Aaron D. Schneider's Blog, page 21

A New Series Is Coming, Along With Dwarvish Dirty Dozen Book 3

Dear Readers,

Well first I’ll apologize for being very, very behind on blog posts. It might be hard to appreciate but I have been very busy with writing and hiding from the world like our friend below in the hopes that I can stay focused.

The one good thing about all of this is along with the Dwarvish Dirty Dozen, which has book 03 Dust Song coming out September 27th (preorder here), I have another series coming out soon. I plan to pen some more information about the series once the pre-order page goes up, but I wanted you to know that despite my lurking I’ve not been idle.

The new series is part of a unique universe that I’ve been developing and fermenting over the last few years and now I’m looking to bring it to you dear reader, in the hopes that this unique offering will be just what you were looking for. By God’s grace and your interest I hope to use this series as a launching point for several other projects all located in the same world, each building on the lore of the great city of Quadras and its surrounding environs.

Again, I don’t want to say more until the pre-order as I’d hate to get you excited with no way to act on said engagement. I try to be conscientious like that, especially with you Dear Reader.

So keep a weather on the website and check your email’s for word filtering through the mailing list (and if you haven’t joined, you really should do that here), and I’ll have a treat for you very soon.

As always Dear Reader, my sincerest regards,

Aaron D. Schneider

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Born Underground, Grown Inside a Rocky Womb

Dear Reader,

Well, I am a bit behind schedule, but that’s mostly because I’ve been so busy, and some of the fruit of that labor is displayed in that I can now happily inform you all that book 1 of the Dwarvish Dirty Dozen series, Mud War, is up for pre-order right now.

This is the first installment of what will be a six book series that unfolds the bracing tale of a collection of dwarvish scoundrels in desperate pursuit of redemption. Set in the same world as the Outcast Royal, what we call the Skharr Mythos, the Dwarvish Dirty Dozen series is a fantastic and gritty story that I’m excited to tell, but I’m not quite ready to give all the details away just yet. Call me a tease, but I flatter myself thinking it will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, I’d thought it would be interesting to dive into the subject of dwarves as a fixture of fantasy literature. If you’re just here for the update then feel free to scurry off, but if you’ve any inclination towards some deep nerding through mythology and folklore (you know who you are) then you’ll want to stick around because we’re going from maggots to monsters to the mountain dwelling master craftsman we all know and love from Middle Earth.

Taking a cue from Alice’s Caterpillar we’ll start at the beginning, which means we are reaching back to the days of the Old Norse tales. Now there are tales of short supernatural not quite human creatures since the days the first men daubed on rock walls, but as for the creatures that actually bear the name that would become the word dwarf (dweorg – Old English / dvergr- Old Norse) we head North to Scandinavia. In the sagas laid forth out in the Poetic Eddaand the Prose Edda, we see the origin of the dwarfs (the term dwarves wouldn’t show up until Tolkien) is a most humble one, in fact perhaps the humblest. I mean what gets lower than a maggot eating a corpse? Nothing comes to mind but those are some baby pictures I wouldn’t want to be part of the slide show. In the Prose Eddait tells us that the progenitors of dwarf-kind were festering about in the flesh Ymir, until the gods, apparently feeling magnanimous after killing Ymir, granted them sentience. Yet, from these lowly beginnings the dwarfs quickly emerge as mysterious, fantastical, and often sinister creatures in a cosmology filled with such crazy critters.

Details vary about these early dwarfs but even from the beginning those early iterations they were deeply connected with the mountains, the underground, and exceptional craftsmanship. Often dwarfs were a byword for magical artifacts and fabulous wealth, but as already mentioned often these treasures came with some awful strings attach. From the treasure of Fafnir which doomed to death any who would possess it, or the Brísingamen Necklace whose crafters (4 dwarf brothers) used its allure to extort sex from a goddess. These ancient dwarfs are intimately tied to the the concept of craftsmanship as a form of magic with all the menacing undertones that entails. In fact linguists and scholars have noted that these first dwarfs share so much in common with the likes of dark elves, trolls, and witches, that at times they are indistinguishable. In short the first days of the dwarfish kind were dark indeed.

