Category Archives: Writing

What I’m Working On – Part II

Posted on by
Reply

Typically, when I finish one project, I dabble here and there, writing bits and pieces of works until something sticks and then I jump in and finish it. I’ve just finished Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge, so I’m tinkering with some projects old and new to find my next project.

The following are three projects in various stages of pre-writing:

Maxxim6 draft 02Astrid Maxxim and the Mystery of Dolphin Island is the next book in the series.  I’m really happy with the direction that the Astrid Maxxim series is taking, and the books are fun to write.  This book is a plot with a bunch of ideas that need to be fleshed out before I start writing.  On the other hand, Astrid Maxxim books come together easily.  Though I might not start on this one right away, they do make kind of a good pallet cleanser after writing a more difficult book.  It’s no surprise that this book will involve dolphins… and an island.  It will also be Astrid, with very few of her regular supporting characters along for the ride.

 

Cool PatiencePeople have been clamoring for a new robot book, and I’ve had an outline for a while.  I was originally calling this one A Great Deal of Patience.  Now, I don’t know if that title fits, because it also features other characters– though there is plenty of Patience.  So, I may call it Cool Patience, or one of several other titles I have ready.  For that matter, now I kind of like Plenty of Patience!  The story involves a split between two groups of Daffodils and how they believe humans should best be served.  This will be the first full-length Robot Wife novel.  The outline is for an 80,000 word novel.  That’s just shorter than The Price of Magic or about two and a half times the size of His Robot Girlfriend: Charity.

 

A Plague of WizardsFinally, right after I finished The Price of Magic, I sat down and wrote a very detailed outline for Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 8.  I’m more excited about this than any Senta book since The Voyage of the Minotaur.  I really kind of want to jump in, but I’m holding myself back a bit, because I feel like I need something different first.  The plot involves what happens to Port Dechantagne and all its citizens when Senta just disappears… for a looooong time.  The answer is A Plague of Wizards.

 

What I’m Working On

Posted on by
Reply

Typically, when I finish one project, I dabble here and there, writing bits and pieces of works until something sticks and then I jump in and finish it.  I’ve just finished Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge, so I’m tinkering with some projects old and new to find my next project.

Two things that have been on the back burner for a while are the following:

82 Eridani Journey82 Eridani: Journey is the first of a seven part series that tells the story of the conquest of a distant solar system by a starship from Earth.  This first volume deals with the crew, who are flying through space after their captain has basically hijacked her own ship and chosen a new destination.  I don’t want to give away too much, but its both the darkest thing I’ve ever written and the most sexually explicit as well.  I’m also trying for more of a hard sci-fi feel than I’ve previously done.  I was working on this very hard a year or so ago, and got half way through, but haven’t touched it in a while.

 

Kanana: The Jungle Girl -- Cover RevealKanana the Jungle Girl is an adventure story like I used to enjoy as a kid.  It owes a lot to Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I’ve tried to give it my own spin, as well as a more modern take on the genre.  In some ways, it is a sort of reverse Tarzan story.  I think of it as a feminist story, but I imagine there will be some who view it as being the opposite of that.  This manuscript too, has been sitting for a while, but I picked it up over the past summer and wrote three or four chapters.  I kind of thought I was going to finish it the time, but got sidetracked by The Price of Magic.

Next time I’ll mention some projects I may be starting.

The Price of Magic: Kaspar and Gabby Drake & Abigail Bassett

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - NewWe continue to look at the many characters appearing in The Price of Magic. I won’t tell you what happens to them in the book, but if you haven’t read the earlier books in the series– watch out. Spoiler Alert.

 

Gabriella (Gabby) Bassett was been a recurring character in Senta and the Steel Dragon.  She’s one of the most beautiful members of the colony.  We see quite a bit of her in The Two Dragons, at weddings and at parties.  By the end of the book, she has become one of Senta’s new circle of friends.  We learn in The Sorceress and her Lovers, that she has a new beau.  By The Price of Magic, they are married.  Kaspar Drake, her new husband is a merchant sailor.

