​This week I’m supporting a Science, Technology, Engineering, Math conference for my job, which is pretty cool. I love seeing the new technology the kids are working on and it gets me out of the office for a week which is always nice. Checking out the 3D printing and robotics is pretty awesome. It makes me wonder how much better my High School would have been if I’d been able to have options like that for courses to study when growing up. One of the many things I’d love to pick up is serious programming or 3D graphic design skills. Nothing is stopping me except having enough time to squeeze it into my busy schedule, so one day I’m sure I’ll work it in, just not right now.
                During one of the conference breaks I was checking out some of the up and coming movies and ran into the World of Warcraft movie for 2016. I’m not sure what I’d expected story wise. Something like a group of gamers being sucked into their MMO game somehow. I just wasn’t sure how Blizzard was going to approach the storyline. But as always Blizzard kicks ass. Instead of doing what people expected, they just made the story of WarCraft into a movie and it looks freaking awesome. The main human hero is played by Travis Fimmel, who plays Ragnar Lodbrok in Vikings, which I thought was pretty awesome. The hero role fits his looks perfectly. Anyway, I’m supper excited to see the movie and you know they’re going to have the ability to have multiple movies based on their storylines from World of Warcraft, so if this movie is well received we should be seeing a bunch more movies in the same series.
To be honest, so far the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016 is shaping up to be an incredible line of movies that I just can’t wait to see. Some of my favorites are Captain America: Civil War, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and of course Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I also saw another up and coming movie that could be really awesome or suck incredibly, the movie is called Gods of Egypt. Even though I am a huge Egyptian fan in general, I would even have to say the whole “Egypt Theme” has been overplayed throughout the last fifty years of movies. Still I have to say the movie caught my eye. I’ve never seen Egypt pictured like they did in this story, with a battle of the gods. Even cooler is the massive monsters and incredible armor and swords that the gods wear when fighting. The incredible graphics and oversized larger than life monsters alone could make the movie worth seeing. I also included the Deadpool movie in the mix for those hardcore gamers like me. Hopefully all of the good parts aren’t in the trailer. Deadpool is one of those games that either you love or hate, I don’t think there’s much in-between. If they did the story right it could really rock, but either way I have to check out the movie. I was really surprised by the last Captain America movie. I loved how the movie hit many of the current major issues we’re facing today as a society and this new release just looks like it has taken this off the hook. I’m really looking forward for the movie, especially when you know they have crossover heroes like Ant-man in the mix. It’s even better due to the whole Ironman vs Captain America theme coming out at the same time Batman vs Superman is being released, which is another movie I’m jonsin to see. The action and effects just looks awesome. I’m not even going to bother going over my excitement for the new Star Wars movie. I mean seriously, what Sci-Fi freak isn’t excited to see the movie? Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with any of the movies listed, I’ve added them below.
                What can I say, I’m a big fan of powerful heroes fighting against massive oversized evil monsters. When a movie can pull off a great storyline and graphics with both of my beloved stereotypes then I couldn’t be happier, which reminds me of a new book series I’ve just been reading. A friend of my introduced me to John Conroe’s The Demon Accords series, which I absolutely love. Unfortunately, even though John is pushing out novels at a high rate of speed, I still end up having to wait too long for his next book to come out. Same problem with the other writers of the same style that I love to read, like: Richard Raley’s The Foul Mouth, Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files and Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series, so I was really excited when I accidentally ran into William E. Brown’s Daniel Black series. I’m just like a kid with a new toy and read three books in three days. By the time I’d finished the last book I was happy and sad that there wasn’t a number four out yet, since I needed a day or two to recover from staying up late reading. If you get a chance definitely check the Daniel Back Series out.  
                I hope that I manage to achieve this same fervor with my own books. From the reviews I’ve received I feel like I’m hitting the storyline right, but I won’t know for sure until I can get Destiny out and see what everyone thinks. I’m so excited about the story and sharing it that I can’t stand it. I did try to put in a little more meat into the storyline, which slowed down some of my balls-to-the-wall action. Still, I believe I’ve kept the action moving fast enough to make everyone happy.
                Anyway, I’m getting lots of time to work on my editing this week. I’m already nearly half way through the manuscript! For now, back to my editing. Hope everyone has a great weekend.   

​     Being an avid fanboy of Sci-Fi/Fantasy in general and a huge gamer for most of my life, the concepts of armor styles, clothing, culture and the reasons behind “why” the characters wear what they wear and act the way they do are very important to me. The stories I grew up with at that time dealt with serious adult themes and moral issues that marked me for life. Movies like the Ralph Bakeshi’s Lord of the Rings Series and Wizards animated movies and even the Saturday morning cartoons I watched had solid stories to them with complete worlds. Cartoon shows like Thundarr the Barbarian, The Herculoids and the ThunderCats, the artwork of Dungeons and Dragons, reading novels like Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity and Xanth Series, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars Series, Jack L. Chalker’s Well World Series, Joel Rosenberg’s The Guardian of the Flame Series, Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Series are many of the formative influences that inflamed my love for the genre in my formative years. The heroes, heroines and species that were in these stories varied greatly in their physical appearance and equipment. Some were heavily armored, while others had light to no armor, but it all made sense in regards to the world/universe that they lived in and to the overall storyline.
     Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to play Dungeons and Dragons. I always wanted to play the campaigns and bought them just to read the stories, but at that time finding other geeks wasn’t so easy. Whoever they were they had to be in range of my bicycle. Also my family, like many adults at that time, thought Dungeons and Dragons was “Satin’s Game”. Sounds crazy now-a-days, but it was a serious concern at the time. Dr. Demento did a great spoof mocking this insanity to break people out of their idiocy at the time. Really, they were just the previews of the modern LAN party. That’s because any “gaming party” or “LAN party” or all night “MMO bender” was always fueled with high caffeinated soda like Jolt Cola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_Cola or Bawls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bawls and pizza.
     When I think back to that time, it’s sad to think that playing board games like Risk with total world domination was acceptable, but playing anything with a fantasy theme was considered evil. It makes you question the morality of society at that time, although in reality it was just ignorant people afraid of things they didn’t understand and weren’t interested in understanding. Although I like this graphic rendition better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Rop4Zt-S0 I’ve put the full skit down below, because it has the full skit with the “Den of Satan” intro.

