S.K.N. Hammerstone's Blog, page 6

Starting the Countdown

Hello Everyone,

Well it's July 24th which means the Countdown to The Deceived has officially started!!!

First off we have a guest blog post by Kaine Andrews on Demons, Daemons, and all things demonic.

http://sknhammerstonebooks.webs.com/a...

It is highly interesting so make sure you check it out. And explore his blog a little when your done reading that. He has some very interesting stuff going on over there.

Next we have the start of The Rift sale. You can now have the 498 page book for only 99 cents and it is a definate must read if you plan on reading The Deceived.

http://www.amazon.com/Rift-Vessel-Sou...

There is also a chance for you to win a copy of The Deceived in paperback so make sure you enter here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Last (for today) there is a chance for you to win an ebook copy of The Deceived in a read for review contest. In order to be one of ten people to receive a free copy and review, you need to post on facebook, twitter, goodreads, etc. about the countdown and The Deceived as well as The Rift. use the hashtags #CountdownToTheDeceived and #VesselofSouls so I can find who is posting the most and if you promote on a site that doesn't use hashtags; make sure to let me know so I can count it towards you winning.

I will be posting links periodically throughout the day so make sure you join in the fun.

Luck and Love,

SKN Hammerstone

Countdown to the Deceived starts tomorrow

Hello Everyone,
Just a little reminder that the countdown to The Deceived starts tomorrow morning!!! The Rift is on sale for 99 cents starting tomorrow morning, The Deceived giveaway on goodreads will also start tomorrow morning with 1 paperback copy available and only a week to enter.
I will also be having a contest to choose 10 people to receive an ebook copy in exchange for a review. In order to win one of these copies you would promote the countdown or The Rift/ The Deceived using the hashtags #CountdownToTheDeceived and #VesselofSouls The 10 people who promote the most will receive the copies. If you use a site other than Facebook or Twitter, let me know so that I can count those too since they most likely don't use hashtags.
And last but definitely not anywhere close to least we have an amazing guest blog post by author Kaine Andrews about demons and all things demonic.
Excited yet? I know I am! Make sure to follow all of the posts throughout the week for more blog posts, a poem, a fan fiction, and giveaways and sales.
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

Addicted to Angels

Hello Everyone,
I have discovered that I have a very bad addiction. What to? Well it seems to be angels. Going through my book list I have discovered that more of them contain angels than any other topic. A good 10% of the books I have read have something to do with angels. Why? I have no idea. It just seems to interest me.
Then there is the rather lengthy list of book and story ideas I have sitting around along with ones I have published or posted as short stories. 75% contain angels and the other 25% have the potential to add them in and I have the inclination to do so.
Once again, why? Once again; I have no idea. I am not sure when this strange addiction started. I have gone back quite a few years in my writing and have not found a single year that doesn't contain them in some way or another.
Should I be put through rehab? Perhaps some demons will put me on the well-rounded writing and reading path again.
Should I be on "my strange addictions"? Well maybe not... When I begin to wear angel wings pinned to my back and collect potential angel feathers I would qualify for that show.
I am not sure what the allure is with this creatures. Is it the wings? is it the power? is it the Heavenly light? But it can't be the Heavenly light because so many of the angels I love are dark and deeply disturbed.
Maybe it is the perfect hair... or the tempting eyes...
Whatever it may be it seems I have a serious problem with this angel addiction.
I will have to continue on the demon literature path to wean myself off of these winged creatures.
Something along the likes of Rakasha by Robert davis, The Age of Apollyon trilogy by Mark Carver, or some good, creepy Frank Peretti.
I will promise to do my utmost to bring you more than just Angels in my future writing. For now; I will be working on my addiction.
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

Is there such thing as too many ideas?

