When I started writing Book One of the Last Paladin Series, I was really having difficulties deciding where to start the story at. Since the world of Irlendria has so much history there were many places I could start the story from, but I wanted an Urban Fantasy novel that mixed in Real World and a Magical World. That desire to have both made me decide to start Flight with Startüm on Earth.

I’ve received some criticism on how quickly I started the story out. While the story if fast paced and fun, there were people who wished for a little more back story on Startüm, and rightly so. To be honest, in a way I look at Flight as being the “Star War’s” of my series in the sense of how you are introduced to everything going on in the middle of Startüm’s story.

With Book Two, this will be a lot different. Partly this is because my writing ability is that much better and I am more confident in keeping the action flowing, while giving readers a deeper appreciation of the characters and their cultures. While Flight was about fun and action, Book Two has those same characteristics and much more. I really love the depth of the story.

A good example of this is with the new species and characters being introduced into the story. Legatus Tiberius Decius Lupus, prince of the Minotaurs of the Imperium is a prime example of this. I really wanted to make his culture come alive and give you a depth of his honorable character that is so much more than the beasts so many people think of when they hear the word “Minotaur”.

Nessa Manitou, Centaur of the Great Plains, is her own person with a very distinctive culture. Her people are very different then the Minotaurs of the Imperium. Her beliefs, magic, culture and viewpoint of life come to life. She is much more than just a traditional Centaur from Greek Mythology. The pains of her heart and her loves have a suffering that I believe many readers will be able to identify with.

Also, the Elves in Book Two are similar yet different to the Fantasy we all know and love. Growing up on stories and concepts of D&D and Lord of The Rings, Elves for me had a spectrum of flavors. Wild, Forest, Gray (High) Elves were distinctive and unique in their own ways. I’ve added my own twist to their cultures and story, but without a doubt my past influences flavor their cultures strongly. Lúthien Narmolanya, Enelya Tasartir, Warden Morwen Telemnar and others are distinctly  different between one another, but at the same time very Elven.

Just thinking about the story and talking about it here gets me excited all over again, so back to writing.         

Even though this was a short week I’ve managed to squeeze in several more novels from John Conroe’s Demon Accords. An amazing series btw if you’ve hadn’t checked it out yet. I’ve had a couple friends point this series out. This weekend I’ll be sure to give Mr. Conroe some well deserved reviews for his writing. Since I’ve started writing there is never just a “pleasure read” so to speak.

It’s not that I’m not fully enjoying the writers I talk about in my blog, but there are really important examples of how the writers have done something in particular that I’m also researching. It’s one of the best things about writing. I can research and learn while enjoying great stories. Gotta love that!

What’s really interesting about John’s main characters are that they are so incredibly overpowered. For those of you that have read Flight, then I expect you can understand my interest in how he handles his characters stories. I know some people might instantly think that an overpowering man character would make for a dull story, but that’s entirely not the case. No matter how powerful you are, there are always things that make you vulnerable. Also, I just enjoy the raw power of the main character and how it's welded into an incredible plot line. I take my hat off to John for his amazing stories. As enjoyable as the “Good Intentions” series is, the Demon Accords are just as good. Although not at the same level of eroticness they are definitely worth reading.

Just in case you were wondering, the answer is "yes". I was also researching the different levels of sexual/eroticness between the stories to assist in my own learning/writing of my own stories romantic scenes. My ideas are definitely falling somewhere in-between these two writers flavors.

For those of you wondering how I can write and read in an evening, I tend to finish off most normal sized books in around six hours or less. Yea, we are not talking about Wheel of Time books, those just give me a headache because it takes me like three or four sittings to finish a freaking book, although great stories. So far I’ve been faring better when I read first and write afterword, since the reading will keep me up to 4 in the morning, but the writing I’ll go to bed by 1. It means I get a little more sleep for my work day.

Right now I’m working on the Elven part of my story. All of my characters are there in the middle of it, so it’s like not “ALL” Elvish, if you know what I mean. But there is so much culture involved that it keeps my mind working full time on getting the flavor where I want it to be while bringing the world to life. It would have been easier to just make one species of elf, but in all of my time playing D&D or reading Fantasy. Just having one type of elf didn’t seem right, hence why I have three distinctive Elven cultures in the story.

Anyway, it’s time to get writing tonight, so I’ll blog again another day.          