     Growing up as a kid, I never thought about the female heroines in the books, cartoons and movies I watched as being weak or men being super, I never questioned the armor or lack thereof. I just loved the action, the characters and the morality of the stories. I never looked at the female characters in the “Dungeon and Dragons Cartoon” as being oversexualized weak females. Sheila and Diana were strong characters that spoke their mind and fought smartly. In “The Herculoids”, Tara was a woman to be reckoned with who didn’t shirk from a fight and was beautiful to boot. Even in “Thundarr the Barbarian” where wielding a Lightsaber came into vogue before there was ever a Star Wars, there was the main female lead named Princess Ariel who was kick ass and was highly intelligent. Lastly, at least for this blog’s list is Cheetara from the ThunderCats who was an incredible warrior and priestess who was her own woman. For me, these female characters had a major effect on me, drawing me towards strong females in my adult life. For those of you who don’t know the comics or want to reminiscent, I’ve added the trailers to the shows below.
     Between all of these different Sci-Fi and Fantasy influences, I have a twisted perspective on armor styles to a certain extent. D&D basic was my first influence on fantasy art. David C. Sutherland III’s artwork was flashy and cool with fit characters, but it wasn’t the overtly sexualized artwork that you see in modern day MMO’s. I especially loved the iconic character artwork for Morgan Ironwolf. Where did you think Startüm Ironwolf got his last name from? Here are some of the links to the artwork from that time, although basic there is a certain flare to the images: 

​and most especially iconic Morgan Ironwolf

​     ElfQuest was an especially a favorite animation cartoon for me. The story of how Elves combined their lives with wolves to become a new species to survive a savage world explained the Elves clothing style and barbarian. Like any fan I loved the relationship that the Elves shared with their wild wolf companions.

​     This story concept was used in different ways. I loved how in the Dungeons and Dragons Endless Quest book “Return to Brookmere” the story used giant weasels in the story line. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/878980.Return_to_Brookmere I never forgot the story even as I got older. I actually even re-read the story to get a feel for how Return to Brookmere flowed to an extent.
     In many ways the Wild Elves of Irlendria are flavored with many of these traits. The link Argus and Enelya share, the culture of the Wild Elf tribe that was influenced by all of these things, but with my own twist. When I was first developing the clothing and style I found a picture that in many ways exemplified my visual conception of the Wild Elves within my story here: 

​     The recent love/hate relationship modern gamers have with the over-feminization of female characters is new to the genre to a certain extent. I’m not saying that female armor was not oversexualized prior to this, but I think female armor has moved to a level of overt sexual appeal that was before not common to the genre in general and one that I am of two minds about. On the one hand, I have played with many female gamers and know they love to have their character look “HOT” and like sexy armor to a point. Usually until the armor between male and female characters begin to look something like this.

​     While visually pleasing to the eye for many of us guys, I can understand the negative feedback that questions the total impracticality of the armor. To a point, having physically fit female characters makes total sense, so that part of the character design doesn’t bother me. I mean, if you’re adventuring and fighting all of the time, you’re going to be physically fit and muscle mass is reasonably different between the sexes. I think my biggest complaint with the MMO’s move in the direction of skimpy armor for their female characters is the lack of reasoning for its existence within the game’s universe. What is the reason that a female player’s skimpy armor is just as effective as a male player’s total body covering armor? It normally doesn’t make any sense. This lack of following the MMO’s universe’s rules is what I think is so upsetting to a lot of players. Well, besides the fact that the game designers are dressing their female avatars like willowy stripers. I enjoyed Gnoggin’s video discussion on this issue.

​     Here are some of my favorite spoofs on this negative skimpy armor themes. 

     When I was creating my universe this whole concept of armor and reasoning was something that I had to sit down and contemplate. On one side, I wanted some of my characters to be sexy and skimpily clad, while other characters I wanted to be fully armored. What would be the reasoning for this? What would make sense to have this in my storyline? After a lot of thought, I addressed this on three different levels.
     The first was designing my sorcerers/sorceresses and wizards to pull their magic power in through their skin. The more exposed skin they had, the faster they could draw in their magic power to store their mana pool. Another point on power intake rule is that it differs for Paladins and Clerics due to the fact that their power is derived from a “holy” nature. This gave me an excellent reasoning and a beautiful opening to have fun with some of my special characters within the story.
     The second part to the rules within my universe was the incorporation of rune tattoos into the skin that can be used for protection. This “powered tattoo option” gives me a lot of flexibility for my magic welders to show more skin for their magical absorption, while still having an option to protect themselves in battle to a point. Albeit, this protection is not as effective as fully armored warriors with powered runes inscribed into their armor, still the main important thing for me was to follow the rules of my universe and have the skimpy armor worn for a reason.
     The third level I address this difference in armor was culturally. My Centaurs are similar to American Plains Indians/preverbal barbarians. While they use armor to a point, culturally they are not inclined to use much armor in general. This also includes clothing. The Centaurs in my universe are not concerned with nudity. The items they wear are for carrying weapons and equipment and not for modesties sake. On the other hand, the Minotaurs within my storyline wear heavy armor for protection and clothing, because it’s socially expected within their society. Having this “reasoning” was extremely important for me in creating my universe and the various races within the world of Irlendria.  
     Anyway, just to give everyone and update on my progress. The editing is coming along great for Destiny. I haven’t gone back over the story until now, which was something I purposely intended to do. This is because the longer it’s been since I’ve read the story, the easier it is for me to evaluate my writing and find my errors. While I like Flight’s storyline, now-a-days when I go back over my writing I now find areas that I’m not happy with even though I love the storyline itself. I see where I could have done better. This is something I want to try to clean up once I’ve passed on my editing corrections to my friends who are helping to clean up the book, before I publish Destiny. The cool thing is I’m not seeing this now that I’m going back over the words for Destiny. Instead I keep thinking to myself, “Damn this is good!”
     Like I said earlier, I have a lot of stuff I wanted to put out and talk about, but just didn’t have time. I did have to take an evening away from editing to get the post out, but this whole discussion over the universe and characters styles and clothing was pretty fun for me to talk about. For now that’s my update, I hope everyone has a great weekend.

