Author Comforts: A Schedule to Keep Me Sane

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz
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This week I’m going to open the door to a few the things I use to get me through a project . . . week . . . day?  These are mostly going to be discussion-like posts since these things are different for every author.

Here is a tentative schedule of my day since I’ve seen a few and felt like that’s the best place to start:

5:59 AM-  Wake up before the 6 AM alarm to grumble and prepare to kick deep sleeping wife out of bed.

6 AM-  Heave ho, woman!

6:01-6:45 AM-  Check weather, prep son’s lunch for school, bathroom, and do email/blog/sales check.

6:46-7:30 AM-  Get son dressed, fed, and move all of his Thomas trains downstairs for him to play with while waiting for the bus.  He helps get paper, make grandma coffee, and mix his chocolate milk.

7:30-8:15 AM-  Son on bus and time to finish email/blog/sales.  Where the hell did these 20 other emails come from?!

8:16 AM-  Check into work out clothes.  Get distracted by text, FB message, or email.

9-10 AM-  Bike, shower, grab breakfast, and head out for errands if need be.  (Going to assume I don’t have any.)

10:01 AM-12:30 PM-  Write, outlining, and handling social media while be routinely distracted by a variety of things.  Always ends with cursing that I didn’t get as much done as I expected.

12:31 PM-  One more Youtube video, I swear!

12:32-1 PM- Make, bring in, or reheat something for lunch.  Consider working while eating, but figure I need the mental break.  Back to YouTube.

1:01-3:30 PM-  Back to wri . . . phone call . . . now back to . . . where did all these emails come from? . . . back to w . . . that’s a lot of WordPress comments . . . when was the last time I went to the bathroom? . . . got a page done! . . . THE BUS!!!!!

3:31-3:40 PM-  Unpack son’s backpack to read forms from school and notes from teacher.  Clean out his lunch bag and put snacks in for the next day.  Write part of note back to teacher if response is needed.

3:41-4 PM-  Homework for son.  Difficulty varies.

4:01-5 PM-  Set little guy up with dinner and his YouTube videos.  Check email, prep tweets for on Hootsuite, handle comments, and possibly do writing.  More than likely, I will be called to computer room every 5 minutes because he wants a different video and he hasn’t figured out the search function.  Also may be called in for snacks and drinks.  One fight about if he needs to go potty.

5:01-6 PM- Wrangle little guy off computer and play with him.  Make dinner if I’m the one cooking for the day.  Sometimes he sends me back to my laptop.  Usually it’s just sitting and playing.

6:01-6:30 PM-  Potty, tooth brushing, and shower time for son.

6:31-7 PM-  Night time YouTube videos.

7:01-whenever PM-  Hand son off to wife, go back to room, handle emails/comments/Facebook messages, and get some writing done.  Maybe watch Daily Show.

That’s pretty much the average day.

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My GRL featured with Linzé Brandon

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

John W. Howell's avatarFiction Favorites

a Purple butterfly

If you don’t know who Linzé Brandon is (and who doesn’t) you should know her blog regularly features authors and their books. Her site is titled Butterfly on a Broomstick with a subtitle of Linzé Brandon’s blog about books, writing and creative life of a writer married to a photographer.

Linzé Brandon is the pen name of a South African project manager who taught herself to read before she went to school. This started a lifelong love affair with books.
She still loves to read – anything considered romance – but also enjoys amateur sleuth and extreme science fiction books. When she is not working or writing, she likes to do cross stitch embroidery, fly fishing, painting abstracts in mixed media, archery and watching Manchester United play. She is captain of a team of soccer enthusiasts on Superbru, and love the interplay with the guys during the season.
Her favorite time…

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Fall Into Fantasy Tour: The Darkworld Series by Emma Adams

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

Welcome to the Fall Into Fantasy Tour, where we are keeping your mind off any end-of-summer blues and welcoming the cooler weather by introducing you to some incredible fantasy reads to curl up with and giving you plenty of chances to win awesome prizes!