Moving from the pre-christian tales to those which sprang up from the Christianized Germanic peoples we see a transition in the dwarfish tales to something a little more familiar. First of all they are most certainly short now, if nothing else because of translational issues from Medieval scribes, and they’ve lost some of their more sinister edge though they are no less magical. Dwarfs now are often acting as guardians of sacred sites or as mysterious benefactors (and occasional villains) in the stories of brave human heroes. Whether supernaturally strong and resilient or able to vanish/grow/shrink in the blink of an eye they are now closer to the dynamic, almost whimsical creatures that occupy fairy tales. An interesting note we also see a few female dwarfs showing up, but as magical temptresses trying to lure young heroes, akin to the tale of Herr Manneling. Not typically how we think of dwarves, but apparently the folk of the Middle Ages saw nothing baffling about the allure of a stout lass.

From these legendary tales we move into the folklore where the dwarf is just ahead of the creatures which will become a fixture in modern fantasy. The beard becomes a permanent feature and they move towards being a people unto their own, not isolated creatures or families but members of tribes and nations. The idea of entire underground kingdoms spring up and we now have communities of dwarfs dwelling in those odd stone formations outside of hamlets and villages. Like the Wee Folk of the Emerald Isles (and elsewhere) the dwarf moves to something less mystical and mysterious to become something… well, earthy.

And that brings us to the realm of the modern dwarf which began with Tolkien’s The Hobbit where the dwarves (ah finally dwarfs was killing me) have become something more than fairy folk look alikes but a full blown culture with a history and language and a boatload of that dwarvish personality that we’ve grown to know and love. From the doughty folk of Middle-Earth sprang the likes of dwarves to occupy the realms of fantasy novels, role-playing games, video games, and even the big/small screen. Everyone has put their own spin on the dwarves, but by now when you say dwarves most people will summon a similar image to mind; the short but brawny, bearded fellow with an axe or hammer in one hand, probably with a tankard of stout ale in the other. It is a useful trope and one I lean on in my new series, but at the same time I love the old tales and I may be taking some time to dig into the old tales for inspiration. Hopefully we can have fun together reviving some of these old tales.

Well, we managed to cover a thousand years of history together in a quick and dirty exploration of the dwarvish phenomenon and besides showing you all what a nerd I hope it can serve a bit of a cheat sheet for some of what is to come.

Regardless, thank you for going on this little trip with me and if you’ve got the time head on over to Amazon to pre-order my first offering dedicated to our bearded friends. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09X275VMW?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wam_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks)

Until next time, Dear Reader

Regards,

Aaron D. Schneider

Image Credit: Dwarf Image in Illustration Used From Wikipedia Under the Creative Commons License: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf...
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Myths and Mutterings

Dear Reader,

I’m not sure if this is enough to plant me squarely in the nerd category, but growing up I was always keen to go to the library once a week at a minimum.

My mother started taking me because it was cheaper and easier than going to the video rental corner of the exchange on base (in case you missed it I was a navy brat), but quickly she realized I tended to be happier at the library.

This might have been partly because reading came early and easily for me, but also because early on I discovered books about mythology. I am pretty sure the Greeks came first, then I discovered Egyptian mythology, and rounding out my younger years were the late comers of Norse mythology (somewhat ironic given my ancestry, but I digress).

Of course my first exposure was to the sanitized or at least discreet annals geared towards younger readers, but even in these desperate attempts at polishing the rough edges of ancient gods and heroes there was more than enough grit to cut my teeth on.

And good thing too, because I’d need them to chew through books like I did. I was typically allowed three or four books at a time, and invariably I’d read through them a few times before we finally got back to the library so I could snatch up more.

Indeed, reading books about mythology is what largely sparked my interest in growth in other subjects.

