For this month, here’s a double feature! Many thanks to Sally Cronin for promoting my published work, and to Robbie Cheadle for allowing me to discuss how poetry has impacted my life. Check out both!
Novels
Reading Fantasy and Science Fiction
Many thanks to author Jamie Adams for this opportunity to discuss the appeal of reading fantasy and science fiction stories. I enjoyed his work The Fathers, The Sons, and The Anxious Ghost.
Reading Fantasy and Science Fiction – Guest Post
Happy Holidays, everyone! Don’t forget that books make great gifts!
Great Ideas: Search and Find
It is a question every writer is asked at some point in their careers: “Where do you get your ideas from?” It’s become a cliché, really. Still, there are others out there suffering from writer’s block who feel their well has gone dry, so to speak. Or perhaps you’re in the middle of an ocean of ideas and don’t know which fish to bait for. Well, I’ll elaborate on some familiar answers, which in my opinion aren’t always suited for every situation.
Write about what you know.
This has been said a lot of times, and it is logical. You’re pretty much guaranteed to do well with ideas you are knowledgeable about. The situations and experiences from your own life can help provide a far more solid base upon which to build a story. Such examples can include professional experiences (Jeremy Lloyd drew on his experiences working in a department store for Are You Being Served?) or places you have visited or lived (Stephen King’s stories are often set in his home state of Maine or in Colorado, where he went on vacation once he was financially able to do so). Then there are personal hobbies and interests, which leads to the next point.
Write about what interests you.
Writing about what you know won’t be enough if passion isn’t in it. It will show in your writing if passion was absent. Interests and hobbies are a great source of ideas because the writer can share those passions through stories and perhaps spark interest in readers. Plus, your passion can compensate because you will compel yourself to drive and learn more about your passions/interests in order to write a better story. Bram Stoker spent seven years writing and developing Dracula, and he never visited Romania, where a good portion of his book his set. He drew on research and his own imagination.
So perhaps in the end, perhaps you need to draw on a combination in order to make a blend. And in my case, certainly, I need to remind myself to not stress over it, which I admit is still hard to do. I must keep hope that ideas will come, especially when I’m not looking for them.
Further Reading
- Adams, Jamie. Where Can You Get Story Ideas From?
- Aldridge, Alison. Where to find great story ideas.
- Elliott, Anna. Summoning the Muse at Writer Unboxed.
- Rodriguez, Asa. Great ideas.
- Zikra, Nour. How To Have Fun Writing Again | Writing Advice.
- Zikra, Nour. How To Brainstorm Story Ideas + Where To Get Started.
Inscribed #4
The collection continues to grow:
I was able to get my copy of Lewis F. McIntyre‘s The Eagle and the Dragon inscribed at the 2019 Maryland Writers’ Conference. It was at a meeting of the Annapolis chapter of the MWA that I had my copy of Lucia St. Clair Robson‘s Mary’s Land inscribed.
Michele Chynoweth and I exchanged books during the pandemic, which is how I got The Jealous Son. I purchased A. L. Kaplan‘s Star Touched at the 2021 Maryland Writers’ Conference.
I don’t remember where exactly I got Damn the Rejections, Full Speed Ahead, but I think it was a gift from one of my relatives years ago.
Be sure to check out the previous post of books in my inscribed collection:
Coming Later this Week!
It’s almost here! Yes, I’m talking about the new edition of Mystical Greenwood from Fae Corps! Don’t forget! There is a launch party on August 26th on Facebook in the Fae Corps Inc Party Room group.
You can still pre-order eBooks! The paperback through Barnes & Noble can be pre-ordered now, too! It seems that B&N and Amazon issue separate ISBNs now (paperback via Amazon should be ready around the release day).
Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Books2Read
It’s hard to believe that it’s happening. This book has been on quite a journey, and with this new edition I took the opportunity to make many grammatical corrections.
In fact, I learned this month that in a contest I submitted the original edition to in Top Shelf Magazine, which I’d forgotten about, the book was an honorable mention. It was a nice little surprise, and it can only make me wonder what’s in store for the new edition!
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to reestablish a morning writing routine, as I’d mentioned previously. I have found that two things have contributed to making it successful:
- Sitting at a table as opposed to on the couch. When it comes to writing rather than editing, posture matters, it seems.
- Not logging onto the internet until after I’m done.