In The Sorceress and her Lovers, we meet Gabby’s little sister for the first time, and she has a fairly substantial role in The Price of Magic.

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.

The Price of Magic – Bennie and Hero Markham

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - NewWe continue to look at the many characters appearing in The Price of Magic. I won’t tell you what happens to them in the book, but if you haven’t read the earlier books in the series– watch out. Spoiler Alert.

Hero Markham nee Hurtling makes her appearance along with her twin brother Hertzel in Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur.  As Senta’s best friend, she plays a very large part in the following four books: The Dark and Forbidding Land, The Drache Girl, The Young Sorceress, and The Two Dragons.

Benny Markham first appears in The Young Sorceress, acting as a bodyguard for Senta and she goes out into the dinosaur-infested wilderness.  He makes an appearance in The Two Dragons at Iolana’s Accord Day party.

We find in The Sorceress and her Lovers, that they are married and have three children.  Benny is becoming and important member of the city and Hero is growing fat and happy at home.  What can we expect of them in The Price of Magic?

New powers are rising in Birmisia. Far to the south, the strange lizardmen of Xiatooq are making themselves known. Closer to home, the new lizzie city Yessonarah finds itself rich in gold—gold the humans covet. As tensions rise, many in Port Dechantagne seem eager to teach the lizzies a lesson in humility. Fourteen year old Iolana Staff finds herself in the center of it all, as she is pulled between her conscience and the conventions of society. Unconcerned with the conflict between human and lizzie, sorceress Senta Bly prepares for her own war, unaware that events will pull her into a life and death confrontation with an old enemy.

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.

The Price of Magic: Chapter 4 Excerpt

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - New“Good morning, all,” said Peter Bassington walking jauntily into the dining room.

“Hi, Uncle,” said Sen from her seat atop a pile of mail order catalogs.

“Good morning, Peter,” said Baxter, watching him sit down and then pushing a platter of white pudding toward him. “You seem in good spirits.”

“Why wouldn’t I be in good spirits? Why wouldn’t anybody? We’re here in Birmisia, the weather is warming up, there’s plenty to eat, and no one to tell us what to do. Isn’t that right, sister?”

Senta didn’t answer. She was staring off into space.

“Sister?”

“What?” She blinked and looked around, her eyes finally settling on him. “Oh, do you still live here?”

“Don’t mind her,” said Baxter. “She’s got her mind on important things and can’t be bothered with us mortals.”

“Well, I’m a journeyman wizard now. I passed my test. Maybe I could help you with whatever you have going on, sister.”

“That’s half-sister,” said Senta. She rose out of her chair as if gravity didn’t exist for her and stepped around the table, pausing just long enough to bend over and bite Baxter on the ear, before leaving through the kitchen door.

“I think she’s getting meaner,” said Peter, frowning and reaching for the toast.

“Get Mr. Bassington some eggs.” Baxter snapped his fingers at one of the lizzie servants. “Like I said, don’t mind her. She’s got something on her mind and forgets the ordinary things—like the fact that we have feelings.”

“Well I shan’t mind her. Life is too good to go around worrying about things.”

“So, what are you doing on this thoroughly wonderful day then?” asked Baxter.

“Oh, I’m going to fiddle around for a couple of hours, and then I have a lunch date.”

“Oh? And where are you taking Miss Bassett?”

“It’s not with Abigail. I’m taking out Lucetta Hartley.”

“I don’t think I know that family.”

“They’re just here from Brechalon—Langsington.”

“Well, you certainly seem to be a popular fellow,” said Baxter.

“I know.” The young man grinned. “None of them ever noticed me back in Brech, but here I’m that popular.”

“I’m sure you can attribute some of that to the fact that your sister is letting you spend her money as freely as you can.”

“Yeah. Do you think she’d let me buy a steam carriage? That’s really the only reason I’m not completely irresistible.”

“I know for a fact that Senta will have nothing to do with a steam carriage,” said Baxter. “She doesn’t like them. And part of your resistibility has to do with your being a dunderhead.”

“Hey! She said I could buy what I wanted. Besides, I don’t see you with any of your own money. How much did that fine suit set you back?”

