Legends of Windemere Fantasy Bundle #1
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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Book Reading at the Cafe and interview with Mary Smith
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7 Tips to Traversing the Fantasy Countryside
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?
- The path with tons of sunlight and pretty flowers isn’t always the safest. Sure, the ground looks even and you see the plume of smoke from a chimney just over the rolling hills. Just make sure to ask around about that route. Those flower patches might be growing off all the bodies that were left behind. After all, what kind of witch or monster would make their lair look like a terrifying lair?
- Just because you followed a road up onto the sky doesn’t mean you can immediately walk on the clouds. There are dead ends on the ground, so you can certainly find some up high. Unlike a wall or gate, this one has a death-promising plummet when you make a misstep. Toss some coins or acorns or whatever you have to see if they stay afloat or fall. Then draw straws to see who goes first because there could always be a weight limit.
- Don’t camp out in the middle of the road. It’s night and you’re tired, but don’t be a jerk. People still need to travel and going around your pot of funny-smelling beans isn’t a welcomed detour.
- The countryside can be pleasant and relaxing as you go by. Not a care in the world and you can feel the tension flowing out of your muscles. A mild euphoria may come over your senses and the world is a brighter place. This doesn’t mean you can take corn, apples, or whatever crop happens to be growing near the road. Not every orchard is public property. Go to the market and buy a bushel like everyone else, buddy.
- No shame in going around the mountains. Time is not as limited as you think since you’ll probably be captured and held for longer than the detour would have been. Not to mention rock slides, storms, avalanches, giant spiders, broken ankles, and all sorts of fun that comes with a rocky path. Just go around or find a proven road that shows signs of heavy use in the last six months. No footprints means be cautious.
- Doesn’t hurt to stop and enjoy the scenery. Adventuring and traveling is tough work, which takes you all over the place. Do you really want to say you went somewhere, but have no memory of what it looked like? You don’t have to take a long time to get a few memories of a place. Sit under a tree, smell some flowers, skip some stones, or whatever else comes to mind when you have a few minutes. At the very least, the horses will enjoy the break.
- The swamp is not a short cut! Doesn’t matter what the friendly old woman with the unfriendly cackle said. DO NOT GO INTO THE SWAMP!
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Tagged 7 tips, author, countryside, epic fantasy, fantasy, high fantasy, Legends of Windemere, lists, magic, traveling, Windemere, world building, writing
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The Working Out Author: Everyone Has a Plan and an Opinion
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.)
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Tagged biking, exercise, flab, gym, muscles, opinions, time, weights, working out, writing
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…have yeez been introduced to my Jack Calder characters yet?…
…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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Thursday – A Little Personal – Interview by Steve DeWinter
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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Detour Trail, on Lisa Burton Radio
Coming at you with 1.21 jigawatts of power, all across the known universe and dimensions you’ve never even heard of, this is Lisa Burton Radio. The only show out there that interviews the characters you love to read about.
I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and we’re broadcasting remotely today from the field just outside my studio. This is because, my special guest today can’t fit inside the little Airstream that houses the studio. “Welcome to the show, Jake.”
“Lisa, Hi! Nice field, by the way.”
“Thanks. Now for our listeners out there, you’re actually a mule. Can you tell me a little about your parents?”
“The first thing I remember is my mother–she was a beautiful red mare–red roan they called her. She was so beautiful and gentle. She taught me manners–and to be careful around humans. My father? I only saw my father once; he was a…
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Castle Contractors: We Don’t Charge By the Brick
Minas Tirith
Watch your head because people aren’t very careful with things like ladders, planks of wood, and anything else long that can hit a man when you’re turning around. We like our comedy classic and simple around here. Now, what can I do for you? I know you’re here to buy a castle since we don’t make anything else. Don’t care if you’re royalty either since time is money in my business. Pretty sure you want to get your perfumed butt into a nice throne room ASAP too. Would you rather I be polite and waste time or be rude and get down to business? I thought so. Now, what are we looking at?
Sounds like you want a fortress since this is being built out of a mountain. That makes material costs lower since we use the stone that’s already there. We’ll still need wood, glass, and metal to give you more than a fancy-looking cave. Let me take a look at the area you’re eyeing. Good size and shape there and I’m not talking about your wife. That’s a joke, sir, so try to laugh or this will take longer than it should. Now, I can see that it’ll be more vertical than your average castle. This means you’ll need to buy a stair package, which is by the flight instead of the step. Much more cost effective that way and it lets you get more of the fun stuff.
How many rooms are you looking at? We can have odd numbers, but we do ask that you give us a range. This way we know the minimum and the maximum. It’s rare that we hit the top number since people always overestimate the space. One rule we do follow is that you only get one throne room. No reason to have multiples . . . Well, there is one person that has one for every season, but that’s a special circumstance. You aren’t a wizard or god, are you? Thought not, but had to ask. Ballrooms can take up a lot of square footage and in a castle like this, you’re looking at one taking up an entire floor. Now, we can have buildings fan out from the base. This would be your barracks, farmer houses, and anything that requires close access to the gate. Yes, this allows for more bedrooms, kitchens, and . . . do you write down that you want 60 bathrooms? That’s twice as many bedrooms that you listed. I mean, we do have over 100 styles of that room, but . . . you want one of each? Well, this got weird quickly.
Now for the defenses because your castle is your fortress. I wouldn’t recommend a moat because of the surroundings. The soil in that region can be eroded fairly quickly unless you’re willing to pay for brick reinforcement. That or stagnant water since it wouldn’t be able to move much. On the other hand, we can make a wall that connects to the mountain and put a trench around that. We have a few thinkers that can give you ideas for the trench like spikes, snakes, or whatever else doesn’t need water. There’s a package that includes archer towers and two boiling oil vats. Honestly, the core of a castle’s defenses is the army you make and that decides on what you have. No point in archer towers if you lack archers. In that case, I’d recommend some hidden rooms beneath the wall for guards to hide in. Catapults can help too and we have a special on buildings that have one on the roof. They’re tall enough to fire over the wall too.
That’s really it. Castles are all about the details, which you can go over with one of our architects. Colors, room locations, and decorations aren’t my area. Choose the employee with the least amount of liquor in them. Their work is always being damaged by raids and wars, so they aren’t the happiest bunch.
Posted in Olde Shoppe Stories
Tagged author, building, castles, epic fantasy, fantasy, fiction, high fantasy, Legends of Windemere, settings, stores, sword & sorcery, Windemere, writing, ye olde shoppe
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Branding
Craig here again. It’s a challenge to write these tips and tricks every time, because so many of the items are debatable. I hate to take a hard line stance, but I do for the sake of the comments that trickle in during the week. The topic today is branding.
Not that kind of branding. The kind where authors promote products. As you appear across cyberspace, what kind of recognizable materials do you use so the masses will recognize you? Chances are, you’ll have a blog, the popular social media accounts, and possibly a newsletter. What kind of branding do you use to tell people this is some of your work?
You will also make guest appearances on blogs, maybe blog talk radio, the occasional video of some kind. While these post are all different, your branding is what sews them all together as you – the author.
My first…
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Meet Guest Author Donna O’Ferrall…
I wrote my books because my love of music sparked my imagination and I found the characters that I had in my mind would become vibrant when listening to music. I would write down descriptions, ages, dates and an intro and it went from there really. I listened to each music track and wrote down everything I imagined and found that I could weave the music into the storylines. I wasn’t sure if it would work to start with but then I free flow write, so I added poetry and fictional lyrics and found that thankfully the stories flowed together along with the music.
Then, having written my first book, I had some reviews back and they were very encouraging, saying that I should write a volume two. And so I agreed and set to work on this. I then put a tweet on twitter and asked if anyone would…
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