Jason A. Cheek's Blog, page 18

Beware of writer's forums and listing your own works

Now let me preemptively state that I am sure there are good writing groups out there that have helped many new and experienced writers. Also, there is a lot of good information being bandied around on many forums that are super helpful to all writers, but I think any new writer needs to be very careful utilizing these resources.

Any new writer starting out to write lacks a certain amount of confidence in their abilities, which is quite normal. Unless you’re making millions and have a huge following these feelings of doubt and questioning your growing writing abilities is natural. Every writer I know looks upon their books online watching each and every review that comes in to get an idea of how their fans feel about their story and writing style hoping to get to that point where they can support themselves by doing what they love best, writing.

Forums would seem like a great place to put ourselves out there and get assistance from other struggling writers to learn the pitfalls of the whole industry. While this seems reasonable, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are a lot of jealous people in the world. There are even more jealous people out there that do not want to see you succeed. Sometimes it’s as simple as they want to succeed in they think you’re in their way, while other times it’s a huge ego trip. There can’t be anyone better than them. Some people have spent years studying literature and writing style, but no matter how much they’ve studied, their writing isn’t very interesting. Not to mention the people who simply think they are the best or are self-proclaimed experts.

Completing the whole writing process is hard enough for any new writer, but one of the worst things that these people can do to you is make you question every aspect of your writing style and make you think that nothing you do is good enough. Before you know it they have stolen away your confidence by making you question everything you are trying to write. Before you know it you are more confused than ever before and are not one step closer to actually writing your own story.

Even worse than taking away your confidence and making you question every aspect of your writing style. These people can follow your online to where you are selling your book and give you negative reviews. I’m sure there are a million reasons as to why fellow Indie Writers do this to one another, but it’s pretty sad. Like rats drowning one another on a sinking ship. When Flight hit the #23rd place on Amazon’s Fantasy/Superhero list within the first three months I suddenly had four extremely negative reviews come in on that very first week. It hurt at first, it always does when you’re receiving your first negative reviews, but I couldn’t understand why it seemed like the readers were attacking my story and taking every little thing out of context in this page to page and a half long post. By the fourth one I can an epiphany and decided to check out their other reviews. Unsurprisingly they seemed to batch every new writer out there. I decided to do a search on these peoples’ names within Amazon and discovered that these people were fellow Indie Writers. Suddenly it all made since.

On the forums there are people who are not going to like your views or are going to be very angry that you dared to disagree with something that they posted. Some are just angry that you’re flooding the book market with something new that would block a reader from finding their own book, while others are simply afraid you might do better than them.

One of the common things to do on a forum is introduce yourself and your book. My own introduction to the forums was no different. If I had this to do all over again I would have never listed my book or changed my writing name so the anyone who didn’t like my opinions wouldn’t try to take it out on my novel’s reviews.

You might think than that I am totally against writing forums, but that is not the case. There are some very good people that you can meet and work together with online. I’m just saying to be very careful about exposing yourself, because it can also turn into a very bad experience with long reaching affects.

On a personal note, I just wanted to let you know I’m still neck deep in my regular 9 to 5 job. I hope this week will be better and I can keep the blog updates coming on time, either way I want to thank you for your patience and coming back to listen to my thoughts and personal experiences.

can your own story be influenced by what you're currently reading

This is an interesting topic I saw brought up a lot on the forums, that is, when I was doing forums. Since I published under my real name, I have since stopped participating in writers’ forums in general. I’ll have to post about some of my experiences within the writing forums and why I made this decision in another post, but for now I want to talk about the topic at hand.

I was surprised to see that there are a lot of writers who get pissy if you say: I don’t want to read that story yet because I’m afraid it will unduly influence my own writing style. To say it’s possible that if you’re reading something similar to what you’re currently writing that it might unduly influence your own writing style or story telling ability, is considered by many posters to on the forums to mean that you’re ignorant and/or a bad writer. For me I don’t see what it matters one way or another if you feel this way, but for many obviously it does mean something to many writers from the responses I’ve seen to this repeated topic on the web.    

