Dan Lutts's Blog

Faith

People have asked where the inspiration came for Rill’s dog, Faith, in Charm Wars. The inspiration was our rescue dog that we had named Faith because she had the faith to come to us. Rill’s faith was loyal to him for her entire life just as our Faith was loyal to us. How did we get her? While Lisa and I were living in Tennessee, someone dumped Faith in the nearby woods when she was two months old. Workers who were working nearby tried to coax Faith to come to them, but she refused to go to them. So every day the workers would leave food for her and then put distance between themselves and her. After spending a month in the woods, she left and for some unknown reason ended up going to our house and sitting in front of the garage door. We tried to bring her into our house, but she refused to go in and would sleep on the front porch. So we set up a bed for her there.

Faith slept on the front porch for quite a few days. Gradually, though, we were able to coax her into the garage, then into my downstairs study, and finally into our living room.

Faith refused to leave the living room for over a year until Lisa and I finally managed to lure her out. Despite her multiple hang ups and phobias, Faith was a wonderful, loving member of our family.

We also found out that she could get along with other dogs. So we found a dog named Mac so she Faith could have another companion. They both got along wonderfully.

Unfortunately, Faith and Mac died within a couple of months of each other. Lisa and I both still miss them. But we’re happy they both had wonderful lives together and with us.

Books I’ve Written and Am Writing Part 2

I started reading books at an early age. I began by reading Batman and Robin comic books. My mother was really concerned about my reading them. So she went into the principal’s office in my school and asked him how she could make me stop reading the comics. “He should be reading books,” she said. “Not comics.” “Relax,” the principle told her. “When he’s ready to read books, then he’ll start reading them. “ The principle was right. After awhile, I began reading books, including Batman and Robin and Dennis the Menace.

Batman and Robin

In the early 1960s, I began writing fantasy stories.

Dennis the Menace

When I was seventeen, I began writing short stories and submitting them for publication. They were mostly fantasy stories, such as Who Speaks of Conquest. The story was about a Terran ambassador whose space ship lands on a star port on an alien planet. The ambassador intends that he will make the occupants of the planet join their federation of planets. An alien approached them and said, “Welcome to the Federation of Free Stars. Follow the rules and everything will be okay.” Later on, I began writing short fantasy novels.

Space Ship Landing

Later, I wrote a Civil War short story, called New Braintree, which takes place in September of 1864. It’s from the Confederate point of view. The main character, who is the narrator, never mentions his name.

Unfortunately, I stopped writing because a friend of mine told me that I couldn’t write effectively if I hadn’t experienced life beforehand. Unfortunately, I believed him, stopped writing, and started “experiencing life”.

Around 1920, I felt a compunction to start writing again. my wife, Lisa, thought it was a good idea and was very supportive of me doing it. So I came up with an idea of creating a four-book fantasy series. The first book was called Charm Wars. The first three books have been released in both paperback and and e-book formats. The fourth book in the series is being edited.

Charm Wars

Right now, I’m finishing work on my latest book, The Vatican List. It’s about a young Jewish man, Paul Jefferson, who is vacationing in Rome. His father is an extremely devout Jew living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paul is given a list of Nazi war criminals by mistake instead of to Nazi war criminal Karl Reichter. Paul sees his father’s name on the list.

Karl and his two fellow Nazis want the list back.

Mossad agent Dahlia Sharett and her fellow Mossad agents want to get the Vatican List, too. But they want to take it back to Israel. Unfortunately for Dahlia, her fellow agents are killed in line of duty.

Paul teams up with Dahlia to get the list back, but at a heavy cost.

The story also shows how Karl Reichter turned from being a good Christian man to becoming a Nazi.

Books I’ve Written And Am Writing Part 1

I started writing in my early teens when I was living in Wollaston, which is part of Quincy, Massachusetts. I wrote both short stories and novels. When I look at my early works now, I cringe. They were so bad I can see now why no one wanted to publish them. I began by writing short stories. One of my first was The Message. It was about a space ship Rover that got attacked by enemies and was damaged so badly it couldn’t return to base. The crew ran out of oxygen and died.

The Rover

I didn’t stick with short stories or fantasy. Instead, I started writing in other genres. One genre was the Civil War, but from the Confederate point of view.

Confederate soldiers

One of my first Fantasy novels was Star Refuge. Jack Richards, who belonged to a band of guerrillas, is captured by fascists and is going to be executed along with five of his friends. He recalls how all that happened.

A Fascist

Right now, I’m almost ready to publish the last book in a four-book series: Charm Wars, A Light in the Window, Revenge of the Estatis, and now Conquest.

