I just wrote the final words of Legends of Windemere: Sleeper of the Wildwood Fugue. It was a rough trip with a lot of drama and adventure. I really do need a break from the actual book writing. This week is rest, next week is birthday, and the week after that is Passover/Spring break. Then on to Legends of Windemere: The Merchant of Nevera Coil.
The biggest issue with finishing a book is deciding what to do next. Which project do I tackle? Book 8 outline while book 7 is fresh in my mind? Tackle a future story to get that stuff down? Only thing I do know is that I’ll be continuing the promotions for Family of the Tri-Rune.
Still, I’m done with the book so that’s a victory.
I’ll be doing the thank you posts along with my usual stuff, so I do apologize for the onslaught of posts. I hope you visit the kind volunteers and show them support for all of their endeavors. Many of them are authors or provide author services, so it’s very important spread the love and support.
All that being said, I do have a question that deals with after the blog tour. I’m trying to work with weekly themes for my posts like ‘School in Fiction’ this week and ‘Birthdays in Fiction’ next week. I was considering doing a ‘Character Interview Week’, but I’m not sure if that would be successful. I figure I will ask:
If I was to do a week of Character Interviews, would you participate and who would you want to ask questions of?
I would put a strong ‘No Spoiler’ message on these things and would avoid such things in the descriptions. Yet, you can always skip all of the other comments to be safe. Again, let me know what you think and if I get enough positive responses, I’ll set it up for either the week after next (to avoid Birthday clash).
A common stage of a hero’s journey is training. Sometimes this is on the road experience in a ‘hard knocks’ type of thing. Other times they get some training beforehand, which works for late teen/early twenty characters that are heading in that direction. Yet, there are many stories where school and training takes either all or a big chunk of the overall tale. Harry Potter and the X-Men are characters that ‘operate’ out of a school. Luke Skywalker spent a good portion of Empire Strikes Back with Yoda. Ranger’s Apprentice is rather self-explanatory in the title of the series.
Way back when I tried to publish Beginning of a Hero, I went with an on-demand publisher and bought a package that included a professional review. I chose not to use it because the reviewer went on entirely about how I should have thrown away the adventure plot and focused nearly entirely on Luke Callindor as a student. Even though without the main adventure, he’d have no reason to be there. Anyway, this made me think a lot about how school settings are so common. Harry Potter, Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Men, Rosario Vampire, Ranger’s Apprentice, Smallville, and I could keep going with stories that take place in a school. (No idea why there were 3 vampire series in there or why I mentioned the sparkly one.) Now I’m going to make posts all week about this (stop groaning), but I want to know what people think of the school setting in fiction.
Personally, I think it’s popular because schools are their own pocket society. You have cliques, clubs, and a vast variety of personalities under one structure. There is a lot of versatility in using a school setting. You can have the hero rise to conquer bullies or a power-mad teacher or a dark secrets. Possibilities are endless because you can take tales from a non-school setting and fit them into it. Also, there’s an expectation of character growth and evolution because we all remember developing in school. It’s unavoidable that we go in one way and come out changed. The ‘coming of age’ and ‘child to adulthood’ tales are always popular because of this relatability.
So, what does everyone think of books that take place in schools?
I hope all of my blogger friends are doing well today, and I hope that my first posted review has been helpful for some of you. If it was, I’ve also posted it on Amazon and Goodreads. A like would be appreciated on either of those sites.
I’m going to be adding regular book reviews to my blog. In honor of the upcoming début of Book Four of the Legends of Windemere Series, I am going to try posting my reviews of the first three books in the Series prior to it. This may or may not happen. But for now, it’s time to post my review of the second book:
Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of Rainbow Tower. ****1/2 Stars
I waited none too patiently for this book to come out after having read Beginning of a Hero last summer. I have to admit, it was worth the wait…
John W. Howell’s new novel, My GRL, is a pleasantly different kind of thriller. The hero, John D. Cannon, lacks a few of the standard hero qualities that you might expect in a thriller novel. He doesn’t seek out danger. In fact, at one point, danger has to literally run him off the road and onto the beach to get his attention. Cannon is somewhat naive as well, especially when it comes to women. He takes them at face value, trusting them in spite of all the red flags they wave in his face. [Ahem, Mr. Cannon, when a woman tells you she had great fun infiltrating another company while pretending to be someone else, in effect, SPYING, you might want to put your trust in her on hold for a bit.] Cannon is also one of the most polite, respectful, and well-adjusted heroes I’ve ever met, and he’s…
I forgot a goal for the coming weeks, which might be a repeat from before.
