Check out Readfulthing’s ‘Blogger of the Week’!
This week’s blogger of the week is a wonderful guy with a great personality. He makes me laugh daily, is always kind and helpful to his fellow authors and gives me another reason to be grateful for wordpress. He is also a very talented author, find his book here:
Clicky cover to buy booky
You can find out more about Lawrence and his unstoppable personality here:
Yahoo Image Search
So, I’ve been thinking and talking about genre. That led me to this post where I’m going to ask a few questions and answer then. Other authors or readers can join in the fun within the comments or on their own blog. Maybe we can turn this into an optional chain post where nobody is tagged. Totally volunteer, but I’m curious about people’s opinions:
My Answers
So, who wants a go at these questions? You can answer in the comments or on your own blog.
Yahoo Image Search
You see it on the screen
Vile venom spewed by a faceless serpent
Condemning a target to death
Or a fate that’s even worse
Yet the two have never met
You assume the target a murderer
Or a crippler of kids
Instead it is an artist
Not around to save their name
The serpent rants and raves
As if their enemy killed their kin
You cannot see their point
A story hated or a painting despised
Wooden actress to their taste
Yet they spout fury as if fact
To the backside of their target
Who is doing what they love
Unaware of the serpent’s rage
I spent a few minutes wandering IMDB this morning. Wow.
Yahoo Image Search (Nazgul)
This is going to be an odd character theme to bring up because Bob hasn’t shown up in the series yet. The character’s name isn’t even Bob. I’ve hinted at Bob because Bob holds a special place among the villains. This one is special even among all of the characters and most of the ones that I’ve created for other series. It’s only one theme that brings Bob such specialness and it’s the one I’m going to mention. All other themes are minor compared to the big one.
THE MONSTER
Up until Bob, all of my villains had some redeemable quality. The Lich has a sense of loyalty and the Hellfire Elf grew a sense of competition that bordered on honor. The main villain has developed some interesting positive attributes as I write his scenes. Some times it’s hard to believe he’s the ancient darkness that the heroes are destined to destroy.
Then Bob appeared and messed up the plan. Bob was supposed to grow into full evil, but Bob stepped right into the darkness. This character is vile, disgusting, cruel, deranged, and an all around monster. So, a big theme of Bob is to see what happens to someone that lives a life of pure evil. I really can’t wait to kill this character off, but I need Bob for a certain amount of time. Bob pushes the heroes to new levels of fear, courage, pain, and whatever else they need. It’s already been pointed out that if they can’t beat Bob then the more benevolent main villain would be too much.
Another part of this theme is how the other villains work with Bob. They hate and fear Bob nearly as much as the heroes. So, they grow from simply being around this monster. I really look forward to seeing what happens to the villain power structure when Bob is no more. If anyone thinks this is a spoiler then wait until you meet Bob. You’ll see that such a creature cannot be left alive.
Pick up Yesterday Road by Kevin Brennan this weekend! Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can read the eBook. This post will show you how!
Well, kids, since my recent marketing efforts have seemingly fizzled out, I hope you don’t mind if I come to you, hat in hand, and ask for some Amazon love. Sad but true — Yesterday Road is fading fast in the Kindle Store.
Occurred to me that, because so many of you regular readers have already bought the book, I might appeal to you to pick up a copy as a gift for someone you think would like it. Remember, you can easily buy it on Amazon and have it sent to your loved one of choice — or friend, or co-worker, or barista, or bookstore clerk who’s indie-curious.
Or, simply arm-twist your loved one of choice — or friend, or co-worker, or barista, or bookstore clerk who’s indie-curious — until he/she buys the book, preferably in your presence because people do, you know, fib a little about such purchases.
View original post 81 more words
Yahoo Image Search
First, I will say that this is just my experience. I know many people who have been successful with these things. I simply haven’t.
