That’s right everyone. I’m having my first video interview next Wednesday, so you get to hear my voice and see my face for an hour. Click on the link above to see the site and I hope to see everyone there. You can even type in questions as the interview goes along and get into the action. The interview will also be going onto YouTube once it’s done. Needless to say I’m nervous and excited.
A big thank you to Sally Ember, Ed.D., for giving me this opportunity.
Beyond Midnight: Asunder, Book 3.5 in the House of Crimson & Clover, is now LIVE across all major retailers!
Broken and dispirited, the Deschanel family reels under the weight of a family curse. Lives were torn asunder, as their numbers diminished.
Amidst their pain, another prophecy takes shape. One laid by the ancient druidic Quinlan clan, in a time long forgotten. Seers across the family have borne witness to fragments. Distraught by the loss of her soul’s true love, Amelia begins to dream of an unknown man and a woman, designated by fate to live their story over and over again, throughout time.
Now, destiny reaches across the centuries.
In the family’s darkest hour, a reckoning with the Empyrean Senetat is fast approaching. Hope becomes the necessary consolation for grief, as the Deschanels come together to make their loved ones whole, in order to face this…
I spent all of this week talking about the eerie, creepy monsters that lurk in shadows and only come to about waist-height at most. Yet there is another side of the coin just as there is with the big guys. Little creatures can be heroes too as you can see from Gizmo. This also means that monster doesn’t always mean evil and flesh-eating. So, where does a heroic mini-critter fit into a story?
Anywhere really. Though they seem to always turn up as comic relief or some type of sidekick. For example, Snarf from Thundercats, which is apparently in the spellchecker. Strange. Anyway, these cute heroes never have the physical strength that one expects from a central hero. They excel in other areas like cunning, magic, stealth, agility, or some special talent. This makes it rather strange that they don’t get a more high profile role in their stories. Though one could assume it’s because we tend to put huge monsters or extremely powerful, human-sized beings in the main villain role. Gizmo works because he is up against Gremlins that are in his weight class even though they’re a lot more vicious. Put the little guy against Orcs and you’ll have a hard time getting readers to believe he can win.
This is where we run into the problem of tiny heroes in general. For some reason, we tend to think that size and strength will always win the fight. A towering threat losing to a small hero can easily be accused of being unrealistic, which hurts the overall story. Imagine if ‘David and Goliath’ came out today. I’m sure many people would complain about the single sling stone being a lucky shot and not definitive of a hero because luck doesn’t count. Strange how the little guy winning is what we dream of, but it rarely happens within fiction.
Bringing this back to tiny hero monsters, they really do require a shift of focus from what an author may be used to. Barging in the door for a throw down, drag out fight of epic proportions might not work. You can give the creature powers to do it like Fizzle in ‘Legends of Windemere’. Another option is to keep the enemies on the same size scale as the heroes. Those are all easy ways to retain big fights, but there’s also the option of going in that other direction. More stealth, chases, and traps than fisticuffs. Imagine a final battle that is a race between hero and villain through a deadly maze. Maybe it’s the hero simply surviving and being able to fight another day
I know this goes for all small heroes, so here is something specific for the monsters. You can make them cute and cuddly, but you need to make them creatures of some kind. It could be fun to give them something that hints they have the capacity for evil such as Mogwai turning into Gremlins. This isn’t necessary, but it can help if this monster hero is unable to talk. Most of them have a strange grasp of human language if they speak any of it at all. Having people scared of them can work, but it only works if they’re not cute. That method would have humans mistaking it for a pet or even getting in the way to pet it. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of an intergalactic bounty hunter that looks adorable and keeps getting tackled by children who want to hug it. In fact, I think that’s similar to a Phineas & Ferb episode.
Gizmo is certainly my favorite hero monster. Anybody think of any other or any ideas on how to use them?
Originally posted on Nicholas C. Rossis: Party cat found on wall4all.me Today is my authorversary Indieversary one-year anniversary since the publication of Pearseus: Schism, the first book of my epic fantasy series! Twelve exciting months and four books later, I’d…
Hello, and welcome to one of my favorite pastimes on the blog: author interviews. Today on the blog is the always awesome Charles Yallowitz, the author of the Legends of Windemere fantasy series. Welcome, Charles!
You undoubtedly know Charles from his blog. But do you know his series? Five books have been published, the latest of which is The Compass Key. (Read the synopsis here.) Take a look at the groovy covers with art by Jason Pedersen.
Later, I’ll tell you about a giveaway I’m hosting. If you’ve read an interview on this blog before, you already know what I’m giving away. Let’s talk to Charles, and you can see if you’re right.