For me, I am of the mind that if I’m writing something similar to what I’m reading, I do feel like it could unduly influence the formation of my own stories and scenes. Although I have my own particularly strong writing voice within my stories, most of my writing skills comes from reading my favorite authors throughout my life. Well between that and my own inner voice and logical thought process. Most of what I look at in digital art, play in computer games or read all merges into my own thoughts and dreams to help form my stories and plots lines. A good example of this for me is Game of Thrones. I was just starting to write the scenes with the Werewolves in Shadowfang’s Winter Heart when I started the first book of the series. Instantly upon the first couple chapters I felt myself struggling to picture the specific parts of the story as conflicting mental images of what I’d read earlier interrupted my thought process. It was too fresh in my thoughts to be writing something that was of that same magical archaic land in deep snow with large wolves. I stopped immediately and just stayed away from the series until I’d finished Flight.

 Now if you’re not one of those writers who have this problem, then good for you. Bravo for being able to keep your thoughts separate. At the same time, the rest of us do not need to hear any chortling about how awesome you are and how much the rest of us suck for this difference. It’s crazy what people bash each other for online. Don’t even get me started on the whole issue about using a word processor to write your story or not using a word processor. Heh, that sounds good for another blog post =D

 Anyway that doesn’t mean that after I finished the magical / archaic land part of my story I didn’t start checking out Game of Thrones, because I did. What a freaking incredible story line. For those who are fans check out the Youtube link below for Honest Trailers, Game of Thrones.

 Lastly, I’m still struggling to get any time to do much other than move my organizations two primary HQ buildings into its new location and continue keeping up my regular IT Support. This week I’m doing multiple fourteen hour days, if you count going into work when it’s dark and leaving work when it’s dark a day. Although this week is worse than normal, I’m still making time for writing and blogging. Anyway, until next time.

balancing out character strengths and weaknesses in your story

I came up with this title when I was playing some World of Warcraft after finishing up last week’s blog post. If you’re a gamer then this concept should be something you already know about, but for those writers who are not gamers. I think this is an important concept to digest. 

Although it sounds logical and intuitive to balance out the good and bad characters in your story, it’s really quite a difficult concept to achieve in practice. Massively Multiplayer Online Games or MMOG’s are constantly struggling with this concept. There are test players and forums that are constantly monitored to gauge the level of fairness and balance between classes within their games. Is a warrior with a sword strong enough to attack a frost mage, and visa versa ... can a frost mage take on a warrior. Are the fights challenging, but the possible outcomes almost equal? Is one class overpowered in comparison to another class? The time and money spent on these questions within the worlds of MMOG’s are humongous. It behooves you to take this into consideration within your own stories. 

If you have a very powerful main character like I do with Startüm Ironwolf in The Last Paladin Series, or like John Conroe does in The Demon Accord Series. You will always have people questioning if you’ve created an overpowered Mary Sue as one critic said in one of my reviews for Flight. I think John Conroe has done this very well within his series. His main character is truly one of the most powerful beings I’ve ever read about, well except for Superman who’s never been one of my favorite characters. I was always more of a Batman (Dark Knight) or Punisher fan, not that Startüm isn’t any pushover either. I bring John’s writing up in this blog along with my own, because he did such an incredible job creating such a fun awesome main character while still showing just how weak he is in different ways that are fun and interesting to the overall story and series, a great author to check out this type of balancing act.
 

Startüm Ironwolf in book one is very powerful, but still requires the help of the regular humans and his class of women Ukkodians (His female harem as some critics have called them.) to overcome his enemies. At the end of the story Startüm would have been overcome if these supporting characters hadn’t fought for their lives next to him. Also, a part of my show of Startüm’s amazing powers was to prepare the readers for what is to come within the future of the series. As Paladins go in Irlendria, Startüm is actually on the weak side in many ways and the enemies he must yet face are unbelievably powerful. At the same time, within Book One of the Last Paladin Series I did my best to keep Startüm’s growing use of power within line of the enemies he needed to face. A good example of this was the Loviatar Clerics he had to face. Each Cleric roughly followed the D&D / MMOG flavor of a traditional evil Cleric. Their spells and abilities were similar, but still slightly different at how they cast their spells. Startüm’s abilities followed along the lines of what you would see if you were playing a typical Paladin in any of these mediums, but at the same time I gifted him with extra special abilities if he prayed to his deity for help. Again, I tried to keep the flow and use of power based within the rules I’d formed for my world. A good example of this is when Startüm is fighting to break out through the circle of power one of the evil clerics had trapped him in. Alone he couldn’t break through the circle of power, since it completely cut him off from his deity and drawing in power from the world around him. Yet, the way Startüm survived this was by realizing he was standing atop a gateway to another world. By reaching through the natural gateway that he came through into the trap, he was able to pull in enough power via Ukko to break the trap that had been sprung on him. 

There are many ways to work on this balance of powers between your good and evil characters. The main thing I wanted to point out fellow writers was thinking out this balance ahead of time. Having a powerful main character is not a crime. There are millions of readers who love these types of heroic characters, but at the same time showing their weaknesses and having them still overcome the evil that they must face is what makes the story so enjoyable to read. 

My IRL work has become overwhelming as my entire organization moves to their new location. Henceforth my time to reply to friends and fans or even to keep my blog up to date has suffered somewhat. I just wanted to thank everyone for their patience. Things will get back to normal soon enough. 

Thoughts on creating your own magic system

Late again with posting, but the only excuse I have is Columbus Day! I chilled out, watched Wolverine X-Men for a second time and just relaxed for the day while writing on and off.

A couple months ago a bud of mine sent me a link on “Magic Systems with Rothfuss, Butcher, Wells, Cole, Sykes, Blackmoore - Phoenix Comicon 2014”. You can find the link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9H7N... (It's the same link attached below too.) Before you click on the link let me warn you. Although this is a really great clip with some really useful information, watching it messed me up in all kinds of ways for about two weeks before I got my head straight once again on my own magic system in The Last Paladin Series. 

I really found a lot of what Jim Butcher was saying in this very interesting, which compared to everyone else on the panel wasn’t much. For me the most important thing he noted was how magic was done in Lord of The Rings. How you knew Gandalf was a wizard and that he worked magic, but there was an unknown quality to his actual skills and abilities. It’s on this topic I would like to expound on in today’s blog. Another consistent topic from each of the panelists that I thought was extremely important was that whatever it is you choose for a magic system, make sure you consistently apply it throughout your story.

I noticed that Jim Butcher in his Dresden Series follows some rules for general magic use in some regards, while each wizard is unique in their own skills and talents that make magic … well magical. It’s not 100% spelled out. You have an understanding of the general rules the world and magic follows, but there is some wiggle room … some play that Jim uses within his stories that in the end fit the magic system in place, or at least doesn’t go against it. I forget the specific book in the series, but I remember the warden wars against the vampires that each wizard was distinctly different. It was all explainable within the rules Jim had created for his world, but at the same time that slight looseness with the magic system allowed an element of surprise that fits, in my mind, the feel of magic. 

If I think back to many of the stories I read, even the D&D stories. They’ve operated magic in this duel perspective. In one way you think you know the skills of the character and the rules of the world, while in another there is a certain looseness that works within the worlds rules. The interesting part of the D&D universe is that many of the clerics, shamans and wizards have specific rules laid out for each class, which are used as guidelines. Yet within the story the authors creates flexibility within the magic system that is more living and realistic. Instead of saying that a wizard can caste ‘magic missiles’ four times in a day, you focus on the energy output of the character or the exhaustion from using their magic. Maybe they can squeeze out another spell and collapse or maybe they’re just wiped out. The rules that you make for your world should advance your story, not restrict your story. You’re not creating a gaming system, you’re creating a story and world that supports the story that you want to tell. 

In many ways this refers back to my last blog post about world building and planning out your story. Don’t get too caught up in the details of your world that you stop writing or that those rules bog your story down to the point that it interferes with the story you’re telling. 

Again, just my two cents of my own explorations in creating a magic system for my own series. I borrowed heavy on traditional concepts of Paladins and Clerics. Traditional being D&D, computer games like World of Warcraft, Rift, Everquest, The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Lineage and etc. They all build on the general concepts of these old D&D stereotypes, which I think is a good place to start on formulating any magic system. Although I’m not saying don’t create something entirely new. There are some amazing writers who do this. I’m just saying, whatever you do. Give it your own twist and keep it consistent in your world, leave a little flexibility for it to feel natural and real, but most importantly make sure it gives you the room to tell your amazing story.    

Writing snobs, writing styles and using an outline for your story

Don’t even ask me about how I came up with the title for today’s post. All these things just came up when I started trying to discuss the topic of outlining a story.

I am probably one of the most unconventional conventional writers you’ve ever met, which doesn’t exactly surprise me as much as it does other people. I say this because of several reasons. First, when I started writing I didn’t consider all of the ways a professional educated writer would begin to look at their novel. Instead I used the authors I loved and my own logical mind as to learn the craft of writing. Second, after finishing my first novel, I discovered there were major discussions on writing techniques and styles that I simply never concerned myself with one way or another. I mean, why should I? I was too busy simply writing. Third, once I finished my story and had the whole series outlined. I realized I had learned many of the concepts and points many professional writers used just by teaching myself from the great examples of the Science Fiction and Fantasy that I’ve read throughout my life. Lastly, the reason this was unsurprising to me is that it’s how I’ve lived much of my life.

Even in today’s day and age, there are many professions you can teach yourself and become extremely good that people will hire you to do the job. Since having the ability to do the work well will win out over your lack of traditional education. I’m not saying that this is preferred method of getting ahead in the world. There will always be people who traversed the traditional route to learn a profession that will give you a hard time or that you will always be competing against. I’m just saying the option is there and that it is possible. Although, it might not be for everyone and it still requires an unbelievable amount of work. Nothing worthwhile comes free. I believe if you truly want something, put the effort into mastering it and believe in yourself, there is nothing you cannot do.

Anyway, back to writing stuff. There are so many does and don’ts when it comes to talking to other writers and a whole slew of acronyms most people who have studied the art of writing like to bandy around to show how educated they are. It can be quite intimidating as a new writer and make you feel like somehow you are not up to the task of writing a good story that people would love to read. Many of these self-proclaimed experts have numerous discussions on the fact that no matter how enjoyable your story is, if it’s not written to a certain “writing caliber” then it can never be good. Some of these people even believe that if you’ve never completed a literary doctorate then you shouldn’t even be allowed to self-publish. Amazingly enough they loved to bash writers like J. K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer & Jim Butcher for their terrible writing, which is something that just blows my mind.

I’d just like to say, don’t get caught up in that hype. I believe the most important things to write are things like: Can you tell a story? Can you hold the reader’s interest? Is the story so good you can’t put the book down until you’ve finished? Don’t get me wrong, there is a bunch more to that list, but if I were going to distill the list of what I look for when I’m looking for a good book to read, these are the things I look for. I would say it’s what most of us look for when we are looking for a new book.

During my time diving into the world of creative writing and various I was surprised initially to discover there are writers who outline their stories and writers that free flow their stories without any outline. While, I’m sure there are many good writers that can “free flow” their thoughts and ideas. I’m not one of them. Also, I would even go as far to say that if you’re teaching yourself to write this would be the last thing I would recommend trying. At the same time, I don’t believe in planning/outlining a story to the Nth degree. Again I’m sure for some people that Nth degree worth of planning is very useful and helpful, but it can take many people completely out of writing as they get lost in the detail.

I really believe there needs to be an approach taken somewhere in the middle. This middle will be very different for each author, but none the less there is this give and take.

When I’m writing, I create a general concept of the story itself and where I want it to go. If you’re just starting out you’ll probably thing this is hard as hell and you don’t have enough stuff to write about, but once you start talking about your characters, their thoughts, what drives them, the world they live in, what’s happening to them and where they are going. Suddenly you have quite an impressive story. I’m a firm believer in creating an Outline for your story, because it helps keep you on track. It helps you have a goal in mind as to where your characters are going so that you can keep them and your writing on track. Without this Outline, it’s easy to wander and ramble and lose your focus. Before you know it you have all kinds of extraneous stuff that doesn’t help progress the story in anyway and just chunks everything up.

Think of this as a 30,000 ft perspective, if you’re trying to relate it to business. Just like in business, if you stay at the 30,000 ft perspective you never succeed. You also have to get down into the weeds and do the dirty work of writing. This is the time I tend to make detailed mini-plans and free-flow the parts of the story I’m working. Sometimes I can picture the scene exactly in my head and sometimes it comes to me as I’m writing it down on the paper, but always I have that 30,000 ft perspective of where I’m going that keeps me on track. In this way you get the best of both worlds.

