A Special Interview with Shannon A Thompson — Author, Blogger, and Member of the Dreams, Fantasies, Nightmares, and Visions Team

Great interview with Shannon A. Thompson.

hutt1234's avatarjohntuckermustlive

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Today’s Interview is with an author who’s definitely someone to watch now and in the future. I met Shannon during the forming of a Facebook Event I’ll be plugging a little later. She’s been an amiable, patient, and courteous friend and I look forward to talking more with her over the course of 2014. Here’s her Author Bio on Amazon.

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I’m a 22-year-old author, avid reader, and a habitual chatterbox. In 2007, I was 16 when I published my first YA dystopian novel, November Snow. In 2012, I was featured in a poetry collection, and in 2013, I signed The Timely Death Trilogy with AEC Stellar Publishing, Inc. After releasing the first installment, my young-adult, paranormal romance, Minutes Before Sunset, became Goodreads Book of the Month. My life changed. Since then, my first short story, Sean’s Bullet, was also published in an anthology, and my poem was featured in…

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Goals After the Storm

By now, everyone knows what happened at the end of last week.  I don’t think I have to go into it again.  All I can say is that this week will be recovery mode.  With any luck, I’ll have the files to sort through by Tuesday and the new hard drive will be installed within the same time frame.  Preferably I would want it a day later, so I can use Tuesday to put all of the ‘to keep’ files on this desktop.  Key items are the toddler videos, my writings, fan art, and Internet favorites.  I’m not sure what the data will look like when I get to go through it, but it’ll get done.

THEN my vacation will kind of start.  I can’t jump into the editing for a week or so.  Depends on scheduling.  This will give me time to do some reading and outlining.  That second part might become a slight headache.  I thought up another story for Clyde’s series and another for Darwin’s series.  The problem is that my notebook is in the middle of ‘The Elysium Saga’, so I need to finish that first.  Then I’ll partition off a section for ‘add to earlier series’.  Oh what a tangled web I weave.  Some days it looks like one of those rope snares in the cartoons.

I’ve been thinking about the action scene week at the end of July and wondering how to work it.  So, I think I’m going to take one from each book and try to showcase each of the champions.  I have Book 1 (Luke) and Book 4 (Timoran) scenes chosen. Not sure what to do about Book 2 and Book 3.  I’ve used all the Nyx vs Trinity scenes before.  From Book 5, I’m thinking of a Delvin scene and then the scene that shows the nightmare that is ‘Bob’ (real name still being withheld).  A hard part of this idea is that I always think battle when it comes to action, but there are other types that I can pick out.  Also, each one will be cut off at a suspenseful moment and come with a spoiler warning.  The entire plan could change if I get the cover art by then, but I don’t have an ETA on that.

That’s really it.  Finished first draft of Book 8 prior to the crying.  It’s Father’s Day where I’ll possibly get a card and then life goes back to normal.  I still want to get pizza, but I’m trying to behave . . . seriously, I just keep getting voted down and I can’t (shouldn’t) eat an entire pie by myself.

Time for the goals:

  1. Put lost programs back on computer when new hard drive installed.
  2. Put files back on and make sure everything is backed up.
  3. Finish reading ‘Ranger’s Apprentice: Halt’s Peril’.  Choose next book to read during ‘break’.
  4. Begin scheduling blog posts for July.  Have a short list of themes like Elements in Fiction, Senses in Fiction, a week of poetry, Books to Film, and something that I wrote as ‘Author Life’.  Not sure what that last one is.  All I know is that I’ll be tackling this on Monday to distract myself from the waiting for data recovery to finish.  Reading doesn’t distract me from fretting.
  5. Get my butt back on that bike.
  6. Cook penne with vodka sauce and order books to sign as a thank you for the data recovery.
  7. Attend toddler’s graduation ceremony.  This is at #7 because I wouldn’t miss it and it’s more of a given than a goal.  Kind of like breathing.
  8. Figure out how to get Pandora to work on the Desktop.  It’s a mess and I’ll need it until my laptop is resurrected.
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The ‘End’ of Windemere

Yahoo Image Search

Yahoo Image Search

First, I apologize for the title.  I wrote it and it was too good to get rid of because that is what this is going to be about.  Yet, it’s not really a now thing.  Windemere will ‘end’ at some point.  Heck, it might even last longer than me, which would be great.  Though I really hope I have all the notes done to give the remaining stories a fighting chance of existing.  Fingers crossed as usual.

