Jennifer M. Zeiger's Blog, page 18

Library Mice

Welcome Adventurous Readers!

It’s time to start a new adventure. I seem to be swinging between serious stories and lighthearted ones. Two adventures ago you were a cat in a garden chasing a gnome, last time you were a starving scavenger trying to find food, and now you’re a mouse in a library. I can’t exactly say what sparked this adventure other than I wanted something fun and I wanted to dig into my Dungeons and Dragon’s Monster Manual. With that statement, you’ve been warned =)

Let’s get started.

Library Mice

You watch the tall man from your spot tucked in between two books on the fourth shelf, right about head level with him. Candlelight flickers and then steadies along the spines of the books as he passes. His head’s bowed over a large, open tome in his hands and his long fingers sprawl across the cover beneath, supporting the book like a small, personal podium.

From the shelves across the room two more sets of eyes watch. He pays the others and you no mind, but unlike most people, he sought you out when he first arrived in the Master’s library.

“You know all the books?” he’d asked, a desperate pinching in his face drawing your interest even before he spoke.

You swallowed, and then nodded since your vocal cords do not support human speech.

“You master said you could find me everything on snakes. Can you do that?”

As soon as the library mice heard mention of the master, they scampered to sit at the man’s feet, eager to help. Even the topic of snakes didn’t deter their eagerness to please.

It’s been five days since that first meeting. You and your crew have pulled so many books you’ve lost count, which says something since you can count to three dozen, unlike the others.

The man, who introduced himself as Mr. Mason, snaps the book closed and a poof of dust makes him sneeze. From the look on his face, you know it didn’t offer whatever answer he’s looking for.

Grumbling with a few sniffles and a second sneeze, Mr. Mason wanders into the shelves to return the book to its home.

Disappointment curls its claws around your heart. Just that morning you painstakingly pulled the book from its shelf and placed it on the desk for Mr. Mason. As the day progressed and he still read from the book, your hope grew that you’d finally found the right one.

He returns and leans his narrow hips on the mahogany desk.

You scamper from your shelf and jump to the desktop.

Hearing your skittering, Mr. Mason holds out his hand, palm up, without looking over. You carefully step onto his hand to let him raise you to his head level.

“Bigger,” he says, “bigger snakes.”

“Bigger?” Amalia titters from a shelf near the ceiling. She’s only voicing what you’re all wondering. The book Mr. Mason read that day was about boas. The day before was pythons. What could be bigger?

You simply nod, unable to ask.

“Thank you.” Mr. Mason pulls a waxed paper packet from his pocket and hands it over.

Its weight pulls you down into a low squat but the smell of sharp cheddar that wafts free of the paper makes you hold the packet like it’s a great treasure.

Mr. Mason sets you back on the desk and heads out for the night, his departure leaving heavy disappointment in his wake.

A black whiskered nose appears over the edge of the desk next to you. “Cheese. Sharp cheddar cheese?” Vincent squeaks. He pulls himself onto the desktop while you unwrap the packet and divvy the cheese into three equal parts.

“Bigger snakes?” Amalia titters again, coming to join you. She’s such a tiny thing that her jump from the shelf barely makes a sound when she lands. She selects a portion of cheese and takes a dainty bite.

“You look like a chipmunk,” Vincent chortles.

She swats him, then points, “You’ve got crumbs in your fur.”

“Perhaps Mr. Mason is not describing his snake well,” you suggest as Vincent tries to look down at his chest.

“Could we follow him to see it ourselves?” Amalia wonders.

“Our only other option,” Vincent shoves a crumb into his mouth, “is to search the monster room.”

Amalia coughs.

You pause with a chunk of cheddar in your paw. The last time you visited the monster room, a book tried to squash you. But then, your group has never left the library, so you’re not sure which is the more dangerous choice, the monster room or leaving the mansion.

Do you…

Follow Mr. Mason?

Or

Search the Monster Room?

Thanks for stopping by for a new adventure. Leave your vote in the comments below and we’ll see you all next week =)

Blessings,

Jennifer

(For more of my stories, check out either my multi-ending Adventure book, The Adventure, or my YA Fantasy novel, Quaking Soul, here on my Website or on Amazon.)

Blessed by Amazing Artists

I am continually blessed by the amazing people I get to work with as I’m putting together another book. I’ve mentioned Justin’s gorgeous work on the cover and Darren’s invaluable help with editing.

Now I get to give you a tease of the artwork inside the book. If you’re familiar with Quaking Soul, you’ve seen some of Esther’s work before because she did the chapter headings for me. This time around, she took on a much larger project and I love what she came up with.

I’ve found with each artist that if I give them a loose outline of what I want and let their imaginations fill in the blanks, the results turn out far better then if I insist on a specific image. Usually it’s totally different from what I have in my head and I love that the artwork adds a depth I wouldn’t have been able to produce alone.