“You watch your mouth if you don’t want it smacked,” said Baxter.

Peter raised a finger, threateningly. Baxter gave him a withering look.

“I wasn’t referring to your spending habits,” he said, “but to your jumping from one young lady to another. You’re going to burn all your bridges. You know they all talk to each other, don’t you?”

The Price of Magic: Shemar and Dutty Morris

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - NewWe continue to look at the many characters appearing in The Price of Magic.  I won’t tell you what happens to them in the book, but if you haven’t read the earlier books in the series– watch out.  Spoiler Alert.

I originally created Shemar and Dutty as some of the background characters for The Two Dragons.  I had written in the outline that they married, and that later Dutty became a close friend of Senta.

Since I actually wrote Book 4: The Young Sorceress after I had written book 5, when I needed a character to serve as a bodyguard for Senta in the wilderness, I used Shemar.

Then in Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers, we actually get to see Senta and Dutty interacting as friends, which was really fun to watch.

Shemar is a handsome young man and could probably have had any young lady in Port Dechantagne.  Dutty is pretty enough, but suffers in comparison to some of the other girls, like her best friend Gabriella Drake nee Bassett.

New powers are rising in Birmisia. Far to the south, the strange lizardmen of Xiatooq are making themselves known. Closer to home, the new lizzie city Yessonarah finds itself rich in gold—gold the humans covet. As tensions rise, many in Port Dechantagne seem eager to teach the lizzies a lesson in humility. Fourteen year old Iolana Staff finds herself in the center of it all, as she is pulled between her conscience and the conventions of society. Unconcerned with the conflict between human and lizzie, sorceress Senta Bly prepares for her own war, unaware that events will pull her into a life and death confrontation with an old enemy.

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.

Most Popular Books

Posted on by
2

I was thinking about my book sales today– in a very positive way, because my November sales were very good– and I started wondering which were the most popular and which were less so.  So I took the total number of books sold and divided it by the number of months that each title had been available.  I didn’t count the five free books.  Here is how they range from most to least popular.

  1. His Robot Wife
  2. His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue
  3. His Robot Girlfriend: Charity
  4. Princess of Amathar
  5. The Voyage of the Minotaur
  6. Tesla’s Stepdaughters
  7. Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike
  8. The Drache Girl
  9. The Dark and Forbidding Land
  10. Women of Power
  11. Blood Trade
  12. The Young Sorceress
  13. The Two Dragons
  14. Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea Dome
  15. Astrid Maxxim and her Hypersonic Space Plane
  16. The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton
  17. The Sorceress and her Lovers
  18. Astrid Maxxim and the Antarctic Expedition

I have five free books available, all of which have been downloaded many times.  They are: Brechalon, His Robot Girlfriend, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress, and Desperate Poems.

The Price of Magic is out, and by the end of the month, I’ll know where it falls on the scale above.

New Cover for The Drache Girl

Posted on by
Reply

The Drache GirlThe Drache Girl, Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 3, has a new cover with the same font and design esthetic as the new The Price of Magic.  By the time you read this, it should be available wherever you find the book.

If you haven’t yet read The Drache Girl, or the other Senta and the Steel Dragon books:

More than three years have passed since the colonists arrived in Birmisia, and Port Dechantagne is a thriving colony, with the railway line almost complete. Twelve year old sorceress’s apprentice Senta Bly, Police Constable Saba Colbshallow, and former maid Yuah Dechantagne must deal with wizards, prejudice, steam carriages, boys riding dinosaurs, and the mysterious activities of the lizardmen.

Purchase your copy of The Drache Girl in any ebook format at Smashwords by following this link!

The Price of Magic – Chapter 3 Excerpt

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - NewHigh Priestess Tokkenoht stood at the top of the stepped pyramid, 130 feet above the city streets. The pyramid’s design was different from temples in any other Birmisian city, as so many things about Yessonarah were different. Each of the nine levels, representing the nine ages of the universe, was covered in smooth white limestone. The staircase running up the pyramid’s front, from the base to the top, was marble trimmed with red brick fired in a kiln, a process learned from the soft-skins. Behind her, the square vault was dark grey marble, with a copper frieze and a doorway trimmed in copper. And on either side of that doorway was a sculpture of the god, carved of stone but covered in silver. The top of the vault was of course flat, to give the god a place to sit when he came to visit.

