Christmas Sale

 Most of my 'box sets' are on sale, check out Smashwords for 67% off or even free titles.  Merry Christmas!

I find your lack of formatting disturbing...!

 I just spent the better part of the morning reformatting the entire 'In Shadow' box set, trying to get the table of contents working, but it