I plan on going through the series I have planned and cleaning things up again. It always happens after a few months that I find some no longer work alone or I find connection between them. For example, Guinevere Archer is feeling more like a supporting character and her storyline works perfectly for one of the newly planned Sin books. So, I’m going to cannibalize a bunch with notes to explain their connections. A lot may be going to Sin or Project Phoenix where they can thrive. If they prove popular in those series then I’ll give them a stand alone book using the current notes.
Part of the reason is that I’m seeing how some of my series are more core and should be focused on. As I do that, the side projects are appearing as extensions to the core ideas or distractions. We’ll see what happens. I’m still guessing that several will remain, so I’m probably only looking at the loss of 5-6 flights of fancy.
Wonder which series will survive and which will go. Any bets? Not that people know of all my series, so I don’t really expect an answer.
First, I’ll be putting in a few video game themes due to a wave of nostalgia. I haven’t played a video game in a while because I lack the time, am 2 console generations behind, and most of my games shouldn’t be played in front of the toddler. Anyway, I had to go through the boxes of old games and price them for a garage sale. That’s if I definitely sell them. I’m talking Atarti 2600 like Centipede, Dig Dug, Defender, and Asteroids. Though I’m not as attached to those as I am to my Super NES games. I jumped from the Atarti to a SNES, which means I missed a lot. So there’s a connection to quite a few games. Except Spider/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, which can suck it.
I got through a lot of Sleeper of the Wildwood Fugue this week, but I didn’t finish it like I had hoped. It was a long shot, but I came up one chapter short. I’ll be working on that today and tomorrow, which means book 7 of Legends of Windemere will be ‘done’ by the end of March. This one has been really rough since I had to rework the outline several times and changed a lot in regards to the romances, the new character, Trinity’s role, the origin of Nyx’s powers, the final challenge, and the final area. With this way, I create more tension for a few subplots and open up for a fun series to do later on that will explain a historical event. I’m talking much later on though. Either a ‘Clean Up’ book or the vampire series will be after Legends of Windemere.
So, April 1st (and this is not a joke) will start a 3 week ‘break’ from writing books. I’ll still be blogging, promoting Family of the Tri-Rune, and working on other projects. There are small things that have built up like the outline for Book 8 needing repairs. Then there’s ‘The Elysium Saga’ planning and I think I want to delve a little further into a ‘possible’ Kira book since it’s on my mind. Also I get to sleep in a bit and do a little reading. Though the reason for 3 weeks is because I have a lot going on after what would be the 1st week of vacation. Big school district meeting for my son, my birthday on the 9th, Passover, and my son has Spring Break from the 14th to the 21st. So, I’ll be back on either the book writing or book editing saddle by the 22nd. With everything going on, editing of The Compass Key might be the only big project I can pull off during this time.
Goals for the week!
Finish first draft of Sleeper of the Wildwood Fugue.
Rework outline for The Merchant of Nevra Coil. At least I figured out why the action figures are seen as a bad thing in the overarching story. Can’t say due to spoilers, but they hold the potential to undo all of Gabriel the Destiny God’s hard work. I’m not even kidding there.
Send in for Month 2 advertising sites for Family of the Tri-Rune.
Catch up on sleep or stay up later.
Work on rewriting plans for The Elysium Saga. Just tentative plans right now, but the plot of the 4th book needs to be redone entirely from the original. A 2 book scavenger hunt? Yikes.
Maybe do some cooking and reading. Those outlines take precedence for the next 3 weeks.
Remember that the Family of the Tri-Rune Blog Tour starts on April 1st! Keep an eye out for it!
Hello to all my beloved blogger friends. I hope everything is going well for you all today. Things have picked up for me as well. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I received the Dragon Loyalty Award which I humbly accepted, but I have some other positive news I will share a little later.
This post is not about me though. Remember how I mentioned losing my close friend Petie to a brain hemorrhage and flying out to Puerto Rico for his burial with his sister after the wake in NJ? Those expenses were nearly $10,000.00, if not more, and we have come to find that Pete did not have any life insurance or real savings. While the family was able to raise some of the money, they fell short. Fortunately, the funeral services involved on both ends are willing to work with the family so they can…
But for now, it’s time to post my review of the second book:
Hello to all my beloved blogger friends. I hope everything is going well for you all today. Things have picked up for me as well. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I received the Dragon Loyalty Award which I humbly accepted, but I have some other positive news I will share a little later.
