L.G. Estrella's Blog, page 7

Art of the Jab (Flash Fiction Fridays #61)

Timmy bit back a smile as he watched Katie move into a fighting stance. What his apprentice lacked in natural ease and grace, she made up for with hard work. She knew she wasn’t good at hand-to-hand fighting, so she worked extra hard to make up for it.

“You might have noticed that I’ve been putting more emphasis on hand-to-hand fighting during your training. However, I want to make it very clear that I am not encouraging you to run up to people and punch them. If you’re having to hit people with...

How To Survive A Unicorn Audiobook This Week

The audiobook for How To Survive A Unicorn will be releasing on the 6th of February. Since it’s a little bit different from my usual sort of thing, being more like a monster manual than a regular story, I would suggest having a read of the free sample chapter of the ebook version on Amazon. That should give you a good idea of what to expect.

https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Survive-a-Unicorn-Audiobook/B0CQYXP9ZY

What Magic Do You Get?

Let’s say your parents both have magic. What sort of magic will you get? It depends. Although it is entirely possible that your magic completely takes after one parent, you could also get magic from both your parents (e.g., primary magic from one parent and secondary magic from the other), or you could get a new magic that is a combination of the magics your parents have.

What do I mean by a combination?

Let’s say one of your parents has light/holy/astral magic and the other parent has necromanc...

Do I Play Video Games?

Nowadays, I don’t play that many video games. I like to think of it as evolving into my final form: the cranky, old person who sits on their porch ranting about how everything was better back in the old days.

However, I used to play video games much more often when I was younger.

Growing up I had a NES (Nintendo). Since I was a kid, I really only got two games a year. One on my birthday and another on Christmas. If I was well behaved and my parents felt like it, I might be able to rent a video g...

The Girl Trains (Flash Fiction Fridays #60)

Elizabeth – better known as Lizzie to her friends – sat with her eyes closed. The air around her was filled with ultra-fine particles of dust and several dozen pebbles. The dust gave her almost total awareness of her surroundings, and each of the pebbles moved around her in its own unique orbit.

Most earth mages focused on building up their raw power. Why throw a pebble when you could throw a boulder? Why use a pebble to block an attack when you could put up a wall? The answer was two-fold.

Lizz...

Boy Meets Star (Flash Fiction Fridays #59)

The boy had never understood why everybody said that his Aunt Avraniel was a star maiden.

A star maiden?

How could she be a star anything when stars were way up in the sky?

He’d asked his dad because it felt like his dad knew everything, but his dad had just laughed and said it would be obvious once he awakened his magic. But what if it took him ages to awaken his magic? His dad had just laughed again and said that if he was anything like his mom, his magic would awaken any day now.

Once again, ...

Book 5 Update

I’m sure many of you are curious about how Book 5 of Unconventional Heroes is going.

I am now about a third of the way through the fourth draft of Two Necromancers, a Fortress, and a Titan. At this stage, I expect there to be one final draft after this one.

Due to a variety of issues (most of them documented here), I have slipped from a first quarter release window and am looking at a second quarter release.

I will be posting the first chapter of the final draft when I get up to it. Keep in mind...

Boy vs Dragon Redux (Flash Fiction Fridays #58)

The boy had returned.

He and his sister had suffered long enough beneath the tyrannical claws of Spot the Drooler. For too long had their cheeks been licked, their hair been ruffled, and their dignity been besmirched!

Today, at long last, they would have vengeance!

“Hah!” the boy jabbed his finger at Spot. “Prepare to meet your doom!”

The dragon opened one silver eye but remain utterly unbothered by the boy’s declaration of righteous vengeance. Instead, he continued to bask in the sun as a certa...

No Surgery Needed

Some oddities on the scans, but all ligaments and tendons are intact. No surgery needed. Physiotherapy is the plan although I’ll have to keep an eye on it and a specialist might get involved depending on how it responds to physiotherapy.

It’s about the best I could ask for since both my knees have long histories of injury. The oddities are related to some findings that would normally be associated with ligament damage, but the scans came back clear and the ligaments are intact. It could be fro...

Boy vs Dragon (Flash Fiction Fridays #57)

The boy was cunning. The boy was wise. The boy was stealthy.

Or so he believed.

With all the patience he could muster, the boy crept around the edge of the courtyard. He knew Black Tower Castle like the back of his hand. Every nook, every cranny, every secret passage.

Or so he believed.

His foe lay slumbering in the courtyard ahead of him, black scales gleaming in the winter sun, a patch of white shining upon his snout. The dragon’s massive wings were folded against his body, and his long, sinuo...