El Space: Now that you’ve published the fifth book of your series, what have you learned about yourself as an author? Charles: I learned that…
October is anti-bullying month. The fact we even need to set aside time to raise awareness for this saddens me and this is a topic I could ramble on about for hours, but sometimes simplicity is best. In light of this, all I am going to say is that while bullying may seem to some people like a meaningless or even fun moment of frivolity, the mental scars you give others will never leave them. Never.
Happiness is a wonderful gift; please don’t ever be the one responsible for taking it away from someone else.
No matter what I looked for, I could only find Godzilla creatures under the ‘Monster Size Chart’ search. Most of them had the Cloverfield monster, which I didn’t take because I remember getting in a debate with a fan of that movie. I asked if it was bigger than Godzilla and all I got was ‘Cloverfield would kick Godzilla’s ass!’. Needless to say I disagreed and wasn’t a fan of the shaky camera movie anyway. That’s besides the point here because I’m going to talk a little about how the size of a monster can determine the use of it. After all, a solitary Gremlin can’t go stomping through New York City and having a swarm of King Kongs is what you might call overkill.
Microscopic– Let’s start at the monsters that you don’t see. These are your parasitic beasts that you don’t actually see beyond a microscope. Using these usually involves having a scientist among the heroes and the creatures take over the host to have them do something. I’m not 100% sure of an example here. There was ‘Invasion’, which is a movie that I never saw. You get a lot of tension out of an ‘invisible’ enemy too because you can’t beat it with a standard weapon or even see it coming.
Golf Ball to Basketball Sized– I admit right now that I don’t know how to categorize these things. I’m thinking of the Facehuggers and other smaller monsters that you see in a lot of science fiction films. These are great for swarming threats, young stages of a bigger monster, and a stealth killer. They might not have the power and presence of the larger monsters, but they have the jump scare ability if you’re using them for horror or at least startling your heroes.
Child to Large Dog Sized– Another category that ends up involving more stealth and speed than brute strength. After all, can you imagine Chucky hurling large man through a window? One thing that can be done with these monsters with more ease than Category 2 is having them go solo. I can see this being even scarier than a swarm because there’s less chance of hearing a solitary creature than multiples. This definitely gives this category more versatility and that isn’t even counting that here is where you can start making them humanoid. Something about monsters being bipedal and symmetrical makes them freakier, which might be because they’re more relatable.
Adult Sized– You can figure this one out pretty easily because it’s so common. From Jason Voorhes to American Werewolf, there’s a lot of normal-sized monsters out there and they tend to be incredibly human. Many of them have some type of motivation beyond the primal survive/eat. The size of the body allows you to do more alterations because of more mass too and they can handle bigger ‘prey’. This might be why you find them more often than other categories.
Van to Airplane Sized– Here is where we get into monsters that always possess incredible strength and not the stealthiest creatures. They can still hide in certain environments like large cities, jungles, and thick forests. You have to do some major explanations for them hiding in open areas like how the Graboids in Tremors can burrow. You get back into a primal mentality with these monsters too. They predominantly attack for food, protection, or because they’re simply creatures of pure destruction. It’s rather easy to make humans scared of these monsters considering they jack into the ‘fear of big predators’. Then again, these creatures don’t even have to eat people. They can just as easily be a herbivore and kill to protect itself.
Building and Beyond Size– Godzilla, King Kong, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Galactus, and do I really have to keep going? Extreme destruction, massive fear, normal weapons don’t work without overuse, high body count, and possibly another giant creature for them to fight. Uses for this is either a mega weapon being used by the main villain or the main threat that mankind is struggling to find a way to defeat before it destroys a single city that the monster randomly chose by throwing a dart at a map off-camera.
Regular visitors will surely recognize Charles Yallowitz, author of Legends of Windemere. Charles is one of the top commentators over here, and I am always looking forward to his witty, thought-provoking comments. As such, I consider him one of the great new friends I’ve made since publishing my epic fantasy series Pearseus a little under a year ago.
Thinking it’s high time we got to know a little more about this lovely gentleman, I asked him to be interviewed and he kindly agreed. You can also watch him live on Sally Sue Ember’s show CHANGES on Wednesday Oct 22nd, from 10-11 AM (EST).
The Usual Questions
Hi Charles, it’s great to have you here! What inspired you to write Legends of Windemere?
This book series is loosely based on a Dungeons & Dragons game that I played in college. At the time, I was working on earning a…
OCTOBER 22ND @ 10 AM EST
