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?    

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.          

So I’m off Monday and Tuesday this week, which means family time. Even so, I wanted to share some quick thoughts I’ve had on writing.

I’ve heard a lot of questions from people on different forums questioning how to deal with writers block and thought I would throw my two cents into the mix. So far in my short time of writing of two and a half years I haven’t really run into this, but not because I haven’t shared that feeling that so many other writers get. I think this is because of how I plan out my stories and how I deal with that initial “writer’s block” feeling.

I’ve read many articles on writing styles. The two main agreed upon division lines are that people a planners or creators. Planners typically plan their whole world out ahead of time before they write, while creators make up the story as they go creating everything on the fly. I myself do both when I write a story. This flexibility I think helps me deal with situations where I could be hit by writer’s block. Typically I do a whole outline for the individual book I’m sitting down to write. In some spots this outline can be extremely detailed, but mostly for me it’s just the general flow of the events of the story, main plot lines I’m planning on following and approximately where I want my book to wrap up at when I write “The End”.

Another thing I do to help deal with “writer’s block” is to just start writing the chapter I’m struggling over. This can happen where I’m struggling with how to start a certain chapter or I’m struggling on getting the correct flavor. Just writing the general thoughts down that I have in my head, even if it flows terrible, is enough to get me started. It breaks me out of that jammed place I’m stuck in and then either I continue onto the next chapter or I go back to the place I was stuck in and start tweaking it until it flows right. Actually either way I end up going back to it to fix it up, but it doesn’t have to be right away. Usually when I go to sit down to write I read the chapter before to get pick up the flow of where I was at and many times I start smoothing out that rough chapter. So far I haven’t been forced to completely re-write one of these chapters … well not entirely. Sometimes you don’t know if something is too much or too long until you get it down on paper and have your friends check it out.

Lastly, I find a lot of ideas from watching TV Series, reading my favorite authors and watching Movies, along with looking at digital art from graphic artists across the web. Even from friends as we discuss different plot ideas for the story. I usually keep my mind open to different ideas and ways to flavor my own story and make it better. Many of these ideas help to add to my current story outline to make the individual plot lines more detail and realistic. This is not stealing ideas. Your ideas in your head are yours and yours alone, but you can always pick up additional concepts to enhance your story and characters within it.

Okay, that’s about it. My family is chomping at the bit for me to get moving, but before I go, I want to make one last comment on World Building. I am no expert on how many writers fall into each category and I know many “world building” writers that takes years upon years to create their world and then have moved on to become very successful, but I find this very hard to do solely. Much of my worlds are build from dreams I’ve always had over my life, and although these different worlds have been with me forever. I have not sat down and actually created the world in detail. I tend to do this when it is required detail for the story. This even includes adding in non-main characters. I consider them similar to extras in a movie. There are many times that you run into characters that you need to pull up and give brief detail to flesh out the story, but it is not something you need to plan down to the last remote detail before you ever sit down to write your story. I am so careful about “NOT” doing this, mainly because I love story planning. I have spent years planning different aspects of words that I like, but then I never actually simply write the story. I think this can become a trap for many writers. We get so hung up on the details that we never actually take that first step and begin writing. As I write my stories I have discovered that suddenly in a scene I need a squad or two of soldiers, or maybe I need three squad cars with an officer in each. Unless they add something to the overall story, I don’t worry about documenting their characters in the story, unless it’s needed. Also, many of your characters take on their own life in many ways that you have to tweak parts of your story to fit their growing character development. Planning that ahead of time is not always possible.

Ha, well not a short “one last note”. Talk later…

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 different fans that have read Book One, I’ve heard multiple comments requesting more “erotic action” in the story. Luckily I’d planned for this within the series, but I needed to get some good examples of how I wanted to do this within my world and its characters. Also, there is that whole “Good Paladin” thing I have to take into consideration, but I have a good twist in the story that will fit what I want to do. I think everyone will like it.

Startüm is coming of age, and for his Werewolf side this means some intense emotional and physiological changes. On Earth he’s considered 24 years old, but on Irlendria he is fast approaching his 18th birthday. Unbeknownst to Startüm, this “coming of age” is extremely significant for his Werewolf half. Fighting his intense aggressive feelings was bad enough, but nothing in comparison to dealing with his raging hormones. He suddenly learns what it means to be a horny teenager.   

