Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 175

Happiness is…

Six Sentence Sunday

Happy Easter to regular and Sunday visitors!

From my latest release Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-handed Warrior, here's six sentences of how the protagonist got his "famous" belly scar (see, it's even on the cover of the book!) – or something like that!

***

Kurt panted, dazed, in Blondsun's arms and the healing powder entered his body and closed the nasty, mortal wound, much like it had done eight years before.

"Mother… leave… the scar…" Kurt begged.

"In memory of stupidity?" she asked, moving only her lips, her eyes never wavering from the healing.

"Revenge," Kurt whispered, closing his eyes, exhausted.

"When Humans forget that word it will never be too late," she sighed.

The golden powder vanished, leaving only a long scar, as she wiggled her fingers back to life.

***

Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-handed Warrior is out on Smashwords and Kindle!

Now hop back to the Official Blog for more six sentence goodies and enjoy your Easter eggs!

Random Friday A to Z

Because April is the month of A to Z challenge that is happening on so many blogs, but I don't want to waste a whole month with daily posts about the letters of the alphabet, I'm just doing this one post of randomness, meaning I'll do the A to Z challenge in one day and referring both to the author and the human (?) being. So Life, The Universe and whatnot. In non specific order except for the alphabetical one!

A as Air, the first (in alphabetical order) of the five elements. Also the air I breathe, and that gives life – if we don't pollute it too much.

B as Best Books Evah – just fill in with your favorite titles here. As a reader, I'm very happy about the digital revolution.

C as creative mind, creative process, creative whatever you want that makes your brain churn out good or bad ideas, but keeps you… well… creative!

D as do-it-yourself, it's often faster than waiting for somebody else. And it boosts your self-confidence! Why rely on others when you can do it yourself?

E as elemental, or the five elements (present also on Silvery Earth). In this case Ether and Earth.

F as Fire, another one of the five elements.

G as Gaia, the other name of Mother Earth. Quite mad at us at the moment, but who can blame her?

H as human being – maybe. Yes, I am a human being in this present incarnation. Next one, we'll see!

I as International Alphabet! In Italian we don't have J, K, W, X and Y. My colleagues are always at loss when placing names with those letters in alphabetical order. I'm lucky because I actually learned the alphabet in France where all those letters exist!

J as jolly joker – because it sounds fun and has two Js in it!

K as Kindle, of course! Because I'm not a Mac user and have only i-Nothings, I'll put the Kindle here! Still have to find him a name (I know it's a "he" because I let him read to me from time to time, LOL!). Maybe I should call him like my Muse, who could also be listed here – except he (the man) has a sexy husky voice, while it (da Kindle) is sorta robotic…

L as life, the universe… OK, you got it. Life and Love, the two most important Ls of the universe.

M as movement – of life, of changes, of evolution itself. Just try to stick to your own pace and don't let anyone get in the way.

N as nature rebirth a.k.a. spring (but I used the S for something else, LOL), which makes me drowsy and sleepy all day long.

O as obsession about whatever you want to be obsessed about! As long as it doesn't turn into depression, of course.

P as passion with whatever you do. Writing, drawing, day-dreaming (for me), cooking, going to live shows, take your pick of favorite things and go for them!

Q as question: why are there so few words beginning with Q?!

R as randomness, and I mean total randomness of this post and it's answers. But well, it was just a filler, LOL!

S as shopping online – for books, ebooks, DVDs and now even clothes! Yikes!

T as technology, this monster that is eating us alive through the world wide web! Human beware!

U as universe – here's to our extraterrestrial brothers, that they might visit soon! (Can you tell I'm researching for a sci-fi novel at the moment? )

V as videos on YouTube – which I normally don't watch unless I'm looking for a long lost song from the 1980s (and then I turn it into MP3, so I can listen to it on MegaTiny, LOL).

W as Water, the last (in alphabetical order, not of importance) element.

X as xeroxed fanzines of the 1990s… fond memories of those!

Y as yawn, is this over yet?

Z as zzzz… I'm going back to bed. It's spring and I'm constantly tired…

Wishing you a Happy Easter!

Writer Wednesday

First of all, please hop to Madison's blog as she was kind enough to let me ramble about my experience with self-publishing so far. It's a good preview of the non-fiction book I might end up writing one day, LOL! Anyway, an excellent post to make an informed decision about which way to publish is here at Writers in the Storm. It's a series, so you might want to tune back in next month!

