Category Archives: Writing

My Favorite 2-Star Review

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My books have gotten many reviews– mostly good.  I’m proud to say that I have more 2 star reviews than 1 star, more 3 star than 2 star, more 4 star than 3 star, and more 5 star than 4 star.  Some of those are very well-thought-out and some not so much.

I usually try not to look at reviews, but sometimes I see them and can’t help myself from reading them.  I recently spotted the only review for Women of Power on US Amazon.  It’s a 2-star review, but I really enjoyed reading it.  First of all, though it has some real criticism, it is constructive.  Secondly, it has some positive things to say too.

Here’s a part I like.

“The sad part is that this author writes amazingly well. The whole book is modern
language type writing, making it easy to understand. And the author certainly
knows how to craft an action scene. It’s exciting and you’re never lost or
wondering where one character is, in relation to another, or even to the
environment. The author creates great superhero/villain names for the
characters. I’m a big fan of the Atomic Jack-O-Lantern, the name alone tells you
what an awesome character it is. I cannot sing enough praises for this author’s
ability to make me want to keep going one more chapter. Just one more… just
one more… till I suddenly find myself at the end of the book.”

Read the entire review (all 2 stars) here.

Astrid Maxxim: Robot Valerie

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**** SPOILER ALERT ****

One of the characters in Astrid Maxxim is a robot.  She’s Robot Valerie, imprinted with the memories of Astrid’s friend Valerie Diaz.

Robot Valerie has two purposes.  The first is just that I wanted a robot character.  Orignially she was going to be a robot version of Astrid’s other friend Denise.  I had Denise and Robot Denise for a long time in the draft, but Denise already has a complicated family life, so it just seemed natural to change the robot to Robot Valerie.

The second reason for Robot Valerie was as a plot device.  The bad guys are after Robot Valerie, naturally, because she’s a cool robot.  It’s just one more thing for Astrid to worry about.

For some reason, people just like robot characters.  People generally love Patience in His Robot Wife, and of the comments I’ve gotten so far about Astrid Maxxim, probably 75% talk about Robot Valerie.

Astrid Maxxim

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Astrid is the title character and the main character in Astrid Maxxim.  As a character, she has two facets.  On the one hand, she has to be interesting, so she has her foibles and flaws, but on the other hand, it is her eyes from which we see her world.  Therefore, she has to have a solid center.

Astrid is extremely intelligent, but she is also intuitive and empathetic.  She is kind and friendly, but shy and unassuming.  She loves science and technology and is easily frustrated by superstition and silliness.  She is supremely confident about herself, but not so confident in her interactions with others.  This along with a certain rigidness regarding change, I associate with her being an only child.

Astrid is a fun character to write and I hope to do a fairly long series of her stories.  It all depends on how long I last, I suppose.

Writing Goals

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One of the things I did this year was set a goal for writing.  On January 1st 2012, I decided that I would try and write 6 pages per day.  I’ve been keeping track since then.  Although there were times when I was behind my goal ( especially over the summer), right now, I’m 60 pages ahead, so that means I’m going to finish the year ahead.

In 2013, I plan to increase my goal to 8 pages per day.  I had hoped to publish five books this year, and it looks like it’s only going to be three, and that is only because one was already written at the start of the year.  Of course if someone were to make a His Robot Girlfriend movie (are you listening Spielberg?) or a Senta and the Steel Dragon Movie (what do you say, Peter Jackson?), then I could quit my day job and focus on writing.  Maybe even a Blood Trade movie (Wes Craven?).

Eaglethorpe Buxton Update (Another Already)

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I whipped through the rest of EB and the Day of the Night of the Werewolf, and have finished the first draft.  I am now working on the revision.  I’ll keep you posted– as always.

 

 

 

 

 

Eaglethorpe Buxton Update

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Wow!  It’s been a tough few weeks.  I’ve not had nearly as much time to write as I wanted.  I was way ahead on my goal, but now I’ve nearly fallen behind.

