Author Archives: wesleyallison

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About wesleyallison

Author of twenty science-fiction and fantasy books, including the popular "His Robot Girlfriend."

Motivations: The Drache Girl

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The Drache Girl was originally the second part of the three part novel I wrote in 2007-2008.  While I was writing it, it was known as “Colony.”  It takes place a little over three years after the events in what became The Voyage of the Minotaur.  When I was done, I decided to call it The Sorceress’s Apprentice, but ultimately changed that title to the current one.  I don’t know if that was the best decision or not.  I wanted to be more original, but the other might have caught more readers’ eyes.

As I mentioned before, this book was inspired by Lord of the Rings, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, James Michener’s Hawaii, and the movie Zulu.  The idea was to create a fantasy world mirroring British colonial imperialism.  This part of the story also owes something to British TV series “Hamish MacBeth,” and if you’ve seen that series, you’ll recognize Hamish in the character and trappings of PC Saba Colbshallow.

I enjoyed writing The Drache Girl probably more than any other book I’ve written.  I really enjoyed the characters at this point in the story– especially Senta and her friends and Saba Colbshallow. It ended up taking me a looong time to publish because I decided ultimately that there needed to be another book between The Voyage of the Minotaur and The Drache Girl.

Indy Author Gets Book Deal

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Indy Author Jamie McGuire has landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster.  She has previously done quite well self-publishing her books and this is a real trend of indy authors being discovered by publishers.  Hopefully this will mark a great career move for her.

Read the story here.

Part of what stories like this indicate is that the old model of the publisher as the gatekeeper  is broken– resulting in way too few new Shakespeares and way too many new Snookies.  Way to wake up Simon & Schuster.

Double Down by Vicki De Leo

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My friend and fellow writing group member Vicki De Leo has recently published Double Down.  I was happy to have played a very small part in her writing process by throwing in my two cents during our group readings.  Here is the description.

Valerie Peterson, Director of Human Resources for the Royal Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, is called back to work one night when security finds one of her employees murdered in her office. She discovers that before she died, the woman she knew as Monica, managed to institute a blackmail scheme in which she implicated Valerie as a co-conspirator.
While her career spirals out of control, her love life heats up. Still bruised from a disastrous first marriage, Valerie finds herself torn between the safety and comfort she feels in one man’s arms and the passion she feels for another.
When her home is burglarized, and her life threatened, she must accept that someone thinks she knows something worth killing for, possibly someone she works with every day, forcing her to reexamine the motives of everyone around her.
To complicate the matter further, the police arrest the one person Valerie is sure couldn’t have committed the murder. Her job and her life in jeopardy, Valerie decides to dig into Monica’s past hoping to find some clue to unmask the real killer.

Follow this link to find the ebook on Smashwords.

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.