​Editing is always an interesting process. All of your mistakes you’ve made over the entire time of the project get brought into the light of day. Things that sounded like a good idea two years ago are now really bad ideas that you have to correct. Like for example the idea I had to shorten up my paragraphs to give the text a faster reading to increase the speed of the story.
When I read the article on editing, it sounded like a great idea and probably has some truth to it even now, but you need to be really careful on how you implement this into your own writing. I did this for something like the first twenty or so chapters. Now I need to go back over what I did and make sure I didn't chop it up too much. I am trying to be aware of how I build paragraph structures, which is all part of this shorten paragraph concept. I’ll have to now closely re-read the story while I’m doing my corrections to get the full thoughts re-aligned once again as they should be. It’s just something else that I have to focus on along while I’m doing all of my other editing.
I think for any Indie Writer, the best thing you can do is take the lead from the genre of authors that you yourself love and enjoy reading. I take most of my guidance for things like this from my favorite authors like Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Richard Raley and John Conroe. I observe how they structure their paragraphs; I study how they do their transitions within their stories. Then I try to incorporate those concepts in my own work.
Most importantly, I try to be brutally honest with myself. If something isn’t right or needs work, I accept the criticism and do my best to learn from it. I know I am not perfect. I know that my writing is something I’m teaching myself and that it will be something that gets better with time.
One of the hardest things to get as a writer to get is true criticism from your friends. As a writer, our human nature wants to make excuses for the negative things we might hear about our book. As a friend, we don’t want to hurt our friendship by telling our friend the truth, especially when we know it will hurt our friend or cause a schism in our relationship. It takes effort as a writer to have your friends trust in you enough to tell you the truth of what they really think about your story. The pluses, the minuses and everywhere they think could use some improvement. Then it is up to us, the writer, to take everything we have heard and decide what is good for us to use, what we need to discard and what we need to tweak. Criticism is never easy to take, but I would rather hear this from my friends who are trying to help me improve my story. Because once you publish your story, the readers and critics that read your work aren't going to be gentle and understanding to your mistakes. No, whether or not that they picked up your book free or paid in cash, they're going to compare your story to the current greatest hits on the market. Some will give you the brutal truth, good or bad, while others will simply bash you just because your an Indie writer. 
                I’m adding another trailer of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic. If you check this out it won’t give you any spoilers like last week’s trailer would have gone. One of the best parts that I love about this trailer is when the two High Templars merge during the battle into an Archon (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Archon). For the Protoss, this transformation is when two High Templars give their lives to form one Supreme Being. In the game, the unit would always transform and immediately say “Power Overwhelming!” in this energy-infused deep voice. Always freaking awesome! In the trailer, Blizzard brings the Archon to life with that same pizzazz.

​I try to bring this same feeling of over the top powerful warriors into my stories whenever I can. It fits beautifully with the whole Werewolf/Paladin concept I have going on in the series. Now I have a Minotaur Species that I’ve brought into the storyline for book two. The species is just as physically overwhelming as you’d imagine a real life Minotaur would be. I also added the whole StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Opening Cinematic for those of you who don’t know the game. I really love the whole StarCraft series. The artwork, the game, the different species, their abilities and the whole storyline is amazing. It’s just so awesome.

​(Content Warning: For those of you not interested in computer gaming and MMOGS, the next several paragraphs are for gamers who enjoy talking about gaming. The subject: Why is WoW dying?)
               
For all of my life I have been a huge fan of anything Sci-Fi/Fantasy and a gamer. For computer games it didn’t matter if it was FPS, Real-Time Strategy or MMOGS, I loved them all. Even now when I find myself too busy to actually find time to play, I still keep up with my favorite video game and my eyes peeled for new titles coming out all the time. Besides helping with ideas for writing, they also just inflame my imagination.
                Unfortunately, over the years I’ve noticed that I’ve found myself less drawn to actually playing computer games for the most part. While part of that is due to a general lack of time and my past history of being a Guild Leader for Black Rook Hold on World of Warcraft’s Llane server and going through a major breakup with my then girlfriend/co-Guild Leader, I’ve come to realize that there is more to my lack of interest in playing MMOGS then just the baggage. I ran into two interesting videos that had some good points on this, which you can watch below. While SignsOfKelani makes some good points in the videos, I disagree with his overall premise to a point.

          While I’m going to say “Blizzard”, I really believe that many of these points could be said for most MMOGS that have been out for the last ten years. Like other MMOGS, Blizzard has tried to respond to the gaming community’s wants and desires to make everyone happy, but in striving to make every type of gamer happy they have ruined the general playability of WoW for the long term. The problem I believe is a general “dumbing down/making the game easier and quicker” then anything else.
          The first big change that I’ve seen hurt many MMOGS is making the game easier to level high level characters. Blizzard is not the first to do this. The first MMOG I ever played was Anarchy Online. Yea … yea, I’m sure you’re surprised it wasn’t EverQuest. It would have been EverQuest if I had a good enough internet connection to play the game at the time. I didn’t, so I hosted LAN parties until my first DSL connection. Anyway, previously Anarchy Online made you save your experience between missions (aka: dungeons). Meaning, if you were in a dungeon and died, you lost all of your experience points gained for the next level. This seems like a horrible idea to the casual gamer, but in actuality it made a lot of sense for the long playability of the game itself. Players didn’t get up to high levels without knowing how to play their class or without knowing how to play with other people in the game world. SignsOfKelani argues that gamers are much more experienced in the mechanics of gaming, while true to a point. Mashing buttons and bum rushing your enemy isn't the strategy of playing your character and working within your team to overcome your enemies. A player's character itself had a certain amount of reputation on the server. Also, if you were an annoying unsociable little shit that couldn’t play well with others; you didn’t level until you learned the above. When you saw a high level character, you knew that person had worked to get that character up to a high level and knew how to play. When they took this away, the game completely changed and not for the better. Over night teams became obnoxious events that made playing with unknown strangers anything but enjoyable. To be honest, I don’t think Anarchy Online ever recovered from their decision to do this. Blizzard over the years has done this in a different way. They have made the games focus on the end game content only and have made it very easy for players to quickly level up a new character and bypass the main content of the World of Warcraft. Although Blizzad’s take on this was different than Anarchy Online, the same comparisons can be made to an extent and also leads into my next point.
          The second big issue is making looking for groups, dungeons, raids and teams easier has created a host of secondary problems. Previously you could follow a storyline for a series of quests that lead to unlocking major game events or you could simply run to the dungeon by exploration and get a certain amount of quests completed. While this might be considered annoying to people who just want to level their character up because their friends are high level, it really is a disservice to the world itself . Just leveling up a character and bypassing this content means these players are missing a huge part of the game and what makes playing an MMOG enjoyable in the first place (Aka the social aspect and the world itself). If these are new players, they are going to get their fix by joining their friends for a quick few games and then leaving the MMOG. They’re not really there for the game itself or for any longevity. Changing the entire world to fit their fleeting gaming habits means you’re removing the playability to your entire player base to a point. The whole looking for groups, dungeons, raids and teams where you’re transported directly to the dungeon automatically is also removing the MMOG’s playable content. No longer do you need to take the time to form relationships with other gamers, ask people how to find the dungeon, explorer the world or learn how to form teams on your own. For the sake of convenience and to speed leveling up your character quickly, you can do this on the fly. All for the sake of getting to the “End Game”, while bypassing again everything that makes a social MMOG worth playing.
          Lastly, games have specialized content for a reason, to give a player something to look forward to and work for. There has been this huge push to make the “End Game” easier for every player, casual/hardcore, to be able to experience the game content easily and quickly, but in doing so the game is over quickly. There is not striving to get through those specialized areas. The casual gamer is angry because to get to these areas takes so much hard work in learning their characters and getting a group of friends together to go through the content that they want it made easier, while the hardcore gamer want to be able to hit this harder content in a challenging way and be considered special for being able to do these difficult dungeons.
          In truth, I think having these specialized areas are essential to MMOGS. Having something to strive to attain makes the earning it so much better. Makes these world events on par with a normal dungeon is like being given a first place trophy for something you’ve never accomplished. What meaning does that have for you if it was just given to you when you didn’t truly earn the accomplishment? I think high content within MMOGS should be similar. When the game designers just hand it to you without any effort, then the desire to strive for it is no longer there. This is why I think many of the MMOGS are struggling to hold onto any type of character base. WoW still has so many because the game is so good, but even they are beginning to loose players in unbelievable numbers.
          I think that’s enough of my gaming philosophy on MMORG for now. I hope I didn’t bore any of you non-gamers out of your mind. Anyway, for now I’m working my butt of getting Destiny cleaned up and ready to publish. Also, I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

