Adam Copeland's Blog, page 4
January 24, 2013
Prologue to the Sequel of “Echoes of Avalon” Available
Burning Castles, marionette knights, doppelgangers, and medieval combat in slow motion set to a score of Gregorian Chant.
That’s how the prologue to the sequel of “Echoes of Avalon” begins.
“Ripples in the Chalice” is the sequel to “Echoes of Avalon” currently under development and follows shortly after the events ending in Echoes.
Again the setting is largely in Avalon, utilizing elements from history, legend, mythology, and sweeping human themes. Chiefly, living with the consequences of one’s choices.
Patrick is an Avangardesman now, but has left briefly to visit his family in Ireland and takes Aimee with him. He has agreed to leave the cup he brought to Greensprings from the cave temporarily in the care of Father Hugh so that it may be venerated as a holy object. He fully intends to return it to the cave on his return as he promised the cup’s guardians.
However, others have different plans and enemies old and new set forces into motion that will shake the foundations of time and history.
Overcoming your demons to fight monsters is one thing, living with your choices is quite another.
Two chapters will appear on this website and Goodreads. The prologue will act as a teaser, depicting events taking place towards the end of the story where Patrick stops to reflect with the “Other” (aka the “Apparition”) as to how things could have gone so wrong. And all indications in the prologue are that things have gone horribly wrong. Patrick’s reminiscing are the beginning of the story. Chapter One: King, Queen, and Bishop will set the stage for the primary antagonists whose plots will turn Patrick’s world upside down and force him to make some hard choices and show him that taking a stand comes with a price.
I hope you read and enjoy the sample drafts. Feel free to contribute your thoughts on them, as now is the time to let your influence be known while the metal is still hot and malleable.
December 24, 2012
Bards & Brews…An Opportunity to Experience Good Drink and Better Stories.
Poster Says it all: Get out of the house and enjoy!
July 1, 2012
Yetzirah: A Place of Rescue is Suddenly in Need of Rescuing-Book Review
Yetzirah: The Pocket Worlds by Pam Bainbridge-Cowan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is a Golden Oldies song out there called, “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?” It is also commonly known that when when people are faced with extreme trauma, children in particular, they will withdraw into themselves. Some to the point of withdrawing into a make believe world.
What if it wasn’t make believe? What if some people, under just the right conditions, could gain access to a magical realm where you could create their own rules? Their own little “Pocket” of reality where they were safe from whatever hardship drove them there?
Such is the case with Elise who, with her twin sister Elena, discovers the world they call Yetzirah after hiding from their abusive father. It is a world of mostly mist that harbors many “pockets” each created by a cast of colorful characters who can make their worlds appear anyway they like, and people it with whomever they like – each world more Burton-esqu than the last. Though Elise and Elena cannot create their own pocket or wield magic, the other Pocket Wizards entertain the twins through much of their childhood, offering occasional refuge until they reach adulthood.
Though Elise continues to visit this wondrous world, Elena lets it go even to the point that she denies its very existence.
The day comes, however, when a butterfly made of wire and jewels follows Elise home from her latest visit announcing that the wall separating the worlds is dissolving. An instability is taking hold of the Pocket Worlds, making it not only difficult to control them, but the pockets start to turn on their creators.
Elise concocts a plan to save the world that saved her sanity as a child. She will find the elusive Queen of Yetzirah, the only person with the power to stop the instability. But to do so, Elise will need to band the disparate Wizards together and convince them to leave their comfort zones – and not all Wizards are exactly easy going characters with worlds full of rainbows and sunshine. Most difficult of all, Elise will need to convince Elena to join her on the quest. Something that will require re-visiting a lot of hard feelings and pain.
Yetzirah: The Pocket Worlds is an entertaining study on human pain, escapism, and healing. The idea of a Matrix or Inception-like world where people can go in their minds to take a break from “reality” to heal (or be tempted to withdraw indefinitely) is fascinating. Watching the character driven story unfold as the characters tackle their problems by coming together for a common cause is timeless and evoked many a real laugh and tear from me. Highly recommended!
June 30, 2012
Making a Movie Trailer for Your Book: Part 3 – Story Boarding and Finish
A simple written draft can do when storyboarding
Before you can build a house, you must first have a plan. Once you’ve conceptualized, identified, and assembled all the components that you want to present in your trailer, it is time to map out your “movie.”
This really isn’t any different than what directors and producers do for actual movies. They make scene-by-scene drawings, complete with arrows and notes, beginning to end. This is not only to reduce the amount of time and effort once the time comes to string it all together in your video making software, but should also eliminate most problems that may come up.