Last weekend was the free period for Beginning of a Hero and the February raffle ended this morning. The results got me thinking about all of my contest and giveaway attempts:
And there is something different about me and my books. All of the people who were telling me how great these promotions are write either drama, romance, historical fiction, and erotica. I write Fantasy, which is why I constantly hear ‘it’s great that you wrote a book. I’d buy it if I read fantasy.’ I saw it with the ENT promotion where people were showing no interest in my book while going on about the other books being repeat promotions. I guess bad timing hit me on this one too. Now, this doesn’t explain the Rafflecopter failure and I can’t figure that one out. Did it fail because a fantasy author headed the promotion? I’ve been a donator on a few run by romance authors and seen them explode.
Now, someone is bound to mention Perma Free, which is what I’ve seen in the free lists. It seems to be popular among fantasy authors because we do series. That first one free supposedly helps the others. Personally, I’m leery of making my first book Perma Free. As I told one person, going Perma Free means that my book won’t be on the same lists as the big boys of my genre. Somewhere along the line, I took a lot of pride from seeing my book sitting among those titles. That’s something I don’t want to give up for the possibility of sales. (I’m sure I’m gonna have a debate or two on this.)
Now, why do I think fantasy has a hard time with these types of promotions? I thought long and hard about this. It’s because as much as we believe fantasy is mainstream, it isn’t. Those of us that are in the genre seem to forget that we’re still fringe. Sure ‘Game of Thrones’ has an HBO show, but it’s unique. A lot of series that fantasy readers know and love aren’t at that level of fame outside of our circle. So, a giveaway or raffle that focuses on a fantasy author doesn’t attract the same amount of people as more mainstream genres like romance and historical fiction. Honestly, I’ve heard ‘I don’t read fantasy’ or ‘you introduced me to fantasy’ more times than I’ve heard long-term fantasy readers talk about my books. In fact, many of the lovers of fantasy don’t like me, but that’s an entirely different story that I’ve mentioned before.
So, what am I going to do? The Free Weekend approach has backfired on me multiple times. The Goodreads Giveaways are a safe bet for promotions since I don’t lose sales or rankings when they’re going on. Joining up with other raffles is still a good idea too. Basically, I need to choose less riskier promotions here until I have more books in the pipeline. That way it doesn’t hit as hard if the first one plummets. Again, this is just me and my experiences. Tons of people have been successful with these tactics, so give it a shot if you want.
Part 2 of my interview on L. Marie’s blog! A big thank you to her for the great questions.
Welcome back to the blog. Glad you’re here. Help yourself to a beverage. With us is the cool and clever Charles Yallowitz, here to continue the discussion of his series, Legends of Windemere. Charles also is a poet, so I’m sure he appreciates the alliteration I just used. 😀 If you’re a first timer, you might want to check herefor part 1 of the interview with Charles.
And of course, there’s a giveaway. Two of those who comment today will win the first three books of the series. But first, let’s talk to Charles.
El Space: How do you decide how much back story to include in each subsequent book of the series?
Charles: Since I write in present tense, I can’t do a narrative that goes over what previously happened. I have to remind readers about prior events through character dialogues. This creates a basic overview of the…
View original post 1,229 more words
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen
Rising from the ashes of this tragedy, Mags starts to learn how to love and
trust again, finally being able to find happiness. But sometimes things really
are too good to be true and again Mags learns how cruel the world can be as she
crashes back down.
A portion of all royalties from Crashing Back
Down are donated by the author to The Marcie Mazzola Foundation.
When Kristen is not driving a pen into paper, she enjoys reading all different genres and fishing. “There is just something so magical about water and the calm it brings to my life,” says Kristen. Even though writing is not her only career she is pursuing, Kristen hopes to one day be a full time writer. Having a day job and a busy life, makes finding time for writing difficult, but anything worthwhile in life is difficult. Loving life, writing, and fishing basically make up her world.
Yahoo Image Search
One of the most common devices/characters/whatever in fantasy is the fortune teller/seer/oracle. It happens all the time where a character either seeks out or stumbles upon a strange person who can hint about the future. One great use for these characters is to pick out the readers that hate this device. Seriously, it’s fun to see people roll their eyes at this one because it’s usually such a minor character with a vague revelation. Aside from being a cliche that people pounce on like free pizza, there is some fun with these types of characters. It’s all about the variation:
