Jennifer M. Zeiger's Blog, page 8

Onyx Treasure – Run Below the Pillar

Welcome back for week two of the Onyx Treasure adventure!

In case you missed last week, here’s a recap: You’re a cyborg treasure hunter who just found the onyx panther statue everyone’s been looking for. (It purportedly turns you into a panther if it’s charged in sunlight.) But one of the other treasure hunters, Blanchard, found you before you could escape the crumbling temple. Readers voted to run under the falling pillar to escape.

Thanks for joining in the adventure =) Let’s see what happens next.

Onyx Treasure – Run Below the Pillar

Blanchard is six foot three and square as a brick. Even with your mechanically enhanced strength, the idea of pushing past him seems ludicrous. Stone cracks again and the pillar slides a bit further against the ceiling. If you’re making a run for it, now is the time to move.

You wave at Blanchard and take off across the temple. Although you’re usually light-footed, the shuddering ground tosses you about. A powerful shudder makes you hit your knees.

That’s going to leave a bruise. Thankfully your metal leg barely registers the impact.

The slanted pillar groans. Shoving to your feet again, you keep going. Suddenly there’s a teeth-jarring screech like the stone pillar’s screaming. Then a gust of dusty air washes through the room just before something slams into your legs.

Stunned disbelief fills the temple as though even the stone can’t believe it caught you. The pillar now has you pinned, awkwardly, on your stomach with your left leg canted to the side and your mechanical leg totally obscured by the stone. There’s no pain, so your normal leg must be fine, but you’re not sure if your right mechanical leg is broken or just buried.

Leather boots appear in your peripheral. “All mighty, Lord!” Blanchard says. “What a mess!”

By reflex, you have your wrist crossbow out and aimed in less than a second. “Stay back.”

He raises his hands placatingly. “Trade me the figurine and I’ll pull ya free.”

You assess the situation. The crossbow isn’t a great deterrent. All Blanchard has to do is get behind you and he’d negate your aim since the pillar has you pinned. So why didn’t he approach from behind? Then you realize, even if he can get to you, the pillar’s burying your leg from the hips down, including your cargo pocket. Without your help, he can’t get to the figurine.

Buried from the hips down! Did the figurine break? Is my leg usable?

You push panic away. Blanchard doesn’t have a reputation for holding to his word. As soon as he gets the panther, he’ll probably leave you behind.

But what else can you do?

You could shoot him. The quarrel you have loaded isn’t meant to kill. It’s coated instead with a sedative that would knock him out for a couple of hours. That would give you time to maybe get free, but it’d be difficult without his help.

Do you…

Accept Blanchard’s help?

Or

Tranq Blanchard?

Leave a comment below with your vote and we’ll continue the adventure next week =)

Blessings,

Jennifer

Onyx Treasure

Good morning. Today sees the start of a new adventure =) It has been far too long since I posted one of these! It’s surprising the resistance I get in my brain the longer the time stretches between posting one adventure and the next. I want this one to be perfect. Yet, the blog adventures were never intended to be perfect. They’re for fun, and for practice writing. So sorry for any hiccups, hope you enjoy the story anyway =)

If you’ve never participated in one of these, here’s how it works. You get to be the main character in the story below. When you reach the end of the post, you’ll find a choice. Leave a comment with which choice you’d like to explore and next week I’ll post the next section for whichever choice gets the most votes.

You’ll get three choices, one each week, and then we’ll see how the story ends in the fourth post. Sometimes you’ll find success, sometimes new friends, sometimes you’ll get lost, and sometimes, in very rare instances, you’ll find an untimely end.

So without further ado, let’s jump into the new adventure!

Onyx Adventure

Your normal hand shakes. Your robotic hand is as steady as the tiny statue you hold. But then, it’s always steady. Although the temple rumbles and the floor shudders under your feet, your attention’s locked on the onyx panther in your hands. It’s smooth as glass and fits almost perfectly in your palm. Weeks of searching, dodging other treasure hunters, and digging through dusty tomes, all for something so small you could slide it into the hidden compartment in your robotic leg, a space no bigger than a cargo pocket.

Legends say the panther, if charged by the sun, can change you into a panther for a while. None of the stories are clear on exactly how long the change lasts, and they definitely don’t say if it can change a cyborg such as yourself, but even if the legends aren’t true and the statue is just an onyx figurine, it’s worth a fortune.

