Category Archives: Writing

More Motivations: Brechalon and The Voyage of the Minotaur

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A few weeks ago, when I was talking about my inspirations for The Voyage of the Minotaur and Brechalon, I forgot one– an important one.  One of my biggest inspirations was the movie “Zulu” staring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker.  This great movie was particularly evocative for me when I wrote the battle scenes at the end of The Voyage of the Minotuar.  I played the theme music while I wrote.  I think Terrence and Augie Dechantagne owe a bit to Stanley Baker and Michael Caine respectively.

I gave a major hint in Brechalon about my inspiration, as one of the characters is Colour Sgt. Bourne.  Another Colour Sgt. Bourne plays an important part in Zulu and the calling of his name is one of the most often repeated bits of dialog.  Second only perhaps to “fire at will.”

Motivations: The Dark and Forbidding Land

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The Dark and Forbidding Land was the first of two books that I squeezed between the events that happened in the original outline of Senta and the Steel Dragon, the other being The Young Sorceress.  I enjoyed writing TDAFL and I think it works well.  Part of that was because writing about Senta as a pre-teen was my favorite part of writing the entire series.

One of the challenges of writing this book was not to top the events in The Drache Girl.  I didn’t want Senta aged 10 to be more powerful and experienced than Senta aged 12.  Remember Star Wars, where we watch R2-D2 trudge around in the desert in episode 4, only to find out in episode 1, that he could fly.

The other challenge that I had was that I knew there were going to be characters who were going to die, based on my single book outline.  But I was limited in which characters I could kill, because some of them appeared in The Drache Girl and The Two Dragons which were already written.  So I sat down and created a whole pack of characters who, unbeknownst to them, were doomed.  The down side of this was that I ended up liking several of them and was sorry to see them go.  Not all of them ended up dying.  So, there are a couple of characters who appear only in books 2 and 4.

I haven’t read The Dark and Forbidding Land in a while, so I have to go back and take a look.  My son though, tells me it is his favorite book in the series.

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.

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.

 

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.

Motivations: His Robot Girlfriend

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It was 2008, and I had just finished writing the first draft of a massive fantasy novel that I was calling The Steel Dragon.  This would eventually become The Voyage of the Minotaur, The Drache Girl, and The Two Dragons.  I printed up 10 copies and handed them out to friends to read and edit over the summer.  Each one was a 4″ thick notebook.  I had also just self-published Princess of Amathar.

While I was waiting for the editing to be completed, I thought I needed something to post to Feedbooks and Manybooks to get my name out there.  I had written some sci-fi flash fiction a few years earlier and thought I could piece them together to make a novel.  This became the first half of His Robot Girlfriend and I wrote the other half over the summer (while teaching summer school).  I published it online and was astounded at the interest.  At one time, it was the third most downloaded book on Feedbooks (It’s since dropped to number 7).

His Robot Girlfriend succeeded in getting my name out there.  It’s been downloaded almost 500,000 times, has been reviewed numerous times, and I get many emails and notes from people that enjoy it.  That being said, I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.  Someday… soon, I plan to make a serious revision to the book.  There are some errors, but mostly, I think I can write much better than I did.  It has to keep the same plot and same major elements, but I’d like to smooth it out, fix the ending (which is weak), and maybe add a bit to it.  We’ll see.

One comment that detractors frequently make about His Robot Girlfriend (feedback is overwhelmingly positive) is that Patience has no will of her own.  She is a robot, duh!  But this gave me an idea for the new book– His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue.  It will show a bit more from her point of view and we will find out that not everything is as Mike thinks it is.