Plus, I love Esther’s style. It fit so perfectly with the steampunk dragon theme.

So without further ado, here are a few of my favorites…well, just a few because I couldn’t pick a favorite.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Jennifer

(Discarded Dragons publishes September 1st, but preorders will be open here on my website hopefully by August 15th. I’ll let you know as soon as I know if the books will arrive in time. =))

Rough Hunger – How’s Hiding Spot

Welcome to the last post in this adventure!

If you missed the first three weeks, you can read them (Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3), or here’s a short recap:

You’re a scavenger in a world where food is hard to come by. One night you were drawn to a fire where four men were eating roasted rabbit. After they fell asleep, you tried to steal food from their bags but found a stone that glows blue instead. The man you stole from almost caught you but a friend, How, broke his nose by throwing a rock at him and you escaped. When How saw what you stole, he informed you its an element stone which might be able to produce fresh water.

When you tried to steal again in hopes of finding another stone or the blue stones instructions, you found the men had posted a guard and then the next day started tracking you. You and How tried to disappear into the swamps, which would have worked except How realized one of the men had food in his bag, so How tried to steal it and was seen. The men are searching for him, so you’re going to yell, “Gator!” and draw them away from your friend.

When you yelled, the men scattered and you were able to get away. Then How found you near the camp where the men stayed the night before and you found one of their packs was left behind containing their food. Readers voted to head to How’s hiding spot in hopes of getting away clean.

Let’s see how this story ends =)

Rough Hunger – How’s Hiding Spot

[image error]How’s hiding spot turns out to be a small lull in the ground that’s so overgrown with vines and bushes you have to crawl in on your hands and knees.

“Watch that.” How points with his chin and sucks his body tight to the left hand side of the foliage tunnel.

In the dusky light, you recognize the shiny three-clustered leaves on the vine he just avoided. Poison ivy.

Being bigger than How, you push harder into the foliage on the left to skirt past. Beyond, you find How laid out on his back with the foliage mere inches from his nose. Shrugging off the pack, you slide in beside him.

“Not very big, eh?”

He giggles. “Works for me.”

You lay quiet for a moment as the forest’s bugs begin to sound around you. Somewhere above, a cardinal calls and is answered. Enjoying the moment to breathe, you break out the cheese and bread and hand How chunks of both before taking some for yourself.

You nibble at the food to let your stomach adjust to it.

“My last meal was some pecans two days ago,” How says. “How about you?”

“Ants,” you answer. “I found some of those big black ants.”

How snorts, “Not very filling.”

“Not unless you spend all day at it.” You recall the moment the roasting meat smell had hit your nose from the men’s fire. Although you’d been eating ants most of the day, your stomach had instantly clenched in desire. Instead of food, though, you’d found something else.

You pull the blue element stone from your pocket. Its soft glow fills the tiny space under the foliage in aqua-green hues.

The men will continue looking for it, you’re sure. Although How’s hiding spot feels safe, it’s not, and at first light you’ll have to move.

“How do you think it works?” How asks, pointing at the stone.

“Well…”

***

A noise wakes you. The stone rests on How’s stomach from where he set it the night before while you both brainstormed how to use it. Faint sunlight now streams into the foliage, letting you know you’ve slept far too long.

The noise comes again, and then How cries out as he disappears down the vine tunnel, being pulled by his feet.

On instinct, you flee the other way, low crawling out of the deep foliage on the far side and climbing the nearest tree you come to, a black walnut. A moment later, How stops hollering and you go still.

“Ha!” Skinny chortles in excitement. “Guess the tracker’s worth his pay.”

“Where’s the other thief?” Braided Beard asks, his voice nasally from his nose being broken.

“I’ll get him,” Skinny grumbles.

“Hold up.” You peek through the walnut’s branches to see the tracker holding his hand up. He points. “There’s your water stone,” he says. “Do you want to keep tracking the thief?”

Stetson grabs the stone and makes it disappear into his pocket. “Guess not,” he says.

“But this one broke my nose!” Braided Beard says. “How about I break his in turn?”

How spins, catching Skinny by surprise enough to get to his feet but running into Stetson before he makes it more than a few steps. There’s no way How can escape with four against one, although he’s giving it a solid try.

You look around and spot the clusters of nuts still hanging on the tree. Hopefully your aim is as good as How’s was when he helped you. Grasping the walnuts, you tear them from the branch and start pitching them at Stetson, then at Skinny. Their hard shells make satisfying thuds as they connect and the men yelp in surprise.

With another handful, you pelt Braided Beard until he takes a step back and you have a moment to find more walnuts.

In that moment, there’s a soft sound and you realize the tracker’s laughing. He turns and walks away while you start pelting Stetson again. How drops suddenly and breaks the man’s hold. Instantly he’s in the trees.

It’s then the men realize their tracker wandered away.

They spin, looking to find him, and spot his retreating form.

“Hey, don’t lose him! We paid him already.”

“We’ll be lost out here!”

“Wait up!”

And then they’re gone, hurrying after their tracker.

How appears below the tree to lean against it, his shoulders shaking until he can’t contain his laughter any more and starts guffawing in delight.

You climb down to join him.

With a snort, he tries to contain himself.

“We lost the stone,” you say, still looking after the men.

“Still have some cheese and bread,” How answers. “Better off than when we started.”

“True enough,” you agree. “And just think, Skinny crawled in to haul you out. What you bet he’s going to be super itchy later from the ivy?”

You meet How’s eyes and he busts out laughing again.

The End

Whew, you survived! Thanks for joining this adventure. Next week will see the start of a brand new adventure, so stop by and join in the fun =)

Until then, blessings,

Jennifer

(For more of my stories, check out either my multi-ending Adventure book, The Adventure, or my YA Fantasy novel, Quaking Soul, here on my Website or on Amazon.)

Let’s Talk Details Part 2

The instructions from IngramSpark and KDP for formatting a book can be confusing to say the least. If it weren’t for other self-publishers posting about their own experiences concerning what worked and didn’t work for them, I truly believe I wouldn’t be where I’m at today in my publishing journey.

The least I can do is add to the general knowledge.

Last week I posted Part 1, which covered the overall setup for a paperback manuscript using full bleed. The overall setup I talked about works for a KDP book.

Today, I’ll touch on IngramSpark. All of the setup stuff mentioned last week is used, plus some. The issues I ran into with Discarded Dragons started to show up when I ran the Preflight on the PDF. (Preflight flattens images and formats pictures for a specific printer. It’s not needed for KDP. I’ve found the PDF/X-3 SWOP format works for IngramSpark).

Issue One

When I ran the preflight, I started to lose parts of images and page numbers. (There’s supposed to be a claw in the image to the right and a page number. ) I don’t know why this happened, but I can say what fixed the problem.

I found that I couldn’t rotate images inside of Word. If I wanted an image angled, I had to set it up outside of Word and then insert it into the manuscript. Flipping images or cropping them seems to be fine, just be aware that if you used a close wrap around the image with your text, your wrap boundary will not flip with your image.

The picture at the top of this post shows the wrap boundary. If you flip the image, go into the Wrap Text tab you see at the top of the image and select Edit Wrap Boundary. The red line will appear with those dots. Drag those dots around your image again.

Issue Two

The second issue I ran into was saving to PDF darkened my images, then the preflight darkened them further, and then the proof from IngramSpark darkened them even further until I lost details on my images. The image below is from the preflight, so you can imagine one more darkening and I’d just have black dots.

My fix for this was, before the preflight stage in the PDF, I right clicked on the images, selected Edit With and went into photoshop to lighten the images. As a side note, it’s really easy to lighten too much, so lighten lightly =)

Wheew again!

These are the big things I learned in formatting Discarded Dragons. I’ve received proofs now from both KDP and IngramSpark and both look awesome! I can’t wait to share.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Jennifer

(To run Preflight in PDF – Tools tab at the top of your PDF screen – Print Production – Preflight on the right side of screen – find PDF/X-3 SWOP – Convert and Fix)

Discarded Dragons will be available September 1, 2021. Pre-orders will be open here on the blog the middle of next month.

Rough Hunger – Yell Gator!

Hello Wonderful Readers!

Today we’re exploring part three of the Rough Hunger adventure. If you’re unfamiliar with these stories, here’s what happens: These are multi-ending stories where you get to be the main character. The first week you get introduced to who you are and what kind of situation you’re in and then you’re presented with a choice. You vote for which choice you’d like to explore in the comments (I love to hear why you decided one way or the other!) and then the following week, whichever option received the most votes is posted and you continue the adventure. There are four posts usually in each story, making  a total of three times you get to chime in. Everyone is welcome to participate, so feel free to jump in!

If you missed the first two weeks, you can read them (Part 1 and Part 2), or here’s a short recap:

You’re a scavenger in a world where food is hard to come by. One night you were drawn to a fire where four men were eating roasted rabbit. After they fell asleep, you tried to steal food from their bags but found a stone that glows blue instead. The man you stole from almost caught you but a friend, How, broke his nose by throwing a rock at him and you escaped. When How saw what you stole, he informed you its an element stone which might be able to produce fresh water.

When you tried to steal again in hopes of finding another stone or the blue stones instructions, you found the men had posted a guard and then the next day started tracking you. You and How tried to disappear into the swamps, which would have worked except How realized one of the men had food in his bag, so How tried to steal it and was seen. The men are searching for him, so you’re going to yell, “Gator!” and draw them away from your friend.

Let’s see what happens =)

Rough Hunger – Yell Gator! 