Your fleshy fingers tremble with a desire to lay the panther in the sun and see what happens.

Stone cracks behind you and a pillar tumbles to the floor with a deafening boom and a cloud of dust. The temple was rigged to tear itself apart as soon as you picked up the figurine.

Escape first, you think, then find some sun to test the figurine. You slide the treasure into the wooden box you brought just for this purpose and put it in a cargo pocket. An observer would assume it’s just a pocket, but you cut out the back to access your leg. With a touch, the hidden compartment slides open and you secure the box.

More stone cracks and another pillar slides against the ceiling, catching at an angle but close to falling. If you’re fast, you might be able to run past it before it crashes to the floor like its companion.

“Hand it over!”

The shout comes from the left. Blanchard, the treasure hunter you’ve had to dodge the most, stands in a doorway you didn’t notice before. Clearly, he got in from that direction, so it’s another way out, but you’d have to get past Blanchard first.

Sweat trickles down your spine.

Do you…

Run below the pillar?

Or

Push past Blanchard?

Leave your vote in the comments below =) We’ll return next week to continue the story.

Blessings,

Jennifer

Hidden Mythics II Update #5 – Theos Rising!

Thousands of words and hours upon hours of time, all invested into a single story, and yet, when it comes time to put a title on all that work, I stare at a blank screen and spin in circles in my brain.

Somehow, two of the hardest parts of a novel to write are often two of the shortest things. The back cover blurb and the title. It’s distilling thousands of words into a concentrated dose of theme and emotion.

I tossed around dozens of ideas for Hidden Mythics II. Asked my Alpha readers, then my Beta readers for ideas. Some suggestions were made but nothing felt quite right for the story. As I’ve posted before, there’s a balance between having the right title for the book and having the right title for the genre.

I had tentatively thought about going with Soul, Mind, and Body themes for the titles since I started with Quaking Soul. What I didn’t think about was how Mind and Body are often attached to religious or self-help books. Not helpful for a fantasy book.

A couple of months ago, my husband suggested Theos Rising. It fits. Yet because I was stuck on the Mind and Body themes, I hesitated.

Funny how our expectations going into something can skew our perceptions. Even when I sent the manuscript to the professional editor, I wasn’t sold on Theos Rising. But as it’s mulled in my brain, it’s started to grow a voice of its own, whispering, “I fit. Stop looking elsewhere. Don’t you see the connections?”

And once I let go of my previous notions, Theos Rising does shine. Funny that. But really cool when I step back and acknowledge it was my own mind standing in the way.

On a different note, the manuscript is with the professional editor. We’ve slated 4 months for two rounds of editing. I can’t express how wonderful it is to see this story polished!

Thanks for joining me in this writing and publishing journey =) Usually, by this time each year, I have the year’s goals figured out. With our upcoming move, nothing’s running as usual. I hope to have Theos Rising out in the spring. Beyond that, things are unsure. I’ll post more when I’ve figured it out. Until then,

Blessings,

Jennifer

On the Doorstep of December 2023

I’m scratching my head, wondering where this year has gone. It must have had wings. Like great, big dragon wings that ate up time with each flash of scales and leather.

The end of this year sees me at an odd point. As usual, I started out 2023 with my writing ambitions, except this year, I shot for the moon. I’m finding that was helpful in reaching certain goals and yet also came with unexpected consequences.

Zap Dragon was published this year. The writing of it flowed beautifully. It expanded the world I love from Discarded Dragons and was fun and exciting to produce. Beneath the bubbly joy of this adventure, however, was the deeper flow of working on Hidden Mythics II.

HMII has defied every attempt of mine to contain it into a specific timeline. Six months for initially writing it stretched into twelve. One month for first-round edits ate up three. Perhaps I just have unreasonable expectations or perhaps this book just needs more time to mature, but because I’ve repeatedly set a deadline, and then repeatedly failed to keep it, this book has dragged me across the bottom of the river. It’s flowing, but it’s painful in a way writing never has been for me. I hate to admit that, but it’s honest.

That’s the unexpected consequence of setting high ambitions for this year. My joy in writing is tinged with bruises.

But that’s okay. True adventure requires a certain amount of bruising. We’re fragile creatures that way. If we try to avoid it, I’m not sure we’re truly trying.

And so I come into December a little bit wiser and a little bit more experienced. This is the time of year, as always, when I step back and soak in the soul-deep joys of life while setting aside the crazy that has a way of distracting me during the year. I’ll sit in front of the fire, book and coffee in hand, and breathe in the aroma of baking bread while I read. The cat will probably burrow under my blanket and snore. My family will sit around the table a little longer after each meal, just enjoying the conversation.

And perhaps I’ll put actual pen to paper, which is my preferred way to write, and allow myself to wander moonlit paths and sunlit streams without any timeline pressing in at the edges of my creativity. I’ll gently press a lit match to my imagination’s kindling and see the smoke drift into the breeze as the pieces catch with flame.

We’ll see what happens from there. If you’ve read this far, thank you for accompanying me on this journey of writing. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I wish you a blessed Christmas. I won’t be posting during December, but I’ll return in January. Hopefully with an adventure in tow

Blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. HMII will be in the professional editor’s hands as of next week. Although I won’t be posting, I will be working on editing.

Quaking Soul Cover Update!

Ever since we came up with a logo for Zeiger Adventure Publishing or ZAP, I’ve been working with my cover artist to update all of my covers. The adventures were fairly straightforward. All I really wanted was the logo added to the spine and back cover.

With Quaking Soul, I knew more needed to be done. I love the original cover for QS but after selling the book for a while, it became obvious it didn’t quite hit the fantasy feel. I’ve written before about how, for the most part, you can tell a book’s genre by the cover art. When people couldn’t figure this out with QS, I knew I needed to update things.

Thankfully, I have a wonderful cover artist. When I asked him for updates, he was more than willing to make them happen despite the end of the year being his busy season in his regular job.

So while I was back in Colorado recently, I found a handful of brittle, yellow aspen leaves and practiced burning them. Then took pictures to send to Justin. He handled everything from there, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. It’s not always easy making changes like this, but this time, it was worth it! Take a look at the full dust jacket at the bottom of the post.

Blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. I’m currently at 75% on the beta edit of HMII and I’ve started working out details with the professional editor. It’s slow progress with our upcoming move demanding more and more of our time, but it’s steady!

 

Updated Quaking Soul Dust Jacket =)

Time has Wings

WordPress recently congratulated me on another blogging anniversary. It’s been long enough that it doesn’t even state the number of years, just that Monday was the anniversary of my account. Yay! I think. It’s been eleven years.

I honestly have no idea how that’s possible. I don’t feel any older, or really any better at this blogging thing. But I can say I believe it’s been worth it.

So many social media platforms are supposed to be about people-interaction. Yet if you look at your feed, there are more ads, bots, and “suggested content” than anything else. Half the time we’re left wondering if the person asking to be our friends is the actual person or if their account has been hacked or maybe it’s AI now. Who knows?

The one area where I still find the interaction genuine is here, on the blogosphere. Blogging isn’t the big “thing” anymore. Some even say it’s dying, which to me is sad, but for those who still put in some time on it, there are true friendships to be found, even with people I may never meet in person.

Some people I’ve now “known” for ten or eleven years. I may never greet them face-to-face, but they know my writing journey, in some cases better than some of my own family members, and I know their own blog journey, whatever it may be. And we still encourage each other. In a world where we’re left wondering what’s real, I love that I know these people are there.

I started this blog because I was scared to share my writing and everyone said a writer needed an online platform. I succeeded in pushing past my fear. The nervousness may never go away, but I can now post without it making my fingers shake. I also succeeded in building a small platform. It’s about as big as my tiny feet, but I love it. But more importantly, I found a community that still cares that there’s a real person behind that computer screen.

Blessings,

Jennifer

Zap Dragon on Kindle!

I always have the intention to get things done in a timely manner. This worked great for me back in school. I was the weird kid who got her essays done the week they were assigned and then had to worry I’d lose the paper before I could turn it in.

In adult life, it doesn’t always roll as I imagine, but I still plan to get things done and they eventually do as long as they don’t fall off my mental iceberg. (My husband and I joke that our brains are icebergs and when we forget something, that poor pigeon fell off.) Anyway, this time I actually followed through on the timeline I hoped!

With HMII out in Beta readers’ hands this last month, the goal was to get Zap Dragon on Kindle. Golden Shells took me over nine months to get on Kindle, which I found kind of ridiculous, so this time, it’s only taken me a couple of months. Huzzah!

So Zap is on Kindle. You can find it here.

And now all the Beta feedback is back in my hands and I’m diving into editing again on HMII. Wish me luck. The timeline for this is hopefully 3-4 weeks.

Blessings,

Jennifer

Change

There’s a constant in life that I usually try to ignore. Yet it lurks in the background, letting me overlook it like maybe if I don’t acknowledge it, it’ll go away, until suddenly it pops out of the shadows with a, “Boo!” and laughs hysterically at making me jump.

It’s called Change. Most of the time, Change is a small thing. A new haircut, the need to replace a coffeepot, a broken sandal, or a worn-out pair of jeans, finding a new gray hair on top of my head. But sometimes it’s not so small.

Like when you have to move states. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, but it never gets easier. My husband’s job has notified us that we’ll be moving early next year. My mind wants to explode trying to gather in all the details I’ll have to figure out.

There are things I love about moving. Getting to explore new places. Meeting new friends. Trying new foods. Finding new story ideas.

There are also things I’ll just ignore for now until I have to address them. Finding a new dentist, constantly feeling lost for a while, figuring out the business logistics.

One detail I’m handling right now is the convention schedule. Some conventions have you book a year in advance. I’ll now be canceling anything after January except for GalaxyCon in Raleigh. That one’s big enough that I’ll fly back for it. Probably the saddest one for me is Power Comicon in Florence SC. It was one of my first conventions and still remains one of my favorites. Sometime in the future maybe I’ll be an artist again at it.

This is life. I’ll focus on the exciting part and deal with the hassles when they come.

Blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. HMII is out with Beta Readers until next week. Also, we may have a title for this book soon! I’ll share as soon as I’m sure about it =)

Hidden Mythics World Book

The magic’s in the details. The bread pudding tastes like heaven to one character but is only soggy bread to another. A character’s left leg is broken, making shifting on an old, standard vehicle impossible. The swamp smells of mold and decaying wood.

Now when someone says the jelly’s making the bread mush, a reader probably knows exactly which character’s speaking…if I remember the details right.

That’s the trick. In a book over 125K words, small details start to blur into the aether of the story world. Then, if that book has a sequel that’s another 125K words or more, that aether becomes thick and heavy.

Enter a World Book, or whatever you’d like to call it. It’s a reference book where all the story details can be found. The characters, the places, the dialogue ticks, the character mannerisms, the fantasy creatures, the cultures.

No two authors seem to create a World Book alike. It’s a matter of figuring out exactly what works for each person.

For me, all I know for certain right now is that I’m seriously behind the curve on a World Book for Hidden Mythics. You see, I wasn’t sure it’d be more than one book, so with Quaking Soul, I kept a small journal. It worked fine for the one book. As I’ve written the second Hidden Mythics and my story world has expanded exponentially, that tiny journal just doesn’t cut it. I can’t easily add new characters because my character section is full. Neither is there an easy way to search the journal. I have tabs, as you can see in the picture above, but I added the tabs as I added characters, which means the only organization is the chronology of the book itself.

So I need something I can hit Control F on and search. Or something I can add to in the middle.

My next task…to see if I can build a working, useful World Book in excel. Wish me luck.

Blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. If you haven’t stopped by recently, HMII is out with Beta readers until the second week in October. Once feedback comes back, I’ll dig into editing again.

Hidden Mythics II Update #4

Some experiences stretch us more than others. Some books require more fortitude. So far, HMII has required more of me than any other writing project to date. I love this story. Sometimes it makes me bleed.

Which makes when I pass a milestone all the sweeter. I finished the Alpha edit on HMII last week and passed it off to Beta readers. I’ve been so thick into the editing that I reached the end and felt like I was missing something, like somehow I couldn’t actually be ready for the next phase. I’m at loose ends, but it’s an amazing feeling to sit back and let my brain relax for a while.

My primary goal with the Alpha edit was to cut 15-20% off the rough draft and pull together the themes my readers had pointed out. When all was said and done, I edited about 24% out and managed to work in some much-needed breather scenes without adding back too many words. The manuscript now sits at just over 137K words as opposed to 172K. It took about three times as long as I’d hoped.

I’m tentatively hoping for a spring publication now but will keep you updated if the rest of this takes twice or three times as long as what I expect. Thank you for being a part of the writing and publishing journey with me! I apologize for my silence over the last couple of weeks. I figured you’d rather I’d be editing than taking extra time for blog posts in which all I had to say was, “Yup, still editing.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a note out of the Sidekick’s book and take a nap.

Blessings,

Jennifer