Stuart Thaman's Blog, page 3
November 24, 2021
Interview with Emily Goglia
October 6, 2021
Signed Paperback Giveaway!
Such a cool giveaway! Check it out, enter to win, and grab some awesome signed books for your collection!
September 9, 2021
Lexington Comic & Toy Convention!
It is about time. We’ve been without major shows and conventions since 2019, and independent authors and artists (and so many more) everywhere are hurting because of it.If you can get to Lexington for the show, come on out. This one is one of my all-time favorites, and it has been for years. I’m just so happy to finally be in a booth signing books and meeting fans. If you make it to the show and mention this blog post, I’ll toss you a discount or maybe even a freebie.
June 24, 2021
Writing to market?
May 22, 2021
Interview with Antoine Bandele - Round 2!
Click on the image to check out his website.
If you missed round one, you can read it here!Thanks for doing an interview! To start things off, tell us a little about yourself, how you got into writing and audio / voice work, and what kind of things you like to do.Like most writers, I got into it because I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read so I wrote them myself. But for audio engineering, I did that purely, and unceremoniously, because of practicality. My primary job (YouTube) has me editing all the time and audio felt like a natural segue as a service I could provide for other Indies. Outside of writing and editing I like to game, mostly Hearthstone and Playstation games (I’m quite obsessed with Persona 5: Royal right now).You’ve written a lot of content in a short amount of time. What’s your secret? What tips do you have for new authors?I definitely don’t feel like I’ve written enough. Every time someone tells me I write a lot I think back on the days I missed writing sessions or release days and goals I’ve missed. Then I turn to author groups where folks are releasing five-six books a year and I’ve only put out that many in three. So my tip is… do everything I don’t. LOL, follow folks like Mark Dawson or Lindsey Buroker.
Tell us a little about the Chronicles of Underrealm series you have with Garrett Robinson. What’s the world like, and how did you get involved with a co-writing project? Any tips for author duos out there looking to co-write their first project?I met him through an editor we both used. I asked him for some advice; he gave it. We started talking, and he proposed me writing a short for his world. It wasn’t exactly a co-authorship like I know others have done. It was more a case of a shared world and he let me play in his sandbox for a bit. It was a fun little experience. Almost felt like I was writing for some big franchise like Star Wars or Avatar and one of the executives was over watching me create new canon in the space. I know you’re pretty heavily into African tales, folklore, and legends. Did you grow up with those stories? What’s your favorite?I didn’t really grow up with a lot of African tales outside of perhaps John Henry and Brer Rabbit, and that’s sort of the reason I’m writing now. It’s great though because the moment I started writing the more aware I’ve become of other Black authors. But even in finding them, I still couldn’t find the stories that really got me jazzed. So now I hope to write a book for a 15-year-old version of me who was looking for the kinds of stories I’m telling. 
What’s the most important thing to you about representing African characters in your books? For me, the principal goal in writing Black characters is simply normalizing them outside of token roles, or people who are always struggling. As I’ve said to my friends… I just want to see a Black dude on dragon doing awesome shit without him being molded solely by the color of his skin. If you’re in the Black community from the inside, you’ll know we’re not a hive mind. We have our subgroups just like everyone else and we are quite diverse in that way. Yeah, there are hood dudes and ratchet girls, but that is in no way the complete story at all. And not all of us are struggling and going through hardships 24/7. Most of us just like watching anime and talking shit. You’ve written about the Kishi, two-faced creatures from Angolan folklore that most people probably have never heard of. What other African myths and folklore do you plan to bring alive in the future?Right now my focus is on the West African Orishas in my young adult series. For the foreseeable future that’ll be the only African mythology I’ll be working in. But in the future I do want to go back and do some other stuff with my adult series. I’ve already got plans for my interpretation of the Nyami Nyami myth, and I’d love to do even more with the tokoloshe, which have made several appearances in my more old-timey fantasy. 
Some very cool art!
