P.H. Solomon's Blog, page 264
August 27, 2016
RRBC Blog Tour Page
One of the 8/26 stops for the RRBC book and blog party this month. I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures, Jo Ann. Reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
Welcome to my second blog of this blog tour event. This is Let Life Begin by Jo Ann Wentzel! I hope you’re enjoying this RRBC Book and Blog Party. I have been delighted to meet so many of you by visiting your blogs or being visited on my own blog. We are so happy to be part of this event. I say we because my husband Dan, is my photograher for this blog. He does my website, helps with publicity and household chores so I have time to write. Sorry, for the brag but, he is vital to this enterprise. RRBC is a great book club and everyone should consider joining for author support and book exposure. Check for the rest ofthis month’s blog lineup here.
Just comment below to be entered for prizes. There will be three winners- $10 Amazon gift card, an autographed copy of It Begins…
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Book Spotlight – “Heart of Brass” by Felicity Banks
This is an interesting book spotlight. Happy to share it around today. Reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
Timothy Bateson (ramblings of an author)
Overview
Emmeline Muchamore is a well-bred young lady hiding explosive family secrets.She needs to marry well, and quickly, in order to keep her family respectable. But when her brass heart malfunctions, she makes a desperate choice to steal the parts she needs to repair it and survive.She is unable to explain her actions without revealing she has a steam-powered heart, so she is arrested for theft and transported to Victoria, Australia – right in the midst of the Gold Rush.Now that she’s escaped the bounds of high society, iron manacles cannot hold her for long.The only metal that really matters is gold.
Where To Buy:
Amazon, Kobo, Odyssey Books (publisher)
From the Author
I’m an Australian fantasy writer, which is why my book is set mainly in Australia. If I had a superpower (other than flying, because who wouldn’t pick flying?) I’d like the ability to pause or speed up time as required. And to never get sick. Super strength might be…
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THE MALICE
Just sharing a recent fantasy review by Bookwraiths – The Malice by Peter Newman. Another book to but on my TBR! Reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic / Fantasy
Series: The Vagrant #2
Publisher: Harper Voyager (April 21, 2015)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Length: 400 pages
My Rating: 3.5 stars
The Vagrant was a revelation in 2015. Peter Newman perfectly blending fantasy, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic themes into a page turning affair. The advanced technology and sky ships, guns and sentient swords, demons and god-like beings, knights and goats thrilling lovers of this type of speculative fiction. All of it told in a lyrical style which caused The Vagrant to bring to mind the ancient myth whispered around the campfires by Homer-like epic poet long ago. And when The Malice offered me a chance to return to this awe-inspiring place with its ravaged wastelands and pristine Shining City, I knew I was in for a thrilling ride
This tale picks up several years after the book’s one conclusion…
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Deep POV Tips Part 2
A few weeks ago I attended a webinar the subject of which was deep third person POV and wrote Part 1 of this series shortly after that time. As promised, here are more tips gleaned from the presentation that you may find helpful you as I know they will for me.
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Editing for Deep POV
The effects of deep POV
The reader is inside the POV character’s mind which keeps the reader part of the action as opposed to being an outside observer.
Show vs. tell problems are eliminated by deep POV so the reader is closer to the action as a result.
Most writers have trouble with passive voice seeping into their writing. With deep POV this passivity is also eliminated in favor of the POV character’s ongoing action.
With deep POV the author’s voice intrudes far less and as a consequence brings the reader closer to the character so that they are fascinated with the motivations of even a repugnant antagonist.
Deep POV keeps the story moving ahead by being in the present, reducing the need for flashbacks (unless the character experiences such an event from trauma) and also reveals only the details the POV character is experiencing. For instance, the POV character cannot know what events and circumstances are affecting another character unless the POVC are informed in some way.
This make the writing tighter so the reader’s attention is more strongly fixed and energized so the reader’s focus wants to find out what happens next and turns pages.
That’s all I have for today. I’ll write more about what I’m learning concerning this writing technique in upcoming posts. Looking for more resources on the subject? Here are some related links you may find interesting:
The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Akerman.
Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson
Writer’s Guide to Emotion: Fiction Writing Tools by Sherry Soule
Looking for more articles on POV? Check out Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.
To find out more about The Bow of Destiny, click over to one of these online retailers:
About the Author
P. H. Solomon lives in the greater Birmingham, AL area where he strongly dislikes yard work and sanding the deck rail. However, he performs these duties to maintain a nice home for his loved ones as well as the family’s German Shepherds. In his spare time, P. H. rides herd as a Computer Whisperer on large computers called servers (harmonica not required). Additionally, he enjoys reading, running, most sports and fantasy football. Having a degree in Anthropology, he also has a wide array of more “serious” interests in addition to working regularly to hone his writing. The Bow of Destiny is his first novel-length title with more soon to come.
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Filed under: Creativity, Deep POV, Editing, Fiction, Tips, What is Needed, Writing Tagged: creativity, Crowdfunding, Crowdsourcing, Deep POV, Indie Publishing, P. H. Solomon, The Bow of Destiny, What is Needed, writing
August 26, 2016
3 Tips for Editing to Deep POV PT 1
Last week I attended a webinar about using deep third person POV. Here are some tips gleaned from the presentation that you may find helpful you as I know they will for me.
P. H. Solom
Editing for Deep POV
Eliminate all words about thinking, seeing, etc. from the POV character. Instead let the internal dialog carry out that function.
Eliminate all prepositional telling – those prepositional phrases that tell about emotion, thoughts, moods, etc. of the POV character. Instead convey these by showing.
Forego using words for emotion and state of being (angry, happy, sad, etc.) and use physical effects from the POV character’s actions, dialog, etc. Familiarize yourself with emotions and how to express them. A great book for this is The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Akerman.
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Still need more pointers? Try these books for deeper POV explanations:
Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson
Writer’s Guide to Emotion: Fiction Writing Tools by Sherry Soule
Looking for more articles on POV? Check out Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.
I’ll share more tips from these books and the webinar over my next several posts and even expand on the concepts as well.
To find out more about The Bow of Destiny, click over to one of these online retailers:
About the Author
P. H. Solomon lives in the greater Birmingham, AL area where he strongly dislikes yard work and sanding the deck rail. However, he performs these duties to maintain a nice home for his loved ones as well as the family’s German Shepherds. In his spare time, P. H. rides herd as a Computer Whisperer on large computers called servers (harmonica not required). Additionally, he enjoys reading, running, most sports and fantasy football. Having a degree in Anthropology, he also has a wide array of more “serious” interests in addition to working regularly to hone his writing. The Bow of Destiny is his first novel-length title with more soon to come.
Sign-up to receive my free ebooks today.
Filed under: Creativity, Deep POV, Editing, Self-publishing, Writing Tagged: Deep POV, Editing, Indie Publishing, P. H. Solomon, Smashwords, The Black Bag, The Bow of Destiny, writing
August 25, 2016
INDIE WEDNESDAY –THE BOW OF DESTINY
Sharing this review of The Bow of Destiny. Bookwraiths doesn’t give out 3 stars lightly. A big thanks for the honest review and a reblog on Archer’s Aim!
Along my reading journey, I’ve made a conscious decision to not only read the books on the shelves at my local Barnes & Nobles store, or online at Amazon, but to also try self-published, or indie, works as often as I can.
Now, I know several of you are snickering in the background or rolling your eyes at my idiot crusade to bring a few good indie works to light. And, believe me, I understand why you’d do that. Several years into this, I have to admit that I’ve probably stopped reading more indie faire than I’ve finished, but those that did keep my attention were — or had the potential to be — above average stories, and I’d like to occasionally share those few in the hope that you might also discover them.
So without any Stephen King disclaimers (Read my review of The Dark Tower Book VII to get the…
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World Builders 3.0 – Level 0: “Why are you building this world?”
It’s the most important foundation of a fantasy novel so this is an important question. There are all kinds of reasons to build a world but knowing the whys of what you are doing makes all the difference. Reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
Welcome to World Builders 3.0, an open-ended series that will run periodically on Fridays. For those who enjoyed the previous incarnations of World Builders, this next generation is going to zero in more on the process of world building itself while I work with fellow fantasy author and world building buff, Malkuthe Highwind to build through our posts a rigorous guide for fantasy world builders.
This week, to kick it all off, we start at the beginning, the question: where do you start?
John: So, my friend, I want to thank you for helping me set up my wiki. Finally, I have a wiki, where I’ll be formally building my world. We squashed lots of bugs to get things working and I’m excited to begin. The only thing is … where do I begin?
Malkuthe: That’s a bit of a tough question, I think, as far as world building goes…
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Scrivener Tips Pt. 4: Project Backups
I recently received a Twitter comment from someone regarding Scrivener and help with backups using Windows. I’m not entirely sure what the issue was but I’ll go ahead and address the subject today. Here are the basics with project backups for Scrivener:
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Keep Scrivener up to date to minimize any issues with the software. To do this click on Help and then on Update Scrivener.
To manage where you backup your projects click on Tools and Choose Options:
Once the Options window opens click on Backup at the end of the menu on the left:
Once you have the backup settings displayed you can click on the Choose button to change the default location of project backups. If you are not changing it but just want to know where the backups are location it is listed there also and you can click on the Open Backup Folder to view backups immediately.