I can’t even begin to describe the feeling I get when I finally write “The End”. It’s just incredible. What makes it even better is to know that I’ve written the story that I wanted to write. It doesn’t matter that the book is almost twice the size of Flight. What matters is that it’s the full story I wanted to tell. The only down side is that now I have to edit the story, which is always an eye-bleeding process. Still, every time I get better and faster.
There are several close friends that have offered/volunteered to help edit the story with me and a handful of fans that are interested in giving me their pre-publishing thoughts on the overall story. Expect to be hearing from me soon. I’ve already warned my friends Patrick, Deanna and Leslie. I’m really excited to get their feedback.
About halfway through the book I just went silent and stopped sharing out my rough storyline with my friends. Not because anyone disliked the story, actually the feedback I’d been getting was awesome. No, it was because I really wanted the entire story to be read fresh. I wanted to give my friends a clean, sharp, nearly finished piece of work. Although it helps to be able to read the entire story through from start to finish to get proper feel of the story in its entirety; the other reason was to assist in the entire editing process. You can only read a story through so many times before you stop reading the words and mentally start replacing the mistakes as you read.    
When I wrote my first book, Flight my friends like Patrick and Deanna really help give me the confidence to go through the entire process and let me know my story was a good, fun read. With Destiny, I didn’t need that constant handholding. Now that I know I can write, I focused on creating the best story I could. I can’t wait to get it out and share it with everyone!
Also, I plan to start blogging again now that I’ve gotten the rough draft finished. Who knows, maybe I’ll even do some videos on my Youtube channel. With everything that’s been going, I’ve had to focus on the priorities of work, family and writing first. Unfortunately, that meant blog updates took a backseat until things settled down.
Things are always happening in my life. I rarely get a chance to sit back and catch a breath, but then again I’ve never been one to just sit back and let life pass me by. I always try to remember the feeling of “Being Hungry”. That might sound like an odd statement, but it’s a feeling that I used to live with on a daily basis. Born into an abusive, dirt poor home, I grew up hungry. I grew up trying to be better than the situation I was born into. Sci-Fi/Fantasy, books and movies, I grew up with larger than life heroes and heroines who strove against incredible odds to overcome the evil they faced.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, except that I loved the stories, but as I’ve gotten older I see how those stories have affected my perspective on life. Whatever I need to do, I just do it. I don’t worry about the odds, I don’t worry if people say it’s impossible or there’s no way I can do something. Instead I find a way to make it happen.
The “Being Hungry” thing is something that I realized just recently. I was talking to my friend Domenic back in Florida one day and said to him. I try to stay hungry. If I eat too much in the evenings, I get feeling fat and happy, which means I’m less productive in following my goals. Whatever those might be at the time. Instead, I try to eat less to give me that feeling from when I was young. That needing to do whatever it takes to reach the goal I’m striving for. When I say “do whatever it takes”, I don’t mean being dishonorable. I mean, learn, do or work at whatever I need to reach my next goal.
The funny thing today is that I just had a work colleague send me an interesting video after we were on the topic of working hard and getting things done. Now what he sent me was the video: "Excuses Are For Bitches". Although the language is quite strong, it’s hits the problem most of us has faced at one time or another head-on. The funny part for me came once the video ended and I the follow-up video started playing. This was from Les Brown and his motivational speech, “You’ve gotta be hungry” video. I’ve added both below. If you don’t like a bunch of swearing or hearing it straight, you won’t want to click on the video “Excuses Are For Bitches”, but definitely check out the Les Brown video. It’ll send chills down your spine and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t get into that kind of stuff usually.

​On a side note, I just ran into a music video that I just love. I ran into the song when I was driving my wife’s car. She likes to take out my music and put hers in instead. While I’m usually more into alternative or industrial generally, I do listen to a lot of different types of music. When I like a song, I usually have to look up the video. But when I checked out the video, it just made me laugh. Don’t get me wrong, the ladies are beautiful and I love the eyes of the lead singer, but the video is like an 80’s throwback, which just makes me love it all that much more. What draws me to the song itself is the driving need that underlays the whole song. Anyway, the title is “Pray to God” by Calvin Harris. 

​I’ve got a bunch more youtube videos, books and anime movies and I want to talk about and share, but I’ll save that for the next blog. Especially the whole new StarCraft2 Legacy of the Void that was just released, which I’ll link here too. Hope everyone has a great Friday. 

