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

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.

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: 

Today I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a DODEA Wiesbaden High School student name Tristan Mann.

He picked up one of my first copies of Flight and has really enjoyed the storyline. Another fellow gamer, we had a great time talking about some of our favorite video games and Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies in-between questions. As soon as he posts the interview I will link to his youtube page, but for now you only have my take on the interview.

Sometimes I get so focused on getting the next story out I forget how cool the storyline is. Talking with Tristan about how I came up with the idea for the series and discussing Books One and Two really got me excited all over again for the story.

I was telling him about how Book Two is going to have Minotaurs, Centaurs and Elves. We had a quick discussion about the Minotaurs, since we both are big time D&D and MMO fans. I explained my concept for the Minotaur Race like this: Picture Minotaur Roman Legions that are armed with runic metal gauntlets that transform into either a fist punch-spike sword that looks like a Gladius or into a large Roman shield. They also have a secondary weapon slung over their back that is a large double-headed battleaxe.

He loved the mental picture I painted for the race and thought it sounded awesome. I told him I was having a lot of fun with the story and that was just one small piece.

One of my fans from Goodreads, Richard Webster, had a great idea about discussing some of the up and coming things from Book Two. I really liked the concept and will try to slipping in some of the main characters bios from Book Two.

Tristan and I also discussed where I got the idea for the Last Paladin Series from. I explained to him that I always wanted to write and I’ve had several persistent dreams. One being about a teenage boy that was hidden on Earth when his people were decimated, the dream is about how he goes back to his own world and confronts the evil there.

Dreams are never one consistent story, but bits and pieces that are formed as I was growing up via Fantasy/Sci-Fi stories and movies that I grew up with. My childhood was quite horrible, so maybe it was my way of looking for a way out of the pain I was borne into.

Whatever it was, the dreams have been with me since my earliest memories.

When I started writing the Book One, I realized there was an entire story with how Startüm is discovered on Earth by his people’s ancient enemy. It was kind of a surprise since I had planned to start out by quickly going to Irlendria, but once I thought about how that story would go it just made sense to write it out. That is how Book One came into being.

Tristan asked me how many Book I’ve planned for the series, which was an easy answer. For now there is four books planned, although from how well the response is I have a great ideal for slightly altering the planned ending of Book four. If I do that I will easily have another three books to add to the series.

I also explained to Tristan that due to the extensive history of Irlendria and the war that has devastated their planet for around 3000 years. I have a lot of options for pre-stories. I already have one planned that would tell the story of how Startüm’s Mother and Father, Novastar Ironwolf and Ilmarinen Ironwolf, met and fell in love. It would go up to the point of where Novastar’s Father, Shadowfang brings Startüm to Earth.

Also I have a Sci-Fi series that has been building in my mind. One of my other long time dreams since I was a child. I’d like to start this once the first series of The Last Paladin is completed before I do any pre-stories.

All in all, I had a great talk with Tristan. He’s a pretty cool guy and we had a great time talking about everything.