Basically, the writing time (as of now) lasts as long as my two morning cups of coffee with Coffee Mate French Vanilla cream, so I guess I now have a writing beverage. But more than anything else, the discipline of doing it, even when barely a few words barely make it out (which has happened a few times), is what is making it work. Here’s hoping it continues and gets more productive. Maybe it’ll progress to a weekly word count, like I had to do in a novella class taught by Professor Jerry Gabriel back at St. Mary’s College. We’ll see.
Release Party Next Month!
For those who haven’t seen last month’s post, my fantasy novel Mystical Greenwood is having a new edition coming out next month courtesy of Fae Corps, with whom I have been in four anthologies (you can find these on my poetry and short stories pages).
Looking back on when it was first published and the road towards getting the new one ready, some of it was familiar territory, while in other cases, things have changed when it comes to technology, which has been more helpful in proofreading and correcting grammatical errors, which is definitely not an opportunity to pass up when releasing a new edition.
But through all of it, I am reminded perhaps more so than before that I need to be patient (one of those four P’s of getting published) and trust that everything will be okay.
I’m very grateful to Fae Corps for taking my book on, and they have done a fantastic job with promotional images:
And don’t forget that you can preorder eBook editions! Print copies will be available on or around the release date.
Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Books2Read
And there is going to be a launch party on August 26th on Facebook in the Fae Corps Inc Party Room group. I hope to see you there!
In the meantime, I hope to continue to try to find a better balance between writing and marketing, which I’ve started on by trying to cut back on social media promotion that I got heavily into during the COVID pandemic and focus a little more on quality rather than quantity.
I also want to try to reestablish a writing routine again, perhaps at a different time of day so that I can make headway on the sequel. Fingers crossed.
Second Edition of Mystical Greenwood Pre-Order!
Many thanks to Fae Corps for publishing a second edition of Mystical Greenwood! For those who didn’t see last month’s post, the original publisher had to shut down as a result of COVID. Release date is set for August 26th! They did an excellent job on the new cover art!
The Kindle version is available for preorder!
So are the Nook and other eBook editions via Books2Read!
And you can mark the Kindle edition to-read on Goodreads (or switch over if you’d intended to read the original Kindle and hadn’t bought it)!
Print copies, unfortunately, will have to wait until the release date.
I know there are many of you will be asking when Book II will be available. I’m afraid I still don’t have a definitive answer, as I’ve had a lot going on in my life, and I haven’t been able to get those creative juices going. But I am not giving up. I will let you know when I have updates on it. Believe me, I want to get it done.
Tempus Fugit
Time is a curious thing. I’ve found when we focus on time, it seems to drag on at a snail’s pace. Yet when we do not pay attention to it, it flies right past. When it comes to fiction, time can play an interesting function. Stories and novels can take place from anywhere to the course of a single day (or less) with a few characters, to several years, decades even, covering generations of people. At other times, a story can seem to go by slower or faster than it really does. Simply put, in stories, as in life, time and how much we pay attention to it can affect how things play out.
A story that takes place in a short amount of time by drawing it out, such as chapters and sections being either specified by time (like a subtitle) or within the text (such as a character mentioning the time). The constant mention of time helps to make the shorter time feel longer. With a story set out over a long period of time, I usually have found there isn’t as many references to the time, which can make the time go faster. Interesting paradox, isn’t it?
I also want to talk about time in a different sense. Perhaps all writers think about what shall become of their work as time goes on. This became more apparent to me because I recently learned that my novel’s publisher, Mockingbird Lane Press, has sadly had to close. No doubt writers want their work to outlive them, to still be read and assessed long after they’re gone. It does seem that any work defined as a literary classic these days is one that has withstood the test of time, to still be printed and sold years, centuries, after it was first published. There are many writers who are remembered for a single thing out of their entire literary output.
Sometimes I think writers wish they could see where their work goes in the future, similar to how in an episode of the Spanish TV drama El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time), a cynical and suicidal Miguel de Cervantes was shown by the protagonists the impact Don Quixote would have on Spain and the world in the centuries after his time (their goal was to ensure its publication, as they’d faced a threat it might not be, thus changing the course of history and literature). Their efforts gave Cervantes the courage and drive to finish Don Quixote (specifically the first half, as the book was actually in two parts with more than a decade in between being published), and go on with his life, thus ensuring he and his magnum opus would make history. In the end, I suppose, what matters is hope: hope that something creative will someday reach that level.
Time is indeed a curious thing. But it keeps going on, as must we. And don’t worry, I do intend to republish my novel.
Young People Reading
Once when I was at the gym, a gym buddy told me how he felt young children these days aren’t as engrossed with reading as they used to be, that nowadays they are in essence glued to technological escapes rather than literary ones. In many respects I think he isn’t wrong. Technology is constantly changing, and certainly isn’t what it once was. In many ways it has improved our lives, but in others it seems to have taken over our lives as well.
