Smooth Sailing . . . What Do You Mean We Lost the Engine?

The week started out so well.  I finished writing Raven’s Wrath and scheduled it for October, which means I’m only doing editing and idea tinkering for the rest of the summer.  That’s if I get around to it though because my son finished camp this week, so he’s home all day.  He got his second blue stripe in martial arts and they said he can go up a level in gymnastics when we sign him up in the Fall.  A lot of progress there and he’s getting better at multiplication and division, which is something that we were having a lot of trouble with a month ago.

I’m trying to delay that ‘bad news’ slide here, so I’m trying to think of all the good stuff that happened.  They’re doing a fun ‘Young Scientist’ series at the children’s museum, so we went to their second program.  The first was creating a compost box with worms, which hasn’t been going well.  We’re trying to keep them alive, but they’re having a really hard time with the humidity and mold growing over the food.  The instructions didn’t give us any ideas with the second issue.  At least the project this week is just a build and hang around the yard thing.  It’s a place for hive-less bees to lay their eggs, which is really a bunch of bamboo strapped together.  Fingers crossed that this one will work.  There are two more sessions, which are a cow eye dissection (I’m guessing computer instead of handing kids a scalpel) and a owl pellet dissection.  The little guy wants to go to both, which is fine by me.

We’ll end on a good note about the future, so let me get to the other stuff.  Time to add humor:

  • The eczema on my shins started growing, but I got to a dermatologist right away.  It’s probably been affected by  stress and humidity.  Joy!
  • To be safe, they did a skin biopsy.  Now, I have two ugly stitches on my shin and a vacation coming up.  Joyous of joys!  Plus side here, I didn’t feel a damn thing after the numbing shot.  Probably could have stabbed me . . . Well, they kind of did, but it was more of a coring.  It is so strange seeing that be done along with stitches, know you should feel something, and not feel anything.  I go back in two weeks to get the stitches out, learn the results, and figure out what to do.
  • I got my permanent crown in and it took maybe 10 minutes at most.  My ride disappeared during this point, but only because he thought I would be in for 15 minutes.  Means the root canal saga is over . . . and replaced by the issue of my sleep apnea mouthpiece no longer fitting.  I get an adjustment in two weeks, which means I can’t use it until then.  Honestly, I saw this coming, but it’s still a little annoying.
  • Why did I need a ride?  On the way to my second anxiety therapy session and on the same day as the biopsy, my check engine light went off.  I dropped the car off the next day, but the mechanic was packed and couldn’t get to it until Friday.  So, I had to get a ride.  Plus side here is that they said it was a lean code, which they cleared.  I drive around and wait to see if the light comes back.  Then I bring it back.  No charge, which is a nice change of pace from things.

Maybe that wasn’t as comical as I’d hoped, but it gets the mess out of the way.  Today is my son’s 9th birthday, so we’re celebrating a little because tomorrow is the party.  Just going to unleash him and his friends on a spray park then get pizza brought in.  Here’s where more insanity turns up:  This party is much bigger than we expected.  It went from 5 pizza estimate to an 8 pizza set up and now it’s a 10 pizza finale.  I’m one step away from imitating Daffy Duck when he loses his mind and we haven’t even reached the event.  If there’s one day this month that I’m going to end with a drink, it’ll be that one.  I expect there to be fun for the kids and hard work for me, but it’ll be worth it as long as the little guy is happy.  He’s already had fun helping me make the favors, helping mommy make his sign, and telling the pizzeria that he can eat 4 slices in one sitting.  They got a good laugh at me immediately saying “You share your birthday pizza because you need room for cake.”

Next weekend is going to be a quiet one because it’s a long overdue vacation for me.  I will still be handling tweets and schedule stuff for the blog, but I will mostly be active in the early morning and at night.  The laptop might be coming with me in case the kid wants to watch some Battlebots before bed.  I’m still deciding on if I want to do a goal post or just hang a sign that I’m out for the day.  Probably do a small one and then try to figure out what to leave up on Sunday.  Tomorrow is about October posts and Teaser Tuesdays, so maybe I’ll make the poll if enough people like the connected idea.  I don’t mind too much since summer has been fairly slow and the most active posts lately have been my Anxiety Journal.  Wow, this post is getting big.  Let’s wrap this up.

Goals of the week:

  1. Son’s birthday party.
  2. Build Lego sets.
  3. If any money or gift cards gained then go to toy stores.
  4. Build more Lego sets.
  5. Pack and prepare for the trip.
  6. Build more Lego sets.
  7. Possibly start editing Derailing Bedlam
  8. Maybe tinker with the superhero stuff.
  9. Put Quest of the Brokenhearted up to $2.99 on Wednesday.  Only a few days left for the sale.
  10. Schedule a few posts for next week to take the edge off after vacation.

Final note on this hefty post, I do feel a little sad about writing the final adventure for Dawn Addison.  This is the ‘monster’ for The Raven Series and she’s now being filed in the same ‘complete’ folder as Legends of Windemere.  Unlike the champions, she probably won’t be making any cameos since she was in her own pocket world.  So, October will be a final good-bye for her.  Kind of sad even though she was only on the blog and didn’t get as much love as my other ideas.

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Designing a Fighting Style for Your Character

Goku

Last year, I wrote a trio of posts that gave tips on three categories of fighting styles.  This was just a general overview of Strength, Agility/Speed, and Counters/Thinkers, which most styles can be fit into.  Of course, this is boiling things down to their essence and ignoring the nuance.  In Quest of the Brokenhearted, Kira is definitely a fighter who depends primarily on Agility and Speed.  Yet, she will repeatedly use tactics that depend on brute force and aggression, which leans towards Strength.  Due to the tricks in the battles, she also needs to Think a lot.  So, it is probably better to say that every character has different levels in these three fields with one being primarily and the others being secondary.

Creating a fighting style for your characters can be difficult because of this issue.  If you make them solely one category then they can become two-dimensional and have no adaptability.  A character built entirely on strength can be defeated by a more well-rounded opponent as well as a full thinker.  You can get away with give them a primal instinct that helps them avoid traps, but this still falls into that third category.  Again, we’re looking at nuance here and that means layers.

Since there are so many ways to go with a character, I’m going to step away from the long-winded explanation and doing something else.  When I make my characters, I ask myself a variety of questions.  Not always intentionally or clearly, but my mind goes to certain aspects when deciding on fighting style.  So, I’m going to share and maybe this will help people out.

  1. Is the character going to be a combat one?
  2. Do they have any experience with fighting?
  3. What is their weapon?
  4. What is their body type and state of physical health?
  5. What is their personality like?  Aggressive or passive?  Arrogant or team player?
  6. Do they wear armor?
  7. Are they willing to kill?
  8. How easily do they deal with pain?
  9. What are the chances of them losing their temper?
  10. Are they observant enough to figure out patterns while on the move or are they a little dense when fighting?
  11. Is there a history of warriors in their family?
  12. Are their goals in combat typically to survive, help others, claim victory, get loot, or fun?

The list can keep going and changes depending on the characters.  For example, I would go further with questions of family history with Luke Callindor and focus a lot on level of restraint with Clyde.  This actually makes #5 a very important question that can lead to others.  In fact, it probably should be #1 in terms of priority.

So, are there any questions you consider with action characters?

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The 2018 Author Interview Series Featuring Dr. Rich Meyrick

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Don Massenzio This week’s author interview features Dr. Rich Meyrick. Rich is from the UK but now lives in Canada where he spends his days writing books and posting on his blog. On a side note, though the initial response … Continue reading →

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Quest of the Brokenhearted, on #LisaBurtonRadio

coldhandboyack's avatarEntertaining Stories

Lisa Burton

Welcome all you disillusioned, disenfranchised, and faithless warriors. If you’ve ever suffered loss, you may be able to relate to my special guest, Kira Grasdon. “Welcome to the show, Kira.”

“Thank you for having me. It’s kind of surreal being here after hearing so much about the experience.”

“My bio says you were a successful business woman. What can you tell us about the Grasdon Merchant House?”

“To be fair, I wasn’t as successful as people think. My father built up the family business and made it an international trading power. We dealt in goods from every continent, which not many merchants could claim. My brothers and I were the successors, but I was the only one left after we were targeted by my fiancée’s enemies. That left me in charge and I didn’t do half bad considering everything else. Being trained as a warrior and more traveled than most…

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7 Tips to Writing Battles: Let The Owies Begin!

Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury

One thing that Quest of the Brokenhearted did is push my limits on writing fight scenes.  Many people thinking writing an action scene is easy because you just have to put in ‘fighting stuff’.  This includes punches, kicks, soliloquies, gloating, guns, swords, and whatever you can consider as basic combat stuff.  If only it was really like this because a flat and lame action scene can really do some damage.  Imagine a great warrior who has battles that last no longer than a paragraph.  Really doesn’t make much sense unless his until purpose is to find a real battle, but that can get boring after awhile.  Even ‘One Punch Man’ (which has that plot) makes sure to put in exciting battles to keep the audience interested.  So, what are some things to consider to up your action game?

  1. Banter should come second to the actual combat.  You see it a lot in non-visual stories where there’s more talking than action.  It creates the sense that the characters are standing there shouting insults instead of fighting.  A way to avoid this is by writing the dialogue in a way that routinely shows it’s being said while fighting.  You can even have them talk about actions they’re taking to get a little of both worlds. For example:  “Is that the best you got?” Clyde asks with a grin. He yawns while repeatedly smacking the paladin’s thrusts to the side and holding his ground. “This is pathetic. I’m really just embarrassed to be wasting my time. You don’t need that other arm, do you?  Thanks.”
  2. The flow of a battle is very important.  If it feels clunky and jerky then you’ll lose the audience’s attention.  This can happen if you do a lot of pauses or every move comes off the same, which could be considered padding.  Only so many times you can say a warrior stabs and gets blocked.  A better way to do this is create some choreography and have the moves flow into each other.  This can be done through reactions.  Every action has a response.  Blocks turn into counters, warriors retreat for better leverage, mistakes force a flurry of movement, an injury weakens a warrior, and the list keeps going.  The point is that you need to have a sensible reaction from the one being attacked.  How can you figure this out?
  3. Like anything else, you can up your action scene game by doing research.  This is fairly easy here because YouTube and streaming services exist.  Hunt down movies and shows that are known for their action scenes.  They can even include superhuman abilities like DBZ because you’re studying the form of the scene instead of the full reality.  Watch for the action/reaction, get a sense of how the human body moves to deliver attacks, and search for ways that tension is created.  Doesn’t hurt to look up basic anatomy stuff too to figure out what a person can live through.
  4. One great way to create tension is the back-and-forth.  While most readers will assume the good guy wins, you can still have a fight where the momentum switches.  The villain can be rallying back after a bad start and then the hero pulls out a crazy stunt to regain the upper hand.  Both combatants should receive blows even if they’re nothing more than scratches and bruises.  This is to avoid a one-sided fight where the finale is never in question.  You can still do these if your goal is to show how powerful a hero or villain is, but it doesn’t do much for tension and the plot.
  5. Use the environment to enhance the battle.  This depends a lot on the setting, but think about if anything will be a factor.  Desert sands are hard to move through and the region may be too hot for armor. Forests have trees that restrict wide movements while allowing for agile characters to get out of reach.  Caves can remove the sense of sight from combatants, rain creates mud, and cities have more innocent bystanders.  The list keeps going and you just have to remember the battle is typically not happening within a blank space.
  6. Rule for casters and other magical beings: AREA OF EFFECT!  Many spells hit an area instead of a single target.  So, factor this in if you have a caster hurling fireballs everywhere.
  7. Know when to stop the fight.  This isn’t as easy as one would think because you need to feel it more than think it.  Sounds strange, but if you abruptly decide to end an extended action scene then it could be a little too jarring.  Now, it could work for shock value if you set things up appropriately.  On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want the fight to go on for too long.  You can extend it with functional breaks like them separating to catch their breath or one making a tactical retreat in order to think of a plan.  Combining a chase scene with a combat scene is entirely viable if you’re looking to increase the tension.  Still, you need to gauge when it’s time to end things and make it a smooth finale.  Beta readers can certainly help here too.
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This Week in Indie Publishing

Unknown's avatarDon Massenzio

The Authors Who Love Amazon

TSERING TOPGYAL / AP
For most of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sales bonanza, an unfamiliar face topped the site’s Author Rank page: Mike Omer, a 39-year-old Israeli computer engineer and self-published author whose profile picture is a candid shot of a young, blond man in sunglasses sitting on grass. He was—and at the time of this writing, still is—ranked above J.K. Rowling (No.8), James Patterson (No. 9), and Stephen King (No. 10) in sales of all his books on Amazon.com. His most recent book is ranked tenth on Amazon Charts, which Amazon launched after The New York Times stopped issuing e-book rankings, and which measures sales of individual books on Amazon. (The company does not disclose the metrics behind Author Rank, which is still in beta.)

Read the rest of…

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Interview with Author Charles Yallowitz

Thanks to Janice for having me on her blog. 🙂

jjspina's avatarJEMSBOOKS

Please welcome author Charles Yallowitz to Jemsbooks.Blog Segment, Author Interviews.

Thank you, Charles, for coming today. Please take it from here.

Charles Yallowitz

1. When did you know that you wanted to be an author?

I’ve always liked telling stories since I was a kid, but the author idea and passion came about in high school.  I was fifteen and had spent most of my life thinking I’d be a zoologist.  My queasiness around blood and total lack of ability with chemistry stopped that, so I was thinking about what I really loved to do.  I began reading ‘The Books of Lost Swords’ by Fred Saberhagen and I became obsessed with the idea of creating a world.  I couldn’t stop myself from designing creatures, characters, and outlining stories.  I still haven’t stopped even all these years later.

jjspina: That’s incredible, Charles. You were meant to be a storyteller. Your books…

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Teaser Tuesday: Hyde the Gruff Gremlin #99cents #fantasy

Cover Art by Sean Harrington

Not much of a set up here.  This is the introduction for Hyde who is a crafting gremlin that helps Kira Grasdon out.  Enjoy!

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The #BlogTour Continues! #YA #scifi #giveaway

Teri Polen's avatarBooks and Such

Today I’m at the following locations.  Many thanks to the blog hosts!

Valeriesmusings.com

DidiOviatt

BookWonderlandandWeb

Make sure to visit and register for the giveaway!

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Turn the Wild Dial Up to 20

Kenshin vs Shishio

Quest of the Brokenhearted has a lot of battles because a major plot point is the Lacarsis tournament.  This means I had to make the action scenes a central focus of at least one scene per non-opener/closure chapter.  I couldn’t go with a basic ‘stab, block, stab, parry, ding ding WINNER’ thing either.  My fight scenes needed to be wild and choreographed to show the magnitude and weight of them.  When people read these, I want them to picture the battle as if it’s on a screen in front of them.

Thankfully, being a Present Tense author helps out here because I’m writing things as they happen.  Instead of saying ‘Kira struck a blow’, I would say ‘Kira strikes a blow’ and that creates a different sensation.  With a past event, you can stop right after the action if you want.  At least to me, there’s a greater sense of urgency in present tense, which means that strike has to either hit or miss.  Then, you need a counter or a follow-up.  Uh-oh, a mistake was made and the momentum is going in the other direction.  Kira has to get some space and is nursing a bruised rib.  Where’s an opening for a strike?  I didn’t know that character could that.  The terrain is falling apart and there’s no time to gracefully get out of the way, so you gotta move quickly.  There’s that opening and the battle is done.

I’ll fully admit that Present Tense and battles aren’t for everyone, but they’ve become one of my strengths.  In fact, they tend to be what I get the most compliments about.  Also the most complaints because it comes off as ‘telling’.  My opinion there is the alternative is to make the battles rather bland and not describe a lot of the action.  I know that’s not uncommon in fantasy books where the fights seem to happen in the blink of an eye and are bookended by either dialogue or exposition.  Probably to my own detriment, I don’t enjoy writing that way.  As I’ve been told a few times, my books read like action movies and that’s where I really tried to go with Quest of the Brokenhearted.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t do this in Past Tense, but I don’t normally see it done in that style.  Maybe I’m just not looking at the right books, which is fair.  Still, battle scenes tend to be more of a movie/TV staple because you want the audience to feel like they’re in the moment.  Once you get a reader’s adrenaline pumping, you have them hooked until the final blow.  This also means you need to have some of your battles end up being really wild and possibly messy.  You can’t start off at the extreme because you need to either increase the oomph-factor or keep it steady.  The hard part about keeping it steady is that it can create a blandness or even a numbness to the events.

Another way to increase the wildness of various battles isn’t so much make them bigger, but making them different.  Every fight that Kira has involves a different champion and battlefield.  That means there’s always a different trick she needs to figure out in order to win.  It could be using a new relic the right way, finding a weak point, or doing the unexpected, but she can’t win the same way twice.  That brings her back to an underdog status at the beginning of every fight, especially since she never knows who or what she will be facing.  The wildness depends a lot on the unknown here, which is another reason I flew by the seat of my pants with the fight scenes.  I knew how they started and sort of how they ended, but everything in the middle was on the spot.  Took a few editing runs to clear things up to make sure the moves flowed and made sense.

I know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so I might be talking to a small audience here.  What do you look for in fictional battles?

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