The men, including Skinny, are flipping over everything in the water—sticks, turtles, even trash. Slime from the water’s surface now coats their hands and they’re leaving a large swath of disturbed surface debris in their wake. It’s perfect as their movement could have drawn a sleepy gator to notice them.

Floating to a spot farther around the cypress tree, you set your turtle shell aside, silently stand up, and take as deep a breath as possible before letting out a, “GATOR!”

Then you thrash through the water, splaying debris and waves in your wake.

Shouts sound behind you. You glance back to see the tracker’s climbed the nearest cypress and Braided Beard and Stetson are wading-running toward the nearest land. Skinny’s trying to climb a tree as well but with his bleeding foot, he’s only half out of the water.

A grin threatens to expose your deceit just as the tracker spots you. You let a look of terror overtake your face and spin, diving below the mucky surface of the swamp to swim away.

The first three strokes are easy enough, but it’s not long before your chest starts to ache from holding your breath.

Just a little farther.

You count each stroke, avoiding tree roots and sticks while feeling minnows swimming against your skin, until you hit twenty. Selecting a tree, you make sure you’re on the far side before surfacing just enough to gasp in a breath. The air rushing into your chest is the sweetest thing you’ve felt since your last meal. You let a dizzy moment pass before taking another full breath and diving under the surface to keep going.

***

Later, you sit hunkered inside the same tree where you hid the night before. In all the chaos, you have no idea where How or the men are, although something keeps nagging at your mind.

Movement in the heavy underbrush catches your eye. With your brown clothing and dirty skin, it’s unlikely anyone will spot you within the tree, but you go completely still just in case.

How emerges and ducks in to sit beside you.

Giving testament to his nickname, he whispers, “How clever was that! The men won’t even think to check back along our old trail.”

It dawns on you what’s been nagging at you. “Yes, they will. Only Skinny had his pack, which means the others will be back for theirs.”

How gives a huff, but then grins. “But they’re not back yet—”

Catching onto his thought, you finished it for him, “—Which also means their packs are unwatched in the camp still.”

You both scamper out of the tree and head toward the men’s camp. At first, the only sign you see of where they slept is the cold fire.

“Drat!” How grumbles. “No packs.”

A bit of fabric catches your eye. You circle the camp to investigate and find yourself wading through a swath of kudzu to discover three packs hidden beneath.

You recognize Stetson and Braided Beard’s bags, so you open what must be the tracker’s pack first.

“Pay dirt,” you breathe, your stomach clenching at the smell that hits you.

How appears at your elbow, peering into the pack at the bread and cheese inside.

He whimpers when you break off a small chunk of the cheese and hand it over. Then you take a small piece for yourself and sling the pack over your shoulder.

A quick check of the other two packs confirms your suspicion. They’re empty of everything but clothing.

“Time to get out of here.” You nudge How. His cheeks move slightly as he sucks on his piece of cheese.

“I’ve got a decent hiding spot not far from here,” He says around the cheese. “It’s not very big, but we could pass a night there if need be.”

Your stomach growls, wanting more than your small bite of cheese. Above, the sun’s position tells you that you only have about an hour before sunset. You might be able to settle into How’s hiding spot before full dark if you hurry.

“I’ve been staying in a cypress grove south of here,” you mutter to How, “but it’ll be after dark before we get there.”

“South?” How asks. “It’s swampier south of here.”

“More predators,” you confirm, “but also harder to follow us.”

How shrugs.

Do you go to…

How’s Hiding Spot?

Or

Your Cypress Grove?

Thanks for joining in this adventure. You have one more vote. So leave a comment below with how you’d like to continue and we’ll return next week to see how this ends.

Until then, may you have a blessed week!

Jennifer

(For more of my stories, check out either my multi-ending Adventure book, The Adventure, or my YA Fantasy novel, Quaking Soul, here on my Website or on Amazon.)

Let’s Talk Details Part 1

Every time I work on a book, I find out new things about formatting. It keeps me humble. As I know I’m not the only one who self-publishes out there, I try to share the tidbits I glean. So, you’ve been warned, this post is going to go into the nitty gritty about formatting a book, particularly one with lots of black and white pictures.

Everything I mention here pertains to Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing which allows both Kindle and paperback books) and IngramSpark as these are the two platforms I use. There are pros and cons to each, but that’s for another post. I also start with a Word document and save it over to PDF when I’m ready to upload the book.

I’ve heard there are easier ways to do this, but I’m terribly familiar with Word and haven’t convinced myself to branch out yet.

Anyway, for Discarded Dragons, I decided to throw myself a curve ball and try formatting the book with full bleed. A book with images printed all the way to the edge of the page has full bleed. That’s all it means. However, that throws in some interesting formatting between text and images. You need images all the way out to your edges but text that still follows your margins. One other side note, so far I’ve only set up the paperback for Discarded Dragons. A Kindle version would have different formatting than what I’m talking about here. (And full bleed wouldn’t even be a thing for Kindle).