Grab the Kishi on Amazon! Tell us about the new novel!My latest series, TJ Young & The Orishas, feels like a culmination of everything I’ve loved when growing up, from Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, a flare of Degrassi: The Next Generation, and even a bit of Star Wars and Avatar (Airbender and Korra, not the blue people). This is the story I’m writing specifically for high school Antoine. Anytime I’m lost or waffling, that’s always my tether: Antoine, you’re writing this for high school you. It’s about a young man who has never touched magic before, despite living among the magical community for his entire life. That all changes after his sister’s mysterious death, and as he goes on an adventure trying to uncover what happened to her, he intersects with the ancient Orishas, West African gods that empower his specific magical community. It’s a really fast-paced read, with characters I absolutely adore, a plot with a fair few twists, and an adventure with freaking gods among mortals. I can’t wait for its release.
TJ Young & the Orishas
The book goes live on June 19!
Pre-order Now! Where can readers go to learn more?Best place to go is antoinebandele.com. It’s the one stop shop for anything you want to know about me and what I’m getting into.April 14, 2021
Horror movies. Let's talk about em.
Check out a (free) new article I wrote for Slow Burn Horror on why Sinister is my favorite horror!Click me!Here’s my top 5 horror movie list:Sinister
Dark Skies
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
A Quiet Place (it holds a special place in my heart since I’m deaf in one ear. I know it actually isn’t that good)
The Ring
Comment below with your own top 5! I want to see what everyone out there likes!April 11, 2021
New sci-fi short story available!
Edgar Lopez, a rotund man about to crest the final hill that separated middle age from senility, scratched his chin in amazement. “Thirty years I’ve worked here…” he muttered to himself and the glazed donut sitting on a cheap paper napkin in front of him.
“What’s that, Ed?” Gabriella, one of the college interns, called from her desk a few feet away. In the astronomy world, Edgar was something of a legend. He had worked at the Apollo Observatory and Space Research Facility longer than the handful of interns had been alive. He had a well-earned reputation and a list of awards and achievements that would make any scientist blush.
Despite his history, he didn’t feel like a legend. He felt like a failure. A stack of field reports sat on Edgar’s desk and stared at him. It was his last day, and Edgar had resolved himself to let his paperwork rot.
“Ed?” Gabriella asked again, this time with a hint of concern lacing her otherwise beautiful Spanish accent.
“Oh, nothing,” he told her politely, “just wandering off. You know how it gets.” Gabriella nodded and returned to her computer screen. “Oh, Gabriella?” He peeked his head over his monitor with the flash of an idea running through his head.
“Yes?” the eager intern replied. Edgar wasn’t sure, but he vaguely remembered that Gabriella was only a sophomore at the university and a foreign transfer at that. She would blindly follow him anywhere… and she wouldn’t be missed.
Edgar rose from his desk with the lumbering speed of a limp sloth. A lifetime of watching the stars through a telescope had added more weight to his belly than glazed donuts and coffee ever could. “Come with me,” he told her. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Gabriella verily leapt to her feet and grabbed a field report clipboard from a peg on the wall. “Yes, sir!” she chirped at his heels. While everyone called him Ed when he was at his desk, the moment he stood up changed the rules. Since the observatory was located on the grounds of an active military base, proper protocol had to be followed everywhere outside the offices.
Edgar made his way down a long hallway surrounded by computer monitors and busy interns. He smiled to himself and basked in the realization that he would never have to return to the observatory again. In just a few short hours, his time would be up.
Edgar and Gabriella arrived a few moments later at a large black door two floors beneath the office area. Large red letters across the top of the door told them where they were: the Deep Space Tele Relay.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to go in there, sir,” Gabriella said apprehensively. “Professor Moun-”
“Never mind your professors,” Edgar interrupted. With a heavy hand he unlocked the door and flipped on a light switch. A long hallway with several glass doors presented itself.
“What is this place?” Gabriella asked as she followed Edgar into the hallway.