Week 13: The Darkworld Series

Prequel Novella: Fear’s Touch

Book One: Darkness Watching

Book Two: Walking Shadow

By Emma L. Adams

This is a standalone novella, intended as a prequel to the Darkworld series. As it takes place one year before the events of Darkness Watching, it doesn’t contain any spoilers (although it does hint at things which will come into play later in the series).

Freakish powers and staring demon eyes aren’t part of Claudia’s plans for the future – and neither is ending up stuck at the gloomy, isolated University of Blackstone. But bad life decisions are the least of her problems, when a split-second decision to help out another magic-user puts her in the crossfire of both the shadow-beasts and the creepy organisation which hunt them down.

Claudia’s never had to worry about making the right choice before, but every decision matters when you have a Darkworld connection. Soon, she’s going to have to make a choice: turn her back on the crazy and try to live a normal life, or take the monsters down.

But in a world where everyone seems to have secrets, can she really trust her fellow magic-users – or even herself?

Now available at retailers! Buy it from: Amazon  Amazon UK  Barnes & Noble  Kobo

Add it to Goodreads

Eighteen-year-old Ashlyn is one interview away from her future when she first sees the demons. She thinks she’s losing her mind, but the truth is far more frightening: she can see into the Darkworld, the home of spirits– and the darkness is staring back.

Desperate to escape the demons, Ash accepts a place at a university in the small town of Blackstone, in the middle of nowhere – little knowing that it isn’t coincidence that led her there but the pull of the Venantium, the sorcerers who maintain the barrier keeping demons from crossing from the Darkworld into our own world.
All-night parties, new friendships and a life without rules or limits are all part of the package of student life – but demons never give up, and their focus on Ash has attracted the attention of every sorcerer in the area. Ash is soon caught between her new life and a group of other students with a connection to the Darkworld, who could offer the answers she’s looking for. The demons want something from her, and someone is determined to kill her before she can find out what it is.
In a world where darkness lurks beneath the surface, not everyone is what they appear to be…

Reviews:

“Demons, Sorcerers, evil, and secrets. Could you ask for a better supernatural suspense set-up? The plot is original, and completely gripping. From the first page, this book had me hooked.” – Rose at Desert Rose Reviews

 
“A suspenseful first part to an intriguing new fantasy series.” – Sharon Stevenson, supernatural author
 
“The story is extremely well-written with effortless, flowing prose, and the original magic-user mythology and Darkworld creatures are very entertaining. The author took what might have been over-done premise and twisted it into something very fresh and exciting.” – Lexa Cain, author of Soul Cutter
 
“Emma is an amazing writer. She has become one of my favorites. I couldn’t put Darkness Watching down.” – Diane at A Creative Mind

Buy it from: Amazon  Amazon UK  Barnes & Noble  Kobo
Or add it to Goodreads
 
 

When you have a connection to the Darkworld, nowhere is truly safe.

Ashlyn has found a new home in Blackstone, but when a spate of grave robberies across the country spark fears that someone is practicing illegal sorcery, she comes under the radar of the Venantium, the protectors of the Barrier between her world and the Darkworld, who are suspicious of any sorcerer who doesn’t know their origins.
The trouble is, what Ash does know might just get her killed.
Sufferers of the dangerous condition known as the vampire’s curse are being brutally killed, and the latest victim is Leo’s guardian, the ex-head of the Venantium. Ash determines to help Leo find out what’s really going on, but it isn’t long before events are spiralling out of control. The dead are rising from their graves, and the barriers around Blackstone are threatened by a demon which looks exactly like Ash herself…
 
Coming December 1st, 2014 from Curiosity Quills

Add it to Goodreads

 
ABOUT EMMA L. ADAMS

Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy novels for children and young adults. She was born in Birmingham, UK, which she fled at the first opportunity to study English Literature at Lancaster University. In her three years at Lancaster, she hiked up mountains, skydived in Australia, and endured a traumatic episode involving a swarm of bees in the Costa Rican jungle. She also entertained her creative writing group and baffled her tutors by submitting strange fantasy tales featuring dragons and supernatural monsters to workshops. These included her first publication, a rather bleak dystopian piece, and a disturbing story about a homicidal duck (which she hopes will never see the light of day).