I'm trying to get back to doing two updates a week again on the blog. Preferably I would like to get back to three updates a week, but between work, family, writing and life I’m not sure if that’s possible. But it’s always good to have goals, right =D

Here are two characters that I’ve had a lot of fun with and have pictured from the very beginning of the story. I hope you like the brief history of the Elven Races on Irlendria that comes with them: 


On Irlendria there are three distinctive groups of Elves that make up the Elven Kingdom that resides within the Great Forest. Although they all live the same general domain, they live separately from one another, internally dividing themselves into Clans: Gray Elves, Forest Elves and Wild Elves. Albeit when referring to themselves, most Gray Elves consider themselves High Elves, a title of pride left over from the Great War. Because it was Daeron Fortress, the Gray Elf ancient home, that stopped the invaders when the Tuonellians sent their hordes to destroy the Elven Race over forty-seven years ago. 

While both Gray and Forest Elves are xenophobic to the other races of Irlendria in the extreme, they respect one another and work closely together due to their mutually shared philosophical perspectives on the evolution of the Elven Race. Unfortunately, this commensal relationship does not extend to the Wild Elf Clan. While the Gray and Forest Elves did work closely with the Klavikians at the onset of the War and even altered their metaphysical beliefs to stand against the Tuonellians, the Wild Elves have never left the core values that their race was founded upon. This adherence to the old ways greatly weakened the Wild Elf Clan’s effectiveness during the Great War and caused a rift between them and the other Clans.   

This brief history of the Elven people I thought was somewhat necessary to explain my next characters from Book Two, Enelya Tasartir and her soulmate Argus. Enelya is a Spirit Shaman from the Wild Elf Clan. She has an animal companion named Argus, which she calls her soulmate due to the spirit-link they share. While the spirit-link enhances them both, their lives are linked together from this bond. If one dies, so then does the other.

Argus is from a race known as the Wenci, which are apex predators within the Great Forest. The Wenci families are formed into Packs that hunt and live together in small communities with the Wild Elves. Although their bodies are long and slender with short legs, they are large enough to act as temporary mounts for their Elven Companions. The Wenci naturally have incredible dexterity and are armed with long claws and sharp fangs with hides that are protected by thick fur coats that combine to make them tough aggressive fighters.  

For any of you that are interested, my I will be participating in a “Winter Gaming Group” that starts up November 2nd and goes on basically until the weather is decent here in Germany. A Teamspeak 3 server is being stood up for when the guild get up to the point of raiding.

Here is the official email I received about the group:

“First off, http://www.audiovideodisco.org

Please register, I'm trying to post information to the forums on a regular basis. It's also a great way to get information from the experienced WoW folks.  Any questions you have you can post in the forums and I'll try to answer.

Secondly, Teamspeak 3... we have it.  This means you need to be able to at least log in.  Nothing is mandatory with it, but it's a very useful tool if you are a new player and have questions.  Once we hit actual raiding content this will be mandatory.

Thirdly, nothing is stopping anyone from starting up right now!  Guild invites are available right now.  We just don't have anything on the event calendar until November.  If you want to try to put together a higher level group feel free!

Lastly, November starts our Winter Gaming Group events.  You need to do the following before November 2nd.  This group is more for brand new WoW players than anything else.  Helping them level up, learn the basics of the game to hopefully become entry level raiders for the guild later on.


1) Register on the website (I'll get you the correct permissions, just message me through the website or post in the forums)

2) Sign up for the events you will be at via the Events link!

3) Have a level 15 character ready to go on November 2nd!  Play what you want and will enjoy!

4) Make sure you have Teamspeak 3 downloaded and you can connect to the server!

Second Lastly, feel free to forward the guild information to anyone interested.  The more the merrier!  Just send them to the website for more information!”

For those of you who don’t know my history, I was a hardcore gamer for a number of years. I loved all genres … first person shooters, strategy, MMO’s, etc. It was a huge part of my life and still is very important to me in many ways, even though I don’t normally play much now-a-days. Partly the reason I don’t play like I used to was that after being a Guild Leader of an End Game Raiding Guild for so many years. The constant responsibility sapped my love of MMO’s in general. Another part of the reason was that I had a long-term relationship end with my girlfriend who was my gaming partner, which made many of the gaming relationships I had painful to continue holding onto at the time. Also switching over to extreme sports and traveling around the world kind of threw a major kink into having any time to game too.