Legionaries in Conquest

Currently, I’m working The Vatican List. Three Nazi war criminals, Karl Reichter and his two associates, try to kill Karl’s brother, who is a high ranking member of the Vatican, and get a list of Nazi war criminals from him. They call the list the Vatican List.

Mossad agent Dahlia Sharett and her two partners try to kill Karl and take the list. Her partners are killed instead and, she fails in her mission.

Paul Jefferson, who lives in Massachusetts with his father and mother, is visiting Rome. His father is a devout Jew. Paul inadvertently gets hold of a the Vatican List and sees his father’s name on it.

Reichter wants the list back and will do anything to get it.

The Vatican

The Publishing Process for Charm Wars

Charm Wars is the first book I wrote, and the publishing process was all new to me. Initially, I thought about writing the novel using Microsoft Word, but then I decided to do more research to find the best book-writing tool. That’s when I discovered Scrivener. Using Scrivener, I could write my novel chapter by chapter. Then, when I’m finished writing the book, I could print it out with Scrivener.

After writing the novel, I needed to have it edited. Of course, I knew nothing about how to select an editor. So I asked a writer friend of mine if she could recommend one. She suggested that I use her editor, which I did. I’m glad she made the recommendation because the editor is marvelous.

After Charm Wars was edited, I needed to format both the paperback and e-book versions. I purchased a book template to format the paperback version and used Draft2Digital to format the e-book version.

CHAPTER 1

Cougar’s Lair

THE RAYS OF THE midmorning sun shining through needle-studded pine branches and naked ash and birch limbs created a patchwork of light and dark on the forest floor. Birds fluttered from tree to tree, and somewhere in the distance an owl hooted.

Rill Larkin paused by the edge of a green-and-brown thicket, his broadhead arrow nocked and his longbow half drawn. The chill, early Awakening season wind attacked his bones through the coarse wool of his heavy, dark-brown cloak. He suppressed a shiver, not from the cold but from excitement mingled with apprehension. He eyed the cougar’s tracks that disappeared into the thicket of brownish bushes and scrubby, leafless trees that grew on the base of the mountain. A narrow, well-worn trail showed the cougar had come and gone that way many times before.

Jedd Euland lowered his yew longbow. “We can’t use our bows in there.” His words, spoken low, held a note of fear. “We should of brought hunting spears.”

Both the paperback and e-book versions needed a pair of maps to go at the beginning of the book. So my wonderful graphic designer created them for me. The two paperback versions—one for Amazon and the other for IngramSpark—had different map requirements. So my designer created two maps for paperback versions .

The next challenge I faced was creating two cover spreads for the paperback versions because Amazon and IngramSpark have different requirements. I was fortunate because my wife, who runs a museum, uses a fantastic designer for her exhibits. So I contacted the designer. She was thrilled to take on the work because she considered creating the cover spreads an exciting challenge. She ended up doing a wonderful job.

I still needed to create a front cover for the three e-books, which don’t require a spine or back cover. Since all three e-books are the same, my designer needed to make only one front cover. So my designer created the same front cover she used for the paperback version.

Getting ISBN numbers came next. What’s an ISBN number? ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. Publishers, including independent authors like me, assign ISBNs to their books. Each version—hardcover, paperback, and e-book—must have a different ISBN. If you’re publishing two or three versions of the same book, such as a paperback through Amazon and other distributors, you can use the same ISBN number. If you’re publishing through Amazon, though, you don’t really need to assign an ISBN to your book because Amazon assigns its own ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) to it. I include an ISBN number to the book anyway.

Some publishers offer you free ISBNs. You should be careful about accepting one, though, because then your publisher—not you—will own the ISBN. Why is that? It’s because whoever owns the ISBN also owns the book.

How can you obtain an ISBN? You can get them through Bowker at MyIdentifiers.com.

Once your finished writing your book, your next step is to publish it. I must say, it’s always a wonderful feeling to see your book in print.

Kenneth Roberts Novels

I ran across my first Kenneth Roberts novel years ago when I was visiting one of my friends at his house. His father was an avid reader, and I noticed Arundel, which was one of the books on his bookshelf. It was an “epic novel” about Benedict Arnold—who would later become a traitor and join the British—and his expedition through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec during the American Revolution. The expedition was one of the most difficult and dangerous campaigns in U.S. History. Arnold and his soldiers had to cross swamps and forests to reach their goal. A lot of them died during the march and many others deserted and went home. The Americans who were left were soundly defeated by the British.

I ended up enjoying the novel so much that I bought many of his other books, including

How Old I Was When I Started Writing

Some people have asked how old I was when I started writing. I was twenty-one. At that time I was an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction novels. (My older brother was an avid SciFi fan too.) I sent out my first manuscript to Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine when I was 21 years old. It was a short piece called The Circle.

