Today, I’m turning over the floor to a familiar face around here and the blogosphere—the awe-inspiring Charles Yallowitz. Take it away, Charles!
Thank you to L. Marie for hosting this exciting and informative blog post. Well, at least I hope this is entertaining, but I can’t guarantee any of those three things.
The newest volume of Legends of Windemere focuses on one of the heroes, Delvin Cunningham, returning to his homeland. He comes from the Yagervan Plains where people live in nomadic tribes, but he was separated from his family at the age of eight. Left adrift on a chunk of ice in the northern ocean, the child crossed into a neighboring kingdom and has never returned until now. So, what is the point of having a hero return to his home?
Cover by Jason Pedersen
First of all, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Legends of…
Uh, it’s staying small . . . Is WordPress trying to make me write for ants? I apologize for the eye-strain. Although, you could click on the book title, which will bring you to the Amazon page and you can see it full sized. This is where I’d say you can buy it too, but I have too much . . . oh . . . never mind.
Seriously though, I’m happy the book is doing so well because I needed some good news this year. I know it’s only 3 days into 2016, but it’s kind of been a continuation of 2015 and its terribleness. Not going to get into it here. One thing I will ask is in regards to the Top 100 lists on Amazon. Why is there shape-shifter/lycanthropy romance erotica on nearly every fiction list? I know Sword & Sorcery is commonly defined as fantasy with action (sex?) that incorporates magic (transformation?) and swords (there’s a long list of lewd jokes here), but come on. Try to have some understandable rationale. Especially since it appears that nobody can outsell erotica. You know what, do what you want to do because obviously people prefer to read one-handed and with no pants?
By now you might have caught an edge or openness to how I’m talking. While I’m gearing up to edit Crossing Bedlam this week, which means I’m letting my filters down to keep Cassidy and Lloyd as they are. Seems to bleed over. Now, let’s get on with the 2016 Author Goals:
Let’s get the big one out of the way. I plan on publishing Tribe of the Snow Tiger, Charms of the Feykin, and The Spirit Well by the end of the year. Those cover the last 3 temples and set everything up for the final act of the series. Not the final battle exactly because a disaster strikes at the end of Book 12 that needs to be fixed in Book 13, Book 14 focuses on an important side mission of supporting characters, and then the big bad Baron gets to flex his muscles. Still not sure what I’m calling the last book. I still wish I knew where I wrote down the great title I had 2 years ago. Anyway, I’m going to be writing the first drafts of the last 3 books since the 3 for this year have already been written and only need editing. That means 2017 will be a smaller writing year since I’ll be outlining the next series on my list. I’m going to wait a year or 2 after Book 15 before I did an epilogue book for one of the survivors. That’s a long plan.
Guess who’ll be back for another summer adventure! I’ll be writing this story up in January since it’s outlined and won’t take long. I’m thinking a June release and I’ll be using beta readers in the spring. This is an easy project that will be a great way to revive the author mojo after the long break. Yeah. I didn’t get to any editing like I had planned.
Raven’s Hold Sequel
I know people liked this and wanted a sequel. I’m going to try and write one after Ichabod and before I dive back into Windemere. Characters, plot, and outline are ready to go, but I have a feeling it won’t be as good as the first. The monsters have been revealed, so there’s not suspense beyond the twist I have at the end. Oddly enough, this feels like a common problem in horror since the fun of the first one is that you don’t know what to expect.
The story line is that Corvus and Dawn are running a resort company that gives them access to several cities. So they can get victims without drawing too much attention to themselves. Dawn gets bored and convinces Corvus to invite special guests for a game. Whoever eliminates the most of these guests wins, but Dawn promises to reveal Corvus to the world if she wins. She gets to do the killing (not by her own hand) while he has to drive his targets insane. So every chapter is more about who will get the victim, how it will end, and how the targets interact with each other. Like I said, it seems to lack the oomph of the original right now. Funny thing is that I have a better idea for a third book, which would return to atmosphere of the original.
As last time, I won’t be editing this book and giving it to the audience in its raw form. It’s a Halloween treat, so typos could add to the horror. 😛
Crossing Bedlam
I’m excited about this one, so I really hope I get it ready by February 12th. Half of January and February will be about hyping this book. If you’ve been with me since 2013 then you probably remember the kinds of Windemere posts I made before spoilers were a problem. You’re getting that here. Since theBedlam series doesn’t have an ongoing plot, I don’t have to worry about that. Just Cassidy and Lloyd surviving and getting into more cross country trouble. This does pose a rough question:
What do I choose as their second adventure?
If this year runs smoother than expected then I might even release a second book of this series near the end of the summer. Depends on if I can write, edit, and cover art it in time. I said yesterday that I had 9-10 other adventures, but without an ongoing plot, I can’t figure out which one to take. There’s one that I might drop too. It involved them capturing a celebrity for Hollywood, which is now run by fans who wish to keep their idols in captivity. Cassidy and Lloyd get dragged into a rebellion led by other celebrities, but that’s as far as I got. Problem with this is I spent so much time establishing that this is our world in chaos that I kind of want to use real celebrities. I don’t know how far I can go with this. Sure fake names could work, but Lloyd is the type who would give big hints as to who they are interacting with. It’s really a silly, stubborn author issue. Maybe I can make a poll with the plots (minus the one I tagged as a the finale) and see what people think.