This doesn’t mean I won’t be writing regularly, but I thought it might be kind of fun to take two days a week to play a couple hours with some co-workers, friends and maybe some fans. I’m just warning everyone, I will be playing at some odd times due to my Central European time zone in comparison to people in Australia, Canada and the United States, but at the same time I would love to have some time to team up and hang out online for those of you that are interested.

Feel welcomed to drop me an email if you’re interested or just sign up on the Guild’s forums

After talking to some fans about the desire to have more romantic/erotic action in book two and then doing some research by reading the Good Intentions series, I had to sit back and think deeply on how that would affect my overall story line. While I loved how the erotic action of the MC in the Good Intentions series, I had to consider how this would work in my own story arc. Honestly I have to say this kind of tied me up for a good week to week and a half before I felt comfortable with how to proceed further.

I ran some of my ideas by my friend Deanna, Patrick and Richard who all have different perspectives on the topic. Everyone had some awesome perspectives that really helped me find peace with how everything should fit into the story.

I have found that I need to be careful when I’m getting outside influences into my writing style and how I allow the different things I read or hear affect my story. Richard listens to a lot of discussions and training sessions from various successful authors, which is very good and gives you some great ideas for what to consider when writing. At the same time, I’ve found that sometimes these different perspectives can really make you question your own story line and ideas. Finding a middle path between your own ideas and outside influences I think is very important. I know I listened to one forum of six well known authors discussing magic theory and world design that messed me up for a good two weeks before I felt like I was back to where I needed to be for my storyline.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to listen to how people are creating these very successful stories and worlds, because it is. What I will say is that you need to be careful once you start writing to be able to keep a certain distance between theory and your current story’s design.

Luckily for me, I was able to find myself once again and keep my magic and their practitioners where I wanted them to be. Somewhere between general accepted character types such as Clerics and Paladins while hopefully still keeping a slight mystical unknown quality to their abilities that come out in a logical way within the story.

Recently my biggest dilemma was how to add in romance/eroticism into my story in a way that fit my characters and overall story arc. When I think of some of the best stories that many of us love, a good example would be The Lord of the Rings series, there is not a lot of romance/eroticism within its pages. Even the love between Aragon and Arwen is very light and subdued, there is no question to the depth and the love that they have for one another.

Now I have to be somewhat careful to not give away any spoilers, but I was always a big fan of Pierce Anthony’s The Apprentice Adept series. I read the series at a very young age and there is no doubt that the mixed species relationships within the story affected me greatly. I will be exploring my own twist to such a story line in my Book Two.

Startüm Ironwolf will be facing many new challenges on Irlendria, including those involving the heart. Along with him are many new supporting characters that are dealing with their unique love situations. Although many of these relationships will be interspecies love affairs that cross many boundaries, I am not going to make the story into an erotic novel per say. At the same time I do plan to explore each of these relationships in much more depth than I had originally planned ... at least in the heavy panting way, so there will be a flavor of the erotic to a point. I think it’s important to have a comfortable medium that works within the overall flow of the story.

If that sounds confusing, think of it this way. Would the Lord of the Rings have been a better story if Aragon and Arwen had hot steamy R-rated sex scene in the movie? Wait … wait, I mean yea I could have gone with seeing more of Arwen too, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. Let me try this again. Would an R-rated sex scene have fit within the overall flavor of the series itself? I think not. At the same time, I would have liked a little more focus on their time together.

With the Last Paladin Series I have more flexibility within the story in this way. I think the story line itself is better setup for more closer and descriptive romantic scenes between characters that would not detract from the overall story itself. At the same time the story is not the same flavor as Good Intentions. Startüm doesn’t have a Succubus at his beck and call to lead him down a path of eroticism while fighting the good fight. Part of my week and a half pause in writing was to determine how best to tweak the story and fit in the intimacy between characters that many of us find so interesting, while still keeping true to the overall story arc.

I believe I’ve found a happy medium for the Last Paladin Series.   

Larissa Evans is a thirty-two years old Archaeology. She holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology, Anthropology and Linguistics and has spent the majority of her life studying cultural, physical and linguistic anthropology, focusing specifically on ancient and classical civilizations of the Mediterranean. Although she is recognized as a world renowned Archaeology and Linguist, her height and looks has made it nearly impossible for her to be taken seriously among her peers within the male dominated field of Archaeology.

While her model height of one point eighty-seven meters (6' 2"), small waist and large chest has time and again caused her considerable problems throughout her professional career, her sharp mind and extensive knowledge of ancient civilizations has allowed her to excel within field archaeology. At the age of twenty-six she turned down a Professorship of Classical Archaeology at Oxford University, once she learned that Jowettney and Newtonian were the current electors. Larissa adamantly refuses to confine archaeology to the classics, which has put her at odds with her academic peers. Instead she accepted a position as the Keeper of the Ashmoloean Museum.

Her Father, Sir Arthur John Evans, was her motivation for going into the field of archaeology. His death when she was fourteen years old left a hole in her life. Still, even in death her Father’s many professional connections and her in-depth knowledge of ancient civilization has enabled her to succeed.

For those of you interested the audio book for Flight, it can be found
here: http://www.amazon.com/Flight-The-Last-Paladin-Series/dp/B00LIAUVCI/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1404911218&sr=8-1 
I still need to see if I’m allowed to give out a copy for Christian who
won the Goodreads Book Giveaway contest. I promise I’ll look into that. 
 
Just so that you know, the audio book’s price is set by Amazon since I went with their production process, so it costs as much as any audio book does. For those of you who like audio books, I will say it's definitely worth the price. Alex Edward Trefethen did an unbelievable job with the story.

I hope the audio version does as well as the Ebook, so that Alex will be open to doing the second book in the series. Since honestly I can’t imagine hearing the story with anyone else’s voice.

It seems like life just doesn’t stop at times. I’ve been given the ancient Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times”. Not that being busy and having lots of things happening is curse, but sometimes I wish events would slow down and give me enough time to recover in-between.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had friends shipping out, my daughter’s return from her exchange program, a wedding in Germany, a wedding in Poland, my audio book release, wife’s nephew’s visit, teaching my daughter how to drive and my first invite into an author meet-in-greet. All while working my normal full time job, preparing for an up and coming move for work, dealing with some personal emergencies that popped up during this same time, while doing my best to squeeze in whatever time leftover to write and work on the plot line of Book Two of the Last Paladin Series. Henceforth the reason I haven’t been to bed before 0200 hours in weeks.

Luckily during my drives heading into work and returning back home on the weekends I get a couple hours to figure out scenes in my head.

Somehow I’ve fit everything into my schedule. This week things are finally getting back somewhat to normal (if you discount Fourth of July weekend), but last night everything finally caught up to me and came down with a cold. A good excuse as any to go to bed at a reasonable time, like midnight =D 

It’s amazing how much better you feel after a decent night’s sleep.

Couple highlights from the Super Strength Speed Reading Event. I met several Amazing writers and interviewers. Most notably were Will Massa, Tina Tame, Starla Huchton and Drew Hayes. Don’t get me wrong, the other authors (P.S. Power, Michael G. Thomas Joshua Guess, March McCarron & Cheree Alsop just to name a few) from the Event are awesome too and I bought all of their books, but for this post I want to talk about the first set.

First off Will Massa is just a great guy and I loved his titles. His Gargoyle Knight and Fear the Light series look awesome. I’ve bought both. The cover Will did on his Gargoyle Knight Series is incredible and I think we both hit it off due to the stories we both like to write. Either way, I had a great time talking with him during the event and look forward to getting to know him better in the future.

Starla Huchton is just an amazing woman. She is savvy and smart about promoting herself and an awesome person with Super Geek Cred in my book. There is a lot any writer could learn just watching how she works. I picked up a copy of her Evolution: ANGEL Series because it sounds like a great story.  

Drew Hayes was a just an amazing wealth of information and a super nice guy. He had some great information in regards to BoolBub & Bookgorilla, The Pen & Cape Society for authors and some incredible creative ideas for Web Series. Over the next several weeks I’m going to have to dig into everything he was talking about, but like I said, a great guy who has no problems sharing from his experiences, which I have nothing but respect for the man.

I’ve put Tina Tame in here due to Fang Tastic and a whole area of Dark Urban (Erotic-Romance) novels I’d never knew about. She invited me to an Event where I ran into some of Isobelle Cate’s work. Let’s just say it’s the perfect read to work on my up and coming romance scenes in my Series. Just plain hot. Tina is super cool and I had a great time chatting with her. Not to mention, she also speaks German of all things. All in all a smart, sexy and amazing woman with some great taste in graphics, so if you get a chance check her out on facebook at Tina Tame or Fang Tastic.

Lastly, I met a writer named Michael G. Thomas and fell in love with his cover for Legions of Orion. I immediately bought his book for two reasons. First, any book with a cover like that is going to grab my attention, and so far I’ve been enjoying the read. I can’t wait to get to the space battle scenes. Second, it partly scared me that the cover looked eerily similar to a Sci-Fi story that’s been bouncing around in my head. Luckily for me the story is different enough that when I write my own it won’t be in conflict with his story line, but when I first saw the cover I truly freaked.  

There were a lot of other incredible people I had a chance to meet. Although everyone was cool and I really enjoyed Geeking Out, I spent most of the Event talking with Kelsea Schafer while trying to keep up the chaos. Who, by the way, is a pretty interesting woman and a fan of Urban Fantasy type novels.

I still need to finish writing up my documentary of the self-publishing processes. Although I have a lot of great information already listed about the process, there are still some important points I’d like to finish up for those writers looking to self-publish their own books.

In the days to come, I will be discussing my exploration into some of the great groups and tools that Drew Hayes gave me information about. Also I want to discuss some of the characters in Book Two.

An Indie Writer’s life is one of striving for balance while writing. 

This is for the Super Strength, Speed Reading Event.

Along with the overall book giveaway, I will be  offering three digital copies of Flight, Book 1 of The Last Paladin Series during my time to meet and greet my fans from 09:00 Est to 12:00 Est on Saturday Morning. I’ll be giving away one per hour. 
 
To win your copy, just ask questions during the hours I will be online for the event. 
 
Looking forward to talking about Flight or my up and coming book two for the series, or whatever you want to talk about. 
 
At the end of the hour I will randomly pick one entry to be the winner.

One quick update, the 99 cent purchases will need to be from Amazon. I have direct control over my book at Amazon, while the other websites my book is sold on via Smashwords takes weeks for the requested changes to go through. Don't worry if you don't have a Kindle. The Kindle App is available for all platforms, so if you have an Iphone or Android the free app will allow you to read Flight on your device.

The link for the event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/310916962406470

Bryan Cohen contacted me a couple weeks ago about participating in the Super Strength, Speed Reading Event, which is a one-day sale on superhero and action & adventure books. We will all be dropping the costs of our books down to 99 cents for one day. The event runs on June 28th, 2014 and I’ll be attending in person virtually in the morning, between the hours of 0900 to 1200 U.S. Eastern Standard Time.

Due to my time zone being Central Europe, this will mean the event starts at 1500 hours in the early afternoon for me. I'm looking forward to answering questions about Flight, Book One of the Last Paladin Series, giving tidbits on Book Two's story line, discussing the release of the audio book for Flight at the end of this month and anything else that people want to talk about.

When I’d first heard about this event, I thought it sounded like an awesome idea. A group of Indie Authors coming together for their fans and to support one another in getting the word out about their great novels. After checking out everyone’s books I was really blown away the magnitude of great writers participating in this event.  

After spending most of my life either reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy books or playing numerous computer games. This is one of those “WOW” moments that will stand out in my life. Looking at these fellow author’s works, I can’t say enough how exciting it is to be asked to be a part of such an incredibly talented group of writers.

Truly a dream come true!

Please take the time to stop by and chat with these amazing writers and check out their works.

The invited author list is as follows:

Drew Hayes, author of SuperPowereds: Year 1 & 2 and NPCs just to name a few.

Joshua Guess, author of Dead Will Rise, Victim Zero and Next just to name a few.

March McCarron, author of Division of the Marked.

Kelly Oram, author of Chameleon and Ungifted from the Supernaturals Series just to name a few.

Jason Tesar, author of The Awakened Book Series.

William Massa, author of Silicon Man, Gargole Knight and Fear the Light just to name a few.

Michael G. Thomas, author of the Star Crusades Nexus Series.

R S J Gregory, author of Cosmic Girl.

Nick S. Thomas, author of the Battle Earth Trilogy.

P.S. Power, author of The Young Ancients Series and Demon Bait just to name a few.

Meg Collett, author of The Hunted One and coauthor of The Lost One from the End of Days series.

Cheree Alsop, author The Silver, The Galdoni and Small Town Superhero Series just to name a few.

You can find the link here: