Iscah's Blog, page 6

A Peak Inside Pinnacle Castle

I hit a point in The Hidden Prince where I realized I need to work out the full layout and logistics for Pinnacle Castle. This took me longer than anticipated, but I'm very detail oriented. I'm not going to post the entire layout which includes 9 different levels plus some of the grounds buildings, but I wanted to show off some of my labors.

You can see a larger version of the 1st Floor layout for Pinnacle Castle on DeviantArt. This floor has most of the main public rooms and the kitchens. Further up are more specialized work rooms and living quarters. In a crisis, all the halls could be used to sleep additional refugees, but it's been an extremely long time since they've needed to make use of them in that way.

The furniture in the rooms is swapped out depending on the needs of guests and denizens, so I consider this a snapshot of how things are probably laid out during the novel Seventh Night. Poor Phillip is stuck in a windowless room when he first arrives. It's supposed to be temporary, since the castle has extra guests for the wedding, but you know how that went... (If you don't go get thee a copy.)

Also Chapter 3 of The Hidden Prince is now available for reading.

Chapter 2 of The Hidden Prince is now available to read.

I've been sick this week which hasn't helped writing productivity, but thankfully, I'm a few chapters ahead of posting. So here is Chapter 2 of The Hidden Prince, up in a timely manner.

I have a new Twilight Zone T-shirt up. Unfortunately most of the text is too small to read at thumbnail size, but it's a nice basic quote shirt for Twilight Zone fans.

Also have a really basic Veronica Mars quote shirt, pictured left.


Most of this week I've been trying to layout Pinnacle castle. I've always seen bits of the castle in my head, but since the current story and a good portion of the next one are set there I felt I needed to work out the full layout. You can see my exterior sketch here as a desktop. The coloring isn't quite right in the picture, but I gave up trying to nail down the exact shade of brown.

Not sure if I'll show the full schematics off but the few people who have seen them seemed impressed.

New Serial "The Hidden Prince"

Horse Feathers is down for further editing and some new cover art.  My editor and I are both busy with writing projects this month, and we're still waiting on the new cover art for the The Girl With No Name paperback. But there's something new for you to read... however, I strongly suggest reading this one after Seventh Night.

The Hidden Prince is Kaleb's backstory. For those of you who've read Seventh Night, you can guess this will have a rather different tone from the first two Before the Fairytale tales. For one thing, this won't be a traveling story, no lonesome tween struggling against society and the elements.

Kaleb is seven when the story starts, a little younger than when my previous two protagonists had dramatic changes in their lives. I think that's all I'll say about the plot itself.

If you've read Seventh Night, you can read the first chapter of The Hidden Prince here: https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3223136/1/The-Hidden-Prince

If you haven't read Seventh Night, both Amazon and B&N have the book priced around $25 right now, BAM! is offering it for $22.39, and the ebook is still only $5.99.

You do not need to read The Girl With No Name or Horse Feathers before The Hidden Prince. There's a little bit of crossover with minor characters, but the stories can be read independently.

Happy Nano... and last week for Horse Feathers on Fictionpress.

I'm not participating in the official National Novel Writing Month challenge, but I know several who are and wish them luck. I do have my own writing project and goal for the month, and a fellow writer has supplied me with a new old laptop. I should start posting chapters for a new serial in a couple weeks.

Horse Feathers will be coming down November 7th. So take advantage of this last week for free reading on Fiction Press.

Retrospecting on last weekend, GMX was fun even though I was mainly stuck at a table, looking forward to next year when the con will be closer to the airport.

And a new Mighty Mouse design (left) is up on the Cafepress shop now. I'm going to try to wind down face to face appearances and focus on online (and just getting stuff done) for a while.

Geek Media Expo and Laptop Woes...

First the good news, I *will* be at GMX this weekend. I got an offer to share a table with another author, and I'm looking forward to being there. It's going to be a crazy weekend though. I'm also booked in Lynchburg on Saturday, so I'll be doing Lynchburg Saturday morning and spend the rest of the weekend at GMX.

And now the horrible, terrible, not good news. My writing laptop has died. It won't boot. I'm stuck with the option of deciding if I should fix it or replace it. Normally, I'd opt straight for fixing, but the laptop has killed it's second battery, the "g" sticks", and it was bought used to begin with...so it may be time to just it go ahead and replace it. But both options costs money, which is tight right now. It'll work out, I'm not quite in panic mode, but the timing is really bad since I was gearing up to work intensely on a new serial.

In other news, I've been struggling to come up with good visual designs for NCIS that haven't already been done by other designers. But after last weeks McGibbs, I found a little inspiration and remembered my favorite NCIS plotline where McGee moonlights as a novelist, Thom E. Gemcity. So I'll probably play with a few designs based off those episodes.

Two best ways to help a writer financially are A. buy their book and B. tell other people about them by writing a review. And if you lack the funds to buy the book yourself, request that your library purchase it. This helps everybody, since libraries need patron feedback, it makes the book available to more people, and it helps the author get their name out there. Big "thank you"s to everyone who has already been supportive!

Last Chance for a lot of Cafe Press items...

All these will be disappearing tomorrow. So if you wanted one, act fast. (This is a Cafepress thing. We're not taking any designs down.)