One last note on writing that doesn’t exactly pertain to Outlining your story, but is important for your writing. If you create a character that you name and describe. Keep notes on them. Create a character sheet or something. Anytime you talk about someone’s hair color, eye color or where they are from. Make sure you document that information somewhere.  Sometimes characters that you introduce as a throw away character sometimes takes on a life of their own and becomes a bigger part of the story. If you’ve documented this information in your notes, it will save you going back to remember what you said in some previous chapter or book.

Anyway, that’s it for tonight. Sorry for posting late, but I’m probably not going to be fully back online functioning at 100% until the beginning of next week. Or even not until November 17th. The main stuff involved with my “move” to Kaiserslautern should be finished up by Monday, but my organization’s move won’t be finished until November 17th, so I’ll be driving back and forth between my Wiesbaden office and my new house for a good month and a half. Still, just having my personal move completed is a huge load off my mind and frees me up to get back to finishing up Destiny! 

chapter writing tips

One of the things I try to do whenever I write is to view the scene before me as if I were watching it IRL or on a movie screen. Probably more times than not it’s the movie screen perspective. I do this because I try to picture my feelings if I were viewing this in a movie theater. Would the introduction I used catch my attention, would it give me that incredible action pack feeling of a typical action movie that I love to watch, or is it bland and boring. I think for any type of book this is important for holding your readers’ attention and for the overall flow of the book.

As I go through this movie perspective in my mind’s eye I try to determine if everything within the chapter has merit to the story, to the characters and to the series. I want to skip anything that really doesn’t add to this overall feeling and character building of the overall story. While my main character might love to play with “My Pretty Ponies” or some such out of contexts nonsense, unless there is a very important reason to bring it up within the confines of the scene itself to enhance some specific part of the overall story, then usually it’s not something that needs to be discussed. Another important aspect is character explanations. Sometimes too much detail is exactly that … too much detail, at least if you give it to your reader all at once. You can give some basic information at the opening scene of a chapter when introducing a new character, but then for the additional details that you want to cover can fill in within the confines of the story in bits and pieces that add to the overall flavor of the character.

Again most characteristics that you cover should in some way add into flow of the story and to building up the characters and scenes that you’re describing and writing about. There will be some times that the story dips and slows down in-between climatic scenes, but even then these scenes should add to the story so that when the action ramps back up you explained or discussed the additional details ahead of time that allows the action to flow within a meaningful way.      

Also the closing scene of most chapters should have at the very least mini-cliff hangers. The switch to another part of the story should leave your readers wanting to know what’s going on and waiting to get back to the action to see what happens to the characters. Another reason you want the beginning of the new chapter to catch their attention enough so they don’t flip ahead to see what’s happening, but the important part I want to leave you with is making that ending of the chapter to be left at a spot that makes you want to rush back and see what’s happening.

I was watching Teen Wolf, an excellent series which does a masterful job at these cliff hangers throughout the different scenes of the story and at the end of that week’s show. 24 is another series that comes to mind that rocks this too. Probably 24 is the better of the two examples I just listed. If you really want to really get the feel for how to do these chapter intros and exits that leave your readers wanting more, I serious suggest you check out 24. Both new and old does this extremely well.

Lastly I want to leave you with this thought. You don’t normally write the perfect scene immediately. Most writers don’t sit down to every scene and just write it out in one sitting. Even if you pictured every aspect of the scene, you still have to work to get the right flow and perspective to each scene. Don’t rush this. Sometimes it might take days for you to get the perfect structure down on paper and that’s okay. Many times I write down something quick, and then slowly build on it to make it better. Other times I write the whole thing out in one setting, and then later still go back and tweak it. It just depends on the scene and how much prep time I’ve put into the whole mental scene building process ahead of time, and the overall complexity of that area of the story.

So many writers talk about making sure you write two to three hundred words a day to make sure you produce a book within a short amount of time, but from my own experience this seems to be counterproductive, in many ways, to writing a great story. Few of us actually the time and ability to write for a living, although we hope to have this opportunity in the future as our writing matures. There will be those times we produce a lot of our story in one sitting, while at other times we struggle to write certain scenes the way we want. But, that is okay. I don’t think rushing your writing is the answer to producing a good story. Throughout my day when I’m not in the physical process of writing, I actually picture the scene I’m currently writing to get a clear picture of the scene I’m trying to write. I find that this is a great exercise to do while I’m driving. One of the few times I have the peace of mind to actually picture the part of the story I’m trying to write and get the mental image of what’s happening before I actually sit down to write the scene.

These preparations times I believe are important if you are going to have an amazing story and be a great writer. A good story needs to have this quality and depth, which only comes from putting this forethought into your writing ahead of time. For this reason alone I’m against the daily word count that so many writers and writing groups love to tell new writers that they must do to be a good writer.

Anyway, I hope some of these perspectives on my own writing process helps to improve your own writing.

Writing, getting back to the basics and editing

It’s amazing just how much life’s stresses can affect your ability to put your thoughts down on paper. There’s nothing like picking up and moving to remind you just how true that can be, but by this coming Monday that should be finished up. Although I’ve missed a solid week of writing, I’ve been working on some of the plot lines during the drive to the new place. Once next week rolls around I should have a nice balance of driving and writing. Driving to help line up my thoughts, so that I can put them down on paper once I get home. Mostly I’ll be happy that the move will be finished and I’ll be completely unpacked and mostly back to normal once again.

I was able to squeeze in about three hours of sleep last night. When I woke up this morning, my arms were flailing as I tried to find the light switch and my Iphone as I staggered in the dark of my new apartment trying to figure out why nothing was where it should be. It was the longest fifteen seconds ever =D

Part of my going to bed so late was that John Conroe came out with his newest book in The Demon Accords Series. Of course I had to read it in one setting, hence the only having three hours of sleep last night, but totally worth it. I just love how he writes.

I’ve been looking a little more into the Ultramarines from the Warhammer 40,000 Universe looking for some good ideas to tweak for the story. I had no idea that the Warhammer 40,000 Universe has been around for over twenty years. It’s quite a detailed story and universe, and I love the powerful Ultramarines. You’ve gotta love chainsaw swords.

Currently I work within the DOD Educational circuit, which is interesting alone in the type of work that I do. But, what is even more interesting is the people I work with and what that means for the editing of Book Two. Several of the organization’s teachers have read Book One of The Last Paladin Series and have enjoyed the story, although they have commented on my need of professional editing. No surprise there with them being teachers and all. Luckily, several have offered to assist in getting Book Two cleaned up before I get it released. I cannot even begin to tell you much that means to me, since editing is my weakest point of my writing.

So lots of good things in the works.

Cover design, story arc and winter gaming group

I’ll be doing my best this week to keep the posts rolling, but I’m in the middle of moving from Wiesbaden to Kaiserslautern. I’ll still have possibly up to a month and a half of driving back to Wiesbaden until my organization moves, but even though my commute will be taking an additional two hours out of my day, I will be in a much better place to write. Yet even with everything happening in my personal and work life, I am still working on the story line to complete the last quarter of Destiny, Book Two.

By the way, I’m listening to some Warpaint while I write. I heard this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVwOMFrvJI “Love Is To Die” Sunday night when my wife and I were finishing up watching the “True Blood” series. We both really enjoyed the story. A friend I met from writing suggested I check out the “Elf Child” and how they aged for some ideas for Frostbrand and Starfire. Definitely gave me some good ideas I’m still formulating for the story. I’ve been listening to some of Warpaint’s other songs and I’m loving them. Some really good music with hauntingly beautiful melodies.  

I had an interesting review today. Even though it was only a three star review due to my grammar and need for a professional editor, the reviewer was honest enough to say that he still thoroughly enjoyed the story, which is high praise from a reader who finds such errors difficult to cope with. Not that I disagree with the comments on grammar/editing, but I’ve done the best I could with the limited budget I had available for the project. I can only do my best to make this better for Book two. I’d like to address one of the last comments the reader left here, because I think it could be on multiple readers’ minds.

 Why didn’t Startüm Ironwolf transform into a Werewolf for the final battle between him and the Pit Demon? I thought this was a really good question. Although it seems like it would have been a perfect spot for Startüm to transform, I’m saving this for bigger and badder monsters. The “Destroyer” in Book One is actually only a Demon Knight within the echelon of Demon society. In the stories to come there will be more for of a need for this and a reason as Startüm learns to embrace his Werewolf’s Bloodline. This will actually occur on his eighteenth birthday (calculated by Irlendria time). I will say this transition is coming, along with several others, but I wanted to make sure it was at the correct spot within the story arc in an appropriate climatic scene. I needed room for Startüm to grow into his power.