“The Deep Space Tele Relay was built in 1978 after the Wow! Signal was picked up by the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State. It took a while to get it calibrated, lot of tinkering and the like, but we had it operational by the eighties.” Edgar stopped in front of a sliding glass door and pointed to the banks of computers and technicians working inside. In front of the four rows of computers was a giant screen with dozens of technical readouts and constantly changing charts and graphs.
“What does it do?” she whispered, peering through the glass like a little girl at a puppy store.
“After the Wow! Signal, we knew we weren’t alone. The public knew it too, but for whatever reason, they didn’t seem to care as much as us nerds here. We built the relay to send messages to the exact location where the Wow! Signal originated.” Edgar kept walking down the long hallway to another heavy black door.
The intern stopped in her tracks, and her voice caught in her throat. “I-I was taught that we never heard anything after the Wow! Signal. None of the radio arrays ever picked up anything like it again. That’s what we were all taught.” Gabriella shook her head, and a creeping sensation in her stomach told her to turn back. None of it made sense. The black door at the end of the hall lurked like a huge monster from her nightmares ready to devour her.
“Don’t believe everything your professors teach you, Gabriella,” Edgar said with a casual laugh. He punched in a long sequence of numbers on a metallic keypad next to the door. A series of clicking sounds emanated from the mechanism, and for the first time that day, Edgar smiled. “A few years after the Wow! Signal was recorded, the deep space tele relay located the origin. It was moving at an incredible speed, so it was hard to track at first.”
Gabriella’s eyes grew wide. “What source? A pulsar? A quasar? Those don’t move, do they?” Everything she had learned in all her advanced astrophysics and astronomy classes was rapidly dissolving into useless dribble inside her brain.
Edgar chuckled and turned to face her with a hand on the doorknob. “Everyone expected the source of the signal to be a quasar. You’re right… quasars don’t move. No, what the tele relay discovered was a vehicle traveling at near the speed of light.”
“My god…” Gabriella gasped. She muttered something inaudible under her breath in Spanish. “Why hasn’t the world been told? Why are you keeping it a secret?” For a brief moment, she thought of fleeing the observatory and running straight to the press.
Edgar laughed and pushed open the door. A world of strange sounds and flashing lights spilled into the otherwise dark hallway. Gabriella’s senses were completely overwhelmed. “Come with me,” Edgar commanded with just enough authority in his voice to ensure that Gabriella obeyed. All thoughts of running vanished the moment she took a step.
“The world isn’t ready to know, Gabriella,” Edgar explained as he walked into the laboratory. Dozens of scientists in white lab coats worked at stations with computers, beakers, slides of organic material, and all other sorts of equipment. Despite the door rarely being opened, none of the scientists seemed to notice the new arrivals.
“How long has this been down here?” Gabriella wondered aloud. She stepped out of the way of a scurrying scientist and noticed a smell she certainly knew but had trouble identifying. The scientist bowled past her to a large metal box with a series of complex locks. Once he opened the door, the man placed what looked like a tissue sample inside and locked the container once more.
“Watch. I think you’ll enjoy this part.” Edgar pointed to the box and took a step closer. After a moment, the device began to hum and vibrate with energy.
“That smell…” Gabriella remarked, still struggling to place it in her mind.
Edgar gave the woman a fatherly pat on the back. “We were surprised too,” he said. “The material they use to coat their communications smells like cedar mixed with dark chocolate. Altogether quite pleasant, if you ask me. We call it Gwycin Gel.”
“Wait…” Despite her advanced intellect and years of training, her mind couldn’t grasp the realities of what she was learning. “A substance to coat communications?” She shook her head. Then her eyes went wide and she gasped. “Who is they!” she practically screamed. “Who are they?”
Several of the scientists at nearby stations turned for a moment to regard her outburst, but none of them were bothered enough to speak. Edgar turned the intern to face a large poster hanging inside a protective glass case. “Have you heard of the Greys?”