General Page Formatting – Page Size

Let’s start with KDP. Thankfully, KDP is fairly simple. To get the full bleed, all I had to do was set a custom page size and margins. Here’s the steps for a 5×8 book:

Go into File-Page SetupUnder Paper Size scroll down to Manage Custom SizesThis will open up a box like what you see in the pictureSet the paper size to something like 5.12×8.25Set the Non-Printable Area to all 0’s and hit okay

A few notes:

You may have noticed the paper size is set larger than 5×8. This is because when the book’s printed, they cut the edges and a slightly larger size helps you avoid getting weird white lines around your images. (As far as I understand anyway.) You will lose some of the outside edges of your images as well.Also, when you add page numbers, click into your header or footer and check the spacing from the edge of the page. I found my footer was set too small and I was going to lose my page numbers when it printed.General Page Formatting – Page Margins

Now on to Margins. These also adjust some. I honestly can’t say how much because I simply play with the numbers until the manuscript looks right. Both IngramSpark and KDP have minimums for what they’ll allow. Here’s what I have. It works to my satisfaction for Discarded Dragons although a true formatting guru would probably cringe like crazy at my haphazard approach.

Another note:

Once I got my Page Setup, I found that when I put the full page images in, I couldn’t get them to expand all the way to the inside edge of the page. It kept stopping at my internal margin. Eventually, I figured out that I had to give the image a position under the Picture Format tab in Word and then I could move the image wherever I wanted.

Wheew!

When I first started writing this post, I was going to cover both Amazon KDP formatting and IngramSpark….umm, bad idea. Even for me, I’m getting bleary-eyed with the tech heavy post. So I’m going to break this into two posts. Next week will build off of all this and talk about some of the stuff I learned for IngramSpark.

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there and they don’t have to trouble shoot quite as much as I did =)

Until next time, blessings,

Jennifer

Other posts about formatting:

Formatting Learned from Quaking Soul

Ha! Kindle Figured (Formatting from The Adventure for Kindle)

(Discarded Dragons will be available September 1, 2021. Pre-orders will start sometime in August. I’ll give updates as things progress.)

 

 

 

Rough Hunger – Steal Again

Hello Wonderful Readers!

Today we’re exploring part two of the Rough Hunger adventure. If you’re unfamiliar with these stories, here’s what happens: These are multi-ending stories where you, Amazing Reader, are the main character. The first week you get introduced to who you are and what kind of situation you’re in and then you’re presented with a choice. You vote for which choice you’d like to explore in the comments (I love to hear why you decided one way or the other!) and then the following week, whichever option received the most votes is posted and you continue the adventure. There are four posts usually in each story, making  a total of three times you get to chime in. Everyone is welcome to participate, so feel free to jump in!

If you missed last week, you can read it, or here’s a short recap:

You’re a scavenger in a world where food is hard to come by. One night you were drawn to a fire where four men were eating roasted rabbit. After they fell asleep, you tried to steal food from their bags only to find they don’t have any extra. Instead, you found a stone that glows blue. The man you stole from almost caught you but a friend, How, broke his nose by throwing a rock at him and you escaped. When How saw what you stole, he informed you its an element stone which might be able to produce fresh water. Readers voted to steal again in hopes of either getting a second stone – maybe the fire stone you saw in a different bag – or the instructions for how the stone works.

Let’s dive in =)

Rough Hunger – Steal Again

You see the glitter of Breaded Beard’s dark eyes and the white swatch of his nose bandage as he scans the forest while his companions sleep. Your stomach rumbles but you’re not worried about the husky man hearing over the chatter of the early morning birds.

“How do we get past him?” How asks. When you woke him and told him you planned to steal from the men again, How had grinned in excitement. Now the grin’s gone, replaced by a worried pinching of his brows while he chews on a piece of pine bark.

You glance up. The sky displays an ever lightening gray through the tree canopy.

“Time to disappear,” you whisper in How’s ear and he follows you back to the bowl in the tree where you hid the night before.

“Should we follow them today?” How asks.

You don’t like the idea. It’s more likely the men will notice if you start tailing them through the forest. Your fingers close around the stone in your pocket. Can you figure it out without the instructions?

How’s fingers suddenly grasp your arm. His frown’s melted into a panicked, wide-eyed look that makes his hazel eyes look too big for his narrow face.

About to ask him what’s wrong, you hear the swish of a pant leg against the heavy foliage. A moment later, a lean man in buckskin leggings comes into view to the left of your tree. He’s crouched, inspecting the ground.

The swish comes again and the man’s hand shoots out, telling someone behind him to wait. You recognize him from the night before as he sat across the fire from Braided Beard when they were eating.