After all when you are knee deep in the Trojan War you can’t help wanting to know about these places where the great Greek kings and heroes came from. Where is Athens? What was Sparta like? These sorts of questions sent me off chasing down history and geography books to add to my pile at checkout time.

Learning of the ancient Egyptians myriad of animal headed gods, some of them creatures I’d never heard of or was very unfamiliar with, meant soon I was chasing down texts to learn more about animals and ecosystems around the world… though to be fair this may have been more of a returning to a first love as I’ve always found animals fascinating.

As evidence I would present the fact that at the tender age of four I was precociously finding ways to tell every adult I knew I wanted to be a herpetologist. Regardless, mythology drove me back to the shelves for another tome or two I would have to beg my mother to let me take home (though in fairness I can’t remember a time when she ever said no).

Even the sagas of the North told me of poetry and verse that drove my curious mind toward the likes of Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and Milton. I might have been the only fourth grader dragging the complete works of the Bard to school for silent reading time, and I might have only understood a tenth of what I was reading, if that, but I was driven by an almost primal love of the rhythm and grandeur of it that had me reading relentlessly even as so much went over my head.

So much of who and what I am is due to mythology books plundered from naval base libraries (and the patience and persistence of my fantastic mother), and so much of what I love putting into my stories is nods, winks, and all sundry of acknowledgments to those stories which made me.

It might even be worth a look to see how many threads you can spin between my myriad of tales. Might be a fun web to weave if you’ve got nothing better to do.

Until next time, Dear Reader.

Regards,

Aaron D. Schneider

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A Writer

Dear Reader,

It is still strange to tell people I am a writer.

There’s almost always a catch, the slightest pause, when someone asks me what I do for a living. It’s almost like I have to check with myself to confirm.

Am I really a writer, an author, some blessed fool who makes a living out of the mad ramblings that spring from his own head?

Well, yeah, I guess I am.

Am I world famous? No. Am I rich? Nope. Are any of my books about to be made into movies? Not last time I checked, but I’m still hoping one day.

But I am a writer and when I finally work myself into saying as much invariably I will get loads of questions.

Now note it’s not because I am so incredibly charming or clever, but rather because I’m something that most people haven’t ever seen before. Keeping in mind that I don’t mind it, but sometimes as the questions start tumbling out I feel a bit like zoo keeper and exhibit all at once:

“Where do you get your ideas from? How do you keep everything straight in your head? How fast can you write a book? What is your preferred habitat? Are you anyway related to members of the Ursa family?”

These questions are fine, and sometimes even a little fun as no craftsman can honestly tell you that people interested in his craft is a bad thing, but it is what often comes afterwards that almost always trips me up, as much if not more than the what do you do for a living question:

“Hey, I always thought I should write a book. I’ve got this really great idea and I think people would really like it. So it’s about this…”

At this point I’m usually elevated to threat level orange and I’m discreetly looking for a way to escape the conversation. Now this has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of said person’s potential career as a novelist, though to be honest when most people learn how much work it is it quickly loses its glamor, but it has much more to do with my role as a craftsman and not as a talent scout. Usually the person sharing their brilliant idea, and some of them truly are magnificent, is looking to me for some sort of affirmation, some assurance that they aren’t silly or crazy for thinking this story or series idea is cool/fun/engaging/exciting/etc. I mean I should know, after all, with how many times I wander about my house harassing my wife and children with “another book pitch”, and as I’ve said I’m still fresh enough to the game to feel that prickling fear in the pit of your stomach that tells you that you’re a joke and a fraud. I get it, I really do, and I often wish I could be more useful with helping people with such things but often I can only manage an admittedly lame “Sounds great, I’d love to read it someday.”

Most often this is when an intangible chill sets in between us and I’m left to squirm in what I’m sure seems like sullen silence before one of us finds an excuse to escape the other’s company. I sincerely hope I’ve never doused a future writer’s dreams with this now formulaic encounter, but turning the coin over what else can I say?

