Samie Foster's Blog, page 11

Part 2 of The Island Audio Story is Now Posted

Hi there, everyone. I hope you been having a great week. I have been battling a summer cold, so I haven't been able to do much other than my day job. So there is little to update you on concerning upcoming projects. But because I'm sick, it doesn't mean I'm going to break my promises. I said by every Sunday, I will posted a chunk of audio story while simultaneously releasing the same portion on Wattpad and I am holding to that. So here are the links below.

First here is the link the Part 2 of The Island Audio Story
https://youtu.be/FAhi1n2MLJw

And now here it Part 2 of The Island on Wattpad
https://my.w.tt/P7RDm3Vm7O

Along with that, there is the weekly book review I post on Hubpages. This week its on Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets by J.K.Rowling.
https://hubpages.com/literature/Harry...

And if you like the free audio stuff, please support by buying the ebook version or making a small donation to Patreon at Project Stories.  The link is https://www.patreon.com/user?u=10411921.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy what's here and I hope you all have a great week. I'll be back next weekend with more stuff.

Audio Stories, Free Stories, and the Progress on The Last Witch

So it has been a while since I last posted. I think it was around the 4th of July when I gave my last set of updates. Right after that post I was pretty much slammed at work. Being a newbie fresh out of college geologist working at agricultural consulting company, I'm finding that summer months can be crazy busy sometimes. Sure I love the overtime, but for my hobby of writing, I'm just too busy to touch it sometimes. But now that things slowed down a little bit, I wanted to give you quite a few updates about what is going on.

First of all, for a while now, I have been talking about this crazy audio book project. I was really hesitant to do it before I started, and was a bit nervous while I was doing it because I knew it would eventually make its way to the internet, and I am far from some confident public speaker. But I have been determined because I know that reading things out loud is such a great way for me to revisit my older works and revise them. And finally I have the first story ready for posting. I am beginning with the Island, which is a longer scifi audio story. I am a posting ten minute part every Sunday starting today. There will be ten parts. A part will be posted each week on Sunday. I was learning and slowly gaining confidence as I was go, so I apologize for it being a bit rough.

The Island Synopsis:

In the middle of the second World War, scientists start vanishing all over the world. When Lily's husband is snatched away, she teams up with her brother in law to unravel what is happening to all the world's geniuses. After a year of traveling the world looking for clues, they are led to a mystery island in the eye of a never ending storm. A place that holds more danger than they ever expected

So here is the link to the video.

https://youtu.be/Fj3KqwmVSZg

And as promised, I am simultaneously releasing the same part for free over on Wattpad at

https://www.wattpad.com/610601836-the...

And for support for those who enjoy, I am asking for people to by the ebook versions

On Kindle for $.99 @ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014VXB4MY

On Smashwords for $.99 @ https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Or support me with a donations at my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=10411921

Speaking of audio stories, when I have forty minutes here and there I try to record a little bit. And I recently read through one of my first short stories, Vanity. Now that I have read through it and I have audio draft, I updated the new ebook draft to the storefronts. The new revised draft is essentially the same with the absence of a minor misspelling. But in celebration completing another audio story, I wanted to let this book be free on Smashwords this week. So I will placed the synopsis and coupon down below.

Vanity Synopsis:

Two siblings, Liz and Denny are on a long drive home from college. But when they take a short cut on the back roads through the woods, they have an unexpected accident. With the car damaged, they find themselves on foot walking through the woods. To their surprise, they stumble across a enormous mansion. A house that contains dark secrets that may kill them before the night is done.

Free Story Coupon Code SP56P

This can be used at the Vanity Store front page @ https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Beyond that I am am 20% through building an audio version and revised written version of one of my earliest written and hastily published scifi romps Warped. Also in between chapters (to break up the tedium) I am recording parts of my short story Late Shift at Pennies.

And what I have been calling High Fantasy Project X for the longest time I renamed The Last Witch. Its a bit cliche of a title but its fitting giving the subject matter. I officially have the last story, The Abyss, up on Scribophile for workshopping, and now that I reviewed all the stories, serious editing is taking place and the whole project just took a huge step toward becoming a finished product.

And then lastly I want to post my book review blogs for the last few weeks.

The Incredible Exploding Man by Dave Hutchinson
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-I...

