Category Archives: Writing

Motivations: His Robot Girlfriend

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His Robot Girlfriend is Free on iBooksIt 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.

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 far from my best story.

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 shows a bit more from her point of view and we find out that not everything is as Mike thinks it is.

The newest edition of the series will be His Robot Wife: A Great Deal of Patience, and will be the first full-length novel featuring the characters.  And as they title suggests, it will feature a great deal of Patience.

Motivations: Princess of Amathar

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Princess of AmatharI began writing Princess of Amathar so long ago, it’s really difficult to remember what I was thinking at the time. It was about 1980 and I was just about two years out of high school. I began writing several stories in short chapters, rotating between them. One was a fantasy story about an alternate world, one was a fantasy story set in a dream world (which I later used as the white opthalium drug-induced world for Senta and the Steel Dragon), but most of them were fan fiction sequels to Edgar Rice Burroughs Books. Finally there was Amathar.

My idea behind Amathar was to write a book that ERB might write if he was still around at the time. In that way, Princess of Amathar more than any of my other books, was written as a book I would really want to read. As the years passed and the story was revised, it became more of a love-letter to the fond memories I had reading John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar, and Carson of Venus as a kid.

I still have the original first chapter draft and the story is quite different than the final version. Our earth hero arrives mysteriously in Ecos, though he doesn’t have the same name and he doesn’t meet Malagor. Instead he immediately finds a family of neo-luddite Amatharians whose daughter has been captured by Zoasians. The book changed again and again over the years. Alexander got his first name after I wrote a college paper on Alexander the Great, and his last name from a girl I worked with at Kmart.

By 1994, when I started teaching, the book was only half done. I worked really hard to finish it and did so about 1997. Many of the characters and alien races were named after kids in school, though in revision they were usually changed. It went through many revisions after that and it got many rejection letters from publishers, before I finally published it in 2007. The ebook came out in 2009.

Princess of Amathar has sold a little over 1,000 copies– not one of my best-sellers.  Still, it holds a special place in my heart as the beginning of my writing career, and I still enjoy reading it.

The Price of Magic – Radley Staff

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The Price of Magic - NewToday we look at the last entry in the long list of characters who appear in The Price of Magic. It is the last one I’m going to detail.  Believe it or not, there are characters I decided to skip.  Today we are detailing Radley Staff, and I’m not going to tell you what happens to him in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Staff first appears in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur, where he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  He falls in love with Iolanthe and the two have a mutual romantic connection that results in the conception of Iolana.  In Book 3: The Drache Girl, he leaves the navy and moves to Birmisia, where he finds Iolanthe married to someone else.

Staff plays a vital role in the politics and culture of the colony, and plays a particularly large part in the story of Book 5: The Two Dragons.

The Price of Magic is the latest in a series that chronicles a world of steam power and rifles, where magic has not yet been forgotten. A new colony in a distant lost world has grown from a tiny outpost to a center of civilization in a vast wilderness. The Price of Magic continues a story of adventure and magic, religion and prejudice, steam engines and dinosaurs, angels and lizardmen, machine guns and wizards, sorceresses, bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons, and dragons.

Find The Price of Magic wherever fine ebooks are sold, including HERE at Smashwords.

Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge

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Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar ChallengeAstrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge is available today at your favorite ebook store.  This is the fifth book in the Astrid Maxxim: Girl Inventor series.

Astrid Maxxim, brilliant teenage inventor returns. Astrid is looking forward to racing against a professional driving team to prove her electric racecar can take on the gas-guzzlers. Then without warning, she wakes up in the hospital with partial amnesia. What could have happened to her? Now everyone treats her like she’s brain-damaged! What if her IQ really did drop to 184? What a nightmare!

Find Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge at these fine ebook stores:

Smashwords

Amazon

iBooks

Barnes and Noble

 

The Price of Magic: Chapter 14 Excerpt

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The Price of Magic - NewThere was a knock.

“Come in,” said Lady Iolana.

The door opened and her father peered inside. He paused for a second, seeing her still in bed, but then he closed the door behind him and stepped across the room to take a seat in the comfy chair by the fireplace.

“It’s unusual for you to be in bed at this hour,” he said. “Not ill, are you?”

“No. I’m just being indolent.”

“Well, you are entitled, I suppose. It’s not everyday you turn fourteen.”

“No, it isn’t, but it seems like my birthday comes quicker every year.”

“Wait until you’re my age,” he said. “They fly at you like freight trains. We missed you at breakfast.”

“Esther brought me breakfast in bed. But I’m about ready to get up and about now.”

“What are your plans today?”

Iolana pulled the book, heretofore unnoticed from her side, and placed a silver bookmark between its pages before setting it on the nightstand.

“We are having our little get-together tonight, and I have a date for tea with Dovie. I thought I would visit some friends this morning.”

Mr. Staff stood up and walked over to the bedside. He picked up the book as if he was reading the cover, though he didn’t really look at it.

“You’re a very busy young lady,” he said. “I suppose you soon won’t have any time for me at all.”

“Don’t be silly, Father. We’re going hunting three days hence. We have to get that therizinosaurus that you’ve been after. Besides, we’ll see each other tonight.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile. Setting the book back down, he turned and walked to the door. He paused to look back over his shoulder. “You have a present waiting for you downstairs.”

“I can’t wait,” she said with a smile.