Gabriella’s eyes devoured the information on the poster faster than her mind could process it, turning the images and captions into a blurred mess of science fiction delirium. “You can’t mean…” she sputtered.
“Oh yes,” Edgar reassured her. “The Greys are very real. When we finally locked onto their ship’s signal back in the early eighties, we couldn’t believe it either.”
“Roswell?” Gabriella asked with eyes wider than flying saucers.
Edgar shook his head. “Just another CIA hoax,” he explained. “The Greys had never been to Earth before 1986—or so they tell us. Honestly, we don’t know. All the evidence leads us to believe that none of the UFO stories you’ve ever heard are true, but in the end, we have to take them at their word.”
Gabriella looked back to the poster and the half-sized drawings of little grey aliens that fit the international stereotype so perfectly. A million questions whirled through her head at once. “Where did they land?” seemed like the most pertinent inquiry to rise above the maelstrom of her thoughts.
“Not far from here, just an hour or so south of the base.” Edgar motioned for the intern to follow him deeper into the complex, and the wide-eyed girl readily obeyed. “Ever heard of Hanger 18?” he asked.
Gabriella followed the man down a long hallway. “Only on the History Channel when they talk about…” she had a hard time saying it, despite knowing it was all true. “Aliens…” The word left a sour—yet intoxicating—taste in her mouth.
“That’s where they docked their ship,” Edgar explained as though he was stating something as banal and mundane as the color of the carpet.
“What ship?” Gabriella shouted, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.
“Shhh.” Edgar placed a hand somewhat forcefully on her shoulder and stared into her brown eyes. “You know…” he began slowly, drawing the intern’s intense gaze into his own. “Would you like… to meet one of them?”
Read the rest online at Simily.coClick here!
March 26, 2021
Interview with Avery Dox, Sci-fi Extraordinaire!
Thanks for doing an interview! Right out of the gate, tell us about your series!In short, it’s about a handful of characters whose lives are dramatically impacted by the discovery of cross-temporal communication (or in other words, a primitive modem that sends and receives binary data across different threads of time). It’s alternate world, set in a vast Pangea-like land mass, pre-continental drift. Different countries surround a large bay, each in various stages of technological advancement and economic development. Most of our characters live in Tenoch, a coastal nation-state currently undergoing a rapid industrial revolution, outpacing its former allies. Without giving too much away, the mass adoption of this new forward-looking technology has transformative effects on civilization. How did you come up with the ideas that fuel your futuristic world? What kind of things give you inspiration?I’m a software engineer by trade (and an amateur roboticist on the side), so the idea of interacting with binary data was already semi-familiar. Reading about quantum entanglement and how it violates relativity fascinated me; I got to wondering how exactly it’d work with time dilation at a binary level. I remember reading Jurassic Park as a kid, and Michael Crichton’s explanation of getting dino DNA from fossilized mosquitos blew me away. His inclusion of genetics in the plot provided a sense of plausibility that I hadn’t felt in a story before. I tried to emulate that feeling with this series. My hope was to promise the reader something that would make a huge impact on civilization—as lofty as the wheel, electricity, the internet etc.—without it being a let-down. Sci-fi is full of awesome technology and terrifying advancements. Tell us about one thing you expect to see invented in the future that will benefit mankind and one thing that will ruin it.I read about researchers in Russia who’ve been semi-successful in reconstructing imagery using brain waves, similar to those captured in an EEG. Elon Musk is working on something along those lines as well, with AI/ML enhancements. Some people may imagine this as a step toward some Cyberpunky/dystopian wasteland, but honestly, it sounds awesome. It’ll take a while for the technology to mature (obviously), but with all the time people spend interacting with phones and computers and tablets, the idea of a direct neural interface seems like a logical step forward. (On my never-ending task list, I have this absurd project to buy a home EEG kit with a USB output, hook it up to a Raspberry Pi and record my brainwaves while I think about something discrete, like a specific color or object. Then I can run that data through an ML image classifier and see how distinct the patterns are. Maybe I can change channels without a remote!)Biggest threat to humanity? Maybe this is too serious of an answer, but any sudden imbalance of “mutually assured destruction” is truly terrifying. I realize the Cold War is over, but still…the sheer volume of annihilation that could occur in under five minutes absolutely boggles my mind. Rich Sanchez would say “just don’t think about it,” which is probably good advice. (Also, if you’re in Arizona, check out the Titan Missile Museum—lots of interesting stuff about MAD there.) 