1249 Accessories Slip-Ons
441 Cases & Covers iPhone 3G Hard Case
459 Cases & Covers Cafepress iPad Cover
678 Cases & Covers Power Bank
703 Cases & Covers iPhone Charger Case
723 Cases & Covers Bluetooth Keyboard
724 Cases & Covers Dual USB Wall/Auto Adapter
725 Cases & Covers iPhone USB Cable
728 Cases & Covers Earbuds
729 Cases & Covers Travel USB Power Adapter
771 Cases & Covers Android Cable
443 Cases & Covers iPhone 4 Slider Cover Case
508 Cases & Covers iTouch 2 Cover
509 Cases & Covers iTouch 4 Cover
518 Cases & Covers Cafepress iPad 2 Cover
548 Cases & Covers iPad 2 Hard Case
594 Cases & Covers Incredible 2
595 Cases & Covers Nexus S
704 Cases & Covers iPhone Wallet Case
705 Cases & Covers iPhone Snap Case
829 Cases & Covers Galaxy S3 Case
830 Cases & Covers Galaxy Note Case
1019 Cases & Covers Galaxy Note 2 Case
1141 Cases & Covers iPhone 4 Switch Case
1142 Cases & Covers iPhone 5 Switch Case
1176 Cases & Covers iPad Switch Case
1177 Cases & Covers Galaxy S3 Switch Case
1186 Cases & Covers iPod Touch 5 Case
223 Accessories Military Cap
435 Home Christmas Stocking - Felt
654 T-shirts & Clothing Diaper Cover
659 Drinkware Beer Cooler
671 Hobbies Heart Pet Tag
673 Hobbies Round Pet Tag
693 Hobbies Luggage Handle Wrap
748 Home Milk Bottle
749 Home Small Tealight Candle Holder
750 Home Large Tealight Candle Holder
767 Home Locker Frame
768 Home Locker Frame
824 Home Tea Box
1178 Cases & Covers iPad Mini Switch Case
129 T-shirts & Clothing Tracksuit
217 T-shirts & Clothing Denim Shirt
218 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Polo
219 T-shirts & Clothing Women's Polo
221 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Performance Jacket
222 T-shirts & Clothing Women's Performance Jacket
1162 T-shirts & Clothing PJ Pink/Black Plaid Shorts
1163 T-shirts & Clothing PJ Red Polkadot Shorts
1164 T-shirts & Clothing PJ Zebra Shorts
263 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Fitted T Grass
263 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Fitted T Slate
263 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Fitted T Fuchsia
263 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Fitted T Brown
263 T-shirts & Clothing Men's Fitted T Raspberry
550 Accessories Field Bag Yellow
560 Home Suede pillow Sage
224 Accessories Stonewashed Cap
566 Cases & Covers iPad 2 Cover

26th Annual Southern Festival of Books starts today!

Location: Legislative Plaza and the Nashville Public Library, downtown Nashville

Festival hours:

Friday, October 10th: 12 n - 5 p.m.
Saturday, October 11th: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday, October 12th: 12 n -5 p.m.

Event Page I will be there. Hope you will too.

New Old T-shirt and Fall Fest on Sunday

So over a year ago my lovely editor Megan pointed out an embarrassing typo on this design.  It's finally been both fixed and vectored, so hopefully it looks much better now. I'm still adapting it to products, but at least T-shirt are available on Cafepress and Zazzle. If you want a different background color on a particular item let me know, it's the sort of design that works in several colors so it's hard to pick one.

I've also started writing the third story in the Before the Fairytale series. I've got a cover artist working on something for the paperback debut of
Finally next week is the SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS, which is exciting for bibilophiles, but this weekend is the Green Door Gourmet Fall Fest. Info below...

Imaginarium and a Taste of Bellevue

So last weekend I was in Louisville, KY at the first Imaginarium convention. It's definitely the prettiest lanyard I've gotten. Hotel was great and so were most of the panels I was in. Attendance was low, but that's normal for a first year convention. It's got a good space to grow.

I debuted minibooks at the convention for my short fable The Magically Thinning Mirror.

This coming weekend I'll be in Bellevue, TN at A Taste of Bellevue to help support their fundraiser for the new library.

Horse Feathers went through a major edit, where I rebroke all the chapters and fixed some typos. The chapters were down for nearly a week while I uploaded the new versions, but everything is fixed now.

Tennessee State Fair Today

I will be at the Tennessee State Fair today along with 8 or 9 other authors.


At last report, these are the authors coming:

Saturday, September 6, 2014 @ 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Featured authors:

Tom Wood– The author of fictional true-crime thriller Vendetta Stone is a retired sports writer/copy editor at The Tennessean and a freelance journalist. His “Death Takes a Holliday” is in Weird Western Yarns, Vol. I.

Susan Burdorf – Susan’s work appears in a number of anthologies including Angels Among Us and, most recently, More Than Meets The Eye.

Scarlet Darkwood – A proud Indie Author of Paranormal, Romance, Horror, Gothic, Thriller and Erotica novels, she is happiest when in the throes of writing a book.

Ricko Donovan – An accomplished musician who has played nationally as well as in Europe, his debut novel Sunnyville is based on a bunch of charismatic elderly people at a retirement home.

Stephen Hines – He’ll bring The Quiet Little Woman, an abridged Louisa May Alcott Christmas story, Titanic: One Newspaper, Seven Days, and the Truth That Shocked the World, and The Christmas Treasury of Louisa May Alcott.

Iscah – She is the author of the fantasy novel Seventh Night and the novella Before the Fairytale: The Girl With No Name.

Stan McDonald – The author is a late-middle-aged American male whose hunt for a good woman resulted in the local true-crime memoir called Match dot Murder: A True Story, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.

Chuck Schumacher – The youth coach and martial arts black belt is the author of How to Play Baseball: A Parent’s Role in Their Child’s Journey, using martial arts training to boost baseball skills.




And there may be a few last minute people to join us. Regardless, the fair looks like fun. You should check it and stop by our booth. we'll be there for signing and chatting.