As soon as Mr. Staff left, Esther entered. She was wearing a cheerful blue sundress.

“Have you decided what you want to wear?” she asked.

“I don’t want to clash with you,” said Iolana. “Perhaps my teal skirt, with a white blouse. Do I have a teal tie?”

“Yes, but you don’t have a matching hat.”

“Find a bit of teal lace and put it around my white boater. I’m sure Auntie Yuah has some if I don’t.”

Thirty minutes later, properly attired, Iolana and Esther descended the stairs. As usual for that time of day, Kayden was manning the front door. He opened it and ushered them outside. Sitting right in front of the portico was a new Sawyer and Sons model 12b steam carriage with a large red bow attached to its shiny sky blue bonnet.

“Golly!” exclaimed Iolana.

TMAO Eaglethorpe Buxton

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Eaglethorpe BuxtonEllwood Cyrene is Eaglethorpe Buxton’s best friend. He is more or less right out of my old D&D campaign. He is rather overaffectionate toward Eaglethorpe, and the latter constantly has to remind himself of how manly they both are.  Of course, Ellwood has a big secret, and the discovery of that secret leads Eaglthorpe through a series of adventures.

Ellwood is the only character that is actually from the D&D game I ran for my children when they were growing up.  The world of Eaglethorpe is the world of that game, but Eaglethorpe and all the others, aside from Ellwood, were made up for the stories.

The Price of Magic – Augustus Marek Virgil Dechantagne

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The Price of Magic - NewToday we look at the next to last entry in the long list of characters who appear in The Price of Magic. Most have appeared in previous books in the series. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

 

Augie is the eldest child of Terrence and Yuah Dechatagne.  We see him for the first time as a baby in Book 3: The Drache Girl.  By Book 5: The Two Dragons, he is a rough and ready little boy that knows more than he should for his age and almost gets eaten by dinosaurs.  In The Price of Magic, he’s an eleven-year-old boy and much more.

The Price of Magic is the latest in a series that chronicles a world of steam power and rifles, where magic has not yet been forgotten. A new colony in a distant lost world has grown from a tiny outpost to a center of civilization in a vast wilderness. The Price of Magic continues a story of adventure and magic, religion and prejudice, steam engines and dinosaurs, angels and lizardmen, machine guns and wizards, sorceresses, bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons, and dragons.

Find The Price of Magic wherever fine ebooks are sold, including HERE at Amazon.

TMAO Eaglethorpe Buxton – Hysteria

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Eaglethorpe BuxtonHysteria is Eaglethorpe Buxton’s horse. I don’t know how I came up with the name, I just remember giggling as I wrote it. It probably goes back to the evocative names in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” an awesomely funny play in which the Romans all have names like Lascivious and Stupendous. Of course, Hysteria is such a great name, because it tells us that she isn’t the steady warhorse a real hero should have. Also hysteria is such a great word, full of meaning and rife with sexism.

The Price of Magic – Pantagria

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The Price of Magic - NewWe continue to look at the long list of characters who appear in The Price of Magic. Most have appeared in previous books in the series. I’m not going to tell you what happens to them in The Price of Magic, but if you haven’t read the earlier Senta books, Spoiler Alert.

Pantagria is either an angel that lives in a parallel dimension, or a drug-induced shared hallucination.  She appears to those who use the illegal magical drug White Opthalium, which one rubs into one’s eyes.  We first get the hint of Pantagria in Book 0: Brechalon.  We see her clearly in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur through Terrence’s drug-induced visions.  After Terrence’s blinding, she appears to be gone, at least from the lives of our main characters, but she returns in Book 5: The Two Dragons, tormenting the grieving Yuah.  Finally, she is a prominent part of Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers, when she comes into conflict for the first time with Senta.  Well, she’s back!

Pantagria was based on a character from some little vignettes I wrote way back when I was in high school.  Back then, the character was a male, but much of the trappings are the same– the endless field of purple flowers, the eye-ball flowers, and the desire to become “real”.

The Price of Magic is the latest in a series that chronicles a world of steam power and rifles, where magic has not yet been forgotten. A new colony in a distant lost world has grown from a tiny outpost to a center of civilization in a vast wilderness. The Price of Magic continues a story of adventure and magic, religion and prejudice, steam engines and dinosaurs, angels and lizardmen, machine guns and wizards, sorceresses, bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons, and dragons.

Find The Price of Magic wherever fine ebooks are sold, including HERE at Amazon.

TMAO Eaglethorpe Buxton: Eaglethorpe Buxton

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Eaglethorpe BuxtonI don’t know where the idea came from to write an Eaglethorpe Buxton story, but he does owe a lot to several other authors and stores. His origin as a medieval story-teller comes right out of D&D and in fact the world in which he lives (including the Queen of Aerithraine) is from the D&D campaign I started as a young man and continued right up until my kids and I used to play.

Eaglethorpe’s line “The Queen of Aerithraine, with whom I once had the pleasure to spend a fortnight” is pretty much stolen from inspired by Baron Munchausen, and his line about Catherine the Great. He also has a bit of Lemony Snicket in him (great books, A Series of Unfortunate Events). I have always loved unreliable narrators and I tried to make Eaglethorpe one. Of course, he is a bit more than unreliable. He’s a complete liar.

In order to make the plot work, Eaglethorpe had to be a bit heroic. He knows how to handle himself with a sword. He can kick the crap out of goblins. But he’s not the hero he thinks he is.