name a place after a person then you need to come up with some history.  It doesn’t have to be much.  Could be how the person found the area or some great feat that they accomplished to earn the right.  To relate this to the reader, you can have a local explain it briefly or have the characters read a sign about it.  To avoid an info dump, you want to be brief or spread out the story.
  5. As with monsters and characters, you can always use another language to come up with names.  Consider something about them and then go to Google Translate.  It can be related to the terrain, a historic event, their biggest export, or whatever makes this place stand out enough to be included in the story.  Do keep in mind that people who actually speak the language will understand it, so try to keep it clean.  Unless the joke is that the town is really a swear word.
  6. Accept that people will mispronounce the fictional locations if they are made by letters being tossed together.  Seriously, I’ve gotten Windemere, Windmere, WindEmere, Winemere, Winmere, Windermere, Windermore, and a few others.  (For those who wonder, it’s Win-deh-mere.  This probably doesn’t help.)
  7. Don’t rely too much on common endings for locations such as -burg, -town, City, Village, etc.  Only way to get away with using the same ending is if you build it into your world creation.  In that case, you can NEVER stray from the pattern or the whole world will implode.  The deaths of millions of fictional characters will be on your head, you monster.
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Teaser Tuesday: The Immortal Gnat #vampires #fantasy

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

I considered leaving this a secret, but I think it’s more fun to show this.  It also drives home the fact that War of Nytefall and Legends of Windemere are in the same world.  Enjoy the brief and amusing crossover.  To be fair, it’s mostly Clyde and Mab with their usual antics.

Continue reading →

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The Stumbling Art of Naming Places

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

Map of Ralian

(The map above was made years ago before some areas had names like the Crysvale Tundra, Pynofira Forest, and the Frost Barrens.  That’s the northeast region. Also, the Stone Asp Mountains.)

This week I’m going to talk about naming places, which kind of connects to War of Nytefall: Rivalry.  After all, I introduce a place called Apelios, which is the Vampire Queen’s hidden kingdom.  We’ll get into that specific one later, but Nyte and Nytefall are being saved for Friday.  This is going to be an overview of my methods, which is what Chelsea Ann Owens had asked about.  Check her blog out!

Before getting into the specifics, I will point out that I’ve used various methods over the years.  It really depends on what kind of place I’m looking for, my mood, my work location, access to technology, and what the story is about.  That’s a long list of factors, but that’s how it goes.  I’ll try to use as many examples as I can, but things do get a little muddled from time to time.  Many will stem from Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of Rainbow Tower since that was a traveling story.  Let’s get into it.

Word Combination

This is the easiest way to name locations, especially in fantasy.  You take two things that relate to what your location will be about and then either merge them into one, put them next to each other, or take pieces.  An example of the first one would be the Deadlands of Ralian, which are a lifeless area that will turn up in later books.  For the second method, there’s always a lot more because you see it in the real world too.  Frost Barrens, Hero’s Gate, Gods’ Voice, New York, North Carolina, etc.  You need to have an idea of what the place is going to be used for or it’s general history.  As far as the third example, I have a continent called Cerascent.  It’s a giant archipelago that I used to call the Crescent Serpent region.  I hated writing that so often and came up with Cerascent, which has stuck.

Foreign Languages and Scientific Names

I use this more for characters and creatures, but there have been one or two times when I do it for locations.  Foreign languages are easy because you just type words into Google Translator and see what comes up.  I actually can’t remember any examples of this one in my current stories, but I believe I used it for a few in Sin’s Tales.  Really need a title for that series.  Scientific names are a bit more common.  The clearest example is Pynofita Forest.  It used to be the Conifer Woods, but I didn’t feel like doing that anymore once I used the location in The Mercenary Prince.  Instead, I looked up the scientific names of pine trees and found ‘Pinophyta’ is the Division name for confiers.  Just changed the spelling around and there you go.

No True Name

This is more for regions than specific towns, which come more from the first and last categories here.  You can see in the map that I have Desert, Jungles, and Mountains written down.  I could never come up with a name for these.  I usually call the first one the Southern Desert or just the Desert because it’s the only one on the continent.  The mountains are the Northern Mountains or Dwarf Mountains, but they never came up enough in the stories for me to think about it.  It struck me as a place where only dwarves lived, so the name might be fairly simplistic.  The Jungles became another issue with a few locations in there.  I chalked it up to locals never agreeing on a name and there being so many that outsiders just call it the jungles.  Southern jungles pretty much gets used and I do worry that I can’t fix this down the road.  Feels like a cop out though, so I’m not proud of these spots.  Then again, I’m sure we have plenty of locations on Earth that aren’t officially named.

Change a Letter

This one is simple and I’ll get into it more with Nyte.  You take a common word and change the spelling.  It’s pronounced the same way, but you get a more fantasy-world look to it.

Wandering Eye and Imagination

This is the more common category for me.  I’ll sit back and let my imagination create the location.  A name might come up from that.  Sometimes it’s a common word like Gaia (largest city of Windemere) or Freedom and other times it’s a strange one like Vorgabog or Rodillen.  Getting back to War of Nytefall: Rivalry, it can also be me noticing a nearby word and another one pops up.  Apelios came about because I saw a book called ‘Apropos of Nothing’.  My brain just played around with the first word and came up with Apelios, which had this mystical feel to it.  Works really well for a hidden island kingdom of a legendary character.

What do you do to name fictional locations?