Being a writer is hard work. What aspects of the author life have you enjoyed the most and what’s been a pain?More and more, it seems like individual creators are losing ground to larger enterprises. Gaming is a good example. I’ve toyed around with building games in Unity, but why would anyone bother to play my low-budget indy game instead of a triple-A masterpiece? Most gamers (myself included) expect pristine graphics, motion capture, endless side quests, etc. Anything short of that is subpar. Big gaming studios have entire TEAMS of people dedicated to nothing but particle systems! I can’t compete with that. On the plus side, the games are truly amazing, but for solo developers, most won’t bother producing anything on their own. Writing, on the other hand, is a creative area that’s less susceptible to enterprise expansion. Sure, some big authors probably have researchers and ghostwriters and whatnot, but for the most part, each storyteller undertakes the same tasks: create a story, develop characters, set scenes, etc. Most still use Word or typewriters. It’s one of the few areas left where a solo creator can still be competitive. As for challenges, the hardest part for me is maintaining a cohesive story—and all the themes and foreshadowing and everything that comes with it—throughout multiple books. Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but establishing intrigue is easy—the hard part is delivering on it. Everyone’s been sucked into an intriguing story only to feel shortchanged in the end. When there’s no eventual payoff, the reader feels duped, and it can retroactively sour the entire work for them. What’s next on the horizon for your writing career?I’m debating between another series and a one-off novel. Either way, it’ll be the same genre: probably some kind of hard sci-fi, a little gritty, with occasional tech/existential concepts. The “alternate world” theme has been falling out of fashion for a while now, so my next project will probably be set in something more familiar, but I haven’t decided just yet. Thanks for doing the interview! Where can readers go to find more?Thanks for having me! My Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/Avery-Dox-114805126582598Ebook/audiobooks for sale here (among other outlets): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089GXTP73?ref_=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tkin&binding=kindle_editionPublisher info here: https://deadreckoningpress.com/theschema 
Grab book 1 of the series today!
March 8, 2021
Nef House Publishing - Now Live and Accepting Submissions!
Nef House PublishingIf you’ve read any of my books, you’ve probably seen the logo. Nef House is a company I own with a handful of other book professionals and investors. We started it back in 2012 for the Goblin Wars series, and that’s where my books have been pretty much ever since. Up until recently, Nef House has been a quiet project. We haven’t been open to submissions or anything like that.Change is a good thing! We’re ready to roll. If you’re a writer—no matter if you’ve published a hundred novels or are just penning your first manuscript—check it out. Nef House is the real deal. Professional production quality, aggressive marketing, and no bullshit. Take me there!
March 1, 2021
Interview with Bill Noel - Author of the Folly Beach Mystery series!
Thanks for doing an interview!Right out of the gate, tell us about your new book!
Tipping Point
is the nineteenth novel in the Folly Beach Mystery series. Chris Landrum, the main character in the series, and his friend Charles Fowler are taking a peaceful kayak trip through the marsh near Folly Beach when a single-engine airplane plummets toward their watercraft. They survive—barely—but two of the plane’s four passengers are killed. After learning the pilot had been poisoned, Charles, a self-proclaimed private detective, decides it’s up to the two retirees to catch the killer. Once again, Chris, Charles and their cast of quirky characters are challenged to solve a crime the police are unable to unravel before lives are lost, possibly their own.The series has been described as light, humorous, and the perfect beach read in the contemporary cozy mystery genre. 