Reading is a great way to escape all that, just as walking or exercising is, because it’s good to unplug and recharge, if you take my meaning. For young children, studies have said it’s important for them to not get glued to technology, because what they really need is that connection and interaction with their parents.
Certainly one of the best ways, if not the best, to get a child to love reading is for parents to read to them from an early age, and it establishes that necessary connection. I remember my own parents reading to me many books when I was little, especially before bed. It’s a great way not only to get children to love reading and spark their imagination, but to forge a bond between parent and child.
Once I was a volunteer for a library that had a special annex. The books there—all children’s books—couldn’t be checked out, just read, and I had to watch over the annex for a few hours. Once in a while, I would offer to read to a child, and even though it didn’t happen often, I loved it.
Some of the best children’s stories began with people telling stories and/or playing with children. A. A. Milne was inspired to create Winnie-the-Pooh by watching his son Christopher play with his stuffed toys. When Reverend Wilbert Awdry’s son (coincidentally also named Christopher) was sick, he told him a story about a sad little steam engine named Edward, which was the beginning of his Railway Series (yes, Edward came before Thomas, as did Gordon and Henry). Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie also interacted with children, through which they were inspired to write their respective masterpieces, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
I have no children of my own (yet), but I do hope to be a father someday. I definitely would read to them my favorite books and series from when I was a child, but I would also encourage them to find their own favorites. Parents have tried to keep children from reading certain titles, even going so far as to ask for books to be banned. While parents seek to protect, I feel they need to let their children make their own decisions too, and teach them to approach reading with an open mind.
The important thing is whether a book entices a child to keep reading. I remember how on an Amazon Prime documentary about Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a single father raising a daughter said that he knew little about R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, which his daughter read, but knew if they were banned, his daughter might lose the drive to keep reading because those books specifically were what motivated her to keep reading.
Further Reading
- Cheadle, Robbie. Teaching your child to read.
- French, Charles F. Benefits of Reading Revisited.
The Hero’s Journey: Departure
Anyone who’s an ardent Star Wars fan will know of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and how it influenced George Lucas. He outlines similar steps within what is known as the hero’s journey, which has been found in ancient myths, folktales, and modern fantasy/science-fiction stories. I received my copy one Christmas and poured over it, understanding these points. It’s among my recommended reads for writers! Whilst editing Mystical Greenwood, I tried thinking of the plot I was forming in terms of what Campbell outlined. In the end, I came to see the book as the Departure Phase, which consists of the Call to Adventure, Rejecting the Call, the Threshold Crossing, and the Belly of the Whale.
In my own observations of other fantasy works, I’ve seen two kinds of heroes who receive the Call to Adventure. The first is the protagonist dissatisfied with life and yearning for something more. The other is essentially the opposite, perfectly content. When creating the two brothers at the heart of this story I tried envisioning them as such. But in the end, I had to pick one to be the central hero, and that was Dermot, the one who was dissatisfied with life.
Often the mentor in fantasy is an old wizard with a long beard. Early on, I felt such a mentor at the beginning giving them the Call might be too much of a cliché, so I had that character appearing not until three quarters of the way into the book. The teenage characters instead traveled on their own and chose to do so, though there was a character who did in a way give them the Call to Adventure. But later on, I realized that scenario was not going to work. A mentor figure was needed in order for the hero and his allies to survive and be properly introduced to their world’s magic and their abilities. So that original herald was vastly reworked, evolving into the true initial mentor figure instead of my wizard.
What made me go ahead without risking cliché was that this mentor was going to be a woman. I sought to have her be an embodiment of Mother Nature, who is associated with three stages of womanhood, each of which I gave her attributes: maiden (her face), mother (her personality) and crone (her age/hair). This deviation, if you really want to call it that, shows a story doesn’t need to follow the Hero’s Journey to the letter, such as when Frodo fails the final temptation at the end of The Lord of the Rings. Changes from tradition can make the story stand out and give readers a nice twist.
I hope to continue with the Hero’s Journey in the rest of the One with Nature series, with the next book being the Initiation Phase. This month marks four years since the paperback first came out (April will be the Kindle anniversary). Please read and rate/review if you haven’t yet!
Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Foyles | Waterstones | Deviant Art
Follow me on social media, too!
Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Tumblr | LinkedIn | Goodreads | Amazon
Further Reading
- Winkle, Chris. The Eight Character Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey.
Andrew McDowell 