There are fancy organizing programs and apps out there that facilitate this (there is an Apple Pages story boarding template, for example, and I hear Scrivener has a similar function), but basically all you need is a pen and paper to draw out your vision in an orderly fashion.
You want, in chronological order, your principal images/scenes laid out with notes that describe what action you want to take place. Ideally, you want the notes so detailed that a stranger could see them and visualize what the scene should look like when it goes “live.” Each scene should have at least 7 elements:
Image/artwork/clip
Scene title and Scene/Slide number
General description of what happens in the scene, including zooming, panning, and any effects that take place.
Music/sound effects used in the scene, complete with title of music/sounds and the time index (moment) you want the sound to begin and end. This includes any audio voice over you might use.
The complete text of any words or phrases you might use.
What the transition from the previous scene was and what the transition to the next scene should be.
Any useful notes, either in a list or in the margin with arrows pointing to the pertinent area of the image.
Do a rough draft in pen or pencil on paper, then clean it up and commit it to digital hardcopy of some sort. If you’re certain you’re going to be the guy behind the mouse when making the video you’re probably don’t have to go to that length, but if somebody else is going to use your roadmap to make the video, it’s best to make it as clear and readable as possible.
Be clear and detailed if somone else is doing the video work for you
You may or may not want to have sound in your video. You can make a perfectly eye-catching and powerful presentation without sound, but in my opinion mood music goes a long way. I decided to use sound in my trailer and I discuss the process in finding the perfect music here.
Either way you’re ready for the final step: Making the magic happen. There are many free software packages out there that come with operating systems that do a good job (Moviemaker in Windows, iMovie in Mac), and you probably could even get away with doing it in powerpoint if you’re a wiz at the program. If you’re a beginner, they’re simple enough programs that you can easily teach yourself by using either their help function or any number of a gazillion un-official (but often more helpful) YouTube tutorials. Going through the training process or the actual video creation process is worthy of a series of blogs unto themselves which I will not go into.
I personally didn’t have the time to teach myself a new software, so I extended my image artist’s agreement to include the video work, in which he also does fantastic work. His software of choice is Adobe Premier, a powerful program that made all the nuances that I wanted to accomplish in my trailer much easier (though still possible in the simpler Moviemaker or iMovie).
We Used Adobe Premier to make my video
So, the final result of customized still images, fitting mood music, story boarding, and a deft hand at video manipulation resulted in a (I hope, anyway) powerful and memorable movie-like trailer for my book, Echoes of Avalon which you can see at the end of this blog. What do you think?
Depending on your personal skills, who you know, and what access to resources you may have, you can probably do a better job and for less money than I put into this project. Drive and commitment knows no bounds. Good luck!
June 14, 2012
Making a Movie Trailer for Your Book: Part 2.5 – Music
Though you can make fantastically effective trailers for your book with free stock images, simple slide show animation, some text, and no sound, you’re better off having a little bit more than that. Naturally, the quality increases exponentially with the amount of money your throw at it.
Such is the case with sound. Mood music is what makes your nerves tingle, your hair stand on end, and goosebumps rise on your skin in the theater during an exciting trailer, or have your emotional heartstrings tugged during a dramatic one. Music is where it’s at, baby!
Now, you can’t just use music from your favorite artist in your promos. There’s this pesky thing called rights and royalties that prevent that from happening (well, with enough money almost anything is possible, but I’m going to assume that’s not the case here), so you won’t be using a Rolling Stones song anytime soon.
But there is plenty of free music out there or you can get some for, well, a song (yeah, I know, terrible pun).
Where do you find such music? A simple internet search “free stock music” will give you an adequate list of sites, but your are always best querying those in your community who have personal experience with such things. I posted a question on the forum of my writers group, Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). I was certain that many of the authors there had previously used music in promos and they didn’t disappoint by the skads of suggestions they gave. Some of the more useful ones included:
Freestockmusic.com: A decent collection of quality works in a variety of genres. As the name of the site implies, it’s all free. A common quote for each sample often says, “100% royalty free license that allows you to use the music in all types of productions, for worldwide distribution, forever. There are never any licensing fees.” It’s hard to beat that.
Soundcloud.com: A ginormous collection of music and sounds showcased by a community of talented artists. If Facebook and CDBaby had a love-child it would be Soundcloud. The challenge of this site, however, is sifting through the shear volume of awesomeness and trying to narrow it down to what you are looking for. It seems to cater mostly to up and coming performance artists (heavy in R&B), but there is plenty of other offerings as well. I didn’t spend enough time to figure out how you download the music, how “free” (if at all) it was, or what the licensing agreement was. But I did hear mostly good things about it.
Incompetech.com: A one man extravaganza of music by artist Kevin McLeod. He offers a substantial collection of a variety of music and sounds of great quality. Though he asks for donations, music is free so long as you credit him in any work that uses his music. If you can’t or don’t want to credit him, then there is a “Non Attribution” license you can download starting at $30 for one piece, and then incrementally increases for additional music. There is a list of similar artists on Kevin’s website.
Purple-planet.com: Probably the smallest collection (that I could tell) of the sites listed here, but still good. It’s a free collection of royalty free music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn. All music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube in exchange for a link to their site. Donations are welcomed. They specialize in music production and sound services for games, multimedia, TV and film. Specialists in Surround Sound 5.1 production. Large additional track catalogue available for licensing.
Stockmusic.net: A huge library of royalty free, diverse, and pro-grade music and sound effects for all occasions. You do have to pay, though. Depending on your needs and the depth of your pocket book, you’ll pay anywhere between $29.95 (individual pieces and small collections of sound effects) and thousands of dollars (for huge libraries of entire genres). This isn’t as scary as it sounds. I found the most perfect music for a project, a collection of 18 works, for $129.95. Each work alone otherwise would have cost $39.95. A relatively easy to understand blanket-license agreement accompanies each purchase for use in personal projects (TV, film, podcasts, etc), or you can license for more public use (restaurant background noise, elevator muzak).
I spent many a night just sitting with my laptop with headphones, sampling what was out there. I found lots of cools stuff, much of it free, but purely by coincidence or fate I found a collection at Stockmusic.net that fit like a glove. Every element I was looking for was in the package. It was too perfect to pass up, so I didn’t mind paying the fee, and the fruits of which can be seen in the movie trailer for my book, Echoes of Avalon.
Here is a sample of the intro to the trailer: FilmEdge2_Epic_Z262-TheWorldAwaits-Schatz
May 29, 2012
Celestine Prophecy Meets Twilight
The Light Warrior by Cynthia Robbins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Lucy Hayes has felt out of place all her life. Never quite fitting in. Always feeling like something was missing or out of place, right up to the start of her Freshman year at Willamette University. It is then that her life is turned upside down by a handsome stranger named Eli who hints that she is the key to something bigger. Her life is then turned absolutely inside out when dark forces enter her life, requiring Eli to rescue her and reveal her true nature: She is a Light Warrior, an Ascended Being, who has voluntarily assumed human form to combat evil forces that want to keep earth ignorant of its magical past, and deny its potential place among the star races. A cosmic rule prevents Ascended Beings from interfering directly in the affairs of mankind, but that is not the case for the Dark Brotherhood, an earthbound order of extraterrestrial reptilians and soul sucking space vampires who in the distant past outright enslaved humanity, but now rule through misinformation and conspiracy with complicit evil humans.
It’s up to Lucy Hayes to take her rightful place at Eli’s side and his band of Light Warriors who come from diverse backgrounds and skills. Lucy’s untapped potential will be the key they’ve been waiting for to open the Light Gates…pathways of cosmic energy that have been cut off by the Dark Brotherhood to prevent earth from basking in the loving glow of the Universe. Once that has been done, the world will see with unfiltered eyes the lies they’ve been living under and rise up.
Unfortunately, to get around the cosmic noninterference rule Lucy had to descend to earth as a naturally born human, leaving her confused, weakened, and ignorant of her previous life. It is a race against time for Eli and his band to train and prepare her for the final battle before evil can permanently shut the gates. This all becomes more challenging when Eli and Lucy fall in love just about the time help arrives in the form of Lucy’s soul mate from her previous life, and Aron isn’t about to give her up without a fight.
Can Lucy overcome her doubts about her abilities, and quiet the distracting struggle in her heart between the love for what she knows, and the stirring memories of a mate before it’s too late?
If you’re into adventure, romance, science fiction, alternative history, time travel, and higher planes of existence, you’ll enjoy The Light Warrior.
May 20, 2012
Echoes of Avalon Now Available in Silverton’s “Books~N~Time”
Charming Mix of Old and New Books and Gear Clocks
Echoes of Avalon is now available in Silverton’s “Books~N~Time”, an eclectic mix of old and new books, and old and new clocks. It is full of the all genres of books, from children’s to historical non-fiction, from best sellers to romance, from Sci Fi to fantasy and beyond. If you are a collector of vintage magazines, Reader’s Digest, and the classics, you’ll love “Books~N~Time”. If you love Grandfather clocks and all manner of time pieces that run on brass gears and go “bong, bong” on the hour, you’ll really love this store.