The Aeronuat's Windlass by Jim Butcher
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-A...

The Things They Carried : A Dark Gritty Emotional Tale of War
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-T...

The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-...

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
https://owlcation.com/humanities/On-S...

Anyways that is every thing I have for you this week. It's a lot of stuff. I will be back next week with the new audio story segments. I hope everyone has a great week!

Warped is Being Unpublished & the Episodic Short Story Fantasy Project is Closer to Finished.

Its been a while since the last blog, and I had a little more free time lately so I've been working a few things. What have I been working on? Quite a few things lately. First I've been editing The Battle of Minerva and The Broken Princess short stories in the still unnamed high fantasy episodic project I've been working on. They have been posted on the Scribophile for workshopping anyone can log on, find my account (Its under my name Samie Foster) and read the rough drafts if  you're interested. There is one short story left to conclude it, and then comes more polishing for final drafts for eventual publication. So in time it will be finished. Also hopefully I managed to come up with a proper name for the project.

Also while cleaning up my computer a bit, I found an old short called Wishes. It's the short story I wrote ages ago, that played with the idea of genies in contemporary times before that core concept was expanded into A Fairy's Tale, which I wrote a couple years later. Its something I think'll I start workshopping so I can have something come out before winter, and to give myself a break from working on a single project all the time.

Other than that I have been working on audio book stuff. I started reading through Vanity and been continuing through Warped. And as I read through Warped, I'm seeing problems. There are just so many little mistakes here and there, and I find myself editing a number of sentences just to improve flow. Warped is one of the books, I edited hastily and published right after high school (In the short lived I'm going to be famous author phase I went through in my late teens) I spoke of before a few blogs back when I said I wanted to revise older works.  And because of this, I am going to remove Warped from the ebook shops for a while. Until I'm through with the audio version of this book and have all the issues ironed out, its not coming back. Also I've been wanting to change the cover for about a year now. I don't like the idea of ever unpublishing things, but now that am seeing so many issues when reading it so many years later, I would feel worse about leaving it up online as a finished product. 

And about the audio project; I got the Patreon page, Wattpad, or Youtube all organized and set up. The audio version of The Island will be coming soon. I would like to begin posting next Sunday, but I have to work overtime next week with the holiday in the middle, so it might be longer than than that. Day jobs always comes first unfortunately.

Beyond that there's the typical weekly book reviews I post over on Hubpages. So here's a list of what was posted over the last month.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
https://hubpages.com/literature/On-St...

Charming by Elliot James
https://hubpages.com/literature/Charm...

Locke and Key: Head Games by Joe Hill
https://hubpages.com/literature/Locke...

A Long Way Home by Jake Lake
https://hubpages.com/literature/A-Lon...


With that said, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and if you live in the US, I hope you have a fantastic July 4th!

Lonesome Town is Published!

This is going to be a short blog post, because since the last time I posted I haven't had much time to work on my projects. Work has really picked up at my day job, and I really needed the hours and over time. So there is not much new other than the fact that the short story Lonesome Town is now published. It's part fairy tale and part 1950's pulp science fiction. It's available both at Amazon and Smashwords. It's an oddball story that got surprisingly good reviews on Scribophile which is strange because this story was began as an exercise to break my post college writer's block. But I am glad to finally have a final draft to be on the available on the internet. The description down below.

When Kaylee dumped Jake she didn't know what he would do. She didn't know he would mope around in self pity and then take off to the mythical place called Lonesome Town, where broken hearts can be mended. But as Kaylee becomes increasingly worried about her friend she goes to find him. I her journey she learns Lonesome Town is a very sinister place that preys on its customers.

It is only $1.00

Check it out on Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

And on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DHC789L



Also there's lot of book reviews since the last post. So I'll list the below.

The Ghost of Ticonderoga by Rod Sterling
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-G...

Deep Storm by Lincoln Childs
https://hubpages.com/literature/Deep-...

The Killing Dance by Laurell K Hamilton
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-K...

Ice Limit by Lincoln Childs and Douglas Preston
https://hubpages.com/literature/Ice-L...

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton
https://hubpages.com/literature/Guilt...

The Watchmaker's Daughter by CJ Archer
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-W...

Lock and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill
https://hubpages.com/literature/Locke...