He’s a tracker. Realization sinks a knot into your belly, an angry companion next to your hunger.

“The swamps,” you breathe into How’s ear.

He gulps, but moves as soon as the Tracker’s back is turned. A moment later when the man turns again to signal those behind him, you follow How.

You know the Tracker will follow your trail through the forest. It’s a bitter admission, but you just don’t have the skill to hide your passage from him. But the swamps are another matter entirely.

You duck under a low hanging vine and direct How to the right by a touch on his shoulder. Not long after, you spot a familiar cypress with deep root channels.

“Hold up.” You stop at the tree to search in the thick leaves at the base. Your fingers come away with a damp layer of musty dirt, but you find what you’re looking for.

Unearthing two empty turtle shells about three feet across, you hand one to How.

How flips it over a couple times in confusion.

You gesture for him to follow and he does, until you step into the swamp and lower yourself up to your shoulders in the mucky water.

“Uck,” he grumbles. “Do we have to?”

“Can you hide your trail well enough to escape a tracker?”

How’s shoulders slump but he steps into the water, sinking down until he can hold the turtle shell over his head. You slowly float away, letting the sluggish swamp current fill the path behind you in the surface debris.

It’s dark and musty beneath the shell with the swamp’s moldy oder filling your nostrils and climbing down your throat.

How follows by holding the edge of your shell below the water. It occurs to you that two large turtles floating so close together might look odd, so once you get out into the swamp, you chance a quick peek and spot a small grove of cypress growing with their bulbous trunks and roots straight out of the water.

You angle toward it and direct How to settle between two of the deep roots. With him safe, you move around and pick another deep section to wedge yourself in. Grime squishes between your toes and makes the roots below the water slippery, but you dig your feet in and stay put.

It’s not long before you hear voices.

“Rough Rats!” one of the men grumbles.

“They actually went into the swamp?” another asks, shock clear in his words.

There’s a pause, then, “If you’re serious about reclaiming that stone, we’ll have to enter the water too.”

There’s some cursing but you catch the swish of the men entering the water.

After that they’re so quiet that you chance lifting your shell a fraction to gaze out. Just as you do, one of the men who’s so skinny he almost looks almost skeletal, yanks his foot up with a yelp.

“Hold up! Hold up!” Skinny shouts. Hopping, he heads toward the cypress grove directly between you and How. Once there, he lifts his bare foot up on the roots and then yelps again as his pack overbalances him backwards. He shrugs out of it and pitches it up onto the trees before trying to look again. A waft of air stirs past your face and an ache starts in your chest before trying to climb up the back of your throat. It’s the yeast of bread. You’d know it anywhere.

As you’re staring at the slumped pack, How’s hand emerges from the far side of the cypress roots. Slowly, he pulls it under his shell.

“Hey!” The tracker lunges for How’s position.

How stands up, swings his shell hard into the tracker’s side, and then dives, shell and all.

He disappears below the floating scum but the tracker’s eyes seem to be picking out every small ripple in the water while he wheezes for breath.

“Flip the turtle shells,” he instructs, heading in the direction How went.

It’s a tall order as turtles love sunbathing in the area and it’s littered with shells, but How can’t stay down indefinitely and the size of his shell will give him away.

“Wait for me,” Skinny hollers, trying to wrap a bandana around his bleeding foot. The others start flipping over anything that’s floating, ignoring the man.

You need to distract them, but how?

Gators immediately come to mind. In the swamps, they’re the biggest danger and the men were already hesitant to enter the muck. If you shout “Gator” and then dive, abandoning your shell, you might be able to swim away far enough away to escape while the men are distracted.

Skinny finishes tying his foot and turns to join the others, which places his back to you. Another idea dawns, one that might get the men to stop following. You could take Skinny captive and negotiate for the men to leave you and How alone in exchange for their man. Skinny’s small enough you think you can subdue him.

Do you…

Yell Gator?

Or

Take Skinny Captive?

Thanks for stopping by! Leave your vote in the comments below and we’ll return next week to continue this story.

Until then, blessings

Jennifer

(For more of my stories, check out either my multi-ending Adventure book, The Adventure, or my YA Fantasy novel, Quaking Soul, here on my Website or on Amazon.)

Hopelessly Hopeful’s Quaking Soul Review

So I tried to reblog this from Mollie’s site and for some reason it didn’t work. I apologize if I’m simply being blond and this posts twice.

Mollie over at Hopelessly Hopeful posted a wonderful Review of Quaking Soul yesterday and I’d love to share it.

Plus it helps Mollie get some visibility as well because she’s got a book coming out the end of September. Mollie writes nonfiction and her upcoming book is a devotional for someone going through a separation from his or her spouse. Heavy stuff but it lets you know you’re not alone in a difficult time. I’ve not read the book yet but I know Mollie and she’s a talented writer. Take some time to check it out.

