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.          

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…

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.

Okay, well maybe not such a “quick update”, but I can’t help it once I start writing!

It’s been a crazy week at work and at home, between the two I’ve missed my normal blog posts. I decided to get a quick post out before I went to the movies to see Lucy. For those of you who haven’t seen the trailer, it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVt32qoyhi0 I hope it’s as freaking awesome as it looks!

Wednesday nights are our movie nights at the Taunus Theater. You can find it here: http://www.shopmyexchange.com/ReelTimeTheatres/Movies-Wiesbaden.htm Although not much of a selection, it’s still a nice theater for those of us serving overseas. The next two movies I’m waiting for are Guardians of the Galaxy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89q_HH-3ghk and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZ0PnDZdZk

Hey don’t judge, I know I’m a geek =D

I’m still trying to decide on a title for Book Two. Hopefully my next post will have the top four Titles that I’m struggling to decide on. I’m hoping I can get a vote as to what people like best and then decide based on everyone’s feedback.

I will also be posting my experience on the process of getting a new edition of Flight’s printed edition up on Amazon. Although I update the Ebook whenever I hear of an issue someone found within its pages, I haven’t updated the printed edition. My wife just had a friend want to give her husband a copy for his birthday and I was horrified when I’d realized I hadn’t updated that version yet.

Until now updating the printed version hasn’t been an issue. People typically buy Ebooks or Audio books, but rarely does someone actually buy the printed edition, which is why I’ve been somewhat lackadaisical on getting it corrected. Now if I had my books in bookstores across the world and in the airport this would have been a priority, but since I’m and Indie Writer it hasn’t been top on my list. Well now my wife has properly motivated me to update the printed edition too.

My daughter just had her eighteenth birthday party this last Monday. Although this was the small party for her girlfriends since it was a school night, the girls danced and sang until 0500 in the morning. I think I passed out sometime around 0230 from exhaustion … not drinking. It was entertaining to hear everyone singing and dancing though.

I’ve also been working with my daughter on learning to drive. She’s doing awesome with the learning the manual and I’m really proud of her. I think it’s always smart to be able to drive any car, no matter if Google is trying to make knowing how to drive obsolete =D You never know when you’ll be stuck somewhere trying to escape a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the only vehicle available is some manual transmission jeep. Sigh, my daughter rolls her eyes at that, but I know some of you know what I mean.

I had a fan named Nic ask me when I’m planning on having Book Two out, and I’ll post what I told him. If RL allows me to finish Book Two in 2014, then I’ll have it out this year, but if not then I’m planning on the first quarter of 2015. While Flight was 88,040 in length, I’ve already written over 65,000 words of Book Two. Although that sounds like a lot, Book Two is turning out to be a lot bigger story than I’d originally planned. I know where I want the story to end at, but as I’m writing the story I’m discovering there is a lot more story then I’d realized and I have no desire to skip over the details. I’m doing my best to get it out as soon as possible though and I normally write a little every night … except on the weekends. My wife has nixed any writing on the weekends after Book One was released. 

Eitherway, Book Two is turning out awesome. I really love how the story is turning out and I hope everyone who reads it feels the same!

I’ve said this Series will have four books, although that doesn’t mean the story is over. I already have a second series planned that picks up where The Last Paladin Series stops. The planned name of the next Series will be “The Demon Wars”. I had originally thought this was a spoiler … and maybe it is. Once you’ve read Book Two it will make more sense ^^

Also, I have two prequels planned for the Series. One will be the stories of the Paladin Ilmarinen Ironwolf and his Werewolf wife Novastar Ironwolf (Startüm’s parents), which will cover the Tuonellian invasion up to their death. The other Series will cover Startüm’s life on Earth.  

After writing back to Nic I just decided I had to share the information with everyone who checks out my blog. Again, thanks for letting me know how much you liked the story Nic. It made my day!

Anyway, I think that’s enough of an update for now. I’m going to try to get a little bit of writing in before heading out to the movies.

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

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.