James Cardona's Blog, page 3

Gabriella And The Curse Of The Black Spot

Today my latest book is published. The final chapter to the Nugen series: Gabriella And The Curse Of The Black Spot

It answers the questions raised in the first series as it continues the non-stop mystery and adventure.

I hope you enjoy it!

It is available on:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

Another Giveaway

Ella Johnson's book blog is featuring a book giveaway for my book, Santa Claus vs. The Aliens. Check it out:

book-spotlightgiveaway-santa-claus-vs-the-aliens

Santa Claus vs The Aliens

wired for story book review

Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A Cheeky Novel about writing cheeky novels
Wired for Story is a book full of solid, albeit basic, advice for story tellers, and in particular writers trying to develop their craft. It succeeds in some areas while falls down in others, however I found it solid and well written overall.

Where it succeeds is in its brevity and clarity. The author gets right to the point and even provides short lists at times of what to do and how to do it. Her writing is also peppered with cheeky humor which is humorous in a thats-almost-funny kind of way that is refreshing compared to the textbook style adopted by many how-to-write books.

Where the book fell down, for me, was in its limited examples and scope. It really felt like the author was addressing romance writers, for the most part. I could think of a few counter examples to some of her rules, although one would have to leave the romance genre for those to work. But for a 230 page book, that is minor discrepancy.

The second thing I noticed, which has already been pointed out by others, is that the brain science was limited. In fact, it was mostly only refereed to in footnote. Personally, that was fine with me, but I could see why it made others feel misled (it is in the title, after all).



View all my reviews

My Author Website Live!

Happy to say that my author website is up and running. You can find it here. I'm very, very interested to know what you think so I can tweak and improve it. It currently has information, links and pictures. I am working on some video stuff so that will be added so also.
Please, please, please let me know what you like, what you didn't like and what you think could be done better.
Thanks again!!

Taking my readers input to heart

For a writer who is constantly trying to perfect his craft, I take the comments that readers give me, whether through email or in reviews, very seriously.

I am currently working on book 2 of the apprentice series and am addressing all of the suggestions and feedback I've received as yet. I truly appreciate it as I feel like It's really helping me to grow.

Some of the commenters mentioned that the first book was too short; book 2 will be at least twice as long. Others thought romance was missing and also wanted more internal dialog; the next book has those facets in spades. One of the most common comments was that people didn't like the modern language. Some felt the book should have read more medieval. It took me a while to cave to this, but now that I'm putting words to paper I see the point. I haven't decided if I will touch book 1 yet, but that may happen.

Several other tweaks and adjustments were made to my writing, including writing chapters in different characters perspectives and adding several female main characters. All things that I have never done before and I have my readers to thank for sharing their insights.

Also the new book takes on a completely different backdrop. I didn't want to write another quest, so almost the entire book happens in one location. I hope that provides a much needed change from the over used quest trope that seems to populate so many fantasy books.

If you are one of my beta-readers, you should be contacted sometime in late December to early January.

Thanks again,
Jim

My New Website

Website building is in progress. Hope to have it up in about a week.

Holiday author Interview

I got interviewed for Nerisa's book blog for her holiday authors series and here is the post.

This was a lot of fun. If any of you have further questions, feel free to ask me in the ask the author section of my goodreads page.

Santa Claus vs The Aliens

A busy month

A little embarrassing fact is creatives are terrible at time management. (I've had my struggles and I'm trying to improve.) This month I decided to not focus on anything except reading and writing --Well, it was supposed to be all reading but I can't help myself!

This month I polished off seven books. Two were nonfiction guides for writers. The others were (ugh!) romance books.
Purely pedagogical, of course.

Why romance? One of the weaknesses in my writing is that I've never quite figured out how to do romance (which is weird, right? Because I'm a very candle-light-and-roses kind of guy). So I bit the bullet and am surprised to say that I quite enjoyed a few. I haven't posted reviews on GR yet, but I will soon. Who woulda thunk it?

As to the writing, I'm a good 300 pages into the second part of the Under the Shadow of Darkness series and I'm hoping (fingers crossed! fingers crossed!) that my romantic scenes are up to snuff.

Here is a screen shot of my status. Those cute little flags are completed chapters!

Nerisa's wonderful video

A fan of Santa Claus vs The Aliens, Nerisa Waterman, created a youtube video for the book and is featuring it on her blog .Santa Claus vs The Aliens

New Cover for Santa

I've had quite a few reviewers who've loved my book Santa Claus vs. The Aliens (thank you!) and hated the cover. So I've decided to commission a new cover by an artist I found on dev art.
I should have the new cover on the book in about a week. Until then here it is.
Please let me know what you think!


Santa Claus vs The Aliens