And that is all I have for updates. I'm hard at work on a bunch of stuff with very little to do it. But hopefully there will be more exciting stuff the next time I post. Have a great day everyone!

Updates From The Last Four Weeks and Get Somewhere Beyond The Sea For Free

So what has been happening since the last time I posted? Well a lot of things that kept me very busy. But I try to carve out some time every week to work on my book projects a little bit. And in that world, this is what has been happening.

I have been working hard on polishing the short story Lonesome Town. I now have a very clean third draft that I believe will be the same draft that will go in ebook form. So I have been working on the cover art for it. Hopefully it will be out in the wilds of the internet for all to read soon.

Then there is another very big thing. I went back through Somewhere Beyond the Sea. It’s a short story I published years ago, and I decided to give it same treatment of reading it out loud while a microphone is on. And not only do I have The Island recorded, I have this story recorded too. Those two will go up as audio books sometime in the future. But point is, I found a few little mistakes in Somewhere Beyond the Sea, and now the new draft is up. And in celebration of having a more polished final version, I wanted to give people the short to read it for free for a short while. So I will post the synopsis down below with the coupon code.

​​Synopsis:

Davey has been trapped on an rock of a island his entire life building a glass castle with his father for the king. He feels as though he is prisoner with no contact with the world beyond the island. Then one day during a storm, an odd yet captivating girl washes up on shore. She says she's from somewhere beyond the sea, but Davey's new friend is full of more mysteries than he ever expected.

Find it at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

And get it for free with the coupon code: JF84N

It's valid through May 20th. 

Anyways, I hope you enjoy and I hope everyone has a great day!

Lonesome Town, Brian's Story, and Everything Else That is in the Works

So it's been a while since the last post, so I wanted to update everything that is in the works. So what I have been up to.

Well the main thing that has been in the works, is the short story Lonesome Town. I submitted a rough draft of the story on the writing community Scribophile to get feedback as my main focus at the time was Brian's Story (Working Title for the high fantasy project I spoke a lot about i previous blogs). But I was surprised to see people who reviewed it really enjoyed it more than I ever expected. So I decided to focus on it, because it’s a nice little short that is easy to work on and finish relatively quickly. Right now, I am on a third draft. I feel at this point, it is not far from being published. After another round of editing and reading out loud, I will be able to build a book cover and get out into the wilds of the internet for everyone to read.

Beyond that, I have been doing the first round of edits on the stories for Brian Story. Two are posted on Scribophile. They include the first two of five stories, which are called The Damn Road, and Old Hobbs, They are very rough drafts and have not yet looked at the feedback yet. I wanted to only focus on Lonesome Town for the time being. 

Beyond that, I looked into Patreon built, an account and have been remodeling my old Wattpad page, for the audio book project. The Island has been done for a while.  I decided because time is limited, I wouldn't worry about sound effects or music, so it will my voice only. But it is rough. I cringe when I go back through it. Because of that, I went onto Amazon and ordered a podcasting microphone, and it’s so much clearer. I've been using it to record Somewhere Beyond the Sea, and it’s just easier to work with.  The stuff will be coming out sometime it the future, I just want to have a perfect system in place before it comes out so that the release is all streamlined.

And of course, there are the articles I post every Sunday for the past few weeks. These include:

The Serpent Bride by Sara Douglas

https://hubpages.com/literature/The-S...

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

https://hubpages.com/literature/The-T...

Dead After Dark by Charlene Harris

https://hubpages.com/literature/Dead-...

Witchblade Origins Vol. 2 (Comic Series)

https://hubpages.com/literature/Witch...

Horns by Joe Hill

https://hubpages.com/literature/Horns...

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Read...


Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

https://hubpages.com/literature/Fool-...


And that is everything. Thank you so much for reading.  Hopefully I will have something more exciting next time.

An Update on Everything

Hi there. It's a almost two months into the New Year, and I have been trying to focus on my book related things, and try to accomplish more than I did last Year (which was almost nothing). After battling the flu for three weeks and working through my scattered brained methods of doing things, I actually have some accomplishments. The dark fantasy episodic project that I am now calling Brian’s Story, is all typed up out of the notebook this whole thing was scribbled in. So I am going through the drafts, now editing them for mistakes. After the first round of edits, I’m getting it workshopped at Scribophile as I do more and polish it to perfection. As of right now, the first story of the project, The Damn Road is on Scribophile and I am just beginning to shuffle through the reviews to start working out a new draft. There are four more stories to be posted in the future for the complete project.