As sales keep tickling in very slowly, I must say I'm happy so far. I wasn't expecting to make any money in the first year, and I didn't. I hope to cover my expenses, or at least half of them, this year, and hopefully next year, I'll cover them all and start earning.

It's certainly not a "get rich quick" thing and it's certainly not for everyone. But for someone like me, with a huge unpublished backlist, it's just what I was waiting for. I can reach more people with an e-book than I could reach with paper copies of my old fanzines during the 1990s. So I welcome the digital revolution – although I still have to experiment, especially with some formats.

I typed a short story in Italian that was still written with an electric typewriter, and had a lot of fun. I also translated another short story and it was so dated – cameras with films, remember them? I had to take off that reference and just left it as "taking pictures and having them printed", the reader is free to imagine a phone or a digital camera!

Mark Coker has an interesting post on agency pricing, but I still haven't figured out if it's good or bad for authors. I won't raise my e-book prices more than what I'm doing this year, but then I'm not really a traditional publisher.  And I still have to read his Secrets to ebook publishing success, but I don't believe in freebies, as from what I've seen, freebies don't bring readers. And I sell more if I put a higher price tag for some reason. So that's my experience.

About "technique" – some musings about descriptions, because by blogging serendipity I read about it both on David Farland's newsletter and re: racist Hunger Games Fans. Mr Farland is of course an advocate of good descriptions and feelings and all, but then you read that other article and have to wonder: why bother with descriptions if the reader will picture the character like he or she wants? Personally, I get lost in too much description – I have a very visual imagination and I don't need lots of input to imagine something or someone. So again, there are contrasting suggestions here. Which is better? Depends on the reader, depends on the writer.

Please note I haven't read Hunger Games but from the citations in the articles, it seems pretty obvious to me the color of the children is not all "white", but I come from a white-centered background, so I understand how a reader might just ignore the "olive skin" detail. Personally I've started putting non-white characters in my stories only lately (except for the Japanese wandering in my stories in the 1980s) and I hope it's obvious (also from the tags) that BoI – Air is India/Persia inspired and BoI-Fire is Africa inspired, so it has a lot of black characters – starting from the cover. Yeah, they're not all "white" on Silvery Earth. I've even decided that some of the Magical Races can have darker skin (mostly the Sila, as they're always in the air and under the sun. The Waiora living underwater don't make much sense, they're pale for lack of sunlight! ) but I still have to write a story about a Sila with "chocolate skin"!

I hate reading descriptions, therefore I don't write many of them. I'm sure my reader is smart enough to imagine whatever he or she wants. I might be wrong, but my background for stories is probably more visual than written. Lots of comics and graphic novels, and movies and TV series inspired the first works, and this hasn't changed. That's why I don't like literary fiction and purple prose.

Now the final announcement: Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-handed Warrior is out on Smashwords and Kindle! Here's the blurb:

The struggle between Humans and Genn gets vicious.

Orphaned by Human bandits, adopted by Genn, seeking revenge and becoming a warrior under a not-so-accomodating Emperor. Especially if you refuse to serve him to side with the Genn.

Welcome to Silvery Earth. Water beings, winged people, shape-shifting dragons and elf-like beings mingle with humans throughout the history of this world.

I shall try to post some excerpts in the upcoming Sundays… Now back to work!

Happiness is…

Sunday Excerpt

Because Six Sentence Sunday doesn't bring that many visitors to this blog, because six sentences is really very short, and because I'm late with the latest release, I will do a Sunday Excerpt – including the past six sentence Sundays. So here's the whole scene from Allan de Sayek (OK, it misses the very end, but at least you know how the full conversation goes),  out on Kindle and Smashwords!

Allan had been sent to his room as soon as they had reached Palace de Sayek and was very worried for Nazir. A servant brought him a message from his father: Prince Ahmed would meet him in the morning, and he was confined to his room until his father's visit. Without food.

Allan tried to glance into the room on the other side of the corridor, hoping to see Nazir there, but his beloved hadn't gone back to his room – the door was wide open and the room obviously empty – and the two guards standing outside forbade him to leave his own.

Allan snorted, frustrated. His fear for Nazir's life made his stomach clench, so he didn't really notice the missed dinner. He wasn't hungry. He couldn't sleep either because it was a hot night and thoughts of his lover kept him up almost until dawn.

When he awoke the sun was high and his father stood next to the bed, arms folded over his chest, wearing a frown that didn't allow much hope.