Mollie’s book – Hopelessly Hopeful During Separation

Thank you, Mollie, for the review!

Blessings,

Jennifer

 

Dragon Inspiration

There’s this meme running around.

I don’t know who to credit for the meme or I’d mention it, but I do appreciate the sentiment. It’s so incredibly true. There are times something will catch my attention – a crazy twisted tree or an accent or even a smell, especially when the trees are blooming – and my brain grabs hold. I’ll stew on that thing sometimes for days, building a picture or a small snippet of dialogue that fascinates me.

But here’s the weird part. That picture or snippet stays a stand alone thing until I sit down and start putting words to a story. It’s like my brain has to plant the thing before it flourishes. Due to this, more often than not, I have no idea what a story will be until I’m sitting at my computer.

Anyway, this is how it worked for Discarded Dragons. During the Christmas season several years ago my husband and I were wandering through the mall and stumbled upon a figurine store. Right near the front was an entire case of dragons. This spells danger for both of us. We love finding fun dragon figurines. As we perused through, my eye caught on a set of steampunk style statues, dragons that looked like they’d been put together with metal plates and wheels and cogs. Needless to say, we ended up with the set and my brain latched onto the idea of those small, metal dragons being great for a story.

They sat on my bookshelves for months as I ruminated over the great idea of them being in a story, and after all those months, I was no closer to having any idea what kind of world they came from or what kind of characters they’d be.

Then, one day, I decided I’d write an adventure just to get the ball rolling.

***

A workshop full of steampunk dragons opens in my mind with the smell of glue and copper and tin. The wooden floor vibrates under a man’s heavy steps as a partially made but discarded dragon watches from the discard pile that sprawls on the floor beside the workbench. In his glowing gem-heart, the dragon desires to be whole above anything else…

***

The story was planted and flourished from there, like I’d given it sunshine and water…or glue, small screws, and metal wings =) Once a story takes off like this, I’m always surprised where it goes, but I love the discovery.

So the next time you see a writer lazing about in a chair with an aromatic cup of coffee or tea, just know, she might be worlds away in a workshop trying to fit together wings and claws to finish her dragon shape.

Next week I’ll get a little techie on you and discuss some of the formatting things I learned this go around. So far every book teaches me something new and this one’s no exception.

Until then, thanks for stopping by and blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. Discarded Dragons will be available September 1, 2021. Pre-orders will be open here on my website sometime in August. I’ll update you as soon as I know more. [image error]

Rough Hunger

We finished the Garden Mischief Adventure last week, so welcome to a new adventure story!

If you’ve been around a while, you know I gain inspiration from just about anything. This most recent adventure sparked after  a day I spent fasting. (This might seem like a weird thing to you, but I’m okay with that. I had some personal reasons for the fast.) Anyway, it’s been a while since I went without food for 24 hours and I was a bit surprised by how difficult it was for me. After missing the first two meals, I became distinctly aware of every discomfort in my body and it occurred to me just how motivating a need for food could be.

Of course, my mind continued with that idea, where the main character in an adventure is driven by the ache in his or her belly and by a world where food is difficult to come by no matter who you are.

Thus the following adventure was born. Let’s explore =)

Rough Hunger

Four men sit around a small fire with their legs outstretched in the dirt and their backs against mossy rocks that are padded with their bed rolls. They eat in silence, tearing chunks off the bones of two rabbits they roasted on spits.

They are not aware of your presences, where you lay hunkered beneath the large, glossy leaves of a young oak. Your stomach growls at the smell of roasted meat. Judging by how the men are devouring their dinners, there won’t be any rabbit left to steal by the time they bed down for the night.

But there might be some jerky or nuts in their bags. Not as tasty as fresh meat, but at the moment the ache in your belly doesn’t care if the food’s moldy so long as it’ll ease the clawing inside.

You wait, ignoring the ants crawling over your hands while the men finish off the rabbits and settle in to sleep for the night. Still you wait, even when the ants bite, welting your arms and neck, until the whistling, rattling snores of the group combine with the frogs and cicadas in the dark. Only then do you emerge, stepping heel to toe between a man with a braided beard and a man who covered his face with a stained Stetson.

The nearest bag sits just beyond the feet of Braided Beard. His boots are so worn that you can see the grubby end of his sock sticking out the leather toe. Your hope for nuts or jerky fades a bit at seeing how gaunt the man is beneath his shirt. If you paused long enough, you could probably count his ribs.

But hunger drives you to look inside the man’s bag anyway. You find an extra pair of socks that look surprisingly whole and a shirt wadded around something. Pulling out the shirt, you carefully unwrap it and stare in surprise.

Your stomach growls, disappointed.