​The last time I touched base with everyone I’d just finished dealing with having our house flooded for two hours with a river of mud before leaving on vacation. That’s quite the odd way to have a vacation start. I’d planned on having a week and a half to relax at home and get some writing in before our trip, but instead the whole time before we left we worked until we dropped from exhaustion. While that was rough and difficult to deal with, at least I was off of work and had the time to deal with the disaster. Coming back from vacation and heading straight back to office meant that every free moment I had was spent fixing the floors, moving furniture, repainting and etc … etc. It took over a month to get my daughter’s room back together so she could stop sleeping in the living room. Last weekend was the first weekend that things were back to normal and of course that meant coming down with a viral flue for a week. I’m usually not sick and not especially for a week at a time, but maybe it was my body’s way of making me rest after having so many emergencies and things going on at once. It did give me a chance to get some good writing time in, even if I had to take naps in-between. Anyway, I’ve added some picture and video fun for those of you who are interested in seeing what happened, check out the video below. The water coming in from the window is before it got bad. At one point my wife and her nephew were both holding the window closed, while icy cold water shot out from the edges with the strength of a fire hose! Oh, and the white under all the brown is the white tile floor.   

​Surprisingly enough, even with everything going on I was able to get a lot of good writing time in. It looks like I’ll probably be hitting 750 pages by the time I finish this final battle scene. Partly that’s because I had to add to the story to get some people into position, while the other part consisted of getting all the different elements into play. I was watching some Transformer’s 1 and 2 for idea of how I wanted to finish up the final battle scene with the Ukkodians working with the Marine and Navy components that make up Task Force 60. I was especially interested in when how the movie did the Scorponok Desert Battle with bringing in the strike groups and the flipping around of action scenes from the different components within the battle. I know, it sounds like a hard thing to fully incorporate into a scene, but I’ve been trying to get that action packed feel with the flavor of the different types of units involved. I think so far I’ve done a good job in putting the scene together and keeping the action popping. I’ve also been watching some Space Marine 40k videos too, since I think of Paladins and Ukkodians as kind of pre-Space Marines to a point. A great idea gather is the video Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine game walk through video. You can check out both videos below. 

​I just hit a point I had to sit down and figure out how I was going to have the human Ukkodians deal with demon warriors. I’ve set the Scourge as being almost too physically strong for even enhanced humans to go toe-to-toe, at least at this time. Don’t get me wrong, enhanced humans can fight against them, they just can’t meet their full strength head-on. If the Scourge are that physically powerful and they are on the lower end of the spectrum of enemies, than how am I supposed to handle demons? Also, whatever answer I come up with must work with the rest of the series’ storyline. Interesting to say the least.
This was my main thought driving home Friday evening. Over the weekend I’ve just been letting my mind work through different permutations of the battle. Today I think I have the basic mechanics worked out, which needs to be solidly in place before I start writing the last scene to finish up the story. The fighting should be pretty interesting with lots of movement and completely different than how the main hero Startüm fights against these creatures. Also it has to bring all of the pieces I have in play together. So far I really like how it’s shaping up.   
At times I wonder if I should release the book in smaller quarter segments for one or two dollars each like I’ve seen some new writers doing. It’s tempting in one way. It would be nice to get the story out sooner and not make people wait so long for the entire book to be finished, but to finish up any story correctly takes a lot of work. To be honest I’d rather spend less time on that process and more time on writing, because my rough draft needs lots and lots of clean up. It’s easier to just go through it at one time, also cheaper since I wouldn’t have to do new book covers each time either. Also, from what I’ve been reading about some of the top writers is that they are not too concerned about writing more before releasing their book. It seems like they’d rather have a great story and end it where they want to then to worry about a predetermined page or word count. The more I think about it for my own story the more it seems like a good idea and basically explains what I’ve been doing with Destiny. I’m just writing the story I want and ending it at the point where I’ve planned this whole time. If there is more details and pieces of the story then I planned on initially, it’s okay. I’m just letting the story tell itself, even if that means I’m writing a longer book than I’d planned initially. If I tried to rush the story, compress it or leave something out, then I wouldn’t be happy with the results, so why not do it right the first time?
I’ll try to keep up my blog posts better as long life gives me the time. Otherwise the blog gets set to the side as I focus on work, life and keeping the story going. Don’t worry, it’ll be worth the wait. You’ll end up getting two stories for the price of one, even with me pushing some stuff out until book three. Also I’ve added in a couple of our vacation pics from Monte Carlo and France. We ended up driving back through France on our trip back home instead of driving through Monte Carlo, Italy, Milano, Switzerland and then Germany. It would have been cooler to drive the second route, especially since I’m a Civilization V player who has had to takeover Milano in most of my games. What?!? It’s the best way for me to get them to produce the units I want for domination wins. Only a gamer would compare driving through Europe to a Civilization V game. 

I keep on trying to get back into the practice of updating my blog on a regular basis, but every time I turn around something major is happening.

Just before I started my vacation, I found out that Teksyndicate is doing a European Tour. I was getting ready to grill when a friend of mine, Angela, posted on Facebook that Vincent Zain (aka: Ian) was going to be in Germany with his good friend Ward Hale (aka: Logan) and she’d wondered if he’d made plans on visiting me while they were driving through the country on tour. Unfortunately with all of the crazy plans and meeting up with fans from Ward’s website https://teksyndicate.com/, he completely forgot about letting me know when they were going to be in country, so we didn’t get a chance to meet up in Frankfurt when they were on their way to Munich. There was no way I was driving down to Munich Sunday afternoon on a school night … I mean work night. That would have been an eight to ten hour round trip drive for me “IF” there was no traffic and that doesn’t even take into the account hanging out. I would definitely need more time for hanging out with those two since they are still hardcore gamers and metal heads looking to have fun and see the nightlife in Germany. Still, it was a big disappointment.

One of the things that I hate about living in Germany is that I don’t usually get any time to meet up with my old gaming friends. Usually when I head back to Florida I make sure to take some time to visit people one-on-one here and there, but unfortunately there’s no massive LAN party to hang out and BBQ at like old times. Don’t get me wrong, now-a-days I suck ass at playing, but for me it’s no longer about winning. I mean, of course I always want to win and try to win, but it’s not about gaming or winning, but just seeing those good friends I miss. Now for my friends, it might be more about beating my ass, since I was so hardcore to beat in-game when I was into playing.   

Vacation started Thursday when I left work. Even though I had a lot to do, such as picking up my daughter and my wife’s nephew from the airport (a four hour trip), I surprisingly had a chance to get a lot of writing in. The plan was to take a week to relax and pack for our trip and then head to the south of France, but then Monday morning at 2 AM (02:00 for you Europeans) a river of muck decided to take a trip through the bottom portion of our house. Now Tuesday morning (around 00:30) I’ve finally had a chance to get dry and sit down before collapsing.

Coming from Florida, I have a long history with flooding and being declared a disaster zone. My home city of Rosdorf here in Germany would be close to hitting that “disaster zone” level. What I find really odd in comparison between Florida and Germany with flooding is that usually in Florida you get a warning when shit’s about to get bad. In Germany you find out when the shit just hits out of the middle of nowhere. While a lot of rain, a large hill and a farmer’s field might not sound as exciting as a hurricane, surprisingly enough I have learned to have some respect for this combo. It’s amazing how much water can start traveling downhill at once to create a flash flood. My wife sent me up to our backyard (we have a two level house since we live on a hill) and the amount of water I saw waiting to pour into our house made me realize there wasn’t jack I could do to stop it, so instead I came up with a great plan. Open up the back window it was pouring into and the front door. Sounds strange, but there really wasn’t any other choice. The water and mud poured through the house and then things got better. Better is relative. Better meant lots of water damage and a carpet of mud two inches deep, but better than the river that was passing through a moment earlier. Once things calmed down we were able to clean things up. The whole lower level of our house is thrashed and our landlords are going to have some major repairs to do, but it’s clean. Oh, we also found out that the flood insurance we have doesn’t count for natural flooding, only man made flooding. My wife had specifically requested to have full coverage, but the jack who wrote up the policy didn’t add in natural flooding and we missed that point.

Luckily it’s just stuff. The important things, such as our lives and health are good. The other stuff, although upsetting, is just stuff. I’ve lost everything I’ve owned before, this isn’t the first time … more like the fourth … but there is only so much you can do. We are still going to go on vacation. We’d lose too much not going and well staying won’t make things better.    

Story wise tying up this last fight scene is time consuming. I’m not even bothering to worry about word counts or anything like that. I just want the scene written correctly. When of my plans with the Last Paladin Series is to have the story progress somewhat like an MMO’s major dungeon crawl. Each book needs to have a major boss to defeat or deal with that opens up the next book to the series. The “boss experiences” have to be unique and over the top, so I’m trying to come up with a scene that was as cool as the ending climatic fight scene in Flight. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do this adequately, but now that I’m almost completely through the scene I have to say I think I hit it. It’s really sounding good.

Okay, I think that is enough for an update. I need to go collapse in bed. 
I'm adding a link for those of you who are interested in seeing the flooding. The video is in German, but the pictures of the flooding is all the explanation you need. http://www.wetteronline.de/wetter-videos

I’ve noticed that most of the urban writers that I tend to read usually bring their home stomping grounds into their stories. I believe this is an excellent way to bring a touch of reality and grounding to your novels as you twist the world around you to fit your vision. I figured if Patricia Briggs can make the Tri-Cities areas of Washington exciting and interesting, then I should have no problem bringing my old stomping grounds in Florida to life for my first book, Flight. I mean come on its Florida. There are so many different things to choose from. I was able to reference the Coral Castle and Trapper Nelson’s, both of which are super cool locations. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve canoed down the Loxahatchee River on my way to Trapper Nelson’s to hang out for a day in the wilds of Florida. The whole area is just cool and great for the imagination. Not to mention, it was just cool to create an action packed story like Flight in my hometown.    

For Destiny’s story, I wanted to do something similar, hence the whole European / NATO feel of my story. Being stationed in overseas and frequenting places like Ramstein Airbase just made me want to be able to create a story around these cool places in my daily life, so in book two I’ve tried to do my best to bring in the cultural stuff from living and working in Europe into the story. Agents Beth Kurwoski and Ryan Moss end up flying into Ramstein Airbase in a C-17 Globemaster III before flying out of Naples, Italy in a V-22 Marine Osprey. Klaus Krüger, a German Ukkodian who is essential in helping Beth and Ryan in get several groups of Ukkodians together, is a fun character taken directly from a nice German I used to work with at the Army Corps of Engineers. His first name is Klaus. Klaus in many ways is built from this interesting man, which helps to breathe life into this character. Klaus (when you say that you have to use a hard “K” sounds that drags out like Kkkloous) happens to get three young Polish men to join him for the adventure. Again, due to my wife’s heritage and our yearly visits to her family in Poland, I felt like I was able to see these characters easily. The three men are named Janusz Lipowski, Ivan Bartkowski and Kai Yurek, which all are based on people I’ve met. Both the Germans and Poles have an interesting history when it comes to swords. An example is Klaus’s five foot long Zweihänder sword.

For the Italians I went for more of a Matrix theme. One of the interesting things I discovered in some of my research is that many Italian martial arts work with different ages from Italy’s past. The two Italians are named Marco Bruno and Fabio Lombard. Marco is more of a Roman Style fighter, while Fabio is a swordsman/fencer. Whenever I think of Italians I think of fine leather and stylish clothing. To get the right feel I watched scenes from the Matrix series to get the feel of what I was looking for. I think they turned out pretty awesome.

Lastly, I decided to go with Greeks for my last group of Ukkodians. I wanted to do something like a Spartan style fighting warrior, but after researching their culture I didn’t feel like that would be the right thing to do. Although Greeks love their Spartan past, modern day Greeks love the freedom fighters that freed their country from the Byzantine Empire. This is huge to the Greeks. Even in today’s day and age you’ll see Greek men dressed on Sunday in this honored uniform and their Honor Guards dressed in the typical battle dress from that time period. Even cooler is the fact that these Maniots freedom fighters were basically Dorians, the decedents of the Spartans, and have been the backbone of country, fighting off invader after invader while the rest of the country fell around them. Truly an awesome history and something that will be a lot of fun for my story, the only problem is that I hate the traditional outfits the Greek fighters wear. Here is a link for those who don’t know about the Evzones uniforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evzones  

Sigh … I’m sure white tights, silk skirts, garter belts and pomp-pomp shoes were cool in the early 1800’s, but I have to say I’m not a fan of the outfits. None the less, the Greeks are such a cool people that I just have to go with them as they are. Helpful since the story is actually occurring on a Greek island. I do try to have fun with the story with this in a respectful way. Picture how modern day Marines and Special Ops units from anywhere else in the world would react to such a uniform. While many would ridicule the Greek uniforms, surprisingly enough many Special Ops operators worth their salt know just how deadly these Greek fighters really are. Anyway, in the story two of the main Ukkodian Greeks are Colonel Thanos Karaiskakis and Sergeant Stelios Anagnostakos who have a squad of six additional Greek warriors.  

This doesn’t mean the story is going to be only about foreign fighters. The primary force that I’m pulling into the story is the U.S. Sixth Fleet and Task Force 60, which has a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit assigned for ground and air assaults. Still the Ukkodians play major roles in the story and will be a huge part of book three and four.

On a more personal note, one of the things I constantly am dealing with is the differences between my home state of Florida and living in Germany. Surprisingly enough, the thing that stands out to me the most is the differences in the weather. I won’t even mention the whole “not having any descent beaches” nearby to go to. Going surfing on the weekends with my two Labradors or just simply taking a walk after work during the week and looking for sea-glass was two of my favorite pastimes that I simply have learned to live without. The weather on the other hand, is another matter altogether.

Right now the temperature is ranging from the low forties to the hundreds, mostly ending up towards the high nineties to one hundred ranges. Although this sounds severe, especially when most offices and houses do not have air conditioning, this typically only lasts for a month to a month and a half, before it once again turns cold and rainy. Although cold and rainy is perfect for writing, it’s lacking in the whole “sunshine” department, which is why I feel guilty complaining about the hot weather. Still it’s freaking hot! I guess I’ll have to pop open a cold strawberry beer to deal with the heat. Luckily the beer here is some of the best in the world, at least to my limited palette.

The last couple weeks have been crazy with my personal life being as crazy busy as my work life, which is why I’ve been MIA for the last couple weeks. Temperatures here have been fluctuating between 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (36 to 41 Celsius). For those Information Technology professionals like me working inside without air-conditioning in a room full of computers and people the temperature is around 98 to 105 degrees on almost a daily basis. Even with the new job where I’m allowed to wear shorts in the worst of the summer months, it’s still unbelievably hot in the office. At the same time, I feel bad complaining about the hot weather, since we get very few hot, non-rain filled days in Germany. Basically a month and a half and it’s back to the cold rainy weather where I never leave home without a jacket. Still, it’s hard to get used to sweating myself to sleep in oven temperatures that make you light headed. Temperatures that give me flash backs of my early childhood growing up in Florida when my family was too poor to have air-conditioning, not that air-conditioning or even screens are common in Europe unless you live down south in Italy and Spain.

The good news is that most weekdays I’ve managed to get some writing time in. The bad news is that as I started finishing off the final fight scene that I had to add in a whole new set of characters. These characters will play pivotal roles in books three and four too, which brought me up short for almost a week as I began fleshing out these new characters. Since the action is book two in Europe based, many of these characters’ nationalities are German, Polish, Italian and Greek and part of the European Arm of the Ukodian Religion. Another cool aspect about the European side of this book is that I can bring aspects of my IRL into the story. Like having Riviera Beach Police Detective Beth Kurwoski and Agent Ryan Moss of the CTA team up together into a new government agency that has been formed to deal with this new alien trans-dimensional threat and then having them fly into Ramstein Air Base Germany to meet up with some of Polish and German Ukodians, before flying to Naples Air Base Italy on a C-130 Hercules and then flying a Marine V-22 Osprey to the Greek island of Santorini to meet up with a Marine Raider battalion and part of the United States Sixth Fleet.

God, just researching what I want to use for the book has been a blast! It’s taken a good week of thought and research to flesh out these European Characters, their looks, their likes and dislikes, cultural differences and how to bring them into the storyline in a way that makes sense in a storytelling way and Military procedural way. I’m putting a little more forethought into who they are then I did for CTA Agent Ryan Moss, who is turning out to be a major character. Not that Agent Moss turned out to be bad. I’m actually quite fond of him and was probably just as surprised as many of my readers when he made it through the climatic ending of Book One still alive.

For the rest of the stuff I’m using a writer’s prerogative to a point. I’m doing my best to keep the story within the realm of possible military operating procedures, while at the same time keeping the story fun and action packed. I already know a bunch of stuff about the Polish people due to my wife being Polish, but the Greek stuff has been super cool. There is a whole history of modern day Spartans that live in the region of the Mani Peninsula. The descendants of the ancient “Dorian” population that was once Sparta and who have been the backbone of Greece’s resistance to foreign invaders, from the Byzantine Empire in 1821, Fascist Italy in 1944 and Nazi Germany in 1945.   

For those of you in the United States who worry about having the book’s Earth side story focus too much on Europe, don’t worry. There is plenty of action going on with the United States military along with our NATO allies. Kind of like the TV Series 24: “Live Another Day” with the whole series being placed in London. For those of you who haven’t seen it I’ve attached the trailer below.

On a side note before I finish up today’s post, I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to wish those service members and government civilians working overseas a happy fourth of July. What every one of us does while serving our country overseas makes a difference in so many people’s lives. Not just for the countries that we give aid to around the world as we strive to make a positive difference in those peoples’ lives, but supporting the troops, civilians and their families that makes this all possible. I salute you!  

As I was driving home Friday I suddenly realized I’d started writing parts of Book Three and had to take stock at what I was doing for the ending of Destiny’s story. At the same time I received a call from my wife that she wanted to go pick strawberries and make some homemade preserves. Interestingly enough even though we’d never spoken together about making homemade jam or done it before in our lives, we were in sync once again around the same time with the same idea. Funny how things like that happen between people who love each other.

We ended up picking fresh strawberries that evening and spend the weekend making various batches of jam: strawberry-vanilla, strawberry-banana and of course just straight strawberry. The process is relatively easy and not incredibly time consuming, except for the multiple batches of different combinations I made up, so I had a chance to think about the ending of Destiny and decide “where” the ending should be exactly. I was also able to talk to some friends who are up-to-speed with my story in general to give me some criticism about where the cut-off should be.

Part of the problem is the story has ended up being a long longer than I’d initially thought it would be to get to the point where I wanted to end the story at. I could have bypassed the details in-between of what’s been happening with the characters to a point, but I think that would have taken away from the overall story. Those “little things” can mean so much and there is no need to rush through the story to get to a particular point. I was really tempted to stop where I’m currently at. It would have left a nice cliff hanger that would have been cool and annoying all at the same time, but I decided not to. The reason is simply my writing style for this series is loosely based on “computer gaming principles”. There are bosses at certain points that need to be overcome in each book, which creates a nice climatic ending for each individual story. Also, as one of my friends pointed out, if I ended in the middle of a battle then I would have to bring everyone up to speed enough not to confuse new readers in book three. Seriously though, who starts a book series off in the middle? A good point none the less.

I know exactly how the battle will go. Well maybe not exactly, but I have the flow of the action in my head. Unlike the Wild Elf battle with the Tuonellian, Argus (the Wenci) and a Grey Elf where I had almost punch-by-punch planned out in my head ahead of time. Oh wait, that’s all part of Destiny’s story, so you haven’t read it yet. Heh, too bad, because it rocks, but don’t worry. You’ll get a chance to read it soon enough.

Anyway, doing this epic battle scene is a good amount of writing, but I feel that it’s a good place to stop the story. The climatic action feels right in my head and heart. I think the idea of keeping in line with that whole “boss ending” for this level … or book is what did it for me.

For those of you who are surprised at my homeliness with making jam and cooking in general, don’t be. I enjoy cooking and am quite good at it. It also follows my desire to live a healthy life and to keep away from processed foods and chemical substances as much as possible that are in so much of the food we eat in our modern society. Making it from scratch helps to a point to ensure that I am staying healthy. Although the fresh croissants and homemade jam hasn’t been so good for my diet. One of my wife’s friends were shocked to see me come home and whip up several batches of homemade jam, which made me laugh. I definitely do not subscribe to any type of domestic roles for men and women, like so many people still do in the world.

Anyway, for those of you who are interested I added the pictures below. Hope you enjoy it.  

Being a gamer, writer and a person living through these constantly changing times, the future is very much on my mind. I’m sure my generational plays a major role in this forward looking perspective. For those of you who didn’t know, I’m a generation Xer.

Google’s definition: A member of Generation X (born from the early 1960s to mid 1970s), "as a Generation Xer I have come to the conclusion that the politicians have let a whole generation down".

Wikipedia’s definition: A generation whose worldview is based on change, on the need to combat corruption, dictatorships, abuse, AIDS, a generation in search of human dignity and individual freedom, the need for stability, love, tolerance, and human rights for all.

A very different label than the one we were given by Douglas Coupland in the 80’s when we were called the materialistic, slacker, disenfranchised stereotype youths of America. Not a surprising description when you think about how sensationalism sells. It amazes me that my generation was ever called materialistic, since most of us considered finding a strong wooden stick or the ownership of a rubber ball the same as kids today think about having an iPhone or iPad. Being raised by a grandmother who was a child of the Great American Depression and as a very poor latch key kid, I was one of the lucky ones who was able to surpass my economic situation and work myself out extreme poverty. An experience that makes me focus on surviving in the now, while doing my best to plan for an ever changing and economically chaotic future.

The next ten to twenty years is going to be one of amazing technological breakthroughs in new technologies and a series of terrifying social upheavals. Being raised on Star Trek, I always enjoyed the idea of this semi-perfect future of the human race, where poverty and hunger and prejudice has been wiped out of society like a disease, but from my experiences I know the world will actually look something closer to the world of Star Wars. Sadly enough, I fear that the world of Star Wars is even too nice and pretty of a future. The reality, I fear, will be much worse and something more along the lines of the movie Blade Runner / Johnny Mnemonic / Gattaca / Almost Human and the world from the MMO Anarchy Online. I’ve attached the trailers down below, just ignore the cheesy 80’s graphics and special effects on Blade Runner & Johnny Mnemonic. Oh, completely ignore the electro dolphin, because that shit just didn’t make any sense.

In many ways many of these are being seen in our current lives. Blade Runner where companies use human-like robots off earth to mine minerals in asteroids or for are sold to people for entertainment purposes. There are discussions about the use of robot control space craft and drones making more sense to send for exploration to other planets then sending humans. Not to mention the idea of AI running amok. Johnny Mnemonic, where people enhance their body functions with technology by assisting their memory, making them stronger and quicker, or improving their vision, all of which is happening now. Also, how international companies grow too large until they begin to control parts of the government, which allows them to enforce their own desired regulations that hurt the citizens. Gattaca, where companies want to know a person’s genes to help reduce cost for health insurance and as a guarantee how smart an employee is and will become. Almost Human, because the technology is right around the corner. The ideas of robots that are basically human. The technology crimes that normal people are facing. I feel like they really hit this right on the mark. Ignore the whole Buck Rodgers sealed off city thing from the mutant humans, that’s just off the wall, but everything else I would say is right on the mark. Anarchy Online, where a large international corporation nearly controls all aspects of the government and use this control to abuse their employees.

I’m not saying this small list is every good movie or MMO showing the concerns of a possible dark future for us, but this is my immediate list of futuristic films and MMO’s that depicts things we are starting to see coming to pass right now. I guys if you took a piece of each of these films and mixed them together into one world, I fear this could be the future we will find ourselves living in.

The sad part is that we are really nearing a point in human evolution and technology where hunger and poverty and discrimination could be eliminated, but unfortunately the intrinsic nature and focus of our current materialistic society cannot allow that to come about without major changes to our current societal focus. I’m not saying having cool tech and technology to improve our lives is a bad thing, but the focus on stuff at its current levels is definitely not healthy. To be honest, I would have even taken the Star Wars ideology even if that meant overcoming some terrible Empire or even working for the Empire. Think of Corran Horn in the Rogue Squadron Series http://www.amazon.com/Rogue-Squadron-Star-X-Wing-Legends-ebook/dp/B00513HXBA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1434224057&sr=1-1&keywords=x-wing+rogue+squadron  I love how Michael A. Stackpole had his hero start out as working for the Empire as a TIE Fighter, before he became part of the Republic.

The sad part, one that I didn’t cover, is that in every book, movie or game that I think does a great job in predicting a very possible real future if we keep going down the road we’re headed down always has a Third World War that humanity must face before things gets better. Lately when I watch everything going on in the world today. Russia’s recent invasion of the Ukraine and their subsequent increase in troop build-up and flexing their military might around the world. China’s aggressive military and economical stance over their claims for the Senkaku Islands, their push to become the new monetary and their disregards for human rights in general. It makes me wonder how close we really are to this possible Third World War. Five years ago I would have said that such a fear was insane, but the invasion of the Ukraine with conventional forces by Russia made me say “WTF, how could something like that happen in today’s day and age.” Unfortunately you know what they say. It always gets worse before it gets better. I hope my fears of a possible World War Three is just an overreaction to the events I see happening around, but none the less I find it very much on my mind as I see the strained economic chaos happening around the world. Desperate people do desperate things in desperate times.

Anyway, I am slowly solidifying an idea of a near futuristic society for a new book series where I put all of these ideas together. It’s been churning around in the back of my mind for a while and the pressure is growing stronger and stronger to begin working on the story, but first I need to finish the four books I have planned for The Last Paladin Series.