Some people have commented that Startüm is overpowered, but in actuality he is not in comparison to the Paladins that came before him, and he will need everything he has and more for the enemy he will be facing in the future. During the Great War against the Tuonellian’s, the armies of the Alliance of Aurenko were only able to stand against the Hordes attacking their World by the power of the Klavikian Paladins. Only thirteen in number, these holy warriors of Ukko were able to resist the Demonic Evil that the Priestess of Loviatar wielded and keep the Alliance Armies alive to stop the overwhelming forces sent against them. Now with the Klavikains destroyed, Startüm is the only Paladin left to hold back the new Tuonellian invasion that now threatens Irlendria.  

Lastly, the Winter Gaming group has started a little earlier than expected. Although the start date is still November 15th, there are a number of us that have started playing. I’ve actually leveled my first character in years to 15 in preparation. Of course it’s a Paladin =D If you’re playing, you can shoot me a message on Darknovia on Hyjal Server. I’m only play around two days a week, due to the need to get Book Two out, but I’ll be playing for a couple hours in the evenings on Tuesday and Thursday. You can join the online guild here: http://www.audiovideodisco.org/

Cover design and book two's artwork

I had a really great idea for the cover for Destiny, Book Two of the Last Paladin Series, and then I realized that I wouldn’t be making it to the part I’d initially planned to end the second at. I know it’s very common for writers to make covers for their books that have nothing directly to do with the story, but personally I find that extremely annoying. I love to see the vision the writer had of the main character or some important part of the story.

Unfortunately that means the cover I’ve been planning to use for Book Two, even before Book One was finished, now isn’t relevant to the story within its pages, since that part of the story will now be pushed to Book Three. That sucks to such a high degree of suckatude that I cannot even begin to express my annoyance. If you’ve never tried coming up with a cover for a story that captures the essence of the characters/action/story, looks good on the front of a paperback book cover (you have to plan for the smallest possible size), looks exciting/interesting and is overall good enough to encourage writers to pick-up your novel, out of the thousands of other books available, to read the back cover, then you understand how unbelievably difficult this is to do.

Seriously, the goal of any cover is to be good enough eye candy to encourage readers who are into the genre you’re writing about to pick-up your book and check out the back story. It’s your primary form of advertisement before everything else. Your second and third primary forms of advertisement are the back cover snippet of your story and the front inner flap excerpt. These show the readers your writing style and the general concept of your story, hopefully getting them to read the sample Amazon and other websites offer. At this point you’ve sank your hooks into them, metaphorically speaking. You’ve pulled the reader into your world and hopefully they’ve enjoyed the experience and will come back for more.

So back to finding a cover for Destiny, recently I’ve been letting my mind wander as I write the last quarter of Book Two hoping to come up with a new concept that will fit my requirements for the cover. As I’ve talked about before, usually as I write I run through graphic images I’ve pulled out specifically relevant in one way or another to the current story I’m working on. Most of the images are from Deviant Art’s website. I might see if what the artist has in regards to posting his works on other websites or even if I can ask to be allowed to share his work, but first I have to find where I originally pulled the image from.

Anyway, the image is from the Ultramarines: Warhammer 40,000 universe. It’s an action shot from the perspective of the enemy attacking a group of Ultramarines that just rocks. I was thinking I could use the concepts and layout the artist did for this shot for something relevant in my own story. The scene would be in a large cavern. The viewpoint is if you were the attacking enemy charging the group. Picture a large stone statue of a gorgon reaching up to the sky (or cavern ceiling) in the middle of the scene, near the base a large Minotaur warrior in legionnaire armor holding to two enormous double-headed battleaxes shimmering with magical power and is in the process of turning to face an oncoming enemy. Picture ornate chest armor, shredded billowing cloak, armored shin guards over black hooves and elbow high metal gauntlets. Back-to-back with the Minotaur is a modern NATO soldier caught in mid-turn with their rifle swinging around. Maybe she’s a female sergeant with short hair and her helmet off. Lower in front of them are maybe two more modern soldiers, one injured laying on their back with the other shooting back over their shoulder as they try to drag the injured away from the oncoming enemy. Another Minotaur is in the front right of the picture falling backwards with one arm slice off at their upper arm, while the other has a fist spike weapon. Lastly on the left side of the screen are two more Minotaurs rushing up with a large shield in one arm and a fist spike in the other.

