I recently discovered Sara’s blog, Rough Diplomacy. Sara is a veteran of Active Duty Air Force and Navy Reserves, plus a Bioinformatics graduate, and her blog reflects her diverse interests. More than anything, however, it highlights how passionate she is about history—and military history in particular. With her permission, I am sharing here some of the wonderful material I have come across as part of my Fun Historical Facts series.
One of Sara’s posts, which is of special interest to authors, deals with the subject of US food rations from the War of Independence todate. As Napoleon famously observed, amateurs discuss tactics; professionals discuss logistics. A lesson all writers should heed in their tales!
“C’est la soupe qui fait le soldat” (The soup makes the soldier)
~ Napoleon
The American Revolutionary War
Armies can’t march on empty stomachs. This simple truth has defined warfare from Ancient Greece (when fighting had…
Almost forgot to use this teaser. People seemed to like the concept of a certain character and I’m happy to share his debut. It’s actually getting rather difficult to get this guy involved because he’s trying to stay neutral, so it’s a special joy whenever I get to use him. It means every scene needs to drip with his personality. Hope that comes across from this excerpt.
The possible steps between biography and fiction seem to increase from year to year. Ian Jack, writing in the Guardian in 2003, commented, “Writing one’s own personal history used to be called autobiography. Now, more and more, it is called memoir.” Since then, the variety of memoirs has proliferated: we have the traditional memoir, the constructed one, the fictionalised and finally the fictional. This last categorization may still be greeted by a furore as some degree of “truth” is still demanded of the genre.
Biographies may trace accurately the life of someone, usually a person, well-known for their achievements or notorious for the life they’ve led. Though stuffed with facts and footnotes and even using the actual words of their subject culled from letters, diaries and interviews, the biographer usually remains somewhat detached presenting an overview of the…
Spotlight and giveaway time! First, I am going to make sure you have an idea of what book you will soon be entering a giveaway for, then introduce you to the author, and, finally, give you the details of the giveaway itself.
This time around the giveaway is for a novel I reviewed last week and immensely enjoyed: Blade and Bone. Take a look at the review if you don’t mind spoilers for this third installment of the series.
With every society, you have different factions and levels that come into play when changes occur. One of the most common groups in vampire stories is the noble class, which stems from how the vampires were originally immortal princes, kings, and other nobles. This has carried over to other time periods where they come up as businessmen, crime bosses, and whatever groups fit at the top of the undead heap. So, I definitely had to consider if this was something that would come about in Windemere and how Clyde would fit within it.
Both of those issues had simple answers. Clyde has always been a borderline anarchist and outsider, so he wouldn’t fit in it at all. It isn’t that he would openly rail against the system, but he couldn’t possibly fit in that kind of world. This was especially true when I enhanced his thief side, which opened the idea that he would work with the nobles if his goals matched with their own. This tempered him a bit since it meant he could work with others to some extent. Yet, I made sure that he would have some friction when them because the vampiric high society had to maintain an air of superiority. Work with a ‘lesser being’ and be friendly, but still consider yourself better type of thing. Of course, Clyde would take opportunities to poke at them when he could.
The other question was if this would come about in the first place. Considering this is a fantasy world where kings and queens truly exist then it would make sense for vampires to mimic that for their own world. After all, they started as mortals, so this is what they are used to. The changes would be created around the idea that their rulers can’t die of old age and heirs were created instead of born. For some systems, this ended up being houses or clans with an inner hierarchy. I didn’t go that route, but made them families divided by global territories. Some of them had ancient capitals for all vampire-kind while others controlled roaming military forces or supplied food to others. You get a sense of this since it starts falling apart after the Great Cataclysm.
The central governing body of all vampire society is the Council, which has a seat for every family. It grows and shrinks a bit, but the numbers tends to be stable. It really depends on if Duragians, hunters, or adventurers take on an entire family and succeed. This is why the Council is designed to connect the global society of vampires and survive upheavals that are short of acts of gods. The downside of this is that there is always infighting, bickering, and power moves. After all, this is a political group as well as a social one, both of which have reputations for being messy. Thankfully, this side of the system pretty much wrote itself since I was focusing more on a few members. Some nobles are good and some are bad with their goals going across the spectrum.
Vampire nobility always feels like a necessity, especially in a world where humans have their own nobility. This is what takes the species and raises them above the other types of undead. Ghosts, zombies, liches, and the other rotting rabble tend to lurk in the shadows as hordes or solitaries. Vampires are the ones that try to be more human in their society and blend into the cities to some extent. It’s almost like they’re trying to retain some of their old lives or rise above them by creating a nobility class. It is fun to see how they function in a story where they aren’t the focal point too. Clyde might play nice and lend a hand, but this is his series and he’s not in that circle.
What do you think about vampire societies and their gravitation towards ‘nobility’ classes?
Harmony is a good friend of mine, and one of the other authors at Story Empire. She is like me, in that neither of us can firmly stick to one genre. I think it makes us versatile. She’s here to tell us about her newest book, Backstage. Please make her feel welcome.
Hello, everyone. Harmony here. First up, huge thanks to Craig for hosting me today! He’s letting me visit today so that I can tell you about my latest book, Backstage. It is an erotic romance novel and deals with some of the sexual coercion scandals that have hit the acting industry in the last year.
Here’s a bit about the book for you:
SHE’S A HOPEFUL ACTRESS
Just when Emma thinks she’s found love. Just when her big chance comes. Just as she finds a little confidence at long last. Right then, it all goes horribly wrong.
In early April, I’m aiming to release War of Nytefall: Loyalty. This is my newest series that focuses on the vampires of Windemere. It’s strange starting from scratch again and I have no idea if established readers will follow me here. All I can do is promote and hope for the best.
Of course, I need to set up a blog tour of some sort. So, I’m going to see if anyone wants to lend a hand. There are going to be two categories for this:
I can send an HTML copy of the ‘Book is Live’ post that I’ll put on here. This is simple, but I’ll admit that it doesn’t really garner a lot of comments and traffic outside of my own blog. Still, if you want to help and can’t think of anything for #2 then this is the way to go.
A personalized post for your blog on a topic that we can discuss below. These might take a few extra days to write and get out, but they can create a lot of comments and traffic. A lot of this depends on how my son’s Spring Break goes, but I might have more me time than I realized during that period.
Hopefully, this new series starts off with a big bang and can reach the same levels as Legends of Windemere. It’s going to be a tough trick since it’s much more competitive on the Amazon lists and books just don’t sell like they used to. Here’s hoping a strong blog tour will pave the way.
First, the above video is of a song the turned up on Pandora at an odd time. My friend and I were talking about English versions of anime themes being mediocre or lackluster. This is really good and I was impressed to see other themes including one of Cruel Angel Thesis. Makes me wonder how these work and others don’t, but I felt like sharing.
I’m going to admit that I’m writing this under a panic attack, so it might be brief. I was waiting for it to pass, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening. Thankfully, most of the week was okay with only a few mild attacks. I was able to write through those at a slow pace, but enough to put me in a good spot. On the plus side, I’ve been able to identify the catalysts for each attack and most of them have been happening at night too. Once I do enough deep breathing, I pass right out. Not sure if it’s because I relax or I’m knocking myself out by accident, but sleep is sleep these days.
In the realm of writing, I’m about a week away from finishing War of Nytefall: Lost and then I’ll have just enough time to do a final edit on War of Nytefall: Loyalty before my son hits Spring Break. I might go a little over, but Passover is at the beginning of the break. That means we’ll be hanging around the house for a few days, so I can finish up before that weekend. I like the idea of writing the second book before I’ve published the first because I can tighten the continuity up. For example, one character revealed his origin, but part of me thinks I did it earlier and I can do a check on the last editing run. I like this newer version better too. The new characters are coming together nicely as well, but one of them has really branched into something else. I had to change his powers up yesterday because of something he did in the last section I wrote. Totally spontaneous, but it added a really diabolical side to him. I was sad to see two of the old powers go away, but they weren’t going to make any sense. Cover art is coming along nicely too and I’m really excited to see it and share soon.
As you can tell from the tags, I had to take care of taxes this week. My wife did most of the legwork because she has more stuff to fill out and things go smoother when she’s in charge of it. Roles reversed, she forgets things and I try to get things moving quickly. Only a few things were forgotten this time, which I was able to get to the accountant the next day. I have no idea what’s going to happen after this because taxes, stocks, and the like make my head spin. Never had a mind for math, which drives some people nuts. It isn’t like I haven’t tried. I simply don’t have the brain wiring for numbers.
The rest of the week was a little messy with another Nor’Easter. That’s number 3 in 2 weeks and we might get a 4th by mid-week. School wasn’t canceled, so I had to drive through it, which was mildly harrowing. The storm was over by the afternoon too, so going after lunch was fine. That helped me grab the copies of Dragonball Z waiting for me at the library. I’m amazed at how quickly I can read this books and the speed that the stories go at. The anime takes multiple episodes for a single move, but Vegeta is already defeated and back in space by the end of Volume 4. I’m still enjoying the story and it’s interesting to see how it went before the anime. Might do Yu Yu Hakusho next or finally finish Bleach.
Since I’m sharing everything, Friday was a little rough. My son had a field trip and abruptly got scared that he would throw up on the bus. I wasn’t there when the freaking out started, but it was frustrating because we’d talked about it many times. He said it was different for field trips and now it looked like it wasn’t. It took about 10 minutes of letting him cry before he had a little food and then was happy to be off to school. Nothing happened and he had fun, so I guess this was a victory. The next big test is a birthday party in a few weeks to see if he’ll be okay eating or at least sitting in the group instead of having a tantrum. We might have to pull something out of our stored rewards to entice him into doing it. Babies R Us is going out of business, so I picked up a bunch of things cheap. He got a soft Pokeball pillow for going on the bus and he’s been clinging to it like a newborn monkey on a soft towel. I might save the big thing I got for that birthday party event.
This week I’m aiming to dive into the writing and get it done. I’m at the more action-packed leg of the adventure, so my confidence should be rising. The rest has been a lot of ‘chaos’ and talking while the origin of a new character is revealed. So, what are the goals?
Finish first draft of War of Nytefall: Lost
Gather volunteers for War of Nytefall: Loyalty debut. (Post tomorrow to explain.)
Rest when I can
Biking
Get back int Sword Art Online
Collect pictures for the June blog posts
Request the rest of the DBZ books because these are quick reads.
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 poet and essayist K.D. Rose. You can catch up … Continue reading →
I recently discovered Sara’s blog, Rough Diplomacy. Sara is a veteran of Active Duty Air Force and Navy Reserves, plus a Bioinformatics graduate, and her blog reflects her diverse interests. More than anything, however, it highlights how passionate she is about history—and military history in particular. With her permission, I am sharing here some of the wonderful material I have come across as part of my Fun Historical Facts series.
Licence Obtained to use image – Copyright: 
SHE’S A HOPEFUL ACTRESS