Hello Everyone,
Recently I have been suffering from horrible writers block but it isn't for the reason many would think. Most people suffer from this affliction because they have run out of ideas. They have dried up the well of their imagination and are struggling to dig deeper and find a water source.
I seem to have the opposite problem. Recently there has been a flood into my imagination tank and it is now overflowing and drowning the plants of completed projects around it.
This shouldn't be an issue, right? Authors need ideas in order to write. But then there is the saying "too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing."
Too many ideas is too much of a good thing. I have so much chaos in my mind right now that I can't keep the project I am actually working on straight. Production has stalled as I try to write down summaries of all of my numerous ideas.
What are these ideas and why is this a problem you ask?
Here are just a few, a small fraction, of my issues.
1. Story of Camelot told from the prospective that King Author is just as evil, if not more evil, than Morgana. Yes; she's evil too. But when these two evil forces come together there's anger, horror, and amazing black magic.
2. Different take on Cleopatra. Also with her as the bad guy. (Although let's face it; she kind of was. She killed both of her brothers who also happened to be her husbands and then married the Caesar of Rome all so she could be Pharaoh, worshipped as a god. Not goddess. A god.) But this is going to come with an awesome paranormal twist. History talks about how she is actually descended from Greek heritage but there could be some African/ Egyptian in there too. In this case; the blood of the serpent goddess; Wadjet. Evil, horror, murder, and the blood of the gods bringing Cleopatra to power and Egypt to its end.
3. A take on Necromancers where a necromancer decides to experiment with someones life; seeing how many times he can kill them and bring them back to life as someone else before they completely lose who they originally were. A sick, twisted, cruel experiment.
4. The Vatican has been capturing demons and studying them not only to learn more about them but to stage exorcisms with trained demons to stay in power. Then one day they catch a guardian angel. The guardian angel of a girl they once forced a demon into to fake an exorcism. And this angel is ticked.
5. A dystopian world where there is a new scientific experiment going on in which a human's soul is removed, leaving them emotionless, painless, killers. Their job is to wipe out the old generation and raise and teach a new one with no fears and no boundaries.
6. A very dark take on genies. A Persian genie who is forced into the captivity of a Roman general. She has been a slave to people's whims for hundreds of years and starts to twist this general's wishes against him, slowly destroying his armies and his empire. She goes from person to person, turning their greatest dreams into their worst fears.

And this is just a little handful of what I have going on in my head. So problem one; none of them have anything to do with another. Problem two; I am supposed to be finishing the Vessel of Souls series but I can't focus on the third book with all of these ideas demanding my attention.
So my question is simply this; is there such thing as too many ideas?
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

Count down to The Deceived

Hello Everyone,
As some of you know, I will be releasing my newest book, The Deceived. In the week before the release, July 24th to July 31st, the release date, I will be hosting a count down.
(Event here http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8...)
There will be guest blog posts from
Mark Carver , Carole Gill ,
Kaine Andrews ,
and the winner of the 2013 Short story contest, Robert Reams
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1...
As well as a poem from author Justin Bienvenue
If anyone else is interested in helping out, please let me know.
In addition there will be a giveaway on goodreads for The Deceived, 10 people will be receiving a kindle copy of The Deceived on July 31st in exchange for a review, and The Rift will be on sale for 99 cents the entire week. More info to come and please make sure you say "yes" to the event.
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

New Poem

Hello Everyone,
I have recently written a very short poem that I would love for people to check out
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...
It is probably not the best since poetry has never been my strong point but check it out anyway and leave me some constructive criticism.
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

Interview on The Hall of the Heroes

Hello Everyone,
I was recently interviewed for The Hall of Heroes, a website created by William Axtell, the author of The Symbiot Awakening. Check it out and make sure you leave feed back for him about his website
http://thehalloftheheroes.blogspot.co...

Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

Character Study on Alexander The Prophet

I have been long absent in both my blogging and my character study series so I thought I’d start in again with a very interesting study on a very interesting character. This installment in the series is about Alexander the prophet.
He is a 19 year old and one of the only human characters in the book or the entire series. He is introduced near the end of the book but there is a lot more to him than is said.
Alexander was born to Catholic parents who loved him and gave him everything they could. They were devastated when they realized that he was blind when he was a little over a year old. Every doctor they took him to said that he had been born blind and nothing they could do would help him. The family put themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt trying to help him.
When he was 5 years old, his father died leaving his mother with no way to provide for herself or Alexander. By that time he had just started showing signs of being a prophet and his mother was starting to believe he was special.
When he drew a picture of her with a man taking care of her; she thought it was a sign and found the man; inviting him into her home and agreeing to date him. However she missed the picture where the man started to turn evil. The man she was with was a drug dealer who wasn’t doing so well in his business.
He got sick of providing for a child that wasn’t his own and when Alexander was 12 he told him to leave and never come back if he wanted his mother to be safe. Alexander left with nowhere to go to protect his mother. A few months later the man found Alexander’s old paintings and realized what kind of child he really was.
He hunter Alexander down and forced him to sell people paintings and drawings of their future. Alexander did everything he wanted to protect his mother but it was killing him to abuse his gift of prophecy like that.
He believed strongly that he was given this gift to make a difference and help people; not sell them what they wanted to know. He was 16 when Gabriel was made aware of him. Many humans have a guardian angel that is also a guardian to numerous other people and his guardian hadn’t been able to watch him closely enough to realize his gift until then.
Gabriel went to Alexander to bring him back to the school in Sicily and help his mother but by then it was too late. When the archangel found him; the man who had abused his gift and his mother had gone into a drunk rage. He had killed Alexander’s mother and when Alexander had stood in the way, he had beaten him until he was unconscious.
Gabriel took Alexander back to the school and put out a death warrant on the man who had done it. Any angel to see him was to kill him on sight. When Alexander woke up he didn’t believe Gabriel. He had become bitter; not believing in God or angels. When Gabriel was finally able to convince him that he really was the archangel spoken of in the Bible, Alexander begged him to take away his abilities to see the future.
Gabriel told him that if he would keep the gift and teach others how to use it; he would be able to visit his mother in death. Alexander immediately agreed. Once a week it was arranged for Joshua to bring Alexander’s mother from the City of Chaos to visit her son in Sicily.
Alexander thrived in this environment knowing his mother was happy and that he was using his gift for what it was meant to be used for. When he was 18 Raphael started to take an interest in his prophecies. He especially wanted to know about the things Alexander saw about Rachael Taylor.
When her future started to turn into two and then three, Raphael started using Alexander to manipulate the future. At the end of The Rift Alexander is beginning to descend into the same dark mood he had been in with the murderer of his mother. Once again his gift was being used to harm and change things that shouldn’t be changed.
Alexander has learned to see the world in a way that no one else does; through the eyes of the past, present, and future. He can see everything that could happen and he knows everything that has happened in all three worlds; Heaven, Hell, and Earth.
He is wise beyond his 19 years and he is not easily turned away from what he believes in. He is the only person to ever stand up to Raphael, in the quote

“Forgive me, my lord, but you are forcing me to do something that is both wrong and highly impossible. I have done my very best to do what you say but you are requesting things of her that are putting her in the wrong direction and then expecting me to fix it. I am just a prophet. I can’t change the future. Having her reverse her decision with Joshua pointed her in a very bad direction. Her going back to Jesse after following your orders once again is not helping her cause either. You know that she was supposed to fall in love with him on her own at a much later date but you couldn’t wait for that to happen. And now you want me to direct her back onto the right path again after she was misguided by your orders to return her power. I cannot do everything you are asking of me. It is impossible and I do not think it was what God intended us to do when he gave the gift of prophecy.”

Alexander is a kind and gentle soul who would give everything for anyone in the world. He doesn’t think about himself or what is going to happen to him. He thinks of everyone else in existence. He knows what will happen to everyone in existence and he feels it is his responsibility to ease any suffering he can with anyone he comes in contact with.
This character was one of the most interesting to create because he can see everything in existence but he is blind.
This character and many more can be found in The Rift, available in kindle edition on Amazon as well as paper back on amazon and in Barnes& Noble.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rift-Vessel...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rift-Vessel...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-r...
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

PS: for other installments of the character series visit www.sknhammerstonebooks.webs.com

Second place winner of the 2013 Short story contest

Hello Everyone,
It has been a while since I announced the winner of the short story contest on my blog and I wanted to post the story by the second place winner, Mark Carver. You can check it out on my blog
http://sknhammerstonebooks.webs.com/a...
Luck and Love,
SKN Hammerstone

The dissapointing rejections

Hello Everyone,
I haven't blogged in a while but that would probably be because I haven't had much to say. I have been working on my third book. I decided to write this post because I heard back from a publisher I contacted a while ago about The Rift. It is published on createspace but I have still been working on a traditional publisher (random house or harper teen being my dream ones) I felt very excited when I read the first few lines stating:
"Your manuscript is very interesting and reads well."
Then I read the next sentence...
"But I have to apologize that I cannot offer anything at this time. I sincerely wish you the very best of luck with publication."
And the big sigh moment. Having received rejections in the past I have been able to cope with them. However; most were form letters that gave no real message.
I think there is something so much more disappointing about one that starts out with saying how much they liked the book only to end with a rejection. This could be my own random and strange, slightly eccentric mind talking but I guess it is only my opinion.
Still very disappointing.