I’ve just finished chapter 12 (of 20) of Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Day of the Night of the Werewolf.  I had kind of figured I’d be done by now.

Well, I’m already looking forward to summer, so I can go back to writing full time.  First quarter of school is now over.  Only three more to go.

 

 

The World of Eaglethorpe Buxton

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Here is a very early map of Duaron, the continent where Eaglethorpe Buxton has most of his adventures.  (Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Amazons takes place hundreds of miles to the south on the continent of Ennedi.)

You can see Aerithraine (spelled without the e at the end) is in the far west.  Brest, where Elven Princess takes place is right about in the middle– part of the “fallen lands.”  Lyrria where Sorceress takes place is on the south coast.  Theen and Goth, two places mentioned in the story but not visited (except maybe in the new book) are in the southeast.

I have a later, much more detailed map, but it’s too much to scan, and who would be interested really anyway?  I could easily have written Eaglethorpe with no map at all, as I (and Eaglethorpe) play pretty fast and loose with the geography.

Eaglethorpe Buxton Update

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Today I reached the halfway point of Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Day of the Night of the Werewolf (draft).  It’s taken me eight days to get this far.  That may sound like I’m writing incredibly fast, but these stories are quite short at about 20,000 words each or 50 typed almost single-spaced pages (I use 1.15 spacing when I write).  So that’s three pages per day.

Maybe another week to finish this draft.  Then I’ll do a revision of this story, and then a revision of all of them together, and then two editing passes.  So we’re looking at mid to late November, which sounds good to me.  I really want to have it available before December for the holiday season.

When I do the whole revision pass, it will give me a chance to improve some of the earlier stories, as well as make them fit together.  I like Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Amazons, but it didn’t quite reach the level I wanted.  Hopefully I can get it closer to what I originally intended.  On the other hand, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Queen of Aerithraine, I think, turned out far better than I hoped.

I’ll keep you updated.  Thanks.

Eaglethorpe Buxton Bits

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It was just about time for elevenses when I spied two snowshoe hares sitting beside the road munching on a few sprigs of green which poked out of the snow.

“Hop down,” I told the orphan.

“Why?”

“I want you to get a rock and bean one of those hares,” said I.  “If you can kill it, we can eat.”

“I don’t know that I can hit it.”

“It can’t be more than thirty feet away.  Any boy could hit it with a rock from this distance.”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on boy.”

The child slid to the ground and then picked up a likely looking stone from a small pile not too far from her feet and hefting it back, launched it in the general direction of the hares.  She didn’t have much heft, and with the lob she put on the rock, if it had hit the hare, it would have done nothing more than make it angry.  Of course there was no chance of that, since the course of the missile was off to the right by a good thirty degrees.  The hares started and took off over the snow, disappearing among the trees.

I am usual content to rip off pay homage to Shakespeare when I’m writing Eaglethorpe Buxton, but here I’m stealing from paying tribute to Mark Twain.  I have a heavily annotated copy of Huckleberry Finn that I’ve read a dozen times, and this little bit comes right out of Huck’s attempt to “borrow” some things when he’s dressed as “Sarah-Mary.”

The Story of the Story of the Queen of Aerithraine

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My son, my daughter, and I used to enjoy playing D&D, sometimes with one or more of my nephews and my son’s best friend.  The story of Queen Elleena of Aerithraine came right out of our D&D campaign.  Aerithraine was the most powerful country and one of the few relatively safe places in a world full of ogres, dragons, monsters, and demons.

I even had a little figure of Queen Elleena, though she had been designed as a character from an official D&D game.  She’s sitting on the shelf just to my left as I write this, just beneath a dragon and a little left of Darth Vader.

I’ve never thrown away any piece of story that I’ve come up with.  I still have a few of them from our game that may end up in a future Eaglethorpe Buxton story and pieces of my other stories will become parts of my new books.