Also I was a bit spontaneous and I decided to throw a more light hearted short fantasy story Lonesome Town out to be workshopped. I think that could be a cute little story I could squeeze in among all the other work and thought it wouldn’t be too taxing. And I decided to post to a new chapter of Finding Elodie to be workshopped as well. I feel bad that I abandoned working on editing the novel for a year. So it just felt justified for, even though it may make little sense considering the writing communities Karma system.

Beyond that I dusted off my Wattpad account, and created a secondary youtube where I could release my audio book project. My train of thought is to release the ten minute segments of a story at time simultaneously with that same chunk on Wattpad. I’m still deciding how much I need to edit the audio story. I first thought that I would add music and sound effects to make it more exciting like a audio drama. But I am not sure if I would have the time to do something like that. I’ll mess around with the audio and make a decision eventually.

Also as mentioned previously, I started revisiting older material using the read out loud method (and creating new audio books at the same time). Currently, I am working on the short Somewhere Beyond The Sea and one of my earliest books, Warped. And oh dear. Twenty-eight year old me is so disappointed in seventeen year old me right now. Warped really does need this revision treatment and I’m glad I’m taking some time to revisit it.

So anyways, you can see some very rough drafts of works in progress on my Scribophile page if you can to see some very messy work. You can view my profile at https://www.scribophile.com/authors/s...

Beyond that I did post some reviews on books and short stories.

Cold Copper by Devon Monk
https://hubpages.com/literature/Cold-...​
 
The Ice Owl by Carolyn Ive Gilman
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-I...

The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-I...

The Martian by Andy Weir
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-M...

The Hanged Man by Steve Nagy
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-H...

Anyways, thank you for reading and I hope you all have a great day!

A New Year's Gift For Everyone!

So it’s a new year and I can't believe it. The year of 2017 has been so busy for me. I mean in my post college life, I have been working my tail off.  And when I look back onto my book goals at the beginning of 2017 verses what I got done by this date, I realized I missed most of my goals. But then again, considering this year, it’s also kind of amazing I got anything done. I am hoping to stick my plan stated in the last blog.  I am almost done typing the high fantasy short stories project to go onto the editing block in the near future. For everything else, I have this check list literally taped on the wall in my work area so I can stay focused.

And then most importantly, I actually finished recording an audio version of The Island. It is rough, but I really don't care. I am just satisfied that I actually finished it. And even if no one enjoys the audio version, this process improved the story.  Regardless of how many times it was reviewed by writing community members and myself, there were still some small mistakes that I saw in “final” draft I read from for the audio version. So this is what I'm going to do now. In celebration of finishing the audio version, I am letting people have the story for free on Smashwords, and the Stories collection will be discounted. I will post the coupons below. And as for the audio version. I am still working on how I'm going about that. I'm thinking posting a cleaned up version on Youtube and if people enjoy it, they can donate on Patreon...maybe. Recording these things take a lot of work and time, so if someone would just donate a nickel here and there I would be grateful. I know very little about running a Youtube channel and Patreon. I also know people are very mean on the internet, so I'm hesitant on the idea of throwing my awful voice work out there for people to judge but I never what will happen until I try.

I also want to continue this process of reading things out loud to clean up older works. I was considering revising one of my first (hastily self-published after high school because I thought I was a going to be a famous author) books, Warped, using this read out loud process. I also wanted to attempt to polish this process a bit more with some much shorter stories as well. (The Island was seventy pages long. So it was very challenging for the first of these.) I'm not sure how I will go about it yet, I'll figure it into the checklist somehow for 2018.

Also as always, I have posted a few book reviews and what not since the last update. So you can read those down below as well.

Book reviews include:

Bye Bye Baby by Max Allan Collins

https://hubpages.com/literature/Bye-B...

Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick


https://hubpages.com/literature/Going...

Also there was a short film review, which was...

The Gunfighter
https://hubpages.com/entertainment/Sh...


Anyways, Happy New Year’s everyone. I hope you enjoy the coupons down below.