Now a reluctant graduate, Emma refuses to settle down and be normal. When not embarking on wild excursions, she edits and proofreads novels for various publishing houses and reads an insane number of books. At the age of 21, she signed a publishing contract with Curiosity Quills Press for the first book in her creepy urban fantasy Darkworld series. DARKNESS WATCHING was published in October 2013, and four more novels and a novella will follow. She chats about writing and other book-related things at her blog, From the Writer’s Nest, and looks forward to sharing more tales from the bizarre depths of her imagination.

Find Emma online: Blog  Website  Facebook Page  Twitter

Sign up to Emma’s newsletter to be the first to find out about new releases




Want to get involved with the Fall Into Fantasy promotional tour?

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Book Cover Artist Q&A with Chris Graham the @StoryReadingApe

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

Ronovan's avatarLit World Interviews

RW: You are the Indie Authors best friend. That’s something many people know you as, but there is another aspect of your contribution to the Author world that some are not quite as familiar with. Tell us about how and why you came to create book covers? What was your first one?

CHRIS: My first cover was for the late Steve K. Smy, ‘Shade of Evil’, the first of a new series that Steve intended to publish, this was quickly followed by two more for ‘Evil Under the Circle’ and ‘A Darkness in Amazonia’, unfortunately, Steve died shortly after publishing this last one, however, based on notes left behind by Steve, his son Damien has published one more book of a new Fantasy series (asking me to do the cover and a map) and already has the cover plus maps from me for a second book:

chris_graham_shade_of_evil_cover_art.jpgchris_graham_evil_under_the_circle_cover_art.jpgchris_graham_a_darkness_in_amazonia_cover_art.jpg

RW:…

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Back to the Grindstone with a New Nose

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

(WARNING: There will be a post later today that involves the blurbs of Sleeper of the Wildwood Fugue.  It will be up from noon today until noon tomorrow before I have to take it down.  All feedback will be appreciated.  Guess spoiler warning would be good too there.)

Well, this was supposed to be a week of rest and it kind of worked.  I read the two short story collections that I planned on reading.  I started reading the book I planned on starting.  I noted up the one idea I planned to note up.  I outlined another idea I planned on outlining.  I set up all the blog posts for December, except for the half week.  I’m exhausted and feeling strained, but I doubt things are going to get better.  So off to edit Book 7 before Thanksgiving.  Entirely doable as long as no disasters show up . . . so I’ll get it done by January.

A surprising success is that I finally sorted through the Project Phoenix stuff and might have chopped it down to between 12-15 books.  For anyone crying about the length of that series, it used to be 19-20 and I’m adding several other stories into this.  The structure will differ from Legends of Windemere in that each book will have a different hero/villain/story with the final book bringing it all together to reveal a great enemy behind everything else.  So you can step into almost any book in the series and take breaks if you want.  Only the first, second to last, and finale will be part of an overarching, everyone is involved storyline.

I did learn that more ‘real life’ people are reading this blog than I realized.  This means I’m not sure what I should and should not say here.  Even saying that runs the risk of some people trying to read between the lines that aren’t there.  It’s been suggested that I make this an invite only blog, but that would kill the blog.  Part of the fun is to have the freedom of people stumbling onto my corner of the Internet and decide to stick around.  So, I’ll have to be careful what I write here.  This kind of puts a kibosh on the extent of personal stories that some people wanted.

I guess I wonder if that even matters too.  People want everything from me and I can only deliver so much without killing myself.  I can already feel the nerves starting to fray with everything I’m dealing with.  You can take what you want from that.  Man, this knowing I’m being watched thing sucks.  Let’s switch gears.

I started re-watching ‘Jericho’ on DVD and I forgot how great this series was.  It deals with a small town in Kansas after an attack on America.  All about surviving and what such a situation could do to people.  Unlike stories where everyone turns on each other, it’s about surviving as a community and remaining civilized instead of people being ready to betray their own family.  It only lasted 2 seasons with the second one being only a few episodes, but I really wish it was more.  I heard that they did comics on it, but I’ve never been able to find them.  Anyway, I might have the rest of it playing while I do editing or save it for when I take another break.  Book 7 is emotionally draining as it is, so adding ‘Jericho’ to the mix might not be a good idea.