Many people might not realize something about my books and future series.  Either you’re new, never caught the posts that mentioned it, never talked to me about my writing in private, or forget that you ever knew.  It’s entirely understandable that people don’t always realize that ALL (but one) of my stories take place in Windemere.  As such, most of them connect to each other and work under the same rules.  Gods are the same and still have the ‘Law of Influence’.  Luke Callindor, Nyx, and the other champions either had their adventures or have yet to be born.  Everything is connected here.  This means if I wipe out a city in one story, I can never use it again.  Anyone who dies has to stay dead unless I can find a way to revive them that works for them, the rules, and the story.  Some characters may even make cameos or be main characters of multiple series.  Talk about tangled webs and headaches.

So this might explain why I sometimes say that I can’t do something.  It’s because I know of a rule or event from another book that prevents it.  I try very hard not to write a story that will unravel a future one, leaving me with characters and ideas that will never see the light of day.  Windemere is a gigantic puzzle of adventure that I’m putting together piece-by-piece.  Probably for the rest of my life.  Of course, this means when I tell all of the stories in my head, I’ll have to make an ending.  It’s only right.

You see, I’ve had a huge idea for a final book that would end both my career and Windemere stories.  At least any written by me.  This might sound rather pessimistic, but it’s many, many years off.  The other stories would have to be told first and this would be one that feels rather . . . final.  It would be the culmination of a long-running villain’s plans and a big war with all of the surviving heroes from the main series.  I’d be trying to fit everyone into it even as cameos or possibly part of the hero army set to face off against a force of demons, undead, and surviving villains.

It’s a ridiculous thing to try and plan right now.  Simply because I don’t know who all of the players will be.  I have a few and know of some events, but it’s going to be something that grows with the end of every series.  The final fate of every character will be forming this over the years.  All I seem to have settled on is the main villain, the threat, and a few surprises.  I may have chosen a format too, which is every chapter will focus on AND be titled after a hero or villain.  For example, if Nyx survives her series and gets into this book, I’d have a chapter dedicated to what she is doing.  It will kind of be a plot relay race between characters.

So, I’m throwing this out here because it is awkward discussing things when people aren’t aware that I have an endgame.  Again, this won’t be for a very long time.

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June Book Blast: 8 Sizzling Thrillers from 8 Best-selling Authors, Only 99c

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

The Hot Box Set with Karen Perkins

Get Your Copy Today from Amazon or Smashwords (99c), or check them out on Good Reads

The Hot Box collection is a selection of thrillers from a variety of sub-genres, including Crime, Historical, Military, Paranormal, Espionage, Suspense and Pirate!  The best part?  You can buy it for only 99c on Smashwords (or $1.99 on Amazon). It comes to you courtesy of Fabulosity Reads.

Large Hot Box - cover - lrThe collection includes the following works:

Steven Bannister – Fade to Black
Allie St Clair is young and brilliant and today she’s been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. But the time for celebration is short. Something is wrong in rain-swept London. Very wrong.

John Paul Davis – The Cortes Enigma
1581: It appeared in the west as the sun was setting, a distant silhouette like a fire on the water. Twelve hours later it appeared again, this time much closer to the mainland. Who…

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Apologies and Updates

First, a big storm just hit and that might knock me out for the night.  The heavens just opened up and roared.

Second, I’m sorry I’ve been absent, but the situation with my laptop left me in an anti-social mood.  I’ll probably be here and there this weekend due to moodiness and being away for most of the time.  So, I’ll try my best to visit blogs through my phone and the desktop computers if I can get to them.

The situation with my laptop is promising, but I won’t get a final answer on data recovery until Monday.  I won’t have my laptop working again until middle/end of next week. I’m using my wife’s Chromebook and I really don’t like this thing.  Keyboard doesn’t feel right and my meaty palms keep hitting the scroll pad.  Still there’s a good chance I’ll recover the data and only have to get Firefox and the other programs again.

It’s actually become a lot more complicated and dire.  Data recovery from a place can be $500-$2000 dollars, so I’m lucky a friend is helping.  If it doesn’t work then the situation gets tricky.  It’s no longer about the books because I can rewrite what I lost even though it will suck.  There was something else that wasn’t backed up that can’t be replaced:

Videos of my son taken off my iPhone.