The Circle takes place in 1930 and is about a twenty-nine-year-old man named John Roberts who’s on his way to a scientist’s laboratory on a dark and foggy night to try out the scientist’s time machine. Along the way, he encounters an old man who begs him not to go to the lab. “I can still remember when I was twenty-five, sixty-nine years ago—in 1930,” he says. Then he keeps saying, “I’m you and you’re me.” Obviously, the poor guy’s demented. As John passes him, he hears the man holler “Tonight is July 20, the same night that I . . .” And then John’s out of hearing range.

At the scientist’s lab, John gets into the time machine. As the scientist starts the machine, John suddenly wonders if he was the old man. But it’s too late, and the time machine takes John to the Battle of Bull Run. After the fighting, John waits for the scientist to transport him back to the present, but that never happens. John is stuck in the past . . .

The night is dark and foggy when an old man emerged from the fog. “I can still remember when I was twenty-five, sixty-five years ago—in 1930 . . .One short story I wrote was about the crucifixion of Christ on an alien planet. The response I received said, “Good writing, but I can’t buy that much religious coincidence without some justification.”

l also wrote three SciFi novels, which were never published. (They need some work.)

The Vatican

In 2007, I began writing a novel titled The Vatican List. It’s about a Jewish professor at Harvard University who goes to the Secret Vatican Archives to do research. His father is an extremely devout Jew living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The professor, though, discovers that is father is a wanted Nazi war criminal. Recently, I brought the manuscript out again and am going to work on it.

After a while, I stopped writing to pursue other activities, but now I’m writing again and enjoying it.

Writers Also Enjoy Reading

I love to write, and spend a long time at it. But, like most writers, I also enjoy reading. Some of my favorite genres are YA fiction, Action and Adventure, History, and Historical Fiction.

My cat Mattie doesn’t read, but loved to be petted while I read.

Reading has a lot of benefits. Reading can:

Strengthen your brain by making the the circuits and signals stronger

Make you empathetic towards people (and animals, too)

Give you a stronger range of vocabulary

Help stop cognitive decline, if you’re older

Reduces stress and

Helps you get a better night’s sleep

Lessens your chances of becoming depressed

Might improve your chances of living longer

What kinds of books should you read? Here’s the answer: whatever books and genres you enjoy. Reading also is better than excessive binge-watching TV because TV doesn’t have the same stimulating affect on your mind as reading.

Writers Also Enjoy Readng

I love to write, and spend a long time at it. But, like most writers, I also enjoy reading. Some of my favorite genres are YA fiction, Action and Adventure, History, and Historical Fiction.

My cat Mattie doesn’t read, but loved to be petted while I read.

Reading has a lot of benefits. Reading can:

Strengthen your brain by making the the circuits and signals stronger

Make you empathetic towards people (and animals, too)

Give you a stronger range of vocabulary

Help stop cognitive decline, if you’re older

Reduces stress and

Helps you get a better night’s sleep

Lessens your chances of becoming depressed

Might improve your chances of living longer

What kinds of books should you read? Here’s the answer: whatever books and genres you enjoy. Reading also is better than excessive binge-watching TV because TV doesn’t have the same stimulating affect on your mind as reading.

How I Named My Characters in My Charm Wars Series

Some readers have asked me how I came up with names for the characters in my Charm Wars Series.

Some names, such as Alyse Dejune and and Rill Larkin, are good, old-fashioned names that everyone uses. Rill’s dog Faith is named after my dog Faith. She didn’t seem honored to be in the story. Other names, though, are fantasy names. How did I come up with them? By using a fantasy name generator.

One I particularly like is Reedsy’s Fantasy Names Generators, which gives you the choice of creating fantasy names for humans, dragons, and Elfs.

Here are a couple of more fantasy name generators. There are tons of others, and you can have a good time checking them out.

Conquest and What’s Next

I just finished the first draft of Conquest, the fourth—and last—book in the Charm Wars Series. While I’m waiting a few weeks before revising the draft, I thought I’d start writing another novel, but one that’s not fantasy.

Over 25 years ago, I wrote a couple of drafts of The Vatican List, a novel I never tried to get published. It’s about a young Jewish professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts who goes to the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome, Italy to do some research. While he’s there, he discovers that his father, who is an extremely devout Jew living in Cambridge, is actually a Nazi war criminal.

I’ve certainly learned a lot since writing The Vatican List, and the book needs a lot of work, which I look forward to doing.

Writing it will be a lot of fun.