The moonlight peeking through the oak leaves glitters off a ruby the size of your palm. Never in your life have you seen such a gem. At first you’re tempted to pocket the thing—out here in the Rough, it’s every person for himself—but there’s no way you can fence it for food without drawing more trouble than you can handle. Carefully wrapping it back up, you tuck the shirt and ruby away in the man’s bag and move on to Stetson’s bag where it rests beside his head.

As you move, it almost sounds like an animal bushes the leaves beyond the firelight but after waiting and holding your breath, nothing reveals itself. You open Stetson’s bag.

On the top rests a knife as long as your forearm. You pinch it between a thumb and forefinger and set it aside on the ground. Not many have such weapons in the Rough. The cities hoard weapons like their lives depend on them, never mind that they have stone walls keeping most of the animals at bay.

Below the knife is a folded shirt and a drawstring bag that makes your stomach grumble in hope. Your fingers have just closed around it when Stetson’s hand shoots out, capturing your ankle in one strong, long fingered hand.

A small cry escapes you as you tumble from your crouched position onto your backside.

Stetson lifts his hat to reveal a tattooed face with cold gray eyes. He growls, pushing to sit up while still holding your ankle.

You can’t let him wake everyone while he still holds you. There’s no way you’ll escape four against one. Your fingers close around the knife you set aside and you bring it up threateningly at the same time as you kick Stetson in the side.

He gives an umph and lets go but his cold eyes turn from merely surprised to angry and you know you’re in trouble.

You swing the knife warningly and scramble away only to find Braided Beard behind you. He grabs your shoulders.

You squirm but Braided Beard’s strong despite his gaunt form.

Something sails past your head and smacks into the man’s face. Before you realize what’s happening, another object catches him on the nose and blood starts flowing from his nostrils.

His grip weakens enough for you to break away. You duck under his raised arms and take off into the woods.

Sounds of pursuit follow but once you’re in the trees, your terror eases. This is your domain now. You dart through the trees and under vines until you see a familiar bowl in an oak. Spinning around the tree by grasping a low hanging branch, you stoop inside the hollow trunk and go still.

Hulking figures soon appear, wandering through the darkness, searching. Your breath rasps inordinately loud in your ears but you know the cicadas are drowning out the sound. Finally, the men leave, grumbling in frustration.

Still you don’t move. Someone tossed those rocks at Breaded Beard and you figure if you wait long enough, they’ll reveal themselves.

Sure enough, moments later a small form rounds the oak and tucks himself into the bowl of the tree with you. He’s so tiny that he barely takes up any space. You recognize his hollow face and bony frame. His name’s Howard but everyone you know simply calls him How because of all the questions he likes to ask.

Although you’ve worked with How before scavenging food, you weren’t aware he’s so good at throwing. In the darkness, you see his white teeth flash in a smile as he tosses a small stone on his palm.

“I did good, yeah?” he whispers.

A chuckle escapes you. “Yeah.”

The smile disappears and he leans closer. “Good enough to share whatever food you got?” he points at the drawstring bag still in your hand.

In the chaos, you didn’t mean to take it with you, but between clutching the knife and focusing on escaping, you forgot you held it in your other hand.

You fear whatever’s inside isn’t the food you both hope for but you nod and pull open the bag to look.

A blue gem sparkles in the dim light. You tip it out onto your palm and How gives a breathless whistle.

“You know what that is?” he asks.

You shake your head.

“See how it glows? It’s one of the new element-stones an inventor figured out in Darmont. You know about those? You know they usually come with a guidebook to explain how they work? What are we going to do with it?”

Your chest tightens at what you hold in your palm. You’ve heard of the element-stones but have never seen one. The cities struggled for food just like the Rough until about a year ago when the Darmont inventor discovered the stones. They create heat or water or grow food depending on which type of stone you use. With a grouping of the stones, you could create your own small harvest to live off of.

“This is probably a water-stone,” you speculate.

The boy’s grin flashes again. “Clean water’s hard to come by.”

Your mind continues to consider the situation. The men around the campfire probably stole the stones from one of the supposedly secure posts that runs between the cities, so you doubt they can report the theft, which means you have to watch out for the men themselves, but not any of the authorities from the cities.

Could they possibly have a green stone as well? Even though vegetation grows like a flood in the Rough, little of it is safe to eat.

But then, clean water is also precious. Do you cut your losses and take the treasure you already hold and hope you can figure out how to use it? Or do you steal from the men again in hopes of an instruction pamphlet or another stone?

“Let me think on it,” you tell How.

He nods and settles against your side to sleep while you tuck the stone away.

Do you…

Cut Your Losses?

or

Steal Again?

Thank you for joining in a whole new adventure! Leave your vote in the comments below and we’ll return next week to see how the story continues.

Blessings,

Jennifer

(For more of my stories, check out either my multi-ending Adventure book, The Adventure, or my YA Fantasy novel, Quaking Soul, here on my Website or on Amazon.)