9/30/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Hello all and happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week. Mine may not have been as productive as I would have preferred, but that happens sometimes. I just keep thinking about how I'm going to make up for it in November and I don't feel so bad. Anyway, like I said yesterday today I was going to post up links and so forth for books I've already featured, as a reminder of some of the great stories that are out there. So let's get right to it!

First up: "Uncrossed Paths" and "The Light Rises" by myself. They are set in a world where steam, magic, and the unknown are frequent. "Uncrossed Paths" tells the stories of the main characters from "The Light Rises" before they even knew one another existed. "Uncrossed Paths" is free and was recently accepted into the Smashwords premium catalog, so it will be available through Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Scrollmotion and Sony soon. "The Light Rises" is $3.99 and currently available at all those outlets as well as the Smashwords main site.

Next we have "Strange Fruit: Prologue" and "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather", by Raegan Millhollin. These stories are set in a modern world where magic is everywhere and forces of the divine have a place in almost everyone's lives. "Strange Fruit: Prologue" introduces the characters and opens up the world to the reader, while "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather" begins with the story of Azriel and Ephriam and how not all meetings happen by chance. "Strange Fruit: Prologue" is free and available via the Smashwords main site as well as Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Barnes & Noble, Scrollmotion and Sony. "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather" is $.99 and is also available through those locations.

"Smite Me, Oh Dark One", by Steve Thomas is a delightful short story that tells the story of a God who hates his job, and those he works with, so he decides that rather than destroying the people they had all created like they want him to, he would become a dark lord to spite them. It is free, available through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, Diesel, Scrollmotion, and also Amazon.







"Smoke: A Ghost Story", but Aaron Polson is about a young man who was raised in a strange town full of ghost stories and other paranormal happenings. When he finds himself crushing on an art student, he finds that the strange things were even bigger than he first thought, and that he may be more involved than he would have hoped. It is $.99 and available through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Scrollmotion, and Sony.






Thank you all so much for stopping by this Friday. I hope you find all the books that have been posted so far enjoyable. As self-published authors one of the best ways to help is to spread the word. Let your friends and family know how much you liked these books and where to find them. That's the best way you could possibly help all of the authors who are just trying to get their voices out there. Thanks again and I'll see you all on Monday!

9/29/2011 Terrific Thursday

Thanks again and I'm sorry for not posting last night. I got home from visiting with a friend and had a super bad migraine, and while I did take my medicine, I'm sure you would have all rather preferred a post you could all follow, and not the strange ramblings of a crazy person.

Anyway, let's get down to business, and now that I have a Disney song stuck in my head, I'll try to get through this posting. Something I wanted to talk about today was character development. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, and is something that can make or break a story. One thing that drives me absolutely crazy, and this is true or books, movies, anime, television shows, is when I could care less about the main character(s). For example, when I watched Full Metal Alchemist the first time around (not Brotherhood, that is magical) I could have cared less about what was happening to the Elric brothers by the end of it. I found the characters in the military far more interesting. This bothered me.

Now something that I believe being a table-top gamer has given me the advantage of is being able to actually make a character, and I don't just mean rolling dice followed by a round of screaming at them for obviously plotting against me. I mean being able to look at my options and putting together a person that has a life, people in their background/present/future, goals, skills, ambitions, and so forth. So one of the things I do when I go to start a story is I figure out my main character, give them a name, then actually put together who they are. Where/when they were born, the circumstances of their birth, how/where/when they grew up, and what influenced them into becoming the person they are in the story.

It's also important to remember the main character doesn't have to be the single most amazing person on the face of the entire planet. For my story, "Daughter of the Shackled King" I'm making it a point to show that the main character was just a normal person who just happened to be thrown into everything that's going on. Sure she gets super awesome powers, but that doesn't mean she's the most powerful, or the most skilled, or anything like that. What is important is to make your characters believable. Give them faults, make them fallible, make it so they learn from what's going on around them, not just instantly know how to solve every problem ever, that makes them boring.