You’ve written a lot. Most authors never even put out half the content you’ve written. What gives you the drive to keep writing more and more?I’d just turned sixty when my first novel,
Folly
, was published in 2007. You don’t have to do the math, I’m a fossil. I’d been a longtime reader of mysteries and wondered if I could write one. I had been a university administrator for many years, so knew I could write nonfiction, but the transition to fiction was something I finally summoned the nerve to try. To make a long story much shorter, I wrote
Folly
to see if I could. The fantastic response I received from readers was the inspiration to continue writing the series. I once heard an interview with a woman who purportedly was the oldest person alive. The interviewer asked her the secret of a long life. She said, “Guess I just forgot to die.” I’ve been blessed with an incredible home life that’s allowed me to follow my writing passion. After the first book, I simply forgot to stop. I haven’t personally read everything you’ve written, but my favorite has been The Pier. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for The Pier and the iconic Lost Dog Café.Folly Beach is a real place. It’s located in the shadows of Charleston, South Carolina, and is as different from historic, stately Charleston as a penguin is to a porta potty. Folly is small, less than a half-mile wide, six-mile long. The Charleston Visitors Guide describes Folly as a “charming bohemian enclave perched on the self-anointed edge of America.” To me, it has an aging hippy, beer-for-breakfast, shared with your Doberman feel. The Folly Pier is a thousand-plus-foot long fishing pier and an iconic feature of the small island. Over the years, several people have committed suicide on Folly Beach. In
The Pier
a death is ruled suicide by the authorities, but, of course, since Chris and Charles get involved it had to be anything but suicide. The
Lost Dog Cafe
is the favorite breakfast and lunch restaurant on Folly Beach. In the series, it’s the place where Chris and his cadre of quirky characters often gather to discuss whatever crime they’re in the middle of solving. As an author, it’s also a fantastic location to do book signings—especially if the books are in the Folly Beach Mystery series! 
Being a writer is hard work. What aspects of the author life have you enjoyed the most and what’s been a pain?I suspect I’m like most writers. The most enjoyable part of the experience is writing the book: creating characters and a setting, devising a plot, stringing approximately 80,000 words together well enough to entertain the reader. Unfortunately, I believe most successful novelists are schizophrenic, not in the clinical sense, but close. For example, in writing a book I have murder, mayhem, conflict, and strange voices bouncing around in my head. Schizophrenic? To compound the problem, writing is a solitary pursuit. I work in a world of my imagination. Real people are problems for me. They interrupt, they question, they distract. I work best in isolation. And that brings me to the part that’s a pain: selling the books, aka marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing book signings where I can talk to the people who are reading or may wish to read the series. That’s the fun part, but a successful writer can’t limit the marketing effort to book signings. Blogs, promotional websites, the author’s website, podcasts, other social media platforms all are part of a successful marketing effort. I’ll be the first to admit, those are far from the fun parts of being an author. What’s next on the horizon for your writing career?I’m often asked when I will stop writing books in the series. My answer is simple and honest. I’ll stop when it ceases to be fun. Fortunately, I don’t have to live off the money I make from the books. If I did, I’ll probably be writing answers these questions in the dirt under an overpass somewhere. I was fortunate to be able to retire from a real job eight years ago. If writing can’t be fun, I have no business doing it. And I’ve been told many times over the last fourteen years how much enjoyment readers get from the books. I sincerely, believe they would be able to tell if writing them was no longer fun for me. At this point, I’m fairly certain there will be at least four more books in the series. After that, who knows? I don’t.Thanks for doing the interview! Where can readers go to find more?My website is: www.billnoel.com. I can also be found on Facebook under Bill Noel, or Folly Beach Mystery Series, and even the Bill Noel Official Fan Club started by two fantastic fans of the series. You can buy TIPPING POINT here: click me!You can buy THE PIER, my personal favorite, here: click me!