I am the first specimen most of these people have ever encountered in the wild, and so I’m not keen to give them a bad impression but also because of that I understand how little people know what being a writer actually means. It’s not all flashes of inspiration and book signings and royalty checks. It is revisiting the same scene a thousand times to berate it and yourself for not closing the plot hole you didn’t see until 50k words too late. It is your characters refusing to do what you tell them to do as they twist with a narrative you thought you had control of. It is dickering with your editor about a single turn of phrase until your so strung out you approve the next five chapters of edits without even looking. It is trying to balance cove ideals with market realities and artist interests and abilities all on the backdrop of a rapidly shrinking budget, because there is no free lunch. It is a constant balance between swallowing your pride to listen to others and having enough confidence to push through with your idea/concept/story/character/word choice because at the end of the day this is your work and it rises and falls based on you.

So like any craft it ends up being a lot of work meaning that any one idea a person has about a book idea, and again many are brilliant, it is simply not enough. It is like the movie Million Dollar Baby: “Tough ain’t enough.” It isn’t enough to have that brilliant idea, it isn’t even enough to force that brilliant idea out of your head and onto the page. It is all those things and a thousand more that I list above, though it is not like I don’t think many people are capable of them, most probably are, but who would want to bother. Most people like books because they are fun and diverting, but the writing of a book is not a book. Writing is art and craftsmanship and work, and I love it where most wouldn’t and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But how am I supposed to fit all of that into a light conversation when some kind and unexpected stranger wants to talk about my job?

Perhaps this is why I’m abysmal at small talk.

Until next time, Dear Readers.

Regards,

Aaron D. Schneider

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New Year, New Books AND a New Website!

Belated Happy New Year Dear Reader,

Well, well 2022 has come and we’re already off to the races!

First of all, Welcome!

Whether you are a newcomer to all of this or a seasoned hand at leafing through my works I bid you all welcome to the new Aaron D. Schneider website. I’ve been looking forward to this day for months now, eagerly anticipating when I’d have a chance to let you all see how much has changed and definitely for the better. Feel free to poke around and see the fruit of much labor and much love. This may be my website but it is for you Dear Reader, so please explore and let us know what you think.

I’m certainly happy with it but I’d love to hear what you think, whether here or on social media.

Now credit where credit is due, much of what you see is thanks to the talent and tireless efforts of the team at Inbound Horizons. I was pleased to become acquaintances and then friends with one of their employees who showed me that there was a great deal more to be done in the digital world. Ever since I reached out to their company they have been nothing but exceptional, and this new website is just the crowning tip of the veritable iceberg of their efforts. If you or anyone you know is in need of online interface and marketing work I’d certainly give them a look.

Well, with a new author’s website we ought to say something about books.

First, the Outcast Royal Series is now available as a full boxed set on Amazon! If you haven’t already I strongly recommend you pick up the series. A true sword and sorcery trilogy from start to finish, the books follow the adventures of Axe-Wed as she makes her way through the war-wearied East from the horror haunted streets of Jehadim to the monster blighted Wyrmspine Mountains. It is a story of red-handed grief and bitter redemption so if you’re looking for blades singing in wild winds as ancient secrets refuse to stay buried you won’t want to miss this one.

Second, I just finished writing the first book of a new upcoming series, the Dwarvish Dirty Dozen. Mud Wars, the first entry in the intrepid series, takes us north of where Axe-Wed has wandered to the Ysgand Vale where armies of dwarves are locked in battle against implacable foes and a troupe of unlikely heroes find themselves caught up in events which will see the fate of the Vale and beyond changed forever. There are six books scheduled for this series so you keep your eyes peeled for news coming soon in regards to release dates.

Third and finally, you’ll want to be checking back here regularly as my ambitious plan is to try and put up an entry every other week to take advantage of the greatly improved web site. From updates about the books and my writing career to explorations of the creative process and stories from other authors, new and old, my hope is to enrich and entertain the eyes and minds of whoever happens across the page. This will hopefully coincide with the revamping of my social media presence so you can let me know what you think.

So there we go!