Free Copy of The Island

Coupon Code: CV55R 

Buy it from the book's Smashwords storefront at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Half off of Stories Vol. I, which includes The Island

Coupon Code: SK58F

Buy from the book's Smashwords storefront at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

New Alice Story and the Road Ahead

So in my last couple of blogs, I mentioned how it has been such a busy year, and I just didn't get much done. And my focus at that time, was to focus on the two projects sitting on the desktop that were at the finish line. The first was the short story collection Stories Vol. II, which I threw out into the wilds of the internet a few weeks ago. And I just recently got the second project Alice: Stone's Story published. And in case you missed m earlier blogs, this is the second entry in the short story Dark Alice in Wonderland Project. Each story follows a different Alice in wonderland, revealing a different piece of a dark world with each story. This story focuses on an ex slave of the Red Queen on the run who finds safety in Diamond City, the last free city of wonderland. The synopsis is posted below:

Wonderland is broken, and every Alice who stumbles in is trapped in a nightmare world. Some Alices become fighters. Other becomes con artists scrapping by. Alice Stone is a coward. An ex card soldier for the Red Queen, who is running from her captures hoping to find somewhere safe. But when she reaches Diamond City, the last free city of Wonderland, she will have to find her courage to survive.

This is available right now on kindle and smashwords, if you want to take a look.

But what am I doing from here on out? First off, I want to return to doing my pseudo- audio book project. What is that? It's basically the process of reading stories out loud with a microphone on. I'm actually using it more for myself, so I can review my work, especially the older ones and fix any tiny mistakes that I missed somehow despite the revising draft after draft. And the idea is to take the audio, clean it up, and post it as an audio book on YouTube, or as a podcast somewhere somehow. I will figure it out once I have an actual project finished. Before this year became crazy busy, I was actually 75% through recording The Island. And I intend to finish it up and do some other stories

Beyond that, things are a bit of mess. I have a third of an edited and work shopped science fiction, Finding Elodie that has not been touched in a year and half. Also I have a few chapters of a pirate novel but so far the second drafts posted on Scribophile, has very bad reviews. Readers cannot understand it takes place around year 1700 which is a big issue. So that needs a lot more reworking. I'm not sure if I have the time dedicate to the research to get everything right at the moment. The third powers book is half edited on my desktop. And as I look at all of it. I think maybe I should do something smaller to get back into the process of editing and polishing. I want to work on the High Fantasy X Project (working title) for now. Its five short stories set in medieval times focusing on witchcraft and a dysfunctional father and son relationship as they are on a journey to kill a god. It’s smaller, easier, and just better for me to get back into the routine of things. Then I will decide what to take from there on out. I just need to establish a process and routine again, or nothing will ever be done.

Outside of the computer work, though I believe it’s safe to say that a story I've been jotting down in a notebook the last couple months is finished. It's the cyberpunk tale called Sugar Plum. It started as a short story, but just kept going. It ended at the 140 page mark oppose to the 40 page mark that I was expecting. Hopefully, sometime in the future, I'll get it typed up and out on the internet for all of you to read.

And that is everything. When there is new news, I'll post again. Anyways, like always here are the new book reviews that have been posted since last time. And if you're on Goodreads, the reviews are up on this site as well. So enjoy.



Dead Iron by Devon Monk Book Review

https://hubpages.com/literature/Dead-...

Tin Swift By Devon Monk

https://hubpages.com/literature/Tin-S...

It has been a while.

Hi everyone. It has been a long time. Years even since I been here. When I started this profile, I was a teenager right out of high school who had great dreams of being an amazing author, and jumping on any social media site to get notoriety. And to be honest, a lot of stuff has happened since then, and just because of life, and I think just getting older in general, I had to refocus everything.

But I still love writing. I'll never stop. And now that things have slowed down a bit, I have started to re-evaluate everything I've done over the last few years. I created a new website. I've been taking a slower pace with editing and prepping short stories and novels for release. I ended paperback editions, as I hardly have sold any. And more than anything, I want to review and possibly revise my earlier "just after high school" works, so things can just be better all around. I kind of learned a lot over the years, and I just want to steam line and improve everything that I can. And from now on, hopefully this blog will reflect my main blog on my new website in upcoming posts.

Overall, I'm glad to be back, and really hope people enjoy what I have to post.

Have a good day!