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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story for Book Two of the Last Paladin Series carries on the ongoing struggle of Startüm against his people’s ancient enemy. There is no place left to hide, the Tuonellians now know about Earth and the situation on Irlendria is quickly deteriorating as the enemy’s long term plans turns the Alliance of Aurenko against itself. While a large portion of the story focuses on the growing evil that once again threatens to destroy the races of Irlendria, the story on Earth proceeds further as Humanity races to discover more about the enemy that invaded their world.  

I know that this is a VERY brief rundown of the general story arc for Book Two, but I felt that it was necessary to discuss the various titles I have been going through in my head. The lists of my first choices are below:

Destiny

Revelation

Descent

Discovery

Exposure

For now Destiny is at the top of the list, although Revelation and Descent are close runner ups. Destiny fits many of the characteristics of the overall storyline, and has the added benefit of being a highly searched name due to the new Destiny MMO that Microsoft recently released. Although that was not part of my initial thoughts when I was choosing the name, but after a couple friends of mine pointed out this additional benefit. It has made Destiny my planned name for Book Two for all of these reasons. Descent would have also been a preferred title in my mind. I’m partial to Descent due to an old video game that had the same name. Descent was my first love within the realm of first person shooters. Also, it has the added benefit of fitting the story’s theme in many ways, unfortunately out of all of the friends I run things like this by, the title was not well received : / Although, I am still interested in having discussions on possible names with anyone who is interested =D Feel free to comment or drop me an email.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, I prefer one word titles for books. Partly this is because I really loved how R.A. Salvatore did his naming conventions for his Dark Elf Series. Titles such as Homeland, Exile and Sojourn are so powerful and simple. I know there are many other writers who have done this with good results, but since the Dark Elf Trilogy is such a powerful story. I’ve been greatly influenced by his writing and the choice of titles in my own books.