A New Year, a new website, new books on the way, and big new plans.

I look forward to making this journey with you.

Sincerest Regards,

Aaron D. Schneider

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In Support of Brandon Barr

Friends, today many of us face many challenges, difficulties and pains, alongside our many blessings and joys. In this world our joys are mingled with grief, and it is with no small amount of sadness that I share this with all of you.

Mr. Brandon Barr, a fantastic author, has been moved to hospice and is facing the certainty (as much as anything is certain) that he will soon have to leave his family and friends. His battle with leukemia may be drawing to an end, but there is something which all of us can do to help. Mr. Barr’s wife and children need our help.

First, if you haven’t already, go get a hold of Mr. Barr’s work. Rise of the Seer is book one in his Song of the Worlds Series.

Not only will you get a great book to read, but you’ll know your money will go to help those in need.

Next, please head over to the GoFundMe page and give what you can so that as Mr. Barr says goodbye to those he loves he will know that they are taken care of.

Learn more about Brandon’s work on his Author Page.

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War-Torn Along a Ragged Edge : The Launch of Book 2

War-Torn, the second installment in the epic Warring Realm series, comes out today, and like so much of my writing, when I look back at the book that I’ve written I realize that I am far and away from where I first thought I’d end up. In the misty, far off days of plotting the entire Warring Realm series out, which was in truth less than nine months ago, I thought I had an idea of where things were going to go, who was going to be doing what, and when the various twists and turns were going to happen.But then Luce grew up.It might seem strange to say it that way, but I’ve found that when you create a character and start putting them through the paces of the world you’ve fashioned around them you’ll find them changing. They mature and deepen, they scar and bruise, and by the time they’ve reached whatever milestones  you’ve laid out for them you realize that they aren’t the same character any more. You learn more about them as you tell their story, and as you do their abilities, their character, and their souls are tested in ways that shape that story. You find that they are racing along, clearing those stumbling stones and making those milestones blur by, or, if you’ve been particularly cruel, you find that they limping along far out from that milestone and one more stumbling stone is going to break them. And sometimes you need to break them, letting them fall and fall hard so that from those pieces they can grow again like a remodeled bone, textured and stronger.I once heard Mr. Stephen King say something to the effect that his best stories, or maybe it was just the best stories, are ones in which you just put characters in situations and let things roll. It can get ugly, it will get raw, but in the end you have something that is a thrill to write and readers are going to enjoy. Plot can get in the way of a good story if you let it and Lord help me, but I love writing too much to tolerate any of that guff.So I’ve watched Luce grow and then I watched him fall, hard. I watched him crack into all these cutting pieces that coalesce together into this walking construct who grows more jagged with each step until he is bleeding with each step. Then I let him break again.What happens from there? Well, that is quite a story. Why not go and find out?From the Publisher:Haven’t read book 1 yet? Pick it up by clicking on the cover.

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The War-Born Comes

Dearest readers,

War-Born came out October 1st and with this first, full, and official offering being unleashed on a forewarned public, I thought it worthwhile to spend a little time introducing myself. If you’ve been to the About page on the website then you have the Reader’s Digest version of my journey to authorship, but for just a minute I’d like to let you know a little about me, my work, and my plans.

As I mentioned in my little biographical blurb, I have been writing for most of my life in one form or another, and while most of it has hardly ever been worth sharing, the sheer accumulation provides the foundation for my creative endeavors, especially when combined with experiences, both those in real life and those between the pages of the many books I’ve spent so much time reading. Despite writing since I was very young, I never considered authorship until I was in high school and I wrote the “next chapter” for Stephen Vincent Benét’s fantasy work ‘By the Waters of Babylon’ for a class. My teacher thought what I’d written was worth reading to the class, much to my chagrin, and later she told me in private that my writing had shown “real potential”.

Potential? Potential for what?