Anyway, that’s the big plan that I’m sure very few people read entirely through. Here’s the video.
Three books will be given away. See if you are in the location noted on Goodreads to participate. I added more locations this time.
Begins 1/8/16 & ends 2/8/16
Hi Everyone! It’s now 2016 and I wanted to start the year off with a bang or I should say with a giveaway from Goodreads! All my previous giveaways have been successful and a lot of fun to do. Here’s your chance to get in on all the fun of Davey & Derek Junior Detectives. Last year I did a giveaway of Book 1, The Case of the Missing Cell Phone. If you don’t have the first one here is the link for Amazon paperback, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Create Space. Check out the 5-star reviews for both…
That’s where Legends of Windemere: The Mercenary Prince is standing right now and I hope it can break the 30,000 mark soon. It’s been dancing around this for the last two days, so it’d be nice to get into the Top 100 by the end of the first week. Then again, I think I’m on a bunch of ones for New Releases.
Now people are probably wondering why I’m on Woman’s Adventures and Men’s Adventures with this book. I’m on Sword & Sorcery, Action & Adventure, Epic Fantasy, and Vampires too, but Amazon only shows your 3 best rankings. I stumbled onto these others lists and figured it was worth doing. Nyx has a big plot line in this book alongside Delvin’s, so she should get some credit along with what happens to Trinity and the new character, Mab. I’ll admit to feeling a little guilty about stretching this information to list the categories. Then again, Sword & Sorcery is peppered with paranormal romance and shapeshifter erotica these days. Not to mention it seems new editions of Harry Potter were released in various languages on December 8th. Something about seeing 3 version of ‘Sorcerer/Philosopher Stone’ on the same ranking page is weird.
Anyway, I’m trying to think of ways to promote the new book. I’ve used my regular sites and have half a month of hype coming. The other half will be Crossing Bedlam, but we’ll get to that in a bit. I’m thinking of going back to scheduling tweets the day before with one going live every 3 hours. This means I’ll turn up more in the ever flowing feeds of Twitter. The hard part is the new school schedule makes that really tough. I probably have to accept that some tweets will be one behind the other instead of divided by retweets. This is really all I have in mind since I won’t do freebies and I already set up a bunch of guest posts. I mean, I know of some tactics I could use, but they would require the discarding of all shame and self-respect.
Getting back to the first release of 2016 . . . I haven’t touched it yet. This week is going to be all about editing. Funny thing is I have targets in mind to straighten things up. Lloyd will lose a few jokes that don’t work and Cassidy will get some extra stuff about her mother. I want Lloyd to explain why so many serial killers end up with machetes too. Think I need to clean up some of Katie’s parts as well. Didn’t really put this through beta reading, but my determination to do a February 5th or 12th makes that an impossibility at this point. Need to make contact about cover art too now that the holidays are over and the kid is going back to school.
Honestly, I’m focusing more on figuring out what the second book will be about. I have a list of 9-10 stories that Lloyd and Cassidy can stumble into. I say 9-10 only because one might be impossible if I remain too picky. I did manage to write all the blurbs for the first book, which I’ll share at some point when things settle down.
This feels like it would be a ‘goal post’, but I’m saving that for tomorrow and making it for the upcoming year. Partially because that needs more thought and also because the last week saw me get a whopping nada done on new projects. All I did was jot down that Cassidy gets amorous when she has tequila, which had to be done. The woman really didn’t have any weak points unlike Lloyd who is distracted by women, alcohol, food, pointy objects, shiny objects, and his own voice.
Uncover the origin of Windemere and the champions. JEMSBOOKS Legends of Windemere, The Mercenary Prince Jason Pedersen (www.jasonpedersen.com) the cover artist Behind the Legends of Windemere Thank you to Janice for letting me write a guest blog and help promote … Continue reading →
Charles E. Yallowitz is the epic fantasy writer behind LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE and he is planning to branch out into the post-apocalyptic action comedy genre in 2016. Having spent most of his life wanting to be an author and even going to college for a Writing Arts degree, Charles went full-time in 2012 and hasn’t looked back yet. Partially because he’s scared of what he’ll see in his own shadow. When not writing, he’s watching TV, suffering on an exercise bike, or cooking. He lives in New York with the voices in his head, a wife, a rambunctious son, and his parents, so it’s a wonder that he hasn’t fallen asleep while writing this bio.
Seriously though, Charles jumped from one office or food industry job to another until he decided that he wanted to take his own life by the horns. He made a blog in December of 2012…
I figure I’m not talking to anybody, so the Dawn Fang questions will be saved for next week along with the Mercenary ones I forgot. That means 2 Questions 3 along with 3 Ask-A-Characters. Why? Because I’ll be editing Crossing Bedlam and outlining, so I wanted to put up some simple posts. Still need to think up posts for when the hype stuff is over. Wait. This isn’t what this post is supposed to be about. Here we go:
How you doing?
How would you want to be doing?
What was the last song you were listening to? (Hate My Life by Theory of a Deadman here.)
Happy and Healthy New Year to Everyone!
(Hopefully I can make another post soon with a high ranking for the new book. Those Top 100 lists are so much more elusive these days.)
