I’m really almost done with this one. I’ve got only about a chapter or so to go on the draft, but I set it aside until this summer. I have the ending all plotted of course, but I kind of stopped feeling it there for a while. This is going to be a novella of about 35,000 words, and is of course about superheroes, supervillains, alien invasions, mecha-warriors, and all that good stuff.
I was really excited when I started the Jungle Girl and wrote the first five chapters. This is sort of another homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs, or maybe my attempt to immitate Burroughs. I just love his stories and I write what I love. I just finished another of his books a few weeks ago– The Deputy Sherrif of Commanche County. But I digress.
I am going to get back to this story sometime soon. It is basically a jungle adventure story, as you might have guessed from the title. There are a few sci-fi twists– it wouldn’t be a Wesley Allison story if there weren’t some cross-genre things going on. Like Princess of Amathar, it’s a first person story– and it’s been a while since I’ve written one of those.
I wasn’t planning on writing another Eaglethorpe Buxton anytime soon, but I knew that the next one would be Eaglethorpe and the Queen of Aerithtaine. Then I thought up a really funny line and had to write it, so I ended up writing the first few pages of the story. Eaglethorpe Buxton stories are really short (though this one might be bit longer) so I could sit down and pound it out pretty quick, but I’m probably thinking I’ll wait till this summer.
The first two EB stories are out there as free downloads, and a new one would be too short to charge even 99 cents for, so I’m thinking I might write two this summer and package them with the first two (maybe rewritten) as the Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton. If I do, the fourth story could be any one of a number that I have rattling around in my head, but the most likely would be Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Werewolf.
This project has been in the works literally for years now. I plotted out the story just after I finished Princess of Amathar and I’ve started writing it a couple of times. At some point I know I’m going to finish it. If I keep up my goal of completing five books a year, then I’ll have to get it done next year or year after, even if I don’t manage to get to it this year.
The story, like Princess of Amathar, is a first person adventure from the point of view of stranded Earth-man Alexander Ashton. There will be lots of sword-fighting, laser gun fighting, and strange alien monsters. The evil Zoasians of course make a return as do all the surviving Amatharians from the first book.
I’ve changed the banner of City of Amathar Blog. For the past two a half years it has said “The Official Blog of School Teacher / Novelist Wesley Allison.” I have changed it to “The Official Blog of Author Wesley Allison.” This is not because I’ve given up being a teacher. I haven’t. Nor is it because I’m not still proud to be a teacher. I am. But I’ve decided I can’t blog about being a teacher. I just don’t have it in me. I can’t shout into the wind anymore. Teachers have gone from being underappreciated to being the scapegoats and whipping boys of politicians, pundits, and commentators who don’t have a clue. I’ll continue to do my best, for more, with less. But after I get home from work, I’m not going to carry it with me anymore. From now on, when I get home I’m no longer Mr. Allison. I’m just Wesley Allison.
I knew that if any of my books was likely to capture attention, it would be His Robot Wife. His Robot Girlfriend was being downloaded by the thousands each month, despite not being my best work. So I really worked to finish a book that was much better written than the original. I also for the first time had letters from over a hundred people who had questions or suggestions about a sequel to His Robot Girlfriend. That was pretty strange– that kind of feedback was definitely new to me. I finished it and published it in February with a goal of selling 8,000 ebooks in a year. It seems like I might make that goal.
I promised myself that I would finish five books this year, and I’m going to be a full time writer this summer. I usually write after school and on weekends anyway, but I’ve been sick now for almost two months and just don’t have the energy. But I’m going to get it done! I have ten projects in various stages of completion and it’s only a matter of which one comes first. I’ll tell you about them all over the next few days.
By 2010, I had mostly given up on traditionally publishing the Senta and the Steel Dragon books. I entered the Voyage of the Minotaur in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, and though it made it to round two, it was very disappointing. I was very unhappy with the feedback I got from the publishers who were evaluating the books. Some of the criticism was valid, but some I felt was very mean and some was just incorrect.
I decided to publish it myself and did. I also decided that Senta and the Steel Dragon shouldn’t just be a trilogy, but a series. The three books I had written (as one long one) took place three to five years apart. I thought I should write books to fill in the void. So my original three books became:
Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur
Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 3: The Drache Girl
Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 5: The Two Dragons.
I sat down and wrote Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land. It was a real challenge making it fit between two already completed books.
I finished it and published book 2, then revised book 3 again and published it.
I also decided that I would write a quick and short little prequel and so Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon, was done.
In the meantime, I was playing a lot of Rock Band on my Wii. This inspired a story that just popped right out of me, seemingly without much effort on my part. It became Tesla’s Stepdaughters.
So, I had five books published in 2010, and I started having visions of dozens of Wesley Allison books or even scores. If I write 5 books a year, I could write as many as Edgar Rice Burroughs before I die.
It was about here that I really decided I wanted to be a writer, I guess. I had published His Robot Girlfriend as a free ebook, and I put out Princess of Amathar as an ebook.
I realized that The Steel Dragon was way to big to ever be accepted by a publisher, so I split it into it’s three parts and sent them off, trying to get them published as a trilogy. The rejection slips started pouring in.
I was speding so much time sending out letters and queries that I didn’t have too much time to write, but I wanted to write something, so I made up a little story, inspired a bit by Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. I set my story in the fantasy world I had created to play Dungeons and Dragons with my kids, and Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess was done. I had so much fun that I wrote Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress, based on the play I had once written for the Brown JHS Thespian Club.
In 2008, I finished my huge steampunk book, which I called “The Steel Dragon.” It was just shy of 1000 pages long, about 375,000 words. I printed up 10 copies and gave them to friends and colleagues over the summer to help me revise and edit.
In the meantime, I taught summer school for the first time that year, teaching 11th grade U.S. History. It was a great deal of fun, mostly because my son John was in my class.
I also discovered ebooks for the first time. Some friends urged me to get something written to get my name out there, so I took some of my sci-fi flash fiction, mashed it together, rewrote it, and wrote an ending for it. This became His Robot Girlfriend. I posted it on Feedbooks and then Smashwords.
One day in 2007, a friend and fellow teacher and I were discussing World of Warcraft, and I commented that I would rather spend the time creating my own worlds than playing around in someone elses. He said. “When you write the book, I’ll read it.” I whipped out Princess of Amathar and gave him a typed copy– which he didn’t really want to read.
He asked if I had ever heard of Print on Demand, like Lulu. I looked into it and liked what I saw. Here I could publish my book without a huge investment on my part. At least a few friends and relatives could get copies. I would “vanity” publish it. I did, and friends bought it. I spent $50.00 and bought an ISBN (which seems expensive now, but wasn’t then) and it appeared at Amazon.
All of a sudden, I thought, “Hey, I wrote a book. I bet I could do it again.”
I sat down and plotted out a huge steampunk story. I had many inspirations. I wanted to write a huge multigenerational story– a fantasy version of James Michener. I was also fascinated with the Victorian mind set and Imperialism and its affects on local indigenous people. I plotted out a big story in three parts and started writing.
City of Amathar 