Something that I find incredibly fun is working out what happens behind the scenes, or working out exactly how all the characters are connected to one another, and how the relationships will grow and/or change throughout the course of the story. Once you figure that out, visualize laying your plot over it and working out exactly how everything fits together. That way you'll know exactly at which point in the story the main character's view of someone else changes and they can finally start working together to stop the big-bad. Speaking of villains, those are super fun too. Treat them as another character (because they are) and develop them just as much as the good guys, make them into a person to. The villain should be as well thought out as the hero, they should be able to compliment one another so that their confrontations are entertaining and feel right.

I hope this was helpful for everyone. As for tomorrow, I'm not sure if I'll have a new book up since I had a profound lack of time this week. What I may do is re-post links to everything that's been put up already and where to find them (in case things have changed, i.e. more locations available and so forth). Hope that'll only happen this week. Thanks again! I'll post that up tomorrow!

9/26/2011 Magnificent Monday!

Hello! Second verse same as the first; thanks for your patience while I keep having to post late. This post is actually a bit earlier than I had been anticipating, but let's not dwell on how I should have known the plans I had for today weren't going to pan out weeks ago when I had to cancel my vacation for my current (wonderful!) training class. Let's focus on what makes today awesome!

This! This is a link to the blog "Pinky's Pub" who has a premise similar to mine. A friend of mine, Raegan Millhollin (who's name you likely recognize) asked her to post my books today as a birthday present. It even has a little 'happy birthday' midi sound file. She said such nice things about my stories, and even posted links, how-to's, and a special coupon offer for "The Light Rises" with it. Raegan did a really good job at keeping the big reveal a secret from me, and I do enjoy surprises, and this was a super nice one! Thanks again my dear!

As for my own writing progress, I wish there was more to report in that area. This training class is seriously wiping me out. I come home and fully intend to write something, and then well, that ends up not happening because I'm super tired. I know I need to get back on my game though, with September almost over, I need to make a lot of headway in October to I can properly prepare for National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO). I'm already preparing the blog for that month, I'm super excited!

I had honestly planned on writing more this weekend, but between my Saturday gaming session, my cat apparently having a vendetta against my keyboard, and walking around the Puyallup Fair for 6 hours, that just didn't happen. Maybe tonight I'll do...something, if I'm lucky it'll even be that prequel too!

Thanks again for stopping by on my birthday, it means a super lot. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday via twitter, facebook, text, blog and the like, and for all the nice presents you gave me. It really meant a lot. I'll see everyone on Wednesday!

9/23/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Hello and thank you again for your patience. I very much appreciate it. I'm terribly sorry I wasn't able to get the book post up sooner, hopefully everything will be alright. Now then! Onto the story!
One thing I kind of hinted at on Wednesday was that advertising for yourself is alright, and so to prove that point, I give you all SHAMELESS SELF ADVERTISING!

As I mentioned on Monday, I finished my short story collection called "Uncrossed Paths" and it tells the story about the lives of the characters in "The Light Rises" several years before they even met (and their actual meeting will be in the prequel I'm currently working on.) All of the stories are chronological, starting with the "Unexpected Apprentice", "His Beautiful French Flower", "Lighting the Lantern" and lastly, "Personal Investment". The stories detail significant events in the characters lives that eventually made them who they became.

I had a lot of fun writing this for a few reasons, the first being as I've said before I'm a total sucker for back story, and also the challenge of writing something short. It was also nice to work on something while getting some of the idea-kinks out of my head for the prequel.

"Uncrossed Paths" is available on Smashwords and is awaiting approval into the Premium Catalog, at which point it will be distributed to Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Scrollmotion, and Diesel. I should also mention it's free, so check it out and if you like it enough, also check out "The Light Rises" which currently is available at those other locations I mentioned.

Thanks again for stopping by, and also putting up with me throwing my own book at you. Stop by Monday to see what current projects I have going on. I'll warn that post may be a bit later since if things go according to play I'll be seeing a movie for my birthday. Until then, feel free to comment, post, and/or contact me, and if you'd like your own book featured on Friday, feel free to let me know! Have a good weekend!

9/21/2011 Writing Wednesday

Hello and thanks again for your patience. I know it's late and I'm sorry, aside from still being 8-5, I also had a schedule conflict and brought me home later than normal. So then, let's get right to business shall we?

Today I'm going to attempt to give marketing advice. Please keep in mind that I am still learning this myself. It's something that is incredibly hard, stressful, time consuming, and can feel a bit silly at times. The reason for that is because you are literally putting yourself out there for everyone to see, they're going to watch you hold your work out on a silver-plated (let's be realistic here, if you're doing you're own marketing, chances are you aren't a millionaire) platter. Today there are a lot more options than there were even say 5 years ago, which does make it a bit easier, but only in the sense of access, it's still something the rather self conscious (i.e. me) are going to have to push through.

First let's talk about the easy parts: social networking. Chances are you're already a part of it, whether you have a Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or so forth, you've already seen the effects of social networking and the incredible amount of power it has. I had both a Twitter and Facebook account before I was published, so simply posting links saying "LOOK AT THIS!", the only issue that I had (and...still kind of have) is that it's mostly family and friends that follow me. Not like that isn't fantastic (I love you guys!) but the part that makes marketing...well...marketing is reaching people you don't even know. Now, Smashwords does help with this a bit because they give you links to places like Stumbled Upon, Linkedin, Digg, Google's...thing, and other such places right there on the book's page. The part that makes social networking work so well is that is runs on word of mouth, especially Twitter, someone likes something, so they retweet to their followers, and their followers do the same, and so-forth, it's like magic.

Now for the harder part: the real world. This is hard because it's more face-to-face interaction, and this can be really scary at times because people will ask you to explain your book to them, and when you explain it's going to sound absolutely crazy/stupid to you. This is normal, at least in my experience. Admittedly I've gotten better, but it still feels incredibly awkward, especially when I have to explain to someone what Steampunk is when they have absolutely no idea in the first place. The other part that I find awkward, and this may just be me, is when people ask me about my process. They ask me questions like "How do you go from writing on your break, to going back to work, then picking up right where you left off on your next break?" and I realized today I have no idea how to answer that question other than, "I don't know. I open the notebook, remember where I was at then get to it?" It's just weird.

Anyway, back to marketing in the real world, the point is to try and sell your book without coming off as needy, crazy, or arrogant. This is really hard, because you are going to run into people who just simply don't care. It's nothing personal, they just aren't interested, these people can be co-workers, friends, even family, that's fine. I asked people at my work if they had an e-reader, expecting to get a lot of positive responses, and I think I've found one or two people. These are people who ALL have smartphones. One of the things I plan on trying out is a business card, it's not advertising the book itself, but more this particular blog, that has as many links to my book as I can fit onto it without looking too desperate. My plan with them is to say, leave them when I pay for food somewhere, just with my tip, or on the wall at a Panera or library, just random places. That way people I don't know can see it, stop by and hopefully get to where the book is located.

The point about marketing is to not give up. It's hard, and sometimes feels incredibly strange or not normal, but it does help. Something else that works is to put links to your other works in new ones so that people can just click over to one of the other things right after their done. It's so convenient.

Again, I thank you all for your patience with my late posts lately. I very much appreciate it. Please stop by Friday where I'll have links for another book up. I'm sure you can all guess what it's going to be! (Marketing tip, shameless self-advertising is ok too.) Have a good next couple days!

9/19/2011 Magnificent Monday!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a fun weekend, I know I did. I also hope everyone got a chance to check out Friday's book posting. The story is really fun and I hope people like it.

For today, I have exciting news! I met my deadline, which means my short story "Uncrossed Paths" is available on Smashwords! I'm still waiting for the approval regarding the premium catalog, and rest assured that once that happens I'll be posting links as soon as I get them.

Writing a short story was a lot of fun, and a delightful challenge for me. Normally when I work on projects they end up being full-length and rather long (see "The Light Rises" for an example). Things that are short and I just never seemed to get along. I got the idea to try out a short story that kind of introduces the characters from "The Light Rises" from a friend, and decided to try it out. Now I am an absolute sucker for back story, so I was all over this project. The biggest challenge I had was making sure it remained short, since all of the characters had at least two decades of life before meeting up, part of me wanted to include everything, but I managed to not let that happen. Some things are best left to be surprises later! (hint hint)

I really recommend trying to write something that challenges yourself, it helps expand what you're able to do, and gets you used to working with the vast options you have available. If you normally write short stories, try to go full-length. Always write fantasy? Go after maybe romance or horror. Something that you just aren't used to, you may find you actually had a lot of fun. For me, aside from short stories, it's action sequences. I'm always afraid they don't make any sense, but luckily playing table-top games has taught me the idea of initiative; it helps give some kind of order to the scene. For instance; Your main character brings his sword up to the arch-villain in a large swipe, the villain seeing an opening, brings his blade low, while the hero's companions try to react to try and defend him. Think of it as taking turns + common sense. If someone brought their weapon/arm/chair up to block the villain/giant bear/gang member's attack, they're likely leaving themselves open somewhere else, and it's possible the opponent may try to exploit that.

Also, soundtracks. I love having background music, especially something instrumental you can use to really help set the mood for yourself. For my big climatic fight scene in "The Light Rises" I probably listened to the version of This is Gallifrey/Vale Decem from the 2010 Doctor Who Proms about a dozen times, followed by their version of Amy's Theme for right after. Having a soundtrack also makes writing those scenes a lot more fun too, at least in my opinion.

That's it for today! Come back on Wednesday where I'll talk about another one of the subjects from a couple weeks ago. As always, feel free to comment/post/contact and such!

9/16/2011 Fantastic Friday

Surprise! I decided to try and get the post up early today, even though I'm stil on that training shift, and here you go! I especially wanted to do it today, since it's the day I put up someone's book, I didn't want to make everyone wait until closer to the end of the day. So here we go!

Today's feature is called "Smoke: A Ghost Story" by Aaron Polson, it's a young adult, supernatural thriller about a 17 year old named Tucker Ellison. The town he lives in isn't really considered 'normal' by any means, but he has learned to handle that. What he hasn't figured out is how to deal with the fact he's falling for an art student named Ellen, a girl who seems to be incredibly close to all the crazy in the town, and leads him to something much bigger.

Now, when it comes to YA, I'm usually a bit hesitant, since there is a lot that follows the 'fish out of water, boy meets girl, blah blah blah' sort of thing. I really like this because of just how important all the supernatural elements are. Not to mention the main character seems at least used to what's going on around him, he's just getting more involved. My thinking is, sure a lot of YA may follow similar tropes, but if it's entertaining, intelligent, and overall a good story, I seriously enjoy it.

I really like this story, I've looked through the sample that's available via smashwords.com enjoy everything I've seen so far. It's a short story that's available for purchase for .99 from smashwords, I'm not sure if it's in the premium catalog yet, I checked B&N and couldn't find it, but it is likely just a matter of time before it's there. This is a very entertaining read, so please go check it out!

Thanks again, and sorry for the quick post. I'll be back Monday and hopefully I'll be able to talk about me meeting my deadline! Have a good weekend!

9/14/2011 Writing Wednesday

Hello! Thanks again for your patience, and I apologize for the late reply. I will say this, after not being 8 - 5 forever, I really appreciate my closing shift. My plan for today, and the next several Wednesdays, is to go into a bit more detail about what was brought up last week, and after my experience last night, I have decided to start with editing.

Editing is the process that seems like it takes a million times longer than it took to actually write the book, and is a thousand times harder. While the amount of time it takes may not be accurate, I will agree on the difficulty. Editing is something that needs to be done in steps and phases, and these are going to be grueling, frustrating, and patience straining. The best way to get this done is going to depend on the length of the piece of work itself.

The first read through is mostly so you can catch spelling/grammar errors and make sure certain things make sense. I can't tell you how many instances I found where I put the wrong word somewhere. For this, in my opinion, the read through isn't so much to start ripping things apart necessarily, but more to give you an idea of what to expect.

The second one is when you start marking it up. Now this can be done in one of two ways, and which one you do is likely going to depend on the length of the work. If it's something relatively short, just going through the file on the computer will likely be easy enough, since you don't have to go far to get back to your place if say, the computer decides it wants to update while you're asleep and the file is forced closed. If you're working on a full-length novel, I suggest printing it out, and I recommend having a professional do it so you're not destroying your ink cartridges or your printer. I got mine printed out by Office Depot and it cost me all of about $20 for 215 pages. Not bad at all. Having a physical copy is nice because you can travel with it without having to carry around a laptop, and it's incredibly easy to find your place again once you've closed it.

During this part of the process you will be crossing things out, adding notes, basically marking it all over the place. My suggestion would be to use a pen that isn't black, since likely your text is black and having a different color makes it easier to see where you've marked something or haven't yet. Once you've read through and marked everything up, it's time to do what I call the 'find/replace' edit. It's the point in which you have your marked up copy open and you're going to those specific parts in your digital version and putting in your changes. I will warn you, like most parts of editing, this part is going to seem like it takes a lot longer than it really should. After this is completed you will do another read through, and either during or afterward, I really suggest having someone else read it as well. Having another set of eyes on the document will help find things you missed, and also certain details that either need to be changed or done differently. Peer editing is something that I have found is also incredibly helpful.

Once you've received your peer edit/someone who's not you looking at it copy, back, I suggest doing one more read through (or however many more you feel are necessary) until you don't think it can be changed any further or made any better. At that point it is safe to declare the work finished. One thing though, and I cannot stress this enough, no matter how many times you click that save button, for the love of everything holy in the world make absolutely sure that your final, edited version of your story is actually saved somewhere. Open that file, make sure it's the right one because you close whatever you were doing in it before. I wanted to absolutely rage-quit the world last night when I came home and the file I had been working on editing for over a week was simply gone. No record of it ever being on my computer, or opened by Word. Make sure it exists!

Those were my thoughts on editing, of course you can always pay someone (in real money or food) to do it all for you, but if you don't have access to either of those, it never hurts to go at it yourself. After all you're the one who wrote it, so you know how things should be described and so forth.

Thanks again for your patience while I work a normal person's shift. As always, feel free to post/comment/questions/and so forth. Come back Friday where I talk about someone's book! Until then!

9/12/2011 Marvelous Monday

Hello! Sorry about the late post, as I said before my work has decided to put me in a training class, so I'm working a normal person's schedule this week (maybe next week too, I don't know anymore) but I am here, I am sleep deprived, and I'm read to type!

I'm still working on the edit for 'Uncrossed Paths" I finished my first and second read-throughs and have passed it off to a friend for peer edits. Hopefully I will be able to finish it soon though, as I said before I apparently have a deadline of next Monday.

Sadly this weekend was not very good for writing on my part, which is sad, but I plan on making up for it shortly. When it comes to writing for me, once in a while it comes in bursts of inspiration, though usually I'm fairly consistent, sometimes just slowing down and letting ideas stew for a bit is necessary. For instance, I can get to one part, then stop and wonder how exactly things are going to play out next, and sit there for a day or so working out the details until I get through the scene. I think all authors go through this, which is fine.

I'm looking forward to finishing my work project, "Daughter of the Shackled King" but because I have no idea what I'm going to occupy myself with next (besides work, of course) I have hit a bit of a problem. I want to work on everything at once, and unfortunately that isn't humanly possible, so right now it's a matter of figuring out what I need to do next. Realistically I should write everything in order, but apparently my brain isn't going to allow that to happen. I have all these ideas popping up for what happens next with these particular characters, I'm leaning more towards making that story-arc-block-thing what I do at work, and the prequel and sequel to "The Light Rises" my home project.

Again, I apologize for the late post, and whatever lack of coherency may or may not be held within it. My normal work schedule is 12pm - 9pm, and they have me working 8am - 5pm this week, so yeah, that happened. I always tell people I'm allergic to the morning (hehe) Come back Wednesday for the writing post, I plan on going into a bit more detail on what was mentioned last week to give a bit more info. Thanks again, and I hope you all have a good couple days!

9/9/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Greetings everyone! It's Friday, and I congratulate you all on successfully making it through another week! Today I will reward this with another book posting!

Today's book is titled "Strange Fruit, Episode One: Feather", it's episode one of the "Strange Fruit" e-book series based on the webcomic, by Raegan Millhollin. If that name sounds familiar, that would be because she is the one who wrote the prologue we talked about on the first Friday post.

This book follows the story of Ephraim, a young man with a lame job who stumbles upon the beaten and broken unconscious body of an angel one rainy night in an alleyway. Normally he would leave people to their own devices, but instead he decides to take the person home and help them recover. However, his one act of kindness seems to be one that will cause a ripple of trouble, and may also cost him his life.

It's short, but it's episode one, so that's kind of the point. It includes the characters from the prologue, obviously, many years later, and it's building up to show how everyone is connected to each other in incredibly important ways. You start to see exactly how the foreshadowing is playing out, and if you're familiar with the webcomic, you also get some of the 'behind the scenes' stuff you didn't get a chance to see previously, so there's an added bonus for you as well!

Like the prologue, this book follows the supernatural urban fantasy genre. It's also available for the super low price of .99, and likely will soon be available at Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and other locations once it is accepted into the Smashwords premium catalog. For now you can find it here, and if you're interested in seeing where it all began, the webcomic is here. You should definitely check it out!

Thanks again for stopping by! Just to give a heads up, my updates for the next couple weeks will be rather late in the day. I'm doing a special 2 week training class at work, so they'll have me working 8 - 5 rather than my normal shift. The week of the 26th should be back to normal though (and I'll have that week off so I super won't have any excuses.) Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I'll see you all Monday!

9/7/2011 Writing Wednesday

Hello! Welcome again on this Wednesday. I hope writing is finding you all well. I felt a small sense of victory the other day when I finished writing my short story collection, "Uncrossed Paths" now I just need to edit it. I've been told I need to finish a week before my birthday, so it's kind of interesting to have a deadline. Anyway let's get to writing stuff!

For this week's topic I want to look at things that are typically some of the most difficult to handle, or at least get through. The first is editing, this task that seems to be nearly impossible to complete, the second is marketing and handling reviews.

When it comes to editing, I personally like editing things that aren't my own, when it comes to my work I don't want to look at them anymore once I'm finished writing it, not because I think it's perfect and don't want to hack away at it, but because I know there are errors and I don't want to look at them. Editing is hard, it doesn't matter who you are, for your story and your precious ideas, it's like you're committing murder by cutting out and/or changing them. For some reason this takes longer than you think it actually should, and when you think you should have been done ages ago you look at the page number only to discover you're halfway through. This is normal. Just remember once you get finished with editing, you're well on your way to getting the story/novel/collection/what have you, out there for the world, so no giving up now!

Once you have your story ready to be thrown out there, it's time to decide if you want to go for an agent, or self publish. Both of these have their positives and negatives, today though we're going to look at self publishing since you need to do your own marketing (most of the time.) This is hard because you have to put yourself out there in such a way that would make anyone nervous. Luckily the Internet makes this a lot easier than it used to be due to things like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Stumbled Upon, Digg, and the like, however when it comes to doing that outside of the Internet once again you're faced with the (somewhat embarrassing) task of telling people face to face about it. Business cards help with this, and there are many rather nice templates you can get for word processors that will only require you buying some perforated card stock rather than paying a company lots of money to print them out for you.

After this is finished, it's time to wait, not that you stop marketing, but it also becomes a waiting game. This is a hard game to play because it takes forever to actually sell anything, and it's not because no one wants to read it, it's still because no one knows it's out there, and if they do, you need to keep in mind that the human memory is a fickle thing. Other blogs out there are helpful, there are many that do things similar to my own when it comes to getting other books out on various days of the week. This brings me to reviews and the sorts, these can be a double-edged sword, because if you get a review it means someone is reading the book, which is good, but they might not have liked it, and felt it was necessary to show it publicly. This is going to make you angry, upset, sad, hurt, and defensive, the way I've combated this (though it's not like all those other things didn't happen) is by thinking 'Any publicity is good publicity'. We've all seen it happen before with movies, TV shows, things on the Internet, and other books, so just because you get one bad review, it's not the end of the world.

