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/

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.   

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…