WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

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I seldom plug projects on GoFundMe, Indiegogo, or other funding websites, but the other day I stumbled across a really cool, exciting, and great looking comic project over on Indiegogo.  The cover image and description grabbing my attention, leading me to check out the creator/artist Mitch Breitweiser’s YouTube channel, The Last Comic Artist.  This talented artist and his co-creators’s excitement and plans for the project getting me even more interested, causing me to fund it.  And I thought I’d share it with you guys, so you can take a look and see if it is something you might be interested in funding.

RED ROOSTER: GOLDEN AGE

“LIGHT BRAVES THE DARKNESS, DARKNESS FEARS THE DAWN.”

For centuries, the mantle of The Red Rooster has passed from generation to generation to fight mankind’s most ancient and terrible evils.  Now Frank Cooper must rise to the challenge, as a cabal of his…

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Teaser Tuesday: Rayne of Lacarsis #fantasy

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

Cover Art by Sean Harrington

This is a longer section that I intended, but the introduction of Rayne didn’t have any decent cut off points.  You get a sense of how this character is going to start though.  She plays an important role in the story and I really enjoyed writing her.  There’s something about Rayne that reminds me of Kira when I started designing her all those years ago.  It’s funny since I created them separately and only put Rayne in Quest of the Brokenhearted after several failed versions.  Maybe she was one of the keys I needed to get this idea rolling.

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Who Lives Here? – Guest Post by Emily Gmitter…

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

Who Lives Here?

Image from Pixabay, Title: Broken

Who lives here? Everywhere I look, I see boxes. Boxes piled one on the other, against every wall. Boxes delivered but never opened. Things bought but never used. Magazines and mail, unopened, sit in unsteady piles on the coffee table, alongside odds and ends that also did not belong there, but which had no choice but to make that table their home. On every chair sit empty food containers and soda cans … guests who have long since outworn their welcome. 

Who lives here? I wondered, as my teary eyes took in the disarray, as my feet wandered cautiously through the cluttered rooms. Pain ripped my heart. I thought I knew who lived here. I did know the name. I even knew the face. But I didn’t know … this.

Her home is full of things old and new…

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Revolving Around a Tournament: Combat and Characters

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

Yu Yu Hakusho

Quest of the Brokenhearted has two sides to its story.  One is the character development of Kira Grasdon from the gutter to either the grave or a position where she is happy.  The other is the central tournament that involves a series of challenging battles for a more physical development.  This is a tough setting and plot device to keep going because it’s very dependent on action.  Yet, I did find a few ways to make this work or at least stay interesting.

  1. The tournament involves more than just Kira and the monsters, which helped to increase the scale.  Other competitors turning up allows for team-ups and outside encounters since everyone wants to reach the end.  You get to see how others handle the stress and idea that death is inevitable.  This brings a contrast with Kira’s borderline suicidal tendencies because many of them want to live without question.  I also get to use these characters as fodder to demonstrate the deadliness of the situation, which helps to create a sense of weight to events.
  2. One problem I tended to have with tournament stories is that you always have some match-ups that never happen.  A character who is gone in the first round won’t get to do anything else and that means sacrifices need to be made.  I bypassed this by never showing a division of rounds.  It’s a rather loose tournament with the Shadow Earl choosing who he wants to fight at his leisure.  Other times, he lets the champions decide the who, where, when, and target of their fights.  This is decided off-screen because a lot of this is about catching Kira and the other competitors by surprise.  Since the action follows Kira, the readers know she will always be involved to some extent, so I wanted her opponents to be a mystery until they debut.  Hopefully, this creates suspense.
  3. Due to the tournament being the central event, I felt that I needed to add at least one battle into each chapter.  This way there isn’t much of a lull between the action that is going to move the main plot.  The fights also wear on Kira and force her to consider her emotional state, which is why they are more intricate than my previous action scenes.  I wanted to make sure they stood out, so every champion has a trick and each battlefield is different.  There’s a lot of back-and-forth in these fights and none of them were designed to be easy.  ‘Design’ is the best word too since I had to sit down and work out the abilities, landscapes, and obstacles before every chapter.  I couldn’t always fly by the seat of my pants because I needed the fights to flow to avoid repetition and staleness.
  4. In anime, characters have a habit of getting a reward either intentionally or by accident in a tournament.  This can be learning a new move in the heat of the moment or earning an opponent’s weapon.  I tried to do the same thing with Kira to help her evolve and be able to handle stronger monsters.  It’s very much a video game tactic as well, but it means her strategy changes with every battle.  This is another method of keeping things fresh and exciting.  It also allowed me to create a fun supporting character for the non-combat scenes.

Action scenes have been a strength of mine since I started writing.  They’re some of my favorite scenes to write, so Quest of the Brokenhearted predominantly plays to this side of my style.  Hopefully, it works as a fun summer read with just enough weight to give Kira’s story some closure.

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A Day in the Life of An Author – Lynne Cantwell #Meetanauthor

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

eranamage's avatarLibrary of Erana

Welcome to the first in the ‘Day in the Life of…’ interviews – a new feature for 2018. Find out the daily challenges and successes of writers, characters, and other professionals involved with the writing process.

Welcome to Lynne Cantwell

Please give us a brief outline of who you are. I’m the author of about 20 books, mostly urban fantasy novels. My biggest and best-known series is the Pipe Woman Chronicles. Before that, I worked as a broadcast journalist; I’ve written for Mutual/NBC Radio News and CNN, among others. If you add up my years as a journalist and this indie author thing, I’ve been writing and editing professionally for nearly 30 years. I’m also on the staff at Indies Unlimited, a superblog for indie authors. [www.indiesunlimited.com]

Do you work at another job? If so tell us about fitting in the writing/editing. My day job is at a big law…

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N.N. Light’s Firecracker Summer Reading Giveaway!

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

July is here and normally that means getting outside and enjoying the nice weather. There’s nothing I like better than to read outside, feeling the sun’s rays heat my skin and hearing the birds chirp. Whether you’re patriotic or just love watching fireworks, you’ll oooh and ahhh this giveaway where you can win free books plus other prizes. Just click the link below to enter to win and good luck!

Firecracker Summer Reading Giveaway

Literary Giveaway Portal

July 2018 Giveaway Prizes:

$15/ £15 Amazon Gift Card donated by Rachel Brimble

In the Moment Prize Bundle including a print copy, $10 Amazon gift card, tea, mug and postcards donated by Jennifer Wilck (US only)

print copy of A Year of Romance (Books 1-4 of Dorado series) by Linda Carroll-Bradd

2 e-copy of Planting the Seeds of Love: A Novella by N. N. Light

3 e-copy of The Delancy Street Disappearances by Aaron S. Gallagher

2 e-copy of First Impressions (MacQuire Women #3) by Peggy Jaeger (US only)

e-copy of Abaddon Rising by Patsy Buker

2 e-copy of N. N. Light’s Book of Daily Inspiration by N. N. Light

e-copy of Tied Up With Strings by Madeline McEwan

e-copy of Arresting Mason by Amber Daulton

e-copy of The Queen of Paradise Valley by Cat Dubie

e-copy of You Dear Sweet Man by Thomas Neviaser

e-copy of one backlist title by Alanna Lucas (US only)

e-copy of Once Broken by D. M. Hamblin

e-copy of A Debt to the Devil by D. M. Hamblin

e-copy of Centrifugal Force by Lisa Lickel (Smashwords coupon)

e-copy of The Shining Citadel by A. L. Butcher (Smashwords voucher)

e-copy of The Colony and The Last City by RM Gilmour

5 e-copy of The Guardian Child’s Return by Diana L. Wicker

5 e-copy of Angelica by Clabe Polk

e-copy of The Wings to Fly by Lisa Gabriel

e-copy of A Crofter’s Tale by Lisa Gabriel

e-copy of Zoraida Grey and the Family Stones by Sorchia Du Bois

e-copy of Dog Fight by Diane Moat

e-copy of Tempted by the Viscount by Sofie Darling

e-copy of Somewhere My Lady (Book 1 Ladies in Time series) by Beth Trissel

e-copy of Legends of Windemere Fantasy Series Bundle #1: (Contains Books 1-3) by Charles E. Yallowitz

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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – New on the Shelves – Quest of the Brokenhearted by Charles E. Yallowitz

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz
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Getting to the Root of the Week’s Problem by Traversing the Canal: The Truth Is In There

Posted on July 7, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

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:

  1. Monday was a normal day with my son starting camp and me working on Raven’s Wrath.
  2. Tuesday started with me chipping a tooth on my cereal.  Called the dentist and got an appointment to check it out on Saturday.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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?

  1. Take son to camp, martial arts, and a handful of appointments.  I’ll be more chauffeur than author here.
  2. Dentist appointment.
  3. Write more of Raven’s Wrath.  I’ll talk more about it next week barring any overshadowing event.
  4. Try to get back into biking since I was slightly derailed.
  5. Read more ‘MAR’ and request more ‘Bleach’.
  6. Cooking if I feel like it.
  7. Come up with some outings.
  8. Get a little extra sleep since I couldn’t use the sleep apnea device for a few days.

Hope everyone has a fun weekend.

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An Overseeing Villain: The Shadow Earl

Posted on July 6, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

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.

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The 2018 Interview Series Featuring Will Macmillan Jones

Posted on July 6, 2018 by Charles Yallowitz

This gallery contains 8 photos.

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 →

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