That’s what has me upset now because I can’t get those again.  He’ll never be 2 or 3 again, which is where the videos are from.  So, fingers crossed that I get good news on Monday.  Also that I don’t have to use this dang Chromebook after tonight.  I never knew my hands were this huge!

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Yesterday Road for 99 cents? You betta believe it, baby!

Kevin Brennan's avatarWHAT THE HELL

Small cover

That’s right, I’m running a summer sale on Yesterday Road, and it’s now live on Amazon. (The other retailers will follow soon.)

The sale runs through 6/27, but it doesn’t begin officially till next Friday. You, my devoted readers here at What The Hell, get first crack, so if you’ve been waiting for that perfect price point and you have a spare dollar in your virtual coin pouch, it’s time to pull the trigger.

This is also the last promotion I’ll be doing for YR before the publication of Wish I Were Here in September. After 6/27, the price returns to $4.99.

If you do take the plunge, I’d also appreciate a brief review on Amazon. I’m stuck at 24, and I’ve encountered recently at least one promotional outfit that requires 25 reviews. Short and sweet is welcome.

Finally, a big thanks to Phillip McCollum, who stepped up…

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Strange Diets: Monsters Need Food Too

No idea where the quote came from.  Yahoo Image Search

No idea where the quote came from.  Could be Anthony Hopkins, but who knows on the Internet.  Yahoo Image Search

I’ve spent all week talking and joking about food in fiction.  One of the things I didn’t mention is how the act of eating can be used for monsters and villains.  Take vampires, zombies, and cannibals.  They feed on humans, which brings an odd sense of personal terror.  Close your eyes and try to image something taking a bite out of your arm or sinking fangs into your neck.  It’s unnerving once you let go of the ‘not possible’ concept.  That is something that ‘protects’ people from getting constantly scared by the idea of being eaten.  We never think it could happen to us even by a wild animal.  That’s why hearing about someone getting eaten brings along a sense of primal fear.

With monsters and cannibal villains, an author should aim to push how disturbing they are.  You want a reader to be afraid of these things and describing how they eat can bring that across.  Many monsters are intimidating, but they don’t create fear until they actual devour someone or something.  Many times this is how we remember them too.  If I say Hannibal Lecter, you think cannibal very quickly.  Dracula is blood, zombie is brains or flesh, and you can keep go.  That might be why monsters are so much scarier than many villains.  A human villain will kill you.  A monster will kill you AND eat you.  Not necessarily in that order too.  Again, we might have a primitive part of our brain screaming how wrong it is for a human to become lunch.  Or dinner depending on the time of day.  We’re not really breakfast food.

It isn’t even just the man-eater idea that can use food to enhance monsters.  Imagine a creature that eats metal and unleash it into New York City.  It might not be after flesh, but its diet is detrimental to society.  Maybe the creatures even reproduce due to what or when they eat like Gremlins and Tribbles.  An enemy doesn’t always have to be a direct, physical threat to a hero.  It could simply be they do what they must to survive and the hero has to find a way to keep humanity going in the face of it.  This doesn’t always have to end in death of the monster either.  You could have the hero find an alternate food source, new place for humans to live, or even a new location to put the monster.  Think outside of the blood-filled box.

A final point on monsters and food that connects to above is that you don’t even have to make the diet a major plot point.  People like to know about unique monsters and what they eat can be part of that.  If your heroes come across an alien life form or a new type of dragon, you can have it eating when they find it.  This can lead to need flora and fauna being created to give this fictional creatures a fictional diet.  For example, the heroes come across a cat with shaggy fur, a long horn, and powerful legs for jumping.  It feeds by leaping into the air and spearing a meat-like fruit from a tree with poisonous spines.  You have a unique creature, a unique tree/fruit, and an interesting method of getting that food.  Yet, the Narcat isn’t a threat unless you want it to be.

Guess that concludes the food topic.  Now, I’m off to get pizza . . . and a side of guilt for not eating healthy.