Books~N~Time
210 N. Water St.
Silverton, OR 97381
(503) 874-4311
Savona Coffee House: Perfect Environment for Reading A Good Book
Coffee houses are refuges for relaxation, watching the world go by, or
Echoes of Avalon Available at Savona Coffee House, Vancouver WA
delving into a new world by kicking back with a good book while sipping your favorite concoction to sharpen the mind. Such is the goal of Vancouver’s Savona Coffee House, a quaint little corner shop across from McMenamin’s and Beaches on the waterfront. They offer a calm ambiance, a wide assortment of brews, ice cream, and other tasty treats.
If you didn’t bring your own book in which to disappear, you can find my very own “Echoes of Avalon”, a novel of epic historical fantasy with a touch of romance, to help get you started on your journey of diversion and entertainment.
Savona Coffee House
1898 SE Columbia River Dr.
Vancouver, WA 98661
(360) 695-0678
March 29, 2012
It Pays to be Clued In to LinkedIn
It seems like everyday your email is filled with requests from friends and colleagues to join 
this or that social network, creating an alphabet soup of social sites clogging your inbox: Flickr, Reddit, Google+, Twitter, Digg, and LinkedIn.
It was the latter that caught my attention when I found myself out of work some years ago, casting my job-search net as wide as possible. I decided to investigate. I had heard it was more like Monster or CareerBuilder―someplace to post your resume. At first glance it looks just like that, your resume on screen. But a closer examination quickly shows that it's more like a Facebook for professionals. Sure, it has all the classic elements of your resume―objective, work experience, education, skill list―but it's no static document. It's a living and dynamic page going more in depth.
If anything, the one page resume you send to a potential employer should be crafted to interest them enough to go to your LinkedIn page (if a business accepts electronic resumes, you can facilitate this by having a live web link on your resume).
Once at LinkedIn, there are the classic resume items as mentioned, but you are able to expand them into larger paragraphs. Using key words and phrases that succinctly express skills and experience at the beginning of each paragraph, you can draw readers in further and elaborate your abilities that you couldn't on a single page resume.
Likewise, you're able to elaborate on your hobbies and how your personal life skills can compliment job requirements. In an age where there are increasing numbers of qualified applicants, you need to differentiate yourself from the other drones by proving you're interesting and well rounded.
This is made easier by LinkedIn's ability to display your blog posts and Twitter feeds which prove just how interesting you are.
Proof that LinkedIn is the love child of Facebook and Monster.com include job boards showing jobs based on keywords in your profile, recommendations to connect with members in your industries, and suggestions to join groups that revolve around your interests. Like Facebook, you can insert a profile picture to put a face to your skills.
Quid Pro Quo is made easy. You can give and receive recommendations with your connections, making it unnecessary for potential employers to ask for them since they are publicly posted.
Now the fun stuff.
What sets LinkedIn apart is the option to include up to 16 apps on your page, enhancing your profile. These applications not only make you more marketable, but also help you learn, collaborate, and be informed. Examples include showing how smart you are by posting your Amazon reading list, and your corresponding book reviews. And if you've written your own book, it's easy enough to make sure the book that shows up at the top of your reading list is your own.
There is an app to post documents that are samples of your work.
If your career involves creative arts, consider a slideshow app that visually displays your crafts. The slideshow can also be used to walk a viewer through scenarios (either with simple text or a full blown multimedia presentation) related to your work experience.
You can see my profile as an example: http://www.linkedin.com/in/adam1copeland
LinkedIn isn't just about getting a job. It's also about keeping a job while networking, keeping current/relevant and growing. A necessity in this day and age.
March 9, 2012
Adam Copeland to Host "Making Magic in Your Fantasy" Workshop at Kalama Word Catcher Literary Festival
Yours truly will be an author presenter at Kalama's Word Catcher Literary Festival Saturday, April 21st. I will be hosting a workshop on "Making Magic in Your Fantasy." The idea is to analyze the various ways magic is portrayed in fantasy novels (from the visual presentation to the mechanics of how magic works and exists in the story), and how you can make magic happen in your own writing.
There will be many other interesting writing topics presented by other local authors on a wide variety of subjects, there is bound to be something that speaks to you so don't be shy about signing up for a fun filled weekend. Find all the info in the following attachment: word catcher 4 web 2012