Goals for the week:

  1. Start editing Book 7.
  2. Read a bit of Ranger’s Apprentice: Emperor of Nihon-Ja.
  3. Cook.
  4. Bike when I can.
  5. Fatherhood.
  6. Think about the Sutyra story.
  7. *left open for anything I missed in my emotional exhaustion*
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Meet Guest Author Charles E Yallowitz

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

Balancing Act of the Author and Parent

Charles author photo B&WI wanted to be an author since high school. That’s where the story begins and the ensuing years ended up being me doing everything except pushing the author career. I outlined ideas, wrote a few books, and designed characters whenever I had a chance. I’m a fantasy author (waits for groans and cheers to die down), so my stories were my own escapism from the retail and office jobs that I kept finding myself in. Now before I lose everyone to the doom and gloom, I’ll get to the good stuff.

As I said, I was still writing, but I wasn’t sharing. One day I noticed someone I knew from high school was publishing on Amazon Kindle. I reconnected and learned more about it. Then I met another Kindle author who showed me the ropes around the time my work life was looking…

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W.I.P.- Sutyra

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz
Succubus from Castlevania

Succubus from Castlevania

Sutyra has been dancing around my head since college . . . I’m not even sure how close she is to the original.  That was when she was a full-blooded Lust Demon who infiltrated demon high society to rule it.  She wasn’t really into sex as much as one would expect from a Lust Demon.  Then she became a half-angel/half-demon who would be the catalyst to another great war.  She had twin pistols in this one and kept a human boy as a pet while she wandered.  After that, Sutyra became a demonic princess that everyone was vying for and she just wanted to escape Hell.  That was about 8 years ago and I haven’t given her any focus since then.  Not that I’ve forgotten her, but it’s only now that I’ve cleared a few outlines off my list and find myself staring at her name.

That brings me to today . . . I’s got no idea.  At some point I wrote that she was going to be sealed under a jail and a young boy releases her.  The two break out and go on a joyride/run through Windemere since Sutyra is all about having fun.  The twin pistols were changed to two rings or something.  Apparently I was derailed because I stopped in mid-sentence and that had to be over 5 years ago.  So I’ve been thinking all day about it and considered the following scenario:

Sutyra has always been about a change happening in demon society.  So I can go back to the original and make her a half-demon, which isn’t common.  In fact, I don’t think I have any half-demons, so she could be the one that proves the species can crossbreed.  I can go further and have her be half-demon/half-angel again, which puts her as hunted.  Some will want to destroy her, others to use her blood to revive the long destroyed angels, and then there’s the wardens of the jail.  I’m definitely keeping the human that’s dragged along for the ride.

A quick note about the angels: Early Windemere had three species.  Evil demons, good angels, and neutral dragons.  The demons destroyed all of the angels along with their world, which caused the primordial gods to restart a bit.  The destroyed realms were turned into the Chaos Void and the demons were left in there.  So the only record of angels is a single scroll.

This means Sutyra could be the harbinger of their return, which you would think is a good thing.  Except it would be a disaster now that the demons have evolved to not be as savage and the angels would probably turn on the rest of the world.  After all, they’re pure good with no wiggle room.  Imagine what they would do to mortals that are morally diverse.  It wouldn’t be good.  At least that’s what I can see.  There was also going to be a city of demons that lost their masters and couldn’t return to the Chaos Void unless they wanted to be destroyed.  They gathered in one place instead of incurring the wrath of their demonic superiors.

So, does this story work as a chase?  She escapes and is hunted by various groups that slowly get defeated?  Maybe have the revival happen and she steps up to save the day.  Heck, it’d be very strange if the demons save the world.  Though I’m kind of already doing that with the chaos elves and orcs in ‘War of the Tainted’.  Anyway, that could turn it into a two-part story with the first having Sutyra on the run and the second handling the fallout of whatever is done with her.  That’s if I have the angels get revived.

Final note: I’m toying with having a certain demonic assassin turn up as a major player in this story.  He gets slipped into several series and he evolves, but this one would lock him into a certain role.

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N. N. Light Editing Services Now Accepting New Clients #amediting #editingtips #NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz
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Sorry about the Phantom Post

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

(The Internet is not my friend here and that new posting thing of WordPress can go fuck itself.  Already wrote this and there’s not auto-draft save on there.  One Internet hiccup and it’s all gone.  Let’s try this again.)

Some people may have seen a post go live earlier today and it was about being frustrated and angry.  Well . . . oops.  It was suggested by a friend that I use the last full week of December to do a ‘Greatest Hits’ period.  So I was setting up the Top 6 posts of my blog to go live on that week.  #4 was a humorous rant from April 2013, which I was surprised to see there.  Why couldn’t this oops happen with the happier ones?

Anyway, my Internet did a hiccup and switched it from a scheduled post (December 25th) to a publish now post.  I didn’t notice and was just happen to have the connection back.  I hit the button and promptly tried not to curse in front of the kid.  Then my Internet slowed to a crawl while I tried to delete everything.  Obviously, I didn’t catch them all in time and some people noticed.  Again, I’m sorry about that confusion.

I’m not in a bad mood unless exhausted counts.  I had a rather productive week and I’m gearing up to jump back into editing over the weekend.  Book 7 is a rough ride, so I need to be on my toes for it.  That’s really it.  I’ll leave you with something funny, which is where my last attempt to post this went off the rails:

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Nonhumans in Windemere

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

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For all my talk about nonhuman characters, I really am lacking in putting them in a main character role.  The slideshow has everyone that is a nonhuman hero.  I could count Timoran Wrath since barbarians are an odd off-shoot of humans, but that’s a gray area that is up for debate.  I’ll explain more on that some day when I get a solid hold on it myself.  There’s also . . . . . that’s a spoiler.  In the end, I really don’t have many nonhuman heroes.  None in the elf or dwarf category since Aedyn, Luke, and Nyx are all half-elves.  Why is that?

The biggest flaw in Legends of Windemere is . . . No, it’s not the present tense third person style.  I can see the hands in the back and I’ll have the troll bouncer come over there to explain more about that.  It’s that this series is based loosely on a game and I still talk to several of the former players.  Aside from Fritz Warrenberg and Nimby, everyone was some type of human or half-human.  It was done primarily for stats and because of how the system works, but that’s how it came out.  I do feel a little ‘stuck’ on that end since I don’t want to change a lot about the physical side of them.  Yes, I can alter personalities, skills, events, and other aspects to fit a book.  Yet, the way the characters look is hard to mess around with and not have to apologize.  To date, there are only three changes that have taken place:

  1. Sari has blue hair instead of black like in the game.
  2. Nyx was made an A/small B-cup, which real Nyx is still scowling about.
  3. Nyx gets a short haircut due to an incident in one of the books.  Real Nyx is actually angrier about this one than the previous one.

None of that has to do with fantasy races and I’m hard-pressed to do any switches within the champions considering they were other players.  So I have to utilize the supporting cast for this, which is where Isaiah the Fireskin, Lord Highrider the Half-Orc, and Duggan Ironcaster the Dwarf turn up.  It’ll be when I finish Legends of Windemere and move on to other series that I’ll be able to flex the races some more.  You can see the others that I can bring into the forefront too.

I might always slip into humans though because they still seem to have the widest range of the species.  In reality, humans have proven to find ways to survive in various environments.  That’s why they turn into the cockroaches of fantasy races.  They’re found on islands, plains, deserts, mountains, and wherever they can build a shelter.  Meanwhile, the other races seem designated to specific regions.  That versatility is what makes humans so appealing too because they have no standard magic or physical limitations.  So, that’s pretty much where I stand.  I’m still going to have a few stories where non-human characters are the focal point.  I delve into the vampires once I’m done with this series, which will be interesting.

I’ll end on an odd question: what nonhuman race would you like to see get a turn at main hero of a story?  I’m going with gnome.

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