And it was then that two lonely neurons in the vault of my dense skull finally sparked a connection: the books I loved so much had authors, humans that wrote words and told stories, and if they could do it why couldn’t I? I was ostensibly human and for years I’d been trying to write words and attempting to tell stories, almost exclusively for my own amusement or the approval of my close circle of family and friends. Could all my scribblings and ramblings in a hundred spiral notebooks really just be the first step toward something bigger, something grander?
So I set out to write a novel… and then another… and then another… and then another.

It was then that I realized that maintaining focus on a project was going to be an issue for me. Call me fickle, but at that point in my literary development I could barely hold attention on a project for more than a few days. Now, I can generate content pretty rapidly, especially as I’ve honed my craft and focus, but I can’t write an entire novel in that time, so what I ended up with was a pile of half-formed plots which were loosely inspired by whatever I was reading, watching, or mad about at the time.

In typical teenage fashion I became convinced that my current difficulties were immutable realities I decided that the best I could hope for was to write short stories. It was not that I abandoned hopes of being an author, but for many years I was convinced that I lacked the ability and temperament to ever be a full time, novel writing author. I wanted it so badly, but I thought I was being so “mature” to recognize that maybe it was something I could never achieve. What I didn’t realize then, and wouldn’t until several years later, was that though I did indeed lack those abilities and temperaments which typify successful authors, all of those things could be fostered with passionate hard work and thoughtful dedication.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able or maybe just unwilling to see that, and so for some time, my writing collapsed into that self-gratifying juvenile state that it had existed in before Benét.

Thankfully, God rarely lets us wallow for too long, and my young wife certainly wasn’t going to put up with it.

“You just need to write something,” she said to me one cool fall night as we walked with our two young children around a neighborhood far nicer than our own. “Just start writing and don’t stop until the story is told. To prove that you can finish something.”

So I did. It took longer than it should have, and by the time it was done the novel was a few degrees better than a recently extinguished dumpster fire, but it was written and I had actually finished a full project. I snookered some good-natured people to edit that abomination into something that resembled an engaging novel, and then set about trying to get it published.

And then I failed… a lot. It remains one of the truest things that we learn most from our failures, but what we learn from those failures usually comes in two flavors: crushing truth or crippling lies.

Crushing truth smashes your arrogant assumptions and gives you perspective that will let you use those broken bits as the fertilizer to grow something better, stronger.

Crippling lies leave festering wounds not clean breaks, and those wounds poison you until so that the world viewed through a warped and fevered eye, keeping you from seeing truth.

Thankfully, I got a good deal more crushing than crippling from the perpetual rejection by publishing agents. I learned a good deal about my weaknesses, my ignorance, and most importantly about my convictions. Somewhere along the way I had decided that no matter what I was doing at the moment, one day I was going to be an author, writing full time, even if I had to keep beating my face against the wall.

So with that discovery I suppose it was a matter of time before I found another avenue toward my goal.

Understanding that this work was a constant process of self-improvement, I started working as a ghost writer and independent support writer, making a little money, but mostly just getting experience in writing for different audiences and genres. It was through this secondary job that I met someone who saw some of that infamous “Potential” and decided to start working with me in developing my own work. I was ignorant and fumbling in so many ways, but I was determined to tell my stories and willing to do the work that would open the doors for that to happen.

And thus the Warring Realm series was born, of which War-Born is the first full book, to be followed in short order by War-Torn in late October and War-Sworn in November. I look forward to hearing all that you have to say about it, and right now is as good a time as any to say thank you for investing the time and resources to join me on this journey. I write at your pleasure, and it is to you that I am perpetually thankful.

Looking beyond the horizon of the Warring Realm series, my plan (the comedic fodder of the Almighty) is to start getting the some work done on the beginning of another series Kreigshunde Chronicles. Following the harrowing travails of the Kreigshunde family as they navigate war, intrigue, and dark, eldritch conspiracies in a world where the monsters aren’t just in the shadows, but sitting on the throne!
With my hook so baited I leave you dear reader, until next time.

Regards,
Aaron D. Schneider

P.S. And here are the links again:  USA   CAD   UK

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