I’m still trying to picture the scene. It can’t be too much or it won’t display properly on the cover size allowed on the site. What do you think? Does the scene sound interesting? Would it catch your eye and encourage you pick-up the novel to see what the story is about? Do I need to go back to the drawing board and try for another image?    

Updating the printed edition of flight on amazon

For those of you who are interested in writing their own book and the whole process of making corrections and new editions. I thought I would write about my recent experience with revising the printed edition of Flight.

While updating my Ebook is quick and easy, I have been nervous about the process involved in updating the printed edition of the story. I’m sure my hesitance is due to the fact that any changes to the printed edition requiring a writer to go through the whole process of getting a new ISBN number and creating the whole distribution of the book from square one. You would think this would be easy since as the author we have the original file to recreate the original from, but that is not always as easy as it would seem to be.

The Ebook and the Printed book are two different files and the formatting, at least for Amazon, responds differently to the template Amazon offers. Not to mention, each web site that you work with seems to require a different template, depending on which way you decide to publish.

Initially I self-published my book on Amazon, which is a double process requiring two separate templates. You don’t realize this until you finish your CreateSpace upload and then suddenly you’re forwarded to Kindle Direct Publishing and things don’t transfer correctly. By the time you finish you now have to finished template that you are required to use. Unfortunately, both of these templates happen to not be compatible with websites such as Smashwords or LuLu and I’m sure many other self-publishing web sites. On a side note, amazingly enough if you go from the Smashwords direction, their templates seem to be compatible across the board, a nice tidbit of information to know ahead of time.

You might ask why I just didn’t publish with Smashwords and push everything out to the various websites that way. First off, I didn’t know about Smashwords at first. Second, I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with how Amazon promotes third party website books. Lastly, most of my sales come from Amazon, so I would rather do whatever is needed to make sure I don’t interfere with how Amazon treats my works. Maybe they do nothing differently, but there are enough strange things that happen within the Indie Writer world in comparison to the professionally published writers that I don’t want any unpleasant surprises. Do a quick search on “Self Published Writers” & “reviews disappearing” and see what I mean. Publishers have paid reviews that review their writer’s books, but it’s very difficult to get reviews on Indie Writer’s books in the same way. Also, if I moved completely to Smashwords I would lose my current sales ranking, which typically shits in a decent spot.

On Amazon, you have to publish a physical book before you are allowed to publish an ebook. The print ready graphics for your physical book is not the same requirements for your ebook or your audio book, if you decide to go that route. So, by the time you get your first Amazon book published you are sitting with a minimum of two different templates and two to three print ready covers. Also, if you joined the Amazon Writer’s Contest, you also have yet another template, so now you’re up to three book templates and three covers … not to mention all of the attempts when you were discovering exactly what size of book you needed to publish your print novel.

The good thing is that if you end up doing a template for Smashwords or LuLu or whatever, you still have only three templates, since you can now use your Smashword template for Amazon. This might not sound like much, but it typically turns out to be more than you realize. I’m pretty organized, but even I have folders and folders worth of templates of previous versions of the word template for my novel and different graphic covers in various formats and designs.

If you are making emergency changes to your ebook because you’ve had some person blast you in a review about a mistake you missed. Your ebook’s template is probably in pretty good shape, but unless you are extremely disciplined I imagine your printed template is probably not in as good of shape. Using myself as an example, I’m probably on my eight editions of my ebook and my first edition for the printed book.

There are so many changes that it was just easier to start from my printed edition from scratch. Unfortunately, I had major issues with using my Smashword template. It was so bad that I ended up spending four hours to get everything reformatted. Annoying, but my wife wants to be able to give a couple copies of my book to some of her family and friends. She would have just taken the first edition, but I was too embarrassed for that, so hence a night of whacking my print edition into shape.

The only additional advice I would give is to make sure you keep all of your Author, edition and novel names completely the same so that the system picks up your new edition properly. If not you will need to work with Amazon’s Help Desk to get everything linked properly, which is a pain in the butt.

Hope my experiences with this helps those of you doing this for the first time.