The temple’s dedication was still three days a way, but everything was coming along. With a quick glance at the acolytes stationed at the vault, Tokkenoht descended the great staircase. A hundred or more lizzies, mostly new arrivals to the city, stopped what they were doing to watch her. She was quite a spectacle. Her smooth green skin was painted azure blue, with zigzag designs of bright yellow down her belly. She wore a cape made of feathers of all colors of the rainbow, from crimson achillobator feathers near her tail, to bright blue utahraptor feathers poking up to form a collar behind her head.

When she reached the street, the crowd parted for her, some of them bowing low. She hissed pleasantly to them and then climbed into her sedan chair, an enclosed seat carried litter-like by the four large males, their bodies painted white, who waited beside it. It was a not a long journey to the palace, but the streets were busy, so by the time they arrived, the sun was already dropping toward the western horizon. When the bearers sat her chair down, Tokkenoht dismissed them for the day and walked quickly up the steps to the residence.

“Welcome home, High Priestess,” said Sirris, waiting at the top. She had no paint or feathers, but wore a large gold necklace, with a Yessonar pendant.

“Thank you, wife of my husband. Were you waiting to speak with me?”

“No. I just stepped out here. I am on my way to check with Ssu and see that all the preparations are complete.”

“I will go with you,” said Tokkenoht. “I want to see the… what was that soft-skin word that Kendra used?”

“Children.”

“Yes. I want to see the children.”

Together, they walked through an ornately carved archway and into the royal gardens. The gardens were not particularly impressive at the moment, as the winter plants were past their prime. It wouldn’t be long till they were pulled out and replaced with spring flowers. But the colorful birds in the aviaries still sang and the fountains still sprayed their jets of water.

Just past the gardens were five plots of carefully prepared soil, and just beyond them, a huge cage. Built like the aviaries, the cage was a half dome made of mesh wire over a wooden frame. Unlike the aviaries though, which were twenty feet in diameter, this great cage was one hundred feet across. Inside was a carefully created environment, replicating the forests that stretched out hundreds of miles in every direction.

Ssu sat on a stone bench, watching the inhabitants of the cage. Tokkenoht and Sirris stopped beside her and looked. Scampering around inside the enclosure were some one hundred little lizzie offspring. Half of them were over a year old and already starting to walk upright. The other half, not yet yearlings, were still on all fours, scarcely thirty inches long.

“How are they?” asked the high priestess.

“They are good,” said Ssu, flushing her dewlap in pleasure.

“Oh, that one is mine!” shouted Tokkenoht, spying a blue band on one of the little hind legs.

The Price of Magic – Dovie Likliter

Posted on by
Reply

The Price of Magic - NewThe Price of Magic is out now, but we’re still looking at all the character of the book. Many have appeared in previous books of the series. While not revealing what’s going on in the new book, we are taking a look at where they’ve come from. If you haven’t read the previous books in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series, beware Spoiler Alert.

Dovie first appeared in Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers.  She’s about Iolana’s age and has become one of her best friends.  She’s also the niece of Dot Shrubb, and shares her bright red hair.

New powers are rising in Birmisia. Far to the south, the strange lizardmen of Xiatooq are making themselves known. Closer to home, the new lizzie city Yessonarah finds itself rich in gold—gold the humans covet. As tensions rise, many in Port Dechantagne seem eager to teach the lizzies a lesson in humility. Fourteen year old Iolana Staff finds herself in the center of it all, as she is pulled between her conscience and the conventions of society. Unconcerned with the conflict between human and lizzie, sorceress Senta Bly prepares for her own war, unaware that events will pull her into a life and death confrontation with an old enemy.

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.

Purchase your copy of The Price of Magic for Kindle by following this link.