That was my post for today. I'm sorry if it was a bit ramble-y, but I figure it was important, and I promised myself I wasn't going to rant. Please come back on Friday where I have a review for another book up on the Internet! See you then!

Magnificent Monday?

Hello! As you can see I'm still trying to figure out what to call the post for Mondays. I'm mostly trying to find something memorable without just ripping off an 80's song. Sorry the post is coming a bit later than normal, but hopefully everyone who has the day off today is enjoy it by relaxing and doing whatever they want!

I didn't make much progress this weekend on my own projects, that's one of the issues with trying really hard not to absolutely destroy my wrist. However, I did spend some time editing something for a friend, and for some reason, while doing that with my own work seems like an endless series of head-desking, I quite enjoy doing it when it's another person's work. I suppose it's because it's not mine therefore it's different.

Hopefully today though, I'll be able to actually get finished with my short-story so that I can get to that aforementioned editing process today. Yes I know I was hoping to finish that this past weekend, but that's the thing about writing; sometimes timetables don't work. Which is fine, it just means that when you do have time to get it done, hopefully it'll be better than if you rushed through it to get the work finished by your own self-imposed deadline. It also wasn't like I didn't do any writing this week, there's the one I work on at work that's almost to the "big reveal" and getting close to the end, and the short stories had some progress, they just aren't finished.

This brings me to something that I believe I may have left out of Wednesday's posts, and it adds to the "it's ok to take a break sometimes" line, and that it's also important to have time when you're not writing. Not in the sense of that's when you're at work and really shouldn't be writing, but more in that there needs to be a time when you are focusing on something else, like another hobby, that lets you clear your head, relax, and just do something else for a while. When it comes to writing it's like another job after (or sometimes during) your other one, and just like your other one, there are times when you just need to not be doing that right now. This is all perfectly fine, so don't stress over things if you hadn't written anything one day. You're cool.

Speaking of writing, I was wondering what everyone is working on these days? I figure this would give people a chance to post and maybe get some discussions going. Do you prefer genre or just literary writing? Do you find some easier than others? Do you usually go for long or short stories? Feel free to post the trials and tribulations of your experiences below. Remember we're all friends here, so there's no need to be afraid someone will jump down your throat because you say you write teenage romance.

I also saw the blog has reached 100+ posts! Hooray! I know it's not much compared to other blogs out there, but since mine has started recently I consider this a glorious victory! Thanks to everyone who's come by (sometimes multiple times) to see the updates and check out the books on Friday. I appreciate it very much. Hugs and loves to all of you! I'll see everyone on Wednesday, if you have any particular topics you'd like for me to bring up, feel free to post! See you then!

9/2/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! It's a 3-day weekend for me, hopefully others get to experience the glory that is not having to work on Monday as well!


Let's get to business shall we? Today's book is a short story currently at Smashwords called "Smite Me, Oh Dark One" by Steve Thomas. I picked this for today's review because of just how absolutely delightful it is.

The basic premise is that Acerbus is a God who's told by the other Gods he needs to destroy the races of the world they made if they try to achieve God-hood. Hating his job (and his co-workers) he decides to one-up everyone and become a Dark Lord.

The writing is splendid and every single page made me giggle, and not many things can do that. From my experience, a lot of comedy books put themselves a little too out there and it's just difficult to read, this one is done intelligently and in such a way that it makes perfect sense for the world around it. It takes the high-fantasy epic and twists it around in such a way that everything that happens in it, is nothing more than logical.

It also has this line, "I invented teleportation that very moment, just to get away from him faster. True story." That should be all the motivation you need to pick this up and read it. Also, like the story from last week, it's also free!

Steve Thomas has also written "Harbingers of Mortality" and "An Exercise in Futility" both of which are available at Smashwords, sadly I haven't read those yet, but I'm certain they are just as delightful as this one!

Thanks again for reading, as always if you would like me to feature your book on Friday, feel free to contact me. Everyone have a fun and safe weekend and see you Monday (though the update may be later in the day due to no working.)