Monthly Archives: July 2012

Astrid Maxxim for Schools

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You may have noticed a new tab on the main page entitled “Astrid Maxxim for Schools.”  I plan to offer Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbikes free (for the electronic ebook) to any teachers and schools who would like to use it.  I will also have a new digest-size paper edition available at cost for teachers and schools.  I plan to also offer a downloadable study guide and more.

I haven’t yet finalized all the details, but if you are a teacher or know one, who would like to use this book for your students either as a class assignment or a reading option for your students, please feel free to contact me.  Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike has a Flesch-Kindaid Reading Level of 5.0.

Cover Reveal: Women of Power

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One of the running topics over at Smashwords is the possibility of improving sales by improving your book cover.  Along with writing this summer, I’m doing new edits of as many books as I can get done, getting paper versions completed for as many books as I can, and generally improving my product line.  So I decided some time ago that I would redo the cover for Women of Power, since it is the only cover I’ve ever actually gotten negative feedback on– something along the lines of “the book was much better thant he cheesy cover seemed to indicate.”

By the time you read this, I should be very close to uploading this cover to Smashwords and Amazon, and of course the other retail outlets will have it soon afterwards.  If you want, feel free to redownload the book.  Regardless of where you purchased it, you should be able to download the update free.  If it has the new cover, you’ve got the new update.

Motivations: Brechalon

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By the end of 2009, I had already decided that I was going to publish The Voyage of the Minotaur myself.  I had three fairly popular free books out there– His Robot Girlfriend, and the two Eaglethorpe Buxton stories.  So I thought, what I really need is a prequel to distribute free that will drive interest for The Voyage of the Minotaur and subsequent books.

Brechalon was a difficult task, because I was trying to set up what would happen in a year or two before the action really starts.  Two of my main characters were at this point fairly uninteresting children and a third was in prison.  I decided to focus on the others, so I had the Iolanthe-Terrence-Yuah story line, the Iolanthe-Zeah story line and the Augie story line.  In addition I followed Zurfina into the prison.  Those decisions brought out a couple of other weaknesses.  The most interesting thing about Terrence is his drug addiction, but I couldn’t show too much of it without giving it away, and the most interesting thing about Zurfina is her magic, and she was in an anti-magic prison cell.  In the end, I was pretty happy with the story, though I don’t think it does much more than hint at what really is to come in The Voyage of the Minotaur.

I don’t think I’ll ever attempt a prequel of this type again.

Motivations: Tesla’s Stepdaughters

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The idea for Tesla’s Stepdaughters came while I was playing Rock Band 2.  I was playing it a lot over the summer in 2009.  As part of the game, you create your band, and the band I created became The Ladybugs.  The original band name was actually Tesla’s Stepdaughters, but when I got around to writing the story, it just seemed to make more sense that the band standing in historically for The Beatles would have a similar name.

I am really pleased with Tesla’s Stepdaughters.  I think I was successful in creating a setting for the story, without delving too deeply into it.  I’m really happy with my mystery.  I never really thought I would be able to write a mystery story, and while some might point out that the mystery is the weakest part of the story (and I wouldn’t argue that), for me, I’m pretty pleased.

 

Update: Back to Work

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After two whole weeks of not doing any writing at all, I’m finally back to work.  I’m working on Astrid Maxxim 2, and I think I should be able to knock it out pretty quickly.  Actually, I know I can knock it out pretty quickly.  The real question is whether I will.

I like Astrid and when I’m having a rough time getting motivated, writing about her and her friends can put me back in the groove.  Right now, I’m about 2/3 of the way through the draft.

On a related topic, I’ve just contacted Shaed Studios to solicit the cover for Astrid Maxxim 3.  Of course I haven’t started writing it, because I’m still working on book 2, but I have it all plotted out.  The idea for the cover is unusual enough that I thought Matthew over at Shaed would need more time to do it.  But he’ll probably surprise me and have it perfectly crafted well before I expect it.  He did a great job on the previous two covers.

 

Motivations: Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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I don’t know what happened to my original post, but here it is basically.

I had finished Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess and had a lot of fun writing it.  I decided a second Eaglethorpe book was in order.  A few years ealier, I had written a little play, which was performed by the Brown Junior High Drama Club to great success, and I decided that this play had been written by Eaglethorpe.  The play involves characters from his world– specifically the parents of the Queen of Aerithraine, so it fit.

I was watching lots of Shakespeare at the time and you will see a lot of not so subtle nods to the Bard.  The third part of Eaglethorpe (which is coming in The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton) is really a continuation of the story in Sorceress.

 

His Robot Girlfriend Available at Manybooks

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Just a reminder that along with the many thousands of great classic books that you can find at Manybooks.net, you can download His Robot Girlfriend free.

Manybooks is one of the best sites of new ereader, iPad, or Kindle owners.  You can create a library to rival Alexandria in almost no time at all.  Check it out.

Motivations: Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess

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It was 2009 and His Robot Girlfriend was being dowloaded by the tens of thousands.  I had just finished editing The Voyage of the Minotaur and was entering it into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.  (It made it to round two.)  So what to write next?

I wanted to do something short and fun and I decided on a fantasy comedy.  I had read an enjoyed Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, particularly the character of Lemony Snicket who is narrator and somehow involved with the characters and frequently hints at things outsidet the story.  I decided that my hero would be a story-teller who changed the story to suit himself.  Eaglethorpe Buxton was born.

I set the story in (sort of) the world I had created for my D&D campaign.  My kids still have fond memories of some of the settings in which the stories take place and even met some of the characters when they played– notably Queen Elleena of Aerithraine.  I had a lot of fun writing EBEP and many people have written to tell me that they like him.  I’ve heard a few negative comments too, but that’s okay.

Motivations: The Voyage of the Minotaur

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The Voyage of the Minotaur was actually the second novel that I wrote– sort of.  As I mentioned the other day, it was originally the first part of a very long novel– almost 400,00 words, about 850 pages.  I was almost done with this book before I even had a working title, but settled on The Steel Dragon, and this of course later became Senta and the Steel Dragon.  The three parts were originally called– Expedition, Colony, Dominion.

After the book was done and had gone through editing, I decided that it was just too big and had to be split into three parts.  So part one became The Voyage of the Minotaur.

Several things influenced me to devise this story.  A friend had encouraged me to self-publish Princess of Amathar, and the success of that book, minor though it was, encouraged me to write a second.  Lord of the Rings had just come out and so I was already thinking of a three part fantasy story.  I had also just read Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and remembered his notes about it being his Lord of the Rings.  Finally, I had recently watched James Michener’s Hawaii.  Putting this all together with several non-fiction books I had recently read about colonial imperialism (particularly Britain in Africa), and I came up with the story outline for Senta and the Steel Dragon.

I wanted a story that told about colonialism over a long period– in this case about ten years.  I had thought about how badly native people were treated by the colonial powers and wondered just how much worse it would have been if those natives were an entirely different species.  I already had a world map that I had created a few years earlier when I had toyed with the idea of writing a role-playing setting.  All of this went into the mix.  I also used the setting I had created twenty years before for a few fantasy vignettes I had written– the otherworldly place that people visit when they use the magic drug opthalium.  Throwing all this into the mix, I just started writing.  It took 14 months to write the drafts for what became three books.