Allan pulled himself up, gathering his wits. "Father, where is Nazir? Please tell me you haven't killed him, as I am the one to blame."

Prince Ahmed's lips twitched as if he had repressed a smile. "No, I haven't killed him, Allan."

"Thank the Gods!" Allan joined his hands and looked at the painted ceiling, relieved.

"But I did punish him and will also punish you," his father continued.

"You haven't hurt him… physically, have you?" Allan worried his father could have made a eunuch out of his lover.

"No, I sold him as a slave."

Allan gaped. Nazir… a slave? "To whom? To do what?" he panicked.

"He's chained to row in a galley. You will not see him, ever, again." His father's voice was harder now. "If you try to contact him or free him I will execute him, Allan – is that clear?"

Allan nodded, speechless, staring wide-eyed at his father. He had lost his beloved. How could he ever be happy again?

"I shall find you a wife," his father added, calming down. "You will follow tradition, Allan. My son will not dishonor our family with a forbidden love. Your punishment is twenty lashes."

The two guards that had waited outside came into the room and grabbed Allan's arms, pulling him to his feet and dragging him to the courtyard where a pole for flogging disobedient servants stood in a corner.

It was probably the first time in the history of the palace that the son of the prince was tied to the pole and whipped under his father's stern eyes. Allan clenched his teeth, determined not to scream or beg, but tears started flowing down his cheeks.

Nazir had become a slave and he was treated like a servant. Life was unfair. His father was unfair in denying him his greatest love.

Memories of the days in the oasis flashed through his mind between lashes. His back ached and he wished he could feel Nazir's hands and lips on his bruises.

They took him back to his room where he slumped on the bed, burying his face in the pillow to hide his desperate sobs. Eventually, he fell asleep.

Random Friday

OK, another week is almost done, what can I say? I might be very self-centered this week, but even if I'm starting from my writing, I'm rambling about life at large. So, it's about CVE3 again (can you tell I'm having a blast at rewriting something that is 20+years old?) – I got to the part at the end when the warrior woman has to choose between two men and I remembered what happened back then.

I saw a shrink from 1996 to 2002. Four years single therapy, four years group therapy, with two years (1998-1999) of both. When I was still doing the single, I gave him some of my stories to read – a graphic novel (The Prince and The Adventurer, I'll reissue it sometime, but I need to scan and re-letter it) and CVE3, at the time known as Lost & Oliver from the names of the two main characters (I even have a L&O Another Version where they end up together, but I'm not going to publish that, LOL!).

At the time I was still the warrior woman, and he guessed who I was in that novel. And then he asked "Why did you choose X instead of Y?" (he was talking about the characters, no names to avoid spoilers, but he knew whom I identified with).

And I said "Why should I choose Y?"

"Because he's the most powerful, the one who could have protected you."

"That's what I don't like about him. I want him to be my equal, not superior. X is my equal, Y is not."

Might be why I'm still single and I'm not too fond of those mushy romances with women swooning at alpha males?

Anyway, I think he used the totally wrong therapy with me, because by the time I told him "I'll be back when I have news" I was so sick of couples that even in my head I thought I could live without virtual lovers.

I went to him because I couldn't understand the rest of the world. He understood it as "I'm unhappy because I don't have a man" or something like that. But when one can't interact with neither sexes, how can she find her significant other? And if you throw me into a group of abandoned lovers, how do you think I'll feel?

the Muse's latest portrait

Dejected and disgusted by that fairy tale of the happily ever after, of course. I already knew Prince Charming didn't exist, he just gave me the proof. So I stopped seeing him, and didn't bother fitting in anymore – why bother when nobody was trying to fit in with me?

Now I have a spiritual teacher, but it's not really improving my social interactions, I'm afraid. OK, I get less stressed and don't try to understand why anymore, but I still don't have much social interaction. I've been faithful to my virtual lover since 2001 (I call him my Muse, in case you were wondering…) while back in the 1990s – well that warrior woman had more than one man, because I liked them so much I needed to (virtually) try them all, LOL!

I'd rather stay in and write or draw than go out and socialize. "No life, no wife" so often repeated by Desi people (yeah, even the ones in Roma selling roses in the street! ) makes me want to tell them "Speak for yourself, man! I'm a woman, I can live without a husband!". I used to be so excited at weddings, now I snort or sigh and recycle the dress I wore at my brother's wedding – also because I've seen many of those marriages fall apart through the years.

So there you have it, the rant about being single and VHEMT (hadn't said that in a long time, LOL! Hema might remember I said it oh so long ago – haven't changed my mind in that department! ) you weren't expecting! Now this compulsive writer is going back to writing… addiction or not, I better feed it. Mr Writing will pay my next hairdresser trip, but not much more yet!

Writer Wednesday

I had a busy weekend (losing one hour to "Daylight Saving Time" – as we switched this weekend) comparing comments and feedback from betas and editors for CVE2 – The Left-handed Warrior. First of all, I'd like to send a special thanks to those five wonderful people even if I had to work a lot this time! But their comments were spot on, so I was happy to almost delete a secondary plot, recycling some of it in an extra chapter – which means one of the Editors is doing extra work on this one, LOL!

Anyway, the rewriting and tweaking lasted until Monday night, so I didn't have time to check any blogs (because I also had to format and upload another short story, B.G.Hope's Legacy), hence this Writer Wednesday will be all about ME, mwhahahahaha!

Because Juli tagged me and because the rewrites were so intense that p.77 is now completely different, I'm redoing the 7 lucky number meme. The original post was here, including the rules. The new p.77 etc follows:

The teachers observed their clumsy students go at each other, amused. Both pupils looked uncomfortable with the weight of their sword, but Beth managed to hit the other's arm with the flat of her blade, forcing him to drop his weapon with a yelp of pain.

"Noble lord." Beth made a mocking bow. "You still have a lot to learn. And I bet you started long before I did."

"I was born with a sword in my hand," the boy frowned.

"I started using mine three months ago."

"Damn!" Even Rupert was impressed.

"Yes, she's a smart girl," Kurt grinned.

"A girl?" Rupert gaped.

Betas, you might notice I changed the POV of this scene – but it's part of the modified subplot I was talking about!

And now, cover reveal for my faithful blog followers.

I hope to publish it next week, so stay tuned…

I have finished the first (handwritten) draft of CVE3 – The Half-blood, and remembered oh so long ago when I wrote the very first draft (almost 20 years ago, yikes! I haven't touched it for some 10 years, and now I've touched it again to fit the "new" Silvery Earth) and the fact that I imagined it as a French BD drawn by Rosinski – much as Thorgal. This occurred to me because one of the betas thought CVE2 was sort of episodic – well CVE3 is even worse!

Because I could almost see the different "albums" drawn by Rosinski coming out every two years, the format was kind of episodic…but then back then most of my novels or longer works were sort of episodic, as I watched lots of TV, so I had this "serial" or episodic format even in writing. Of course there's a beginning, a middle and an end, but I called them "serial novels" for that reason – although CVE3 was the first with longer chapter and less episodic than the previous works.

And this specific book definitely continues in CVE4 (but it doesn't end with a cliffhanger, don't worry! Besides, the next book will be out two months after this one – and in 2 months you might not even get to reading it, if you've loaded your e-reader, LOL! ). I might do the print version in one volume (lemme see… CVE1+Allan de Sayek, CVE2+Records of the Varian Empire, CVE3+CVE4… yeah, should work! ) – but I don't know when I'll do the print version, LOL!

By the way, I've raised the price of Allan de Sayek to 2.99$ but Amazon might have not updated it… they're sort of slower than Smashwords where the change is immediate! I can't check because I'm on Kindle Italia, but you might still be able to grab it at 1.99$…

Anyway, I've updated the Silvery Earth Chronology (see the tab at the top of the page, enough pingbacks for today! ) and now I'm off to… reading because I have two reviews to do and I've fallen behind with all the writing of the weekend!

Oh, and one last thing: BoI – Prequels has finally made it to the Premium Catalog. You Nook users please kindly keep a look on my Nook page and as soon as it shows up on Barnes&Nobles, go to Amazon and tell them of the lower price, thank you! I'll remind you again next week – thanks, much appreciated!

Have a great week!

Happiness is…

Six Sentence Sunday

One last bit from Allan de Sayek just to let you know of Nazir's fate… continuing from last week.

***

Allan gaped. Nazir… a slave? "To whom? To do what?" he panicked.

"He's chained to row in a galley. You will not see him, ever, again."

***

Wanna know more? Allan de Sayek is out on Kindle and Smashwords.

Now hop back to the Official Blog for more six sentence goodies… have a great Sunday!