Richard, a buddy of mine, suggested that I check out a book series to get some ideas of how I might want to think about doing the intimate scenes. I wasn’t sure what I thought initially when I read the book’s excerpt, but once I started reading I couldn’t stop. Thankfully there are only two books in the series, because I don’t think I could have stayed up for another night to read the third book. Two sleepless nights of reading and working through the day was hard enough on me.

Yea, the books are THAT good!

The author is Elliott Kay and the first book in the series is: Good Intentions http://www.amazon.com/Good-Intentions-Elliott-Kay-ebook/dp/B0054E8QYE/ref=la_B00B6QGFMY_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407580735&sr=1-1

The second book is: Natural Consequences http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Consequences-Elliott-Kay-ebook/dp/B00EENE9G0/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407580694&sr=1-2&keywords=good+intentions

Both are awesome. If you get a chance check them out. The only warning I would give is for those people who are closed mind about religious stuff. If you’re one of those people I would suggest not reading the series, but I figure if you’re reading my blog and have checked out Flight then that’s not an issue. They have a modern Robert A. Heinlein feel to them, mixed in with some Dresden Files and Patricia Briggs.

I now have some awesome ideas for how I want to do some of the specific intimate scenes. For those people who love the intense action, don’t worry. The story is still action packed.

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.

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

Alex sent me the completed work last Friday, but I was in Poland going to a wedding for my wife’s family. Between the wedding, driving back to Germany on Sunday and then heading in for work on Monday morning, I just hadn’t had a chance to check out the audio book.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had a chance to start listening to the audio book until tonight. Part of that was because I was chatting with Richard who I met off of Goodreads after he read my book. He’s a cool guy. We were talking about writing and stuff and before I knew it half the evening was gone. I don’t get a chance to Geek-out as much as I’d like since I’ve been writing and not Computer Gaming, even though a friend at work did give me a key for WildStar-Online. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, the link is here: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/  It looks completely cool though.

The other part of the reason was I was preparing for attending “The Super Strength Speed Reading Event” https://www.facebook.com/events/310916962406470 . I just realized it’s going to be Thursday tomorrow and I haven’t decided how I’m going to do my Ebook giveaways. Ack! I’ll have to figure that out tomorrow.  

I just finished chapter five and all that I can say is “WOW!” I’ve never listed to an audio book before, so this was my first time going through the experience. I can only say Alexander Edward Trefethen has an incredible range of voices. If you’re interested about Alex, his web site is here: http://trefethenvoice.com/

I was a little concerned about having a man do the voice. I tend to love female voices, but I figured since Startüm, the main character, is male that a man’s voice would sound better for the book. I wasn’t sure how he was going to manage the children, demon, werewolf and female voices in the story, but I loved Alex’s voice so much during the sample he sent me. I had to go with him.

Alex’s skill is freaking unbelievable! His voice really brings the characters to life. I just got through the entire Werewolf Shadow Fang battle scene and was blown away. That might sound funny, but you have to understand. I have read through Flight, Book One of the Last Paladin Series over thirty times, seriously at least that amount of times. Every time I’m amazed at how the story pulls me in. This time was the most intense yet with Alex’s voice.    

The reason I’ve gone through the book so many times is because of the editing for mistakes and smoothing out the writing. Since I didn’t have $8,000 for a professional editor to go through the manuscript, I’ve had friends help with getting Flight in the best shape I could given the funds I had. Also, the website grammarly.com and of course help from critics who have pointed out the mistakes I’ve missed after publishing. I just look at it as free editing help, since I know the story is good. Maybe for Book Two I will try getting help from Kickstart.

I’m trying to get through the book this week, but there are a lot of chapters to get through. Either way it will be ready for the end of this month.

I’ve been asked if I could give out a free audio book for some of the contest winners. Right now it’s a huge group of 26 mp3’s that are around 2.5 GB’s in size all together. Also I don’t know how licensing works between Alex and I for promoting the book by contests for free audio book giveaways. Once I know I’ll post what I’ve learned and hopefully be able to send the audio book version out to the few people who asked after winning the Goodreads Book Contest Giveaway.