Legends of Windemere Fantasy Bundle #1
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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – New on the Shelves – Quest of the Brokenhearted by Charles E. Yallowitz
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Getting to the Root of the Week’s Problem by Traversing the Canal: The Truth Is In There
First up:
Grab ‘Quest of the Brokenhearted’ for 99 cents! This month only!
I actually managed to hit publish and set up a lot of the promos while on my trip. Part of it stemmed from not being able to sleep well when away from home. The other was that I spent most of last weekend trying to hide a really bad anxiety attack. No word on if people noticed me disappearing from the party every now and again. Since nobody came looking for me then I assume I wasn’t missed. All I did was lie down on an air mattress to read manga, do word searches, or do breathing exercises until I felt like I could go back out there. Still, I mustered enough gumption to get the new book out and figured the storm was over . . . Boy, was I wrong.
For those who have followed me for a few years, you might have picked upon the comedy that tends to ensue after I release a book. There’s always some disaster that ranges from the flu to broken laptops to me realizing I uploaded the unedited book while deleting the edited one. This time was a throwback to Beginning of a Hero when I broke a wisdom tooth and that started a whole thing of more teeth stuff. Well, you can probably guess what happened, but I’ll give you a play-by-play:
- Monday was a normal day with my son starting camp and me working on Raven’s Wrath.
- Tuesday started with me chipping a tooth on my cereal. Called the dentist and got an appointment to check it out on Saturday.
- Wednesday was July 4th, but I was being careful. That is until I ate a fry and felt the chip turn into a crack. It was like a pizza pie with a slice taken out of it.
- Thursday I called to get an appointment since it was getting worse. This resulted in a full day experience of a ROOT CANAL. My first one and it wasn’t as bad as I’d heard, but still not recommended as a fun experience. I didn’t even get to each anything until 3 PM, but I got my head together (Ibuprofen!) to get the kid to martial arts. As you can guess no writing happened.
- Friday is me resting and trying to be gentle. Think I’m on a yogurt and pudding diet for a while.
So, that was the big mess of the week. I didn’t get much writing done and had a lot of trouble keeping up with social media. I’m sorry if I missed a post helping with the new book. Please let me know if I forgot to come by and I’ll swing on over to handle comments with apologies. This really threw everything off and I still have 2 appointments to go before it’s all done. They have to put a crown on there, so it’s prepping next week and then the final product two weeks later. My goal is still to finish Raven’s Wrath by the end of the month, so I can do casual editing through August. Probably tackle Derailing Bedlam for next summer and then move on to War of Nytefall: Rivalry. I’m not going to kill myself too badly in the fall since school has all of these breaks and I’m not behind any more.
Quest of the Brokenhearted is selling pretty well. The sale is helping and summer is notoriously rough, especially the last two years. Nothing else I can really say on that end of things. Oh, I did lose about 9 positive reviews on Tuesday, which is starting to become a common thing. I’ve heard from other authors that they’re losing reviews left and right with no idea what’s going on. Some reviewers appear to be getting deleted entirely too, so I’m guessing it’s an Amazon algorithm gone wild.
Well, that’s really all for the week. The root canal overshadowed everything else and the rest of the time was spent relaxing. Summer might be a lot of these posts, especially since I’m learning more people than I realized are lurking around here. Seeing that politics are getting more widespread too. Leaning towards keeping that a private thing just because I don’t feel like dealing with the headaches. So, what are the goals of the week?
- Take son to camp, martial arts, and a handful of appointments. I’ll be more chauffeur than author here.
- Dentist appointment.
- Write more of Raven’s Wrath. I’ll talk more about it next week barring any overshadowing event.
- Try to get back into biking since I was slightly derailed.
- Read more ‘MAR’ and request more ‘Bleach’.
- Cooking if I feel like it.
- Come up with some outings.
- Get a little extra sleep since I couldn’t use the sleep apnea device for a few days.
Hope everyone has a fun weekend.
Posted in Goal Posts
Tagged dentistry, goals, health, parenting, root canal, tradition, writing
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An Overseeing Villain: The Shadow Earl
The Dahaka from Prince of Persia
Quest of the Brokenhearted has a lot of monsters since Lacarsis is known as the city of evil. That means there has to be one that’s above all the others and pulls the strings that keep the story going. I had a few early versions of a terrifying master that ranged from a vampire to a demon and then a ghost. At one point, I even had it be a projection of Dariana that has gone insane, but that got tossed pretty quickly. In the end, I came up with the Shadow Earl and everything else fell into place.
Much like many of my characters, I began with a name and role when I finally cleared my head of failures. The Shadow Earl was rather self-explanatory in terms of abilities and general appearance. I was still trying to decide between ghost and demon, but I felt the latter was a better way to go. This made him more tangible and helped him evolve a more fearsome persona that would eventually be tempered. A unique tactic I took with this character is that I came up with his abilities first because I thought that would reveal the way he acted. As expected, the Shadow Earl can create and control shadows to do various things. Not the most unique power, but it works for him because everything has a shadow and I added another quirk that is a spoiler.
Similar to Baron Kernaghan, the Shadow Earl depended a lot on his personality because he could only be used once for a battle. The way the story was coming out, it couldn’t function for very long after he faced off with Kira. Either one winning is basically the end game, which means I needed him to play the villain that stays on the sidelines until he has no choice. Thankfully, the Shadow Earl wasn’t locked away like the Baron, so he could still interact with Kira. Not an easy thing to do when you’re working with a demon, which meant I needed to work on his personality. Typically, these guys are written as ridiculously evil or bestial, which doesn’t always work when you need a bad guy to keep the story going as much as the hero.
This is where the rage-fueled personality that I originally gave the Shadow Earl got changed. He comes off very much like a host with the way he talks to Kira, but he still has this murderous edge. I ended up giving him a casualness to life and death, which one can almost say is the sibling of Kira’s mentality. While she has become apathetic to her own existence, the Shadow Earl feels that way towards the lives of others. If a person dies then they die with only a handful of monsters being exempt from this rule because he has a use for them. There’s also a pretty big ego on this character, but it’s oddly hard to find in some scenes. He brings attention to the various competitors, but only because they are going to give him what he wants. The attention they get as they move up the ranks makes this demon think that people are complimenting him. He’s the one who made the game, allowed the mortals inside, chose the champions, and set everything up, so it’s all about him.
It’s in that ego and desire for attention that I found the Shadow Earl’s true goal. I considered how an immortal demon would feel after so long and the idea of boredom came up. Due to Lacarsis’s reputation as a city that nobody comes out of, the big names in adventuring don’t bother going near. All you have to do is not enter since the monsters don’t attack cities. This means the Shadow Earl hasn’t had a fight in hundreds of years and that upsets him. His desire is for someone to defeat all of his champions and earn a right to face him. One could say this is a suicidal goal, but he doesn’t believe he can lose and simply wants the challenge. There’s also a fear that his citizens are going to doubt his power if they don’t see him flex his muscles for more than flicking a weak adventurer into the graveyard. This is another odd pairing with Kira because she enters wanting to die and the Shadow Earl looks at her as another chance to live.
Well, that’s the big baddie of Quest of the Brokenhearted. Wish I could say more, but he holds all the secrets of this tale.
The 2018 Interview Series Featuring Will Macmillan Jones
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Don Massenzio It’s time for the next subject for my 2018 author interview series. Author interviews are posted every Friday throughout the year. I am honored to continue this series with author Will Macmillan Jones You can catch up with … Continue reading
Saga for Pirantina, on #LisaBurtonRadio
Welcome all you space jockeys and dragon riders. You telepaths from the twilight zone. You’ve landed on Lisa Burton Radio, the only show that brings you the characters from the books you love. I’m your host today, Lisa the robot girl, and my very special guest is Battle Prince Yaitolan Rintenide, of Pirantina. “Welcome to the show Prince Yaitolan.”
🦗🦗🦗
“Um, yeah. Honey we talked about this already. Your telepathic communication doesn’t work on me, because I’m a robot girl. It also doesn’t make for good radio. You’re going to have to use your words here.”
“My apologies, I haven’t interacted with any beings from this dimension, yet. Please, just call me Yaitolan, if you would be so kind. I am far too casual for my full Battle Prince title.”
“Battle Prince sounds like an important job. Is there down time where you aren’t actually a prince?”
“I can’t say…
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Ask-A-Character: Kira Grasdon in the Hot Seat #fantasy
Cover Art by Sean Harrington
Quest of the Brokenhearted is available for 99 cents throughout July!