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Groggy & Enraged Update

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Yahoo Image Search

As I said yesterday, I might not be very social for a little while.  My recently turned 1-year-old laptop seems to be dead.  Today will be spent trying to get the files out of the hard drive and planning on what to do next.  Not sure if I should say fuck off to Dell or Microsoft on this one.  The situation went like this:

Windows updated itself yesterday morning.  No problems from I could see and I had taken a break from the laptop before.  I did a writing marathon and finished Book 8 around 11 PM.  Thoughts of resting today were already swimming in my head and I plugged in the thumb drive to back everything up.  I swear I did that at another point this week, but either I didn’t or it didn’t take.  Either way, the laptop froze a few seconds later.  I restarted and it couldn’t even get to a log in.  Thing barely gets into BIOS.

From searching on-line, this doesn’t seem to be a rare occurrence.  Windows updates a Dell and trips over itself to cause a system corruption.  This time it appears to have make my laptop incompatible with my thumb drive and didn’t even give me the option to format the thing.  Not a warning whatsoever.  Just plug in and CRASH!  ALL OF THIS WEEK’S WORK IS GONE!  Oh goodie!  Windows is trying to update the desktop now.

I can hear a few people saying that at least I have the laptop.  Here’s the issue with this pain in my ass:

  1. It runs on Vista.  I turned it on 20 minutes ago and the damn thing still sounds like it’s running starter systems.  It will not shut up and I have no idea what programs have it slowing down.
  2. All of the social media sites automatically open to my wife’s accounts.
  3. For some reason, the Internet browser always opens a new tab instead of opening a link in the same tab.
  4. Pandora always has a problem on this thing.
  5. It’s in the basement.  This means I can’t write when the toddler comes home because he can’t play down here.  It also means I can’t write in front of the TV while sitting in bed at night.  So I actually have less time to work on things right now.  Blog posts are going to be tougher too because I have physically escape people and pray they don’t have to be in the basement too.
  6. There are camel crickets in the basement.
  7. The desk kind of puts the monitor about two feet away from me.  I feel like I’m doing this long distance, but that will probably pass.
  8. I really hate Vista!

If I can retrieve the files from the hard drive then I’ll be better about this.  Then I only have to get my laptop to be rolled back and fixed.  File recovery appears to be an expensive thing.

I will try to do my best with the iPhone for comment responses.  Though I think I’ll be in a really bad mood today.  Also, I’ll be gone tomorrow for defensive driving and . . . I swear to god I closed that program.  Why is it back asking for an update?  You know, fuck technology that has become more fragile and undependable as the years go on.  2 chapters gone!  I busted my ass all day yesterday after carefully crafting the ending to Book 8.  Now, I’ll have to rewrite the chapters wondering if they’re better or worse.  Nobody dare mention anything along the lines of ‘fate’ on this one.  This is bullshit and this damn machine is still making boot up noises!

Yeah.  I’ll definitely be a rarity until I recover the files, rewrite the chapters, or get to punch the guy who made this update.

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$”&$?#^+!? And The Horse They Rode In On

Finished book 8.

Went to back up book 8 on thumb drive.

1 Year Old Laptop crashed and is pointing finger at Windows Update.

Might have lost 2 chapters.

Victory snatched from grasp and very upset.

Might not be social for a few days.

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The Fabulous Feast Of Prince Profundus Vorago (Finale)

Earl Tyrant from Final Fantasy Unlimited

Earl Tyrant from Final Fantasy Unlimited

Our pastry chefs have made desserts of all sorts
They have cookies and brownies and cinnamon torts.
Assorted colors and tastes all sweet to the buds.
Especially the cream puffs that are bigger than spuds.
Peach-stuffed strudel and an amazing plum pie.
A plate of chocolate chip cookies piled very high.
The prince has a sweet tooth that wants every crumb.
But he will give food away if you ask him for some.

The cake is now done and is sporting his name
And heating the room because it is written in flame.
‘Happy Birthday, Prince Profundus Vorago, Our Love’
I truly hope the sprinklers do not rain from above.
The cake is simple with fresh cream frosting and such
Gold shavings on top do add a nice touch.
I admit I am curious about the rich taste
You can ask me later because none goes to waste.
For we are nearing the end of the yearly great banquet
That typically ends with the prince holding his blanket.

It is time for the prince to go back to bed.
For there are beckoning dreams in his head.
The master chef has prepared the mint of deep sleep
That will have the small prince counting his sheep
He shall not go hungry because of these meals.
They will keep him sustained as time spins its wheels.
We ask that you all remember this date
So that next year you will not risk being late.

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