You can also handle an individual backup from the project you have open. Click on File and hover your cursor at Backup to see the fly-out menu. Here you can choose to backup the current project to a specific location. You can force an immediate backup instead of when you close the project. You can also choose to exclude the project from automatic backups.
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Options for Backup Locations
Here are a few thoughts about where to backup your Scrivener projects.
1. On your computer – you can choose to back them up on your computer. However, unless you are backup up the Scrivener backup folder using something else – software or external drive/cloud then you run the risk of losing data should your computer fail in some way.
2. On an external drive – you can backup directly to an external drive but this requires that you have the drive connected whenever you close Scrivener for automatic backups on close or when you manually backup your projects.
3. On the cloud – I have many of my projects located in my Dropbox folder so it is automatically synchronized on the cloud while my automatic backup runs to my computer. I also backup my Dropbox folder to and external drive.
Help Thunderclap my appearance on Beyond the Cover
Project Recovery
To recover a project do the following:
1. Open your backup folder where you will notice that all the project backups are in .zip folders
2. Open the .zip folder for the project and date to which you want to recover.
3. You will see the .scriv folder for the project. Copy the folder to the appropriate work location or a restore folder of your choosing (WARNING: If you overwrite a current folder with a backup folder you may lose changes since the last backup). From any location you should be able to open the project by double clicking on the .scriv folder or using Scrivener to browse to and open the project folder.
For more details on Scrivener backups check the manual by clicking on Help and then Scrivener Manual – the subject is at Appendix B – Options, page 322, B9 – Backup.
Are you in NaNoWriMo yet? If so, what are you doing to prepare? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section.
To find out more about The Bow of Destiny, click over to one of these online retailers:
About the Author
P. H. Solomon lives in the greater Birmingham, AL area where he strongly dislikes yard work and sanding the deck rail. However, he performs these duties to maintain a nice home for his loved ones as well as the family’s German Shepherds. In his spare time, P. H. rides herd as a Computer Whisperer on large computers called servers (harmonica not required). Additionally, he enjoys reading, running, most sports and fantasy football. Having a degree in Anthropology, he also has a wide array of more “serious” interests in addition to working regularly to hone his writing. The Bow of Destiny is his first novel-length title with more soon to come.
Sign-up to receive my free ebooks today.
Scrivener screenshots from my 2015 blog project.
Cover art commission from Christopher Rawlins
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Filed under: Blogging, Cover Reveal, Creativity, Indie Publishing, Scrivener, Self-publishing, Tech Tips, Templates, The Black Bag, The Bow of Destiny, Tips, Twitter, Writing Tagged: blogging, Coverart, creativity, Facebook, Indie Publishing, P. H. Solomon, Scrivener, Self-publishing, The Black Bag, The Bow of Destiny, Twitter, writing
August 24, 2016
On the Two Types of Inspiration — By Elan Samuel
The fusion of inspiration and discipline is quite important for authors – more so for those in speculative fiction. I found this quite an interesting discussion about putting it all together to get the job done. Reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
Today, Elan Samuel returns to EFW to discuss inspiration. After convincing himself that he was donewaiting for inspiration to strike, he decided that he could seek it for himself. Read more below. For more by Elan, click here.
Over and again I hear (or read) established authors being asked about where they find their inspiration or how they “do it,” where it is simply “write books.” It’s a question I can certainly relate to, after a fashion. Truth be told, I’ve asked it many times. The reality of the creative process is not so glamorous, and folks like me (the less experienced and those of us on the beginning of our authorial journey) want to know the secret sauce. How is it that people like Brandon Sanderson and Stephen King can write so much? How did author x or y even come up with their incredible ideas? How can…
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Welcome to P.H. Solomon’s THE LOST BOW tour
This is one of the stops from last week’s Lost Bow Blog Tour for The Bow of Destiny. It features a few tidbits about the world setting, Denaria. Reblogging on Archer’s Aim!
Today it’s my great pleasure to host awesome fantasy author, P.H. Solomon who’s currently out there on THE LOST BOW tour. Today we’re in the Lands of Denaria – take it away P.H.!
Haunted by his past. Hunted in the present. Uncertain what is real.
Athson has seen things that aren’t there and suffered fits since being tragically orphaned as a child at the hands of trolls and Corgren the wizard. When a strange will mentioning a mysterious bow comes into his possession, he’s not sure it’s real. But the trolls that soon pursue him are all too real and dangerous. And what’s worse, these raiders serve Corgren and his master, the hidden dragon, Magdronu, who are responsible for the destruction of his childhood home. Athson is drawn into a quest for the concealed Bow of Hart by the mystic Withling, Hastra, but Athson isn’t always sure what’s real and…
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