Imagine my surprise when I saw I didn’t have a post for today. Yeah, I’ll admit that I didn’t plan anything since I was focused more on the book release. The thing is that it’s a holiday in the USA, so it’s hard to tell what blog traffic will be. So, I’m going to attempt some audience interaction by dusting off an old blog type.
(Addition: Imagine my surprised again when another post went live right before this one. I swear that ‘7 Tips’ post wasn’t listed on the scheduled post thing when I made sure I was set for the week. Sorry about that. Guess if there’s any day to get clogged and messed it then a day with low online activity is when to do it.)
With Kira Grasdon going through so many changes and now having a book to call her own, I’m sure she has a lot to say. People may be wondering how she went from a positive-minded person to one who is borderline suicidal. What was she thinking by going into Lacarsis? How did she end up in that brothel tending bar and being a bouncer? The questions keep coming even if you haven’t read the book. Not saying you can’t ask her about this adventure though. I would, but I already know the answers and I’ve found that the audience always come up with something I never considered.
So, Kira Grasdon is in the hot seat. Enjoy and don’t forget to take advantage of the month long sale.
7 Tips to Ruling a City of Monsters
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Ruling over a city full of monsters isn’t easy. It does help to be one yourself, but not everyone has that luxury. There’s always a problem that has to be taken care of and at least half of your citizens are nocturnal and food for the other half. Let’s not even get into the constant soliciting from adventurers who are out to make a name for themselves. So, what is a dark warlord of evil to do?
- Make strict rules about what people can eat. If you allow the monsters to feast on each other then you won’t have much of an army. Sure, the strongest will be on your side, but how long before they start fighting each other. Eventually, you’ll be left with a single, overweight monster that is eyeing you like a free rib-eye. Just set up a farm and maintain enough livestock to avoid the disaster.
- While many monsters love darkness, it isn’t something that is needed across the board. You can keep some places in utter darkness and others in light or make sure you have functional days. This way, you don’t play favorites between the nocturnal and diurnal species. It also means you have agents who can function at all hours of the day.
- Be very careful with the undead. They have a habit of eating whatever has a heartbeat, possessing random targets, and smelling like death. Anything with a sensitive sense of smell won’t want to be around them during the summer.
- Don’t ignore the fun parts of cities just because your citizens are monsters. They might be used to living in the wilderness, but creating houses for their specific lifestyle can go a long way towards earning their trust. You can add all the things they might want like hot springs, cold springs, waterfalls, ponds full of fish, insect gardens, and all the amenities a monster desires.
- Killing a monster to keep the others in line can only work for so long. Much like humans, they can be turn on you out of fear.
- Money might be a problem since monsters aren’t known for paying rent. This can be remedied by commandeering a gold mine or training a group of raiders. Of course, the latter means you can be attacked for revenge or considered a threat that needs to be eliminated. So, your money-making ventures should be paired with maintaining a powerful defense. This will require more money and you’ll have to . . . Let’s just say it could be a vicious cycle, so raiding might not be a good idea.
- Don’t go overboard with giants and dragons. These monsters take up a lot of space and can be territorial. You’ll not have much of a city left if you let any combination of these groups tangle.
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Tagged evil city, fantasy, humor, Lacarsis, lists, magic, monsters, Quest of the Broken Hearted, sword & sorcery, Windemere, writing
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Check Out My Interview at Jacky Dahlhaus’s Blog! #fantasy
Cover Art by Sean Harrington
A big thank you to Jacky Dahlhaus for asking me to be a guest on her blog. The questions were a lot of fun.
Click here for the fun interview!
SMC Cartography – Making Maps
I was recently followed by Soraya Corcoran of SMC Cartography. Soraya has drawn some amazing fantasy maps, so I asked her for a guest post on her craft. She was happy to oblige, so feast your eyes on her brilliant art and read her tips on world-building. And if you wish to commission her, her rates are pretty reasonable!
SMC Cartography – Making Maps
My name is Soraya, a fan of all things fantasy… and MAPS!
Let me tell you about myself. I was born and raised in a small village in wild Montana, a quiet place where nothing exciting happened. Once I was of age, I set sail on the Pacific as one of the logistics specialists aboard a great military ship, where I most certainly did not talk like a pirate most of the time. Three years I spent on the seas, until I settled into the life of…
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