Canst’s Fields (Lost the name list)

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Where Did My Titles Come From? #fantasy #dystopia #vampires

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

So, I was asked to make a post about the origin of my book titles.  I have done this a little, but not in depth.  Then, I realized that I’m not that subtle when it comes to these things.  I figured I’d list all of them here with the cover and a quick explanation.  Click on a cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

This one appeared right out of the gate.  Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero is where Luke Callindor’s path to being a hero begins.  It’s also the one that I started my author career on, so there’s a real life association too.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Nyx is a magical prodigy.  Nyx lives in Rainbow Tower.  I said I wasn’t very subtle here since this was her debut book.  Although, I will say that this was originally called ‘Running the Gauntlet’ because of all the obstacles.  Glad I changed it.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

This one actually took me a little longer than I would like to admit.  At first, I was focused on Luke Callindor returning home.  Then, I switched to how Sari debuts and she was an ‘alluring’ character to others in the book.  Until that point, it was a blank page.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

This was originally ‘Behind the Curtain’.  I switched it when I did the final outline and realized how important the Tri-Rune was.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Another title change from ‘Touch of Destiny’ to focusing on the object that will kick off the Champion Prophecy.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

This is a rarity where the original title stayed.  As you can tell, a curse called the Dark Wind causes trouble for our heroes.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

Originally called the ‘Temple of Power’, I changed to the debut of Dariana.  The temple in question was Helgard, but that’s the last act.  I found it easier to focus when I named it after the new arrival.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

This wasn’t one of the original stories and I came up with it later on when I realized that one character needed to get more development.  This was Yola Biggs the Chaos Goddess, but I named it after the gnome who would end up being the door to the trouble.  Mostly, I really liked saying ‘Nevra Coil’ and felt it was title worthy.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

This was another addition after I looked over my outlines.  Delvin Cunningham shared a debut book with Timoran Wrath, but he came in near the end.  After that, I never gave him a moment to shine or a real origin story.  He did have a fancy title, which was perfect for his big adventure.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

The original here was really lame with ‘Barbarian Honor’.  It’s about Timoran Wrath and his honor, but there wasn’t any punch to it.  Once I gave a solid name to his tribe, I thought it deserved on a cover.  A lot of the story connects to the history of the tribe and Timoran as well, so it fit.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

I was paying more attention to the Nyx/Delvin relationship and named it ‘Love of a Warrior Mage’.  Of course, this was before I started using the term ‘caster’.  Either way, it didn’t work and I wanted it to be about the adventure.  The high use of mental manipulation and the introduction of the Feykin gave me this idea.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

‘Lost Temple of Souls’ . . . Not that much of a change since I simply renamed the location ‘The Spirit Well’.  You can see I tend to make titles over locations, characters, or story specific events.  Isn’t that normal though?

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

I wanted to focus on the rescue of Luke Callindor here, so I went through ‘Where is Luke?’, ‘Fallen Hero’, and ‘Breaking of the Callindor’.  Far too meh in my opinion.  I decided to name it after the ritual that would be used once I changed the story around to include such a thing.

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

Another addition after I wrote a little into the series because I really liked Trinity.  The title came last after I added a few more former enemies to the mix.  The overall adventure really is the path of redemption of several characters.  Can you still call it that if not all of them go hero?

Cover art by Jason Pedersen

The grand finale!  I wanted to make it big and choose the epicenter of the whole thing.  So, I wrote ‘Blood of Heroes’ and then ‘Age of Heroes’.  Those really weren’t the crux of the entire series when I thought about it.  Baron Arthuru Kernaghan was the driving force of evil behind it all.  Figure the guy deserved a title.

Cover Art by Sean Harrington

Kira Grasdon was emotionally, physically, and mentally wounded in the main series.  It left her looking for purpose or death.  She needed a quest and I kept coming back to her emotional state.  It does sound a little like a romance story, but I like how that’s kind of a swerve.

Cover Art by Circecorp

This is a collection of short stories, so I wanted a title that kind of showed that.  It also has this casualness that fits the character.  There’s also a humorous slide to it as well when you consider these are all epic action adventures.

Cover art by Jon Hunsinger

We’re going to be getting briefer here.  Cassidy and Lloyd Tenay live in a chaotic land that they need to get across.  Pretty on the nose and it began the trend of these stories always being two words with ‘Bedlam’ as #2.  (Why is Lloyd giggling in my head?)

Cover by Jon Hunsinger

Instead of simply going across a region, Cassidy and Lloyd Tenay were going after an old enemy.  It was definitely a big chase full of destruction and chaos.

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

And here we come to the newest series.  Each book is a single word that is at the core of each story.  Questions of loyalty push the plot in the opener, so that is what I went with.

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

This is probably the most on the nose title of the series.  I think.  I named it after the introduction of Lost who throws the new world out of whack.  Yet, I noticed that many characters are lost in some fashion because they’re trying to figure out where they fit in the ongoing war and new Dawn Fang society.

Cover Art by Alison Hunt

War of Nytefall: Rivalry is the newest one and goes straight to the point.  There is a big feud at the core of the story.  I don’t remember what the original titles were for this series and I can’t find the right notebook.  Maybe that will be in the future.  Sorry that the origins of the titles aren’t more exciting, but clarity can be more useful.

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Punk Subgenres

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

One of my favorite writing resources, Mythic Scribes, recently published a great post exploring the world of -Punk subgenres: think Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk. The post, by Cathy, the Overprepared GM, PsychoJuliet, Jaren J. Petty, and Cryssalia Noire, was presented by Worldbuilding Magazine. The complete post is pretty detailed (I suggest you read it at your leisure) but here are the main genres mentioned:

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's booksPerhaps the most famous of these -punks is the cyberpunk school of the eighties and nineties. Bruce Bethke coined the word cyberpunk in a story of the same name back in 1982. Cyber- stemmed from the words “cybernetics,” the science of replacing human functions with computerized ones, and -punk came from the musical genre and referred to a group of aggressive young people who eschewed convention.

A subgenre of sci-fi, cyberpunk takes place in near-future settings that tend to focus on a “combination…

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