Originally posted on lucinda E Clarke: Please will you re-blog this post for me? Yes, I know you’ve not read it yet, but I really, really want to get the word out. In January I plan to start a new…
At least at the writing of this post, people are liking the idea of doing a collection of Ichabod Brooks short stories. I’m away until tonight, so I don’t know if things changed and a bunch of people swooped in to boo the idea. If so then tell my family to stop fixing the polls. (Joking!) Figure 10-12 at 30-35 pages would work. Leaning more toward the 10 than the 12.
There are still a few questions I have to find answers to in regards to Ichabod:
Do I keep ‘Ichabod Brooks and the City of Beasts’ as a 99 cent intro or unpublish that to make it the lead to the overall book? Doesn’t really sell any more, but who knows what will happen? Wondering if I can mention it in the blurb of the collection.
Do I remove ‘Ichabod Brooks and The Starwind Egg’ from the blog and put it into the collection? I’m leaning toward yes here since people liked it and it would simply be left in limbo. This also means I have only 9-11 stories to go. 8-10 if I put ‘City of Beasts’ into it too.
What do I do about cover art? The first had 99designs, which might be where I go this time too. Money is an issue here.
Do I try to release it next summer? This is possible even if I take January to set up stuff for ‘War of Nightfall’ and the next ‘Dawn’ story. An Ichabod story takes maybe 3-5 days to write. Editing isn’t much longer and I’d have to really do that this time. On the other hand, I could have this in reserve for 2018 when I’m not sure if I’ll have the vampires or a 3rd Bedlam book ready.
What do I call this collection? ‘The Adventures of Ichabod Brooks’? ‘The Chronicles of Ichabod Brooks’? Not sure yet, but part of me wants to play it off Ichabod’s dislike of bards who embellish his adventures. Many ‘The Real Adventures of Ichabod Brooks’? I was thinking of an amusing subtitle like ‘Some bards were bruised in the chronicling of these tales’ or maybe put that in the blurb.
Right now, I’m thinking of playing this by ear. 2017 is the last year of Legends of Windemere and I have another ‘Bedlam’ book coming out. Not to mention the looming specter of ‘quit and get a real job’ that seems to make a bi-weekly appointment with me at the worst possible moments.
Finally, a REALLY BIG THANKS for everyone who voted. I really appreciate it. If you didn’t get to vote then feel free to go:
This is going to be fairly short because I’m away for the weekend. Not much of an Internet connection and I’m around family, so I have to avoid being dubbed anti-social. I’ll do my best with the WordPress app that loves to crash, but I might only be active in the mornings and evenings until Monday. I’ll be home tomorrow, but I’m getting back just in time for the Giants to take on the Steelers. We’ll see what happens in general.
On Wednesday, I showed off a rough sketch from Jason for The Spirit Well cover. It looks awesome. My hope is to release the book by next weekend or early the following week. This time of year is full of events that play havoc with my schedule. It also means I’ll be delaying the ‘character interviews’ by a week. Part of it was to promote the new book, but I need it to be released for that to make sense. Not that I don’t enjoy promoting other authors, but the initial plan was to get my own work some hype. It changed to be a shared endeavor, so I want to keep it there. Worst case scenario, I’ll promote one of the bundles. The thing is that the first one scheduled deals specifically with Dariana whose big book is The Spirit Well.
Aside from packing, seeing ‘Moana’, and dealing with an insurance issue, I made some progress on Warlord of the Forgotten Age. The champion prophecy has really been turned on its head with all these revelations. Finally got things to settle as the big battle kicked off and all, but one secret has come to light. I’m aiming to finish the battle and move on to the final chapter and acknowledgement page by Wednesday. I’ll be doing a test run on that last part next Thursday. It’s still weird thinking that this is the end and every finished section drives the point home. Suggestions have been made to keep the series going, but I know this is how it should be. Dragging something on until it’s lost its luster and nothing more than a husk doesn’t feel natural to me. The champions will be retired here and appear only as cameos or mentioned in passing. I think after nearly 19 years of activity, they deserve the break and another cast should get my attention. At least I have a year before I publish it though.
In case you were wondering, the name of the blog will remain ‘Legends of Windemere’ even when I move on to another series. All of the other heroes are technically legends of this world, so I think it still fits. Next year will certainly be interesting with me trying to find projects for my time. January is definitely going to be a gear shift period where I outline Clyde’s series and consider the next step. Can’t forget about Bedlam, Ichabod, and Dawn too.
Goals of the week?
Finish writing Warlord of the Forgotten Age.
Possibly publish Legends of Windemere: The Spirit Well.
Blurbs for Chasing Bedlam.
Keep reading ‘Fairy Tail’.
If possible, start editing Chasing Bedlam.
Consider responses to Thursday polls.
FINAL NOTE!
This is a belated announcement since it made no sense to make a post that would only be a few sentences long.
December 1, 2016 = 4 Year WordPress Anniversary
I’ve managed to stick around here for 4 years. Wow. Time certainly flies when you’re writing, putting out books, and repeatedly revealing you’re a nervous wreck that’s in dire need of padded walls. Enjoy the weekend.
(Out for the weekend without a laptop, but I’ll try to respond to comments through my traitorous phone.)
Island of Pallice, Garden of Uli, Helgard, Aintaranurh, and Binhadar Falls. Five corrupted temples have been challenged and defeated over the course of Legends of Windemere. Not without a lot of loss and suffering. Trust me, it isn’t a spoiler that we got this far because at least one champion had to reach The Spirit Well unless the whole thing was that the Baron wins. At least it won’t happen this early on since I still have three books to go after this.
It’s strange being at this stage of the series even though I’ve run it through my head for over a decade. This ends the long path of temples and challenges the gods set up to do two things. One is that they are the power centers of the Baron’s curse, which is why they were targeted for corruption. The other is that they are designed to push the champions to new levels of power and awaken whatever abilities are within them. After that . . . well, things do go off the rails at the end of this one, but that’s the fun here. Three more books to go after The Spirit Well, which covers some interesting ground. That’s for another time that we’ll call 2017.
I’m sitting here wishing I could tell people about this temple and the story that revolves around it. Without going into details, this is the one that no champion has ever officially visited. Even Binhadar Falls was found by one or two groups in the past with lethal results. The Spirit Well is a total mystery to everyone . . . sort of. I will say that Dariana went there once on her own, but wiped the memory. She’s following her own breadcrumbs that have been hidden for centuries. One can only wonder what other mysteries about her past will be unearthed during this. I’ll touch on Dariana in a week or two because her existence is a spoiler that I want to share after this book comes out.
So, where did the Spirit Well come from? This and Binhadar Falls were the two that never got mentioned or planned in the game. The previous four were either challenged or, in the case of Aintaranurh, mentioned before the final session. I remember there being a mark on a game map that involved a jungle, which is where Binhadar Falls came from. The Spirit Well was simply me looking at what I already did. Underground had been touched on, but not like this. I wanted a sense of abandonment and claustrophobia in this temple because it’s the final challenge. How do you push a character like Dariana, who is immortal and psychic, to her limits? You bury her alive and surround her with the dead that might not be happy to be there. Everything rolled into life after that including pieces of her past.
Really hoping the last stage of temples and the first part of the ‘end’ is a hit. How do other authors deal with hitting a point in a book or series when they can see the grand finale in reach?
Legends of Windemere 