Update to the Update

With my technical editor, Michael Scott!

It has been a busy and gratifying few weeks since Blood of the Dragon was released! The book has remained in Amazon’s Top 100 for young adult fantasy. The support I’ve received so far gives me hope I can retire completely from any office work and just write and coach swimming, my two passions.

I’ve been doing final edits on the rough draft of the sequel, Heart of the Dragon, readying it for my technical editor, Michael Scott, as we get ready for our hoped-for publication date of October 1, 2019.

Plotting and writing for Book 3 has reached a sudden standstill, however, as I’m contemplating restarting from scratch and pushing Book 3’s plot back to Book 4! My original plan had been for the traditional trilogy, but now I’m not so certain. By the time I finish editing Book 2, I hope to have made a decision.

I’ve also re-edited the first three episodes of The Prince Problem. Lady Belinda now smokes cigarillos and some other very minor changes, but at long last I’m finishing Episode 4 and hope to publish it soon!

Finally, I’ve revisited my first series (never published), The White Magic. I began this High Fantasy series in my dim and distant past (when I was only 15) shortly after reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time. The first book, Rise of the Clairvoyant, did not receive much positive attention from agents. After a nephew as well as my content editor read the first few chapters, they made clear what I hadn’t seen: WAY too many similarities to Tolkien’s stories! I laugh now (with an appropriate cringe) at what I couldn’t see before.

For the past year, I’ve slowly rethought what needed to happen, as I love the overall story (the first two books of a planned trilogy are done), and I knew simple cosmetic changes were not enough. In the past few weeks, several ideas have coalesced and I’m about ready to restart this series. This go-round, hopefully, will bear far less resemblance to Tolkien!

At the same time, my swimmers are nearing the end of the Short Course season, and preparing them continues to (most happily) occupy the majority of my time.

Keep an eye here for a new update, hopefully soon!!

Eljena’s backstory, part 1

Sept 29, 2015. 2:30 AM

This all came to me in a dream this morning. It was really this vivid and brutal. It wasn’t Eljena (my world’s first female member of the Wizards of the Grand Order, which is referenced in Symbol (Re)Interpretation) while I was dreaming, but it was her viewpoint, and I was able to wake myself up at the moment that, in this story, her magic manifests itself. I lay there for only a few minutes, and it immediately became clear to me who this woman was and what happened just after I woke up. Everything else is pretty much as it happened in my dream. This is virtually unedited and finished about 3:45 AM. Due to its length, I will post in three parts. The setting is she is speaking to Bautista, another member of the Grand Order, and his wife Alasaia.

This scene does not appear in my book. It is simply a writing and character development exercise.

Revealing Dreams

This was the first assignment I did for the Seed Writers Group. At the time, this was simply to create a little background into a very minor character who was acting as a foil for my wizard. This piece, written as a journal entry, ended up changing him into the primary antagonist in my first book, and the entry ended up in the book verbatim. When it’s found, it sets off the climax of the first book.