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Originally posted on Library of Erana:
I’d like to welcome back author Robert Eggleton. Hi Alex. Thanks for inviting me back to your great book blog to update you about my debut novel. Please recap briefly about your book: Rarity from the…
Once upon a time I decided to buy a narrowboat to live so that I could escape the rat-race and pootle around England’s canals. The process is a bit like buying a used car, but with more chance of falling into water. In the end it seemed more a case of offering myself to various boats until I met one that was prepared to adopt me.
Sales Pontoon (with Ducks)
Sales marinas and boat brokerages vary drastically in aspect. Some look like scrap-yards on the Indian sub-continent. Some, at the other end of the spectrum, resemble the offices of Messrs Harland & Wolff before that little upset with the Titanic. A minority, those in the middle of the spectrum, and one that I ended up buying from eventually, are quite nice places. It is entirely a lottery. One key indicator is to find a brokerage without a parrot in…
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First order of business is mentioning that I have a new laptop. It arrived Thursday and I spent the day getting it set up. Always strange getting one computer up and running while using another to play music, check email, and do a little writing during the rebooting and downloading stages. Maybe that’s just me. Anyway, it’s going smoothly with me learning Windows 10. The keyboard has a backlight too and the hard drive doesn’t try to escape like the last one. Only problem is this precision touchpad, which is incredibly sensitive and not that precise. Still messing with the settings there. It’s just one pad with two spots for the buttons, so I tend to hit in the middle and right click instead of left click. Or I press too hard and set something off. Let’s just say this is going to take a little time.
Now, the new laptop, a parent/teacher meeting, and Tuesday’s ‘snow’ storm has caused a blip in my schedule. I was hoping to get 15 sections of Raven’s Dawn done since it’s a 31 section story. Only got 11 and I’ve got 2 weeks before a big family event. One problem is that the story isn’t as carnage-filled as the second book. It’s closer to the first where there are weird events happening while the main characters interact. I can get it done before that, but it means I won’t be editing Legends of Windemere: Path of the Traitors beforehand. That might be afterwards, but who knows because the family event goes into a week and a half of Spring Break for the kid. Here’s my 2017 project list:
Bedlam is giving me a slight headache. I’m still nervous about the blog only one for various reasons. Probably going to change up some things by removing some characters and altering others. My source material is rather repetitive in look and aspirations, which is a slight pain. The other issue is I’ve never done a full book on this blog. Short story and novella, but never novel. I hope people read and enjoy it as well as drawing attention to the series. One tough thing is that a few have told me that I shouldn’t give anything of mine out for free. Not like this, but Bedlam isn’t doing very well. My main audience is fantasy and they don’t always crossover, but this might help out.
Another Bedlam issue is that I would now have: Crossing Bedlam, Chasing Bedlam, Controlling Bedlam, and Derailing Bedlam. Which one of these is not like the others? Yeah, I need to think of a c-ing word to replace derailing. I know it’s a train adventure, but maybe I should focus on them protecting it. Chugging Bedlam sounds terrible. Careening Bedlam doesn’t seem to work either. Ugh.
Running around a bit this weekend, but I hope to get some writing done. The next few weeks and weekends are going to be a bit messy. Is it wrong that I’m already trying to drag my butt to May? How does anybody expect me to maintain a writing career when there always seems to be something going on? I don’t mind the events, but it gets rough when I’m planning around these things, taking care of my son, cooking dinners, and then being asked why I don’t have a publishing deal. The frustration is rather . . . frustrating? Might be another reason I’m not getting very far.
Plans for the week:
Dragon Hunters
You can’t have an adventure without traveling and the landscape can get pretty funky out there. Floating islands, horse-eating grass, Starbucks on every corner, oceans of clouds and other distractions that you need to be alert for. So, what are some tips for being careful on the road?
Ace Ventura
I’m not 100% certain how to start this post out. You see, I do need to lose some gut and it’s been suggested that it’s one of (some say only) reasons I have repeated back issues. Not sure I agree with that, but it’s something I should probably work on. Let’s leave the diet side of things out of this since that’s another fight. Seriously, I don’t care if one person enjoys quinoa. It’s barely flavored sand to me, so no amount of pestering will get me to eat it for any reason other than to make someone be quiet while I plot my revenge.
Anyway, ‘muscle training’ has been suggested. My wife has these resistance bands that I’m trying to use. I’m saying try because her attempts to teach me about them would have been easier to understand if it was spoken in Latin. My wife is an expert at extraneous detail when talking, but I got the gist of it. Look at list for weight amount, hook up to handholds, stand on band to keep it fixed, and move my flabby arms like I would with dumbbells. Seems easy enough to do.
The schedule is the hard part, but I think I got that:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday- Biking for 30 minutes/10 miles whichever comes last.
Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday- 15-20 minutes of the resistance bands
Saturday- Rest
I was originally thinking of doing both on the same day, but realized time would get drained and I’d be killing myself. Then again, this is the first month I’m doing it. We’ll see how I do with the resistance bands because I have a habit of getting bored. Probably play YouTube stuff while I’m working out.
So, here is where I open the floor. Do you work out to keep off the author/office worker/whatever flab? What do you do?
I will say that this is not a request for suggestions on what I should do. That may sound really cruel, but I’ve been here before. I say what I’m doing and a horde of people rush in to tell me why I’m wrong or ways to improve. This is the easiest way to make me quit it all and figure I’m doomed no matter what I do. Seriously, I’m working on a plan for me and one key component is optimism and positive energy. You might come from the right place, but that doesn’t mean it hits the other person’s happy place. Kind of like firing a warning shot to bring an ally’s attention to a trap, but you end up hitting them in the back and they fall in anyway. Now, we can discuss, but lets try to keep a friendly and supportive tone here. (This paragraph probably killed the post, but whatever. Really tired of explaining why I don’t like going to the gym and prefer to work out at home and alone.)
…the inevitable question arrived the other day, when I was Guest Speaker at The Royal University for Women in Bahrain… are the characters in the books modelled after ‘real’people?… for a split second, I felt that p’raps the audience thought the players in the novels were only figments of my imagination… heaven forfend, Mabel!
…every writer worth his/her scribbling salt will tell yeez that ‘of course our characters are real… they all live in our heads… and argue with us… and disagree with us… and cause us endless sleepless nights with their constant debating with us as to what they are supposed and supposed not to do in our narratives’… but let me hit the ‘pause’ button for a few seconds… and ‘fess up… when I re-read any of my Jack Calder series, it becomes quite apparent that subconsciously or otherwise, the characters do seem to have…
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I am pleased to have appeared on Steve DeWinter’s interview show titled Fiction Silicon Vally Spotlight. On this show, Steve features Indy authors. Here is the link to the show on YouTube.
A little bit about Steve.
You can visit him at his information site to see all his books.
Steve is a #1 Bestselling Amazon Action & Adventure Sci-Fi Author who has also co-authored two fantasy novels with Charles Dickens.
Yes! That Charles Dickens. books have hit #1 on the Amazon Children’s Action & Adventure Sci-Fi Bestseller list, #1 on the Amazon Steampunk Bestseller list, and my adult thrillers reached as high as lucky #13 on the Amazon Action & Adventure Bestseller list. I also have the distinction of having nine books in the top twenty of the Amazon Children’s Action & Adventure Sci-Fi Bestseller list all at the same time.
His books have hit #1 on the Amazon Children’s Action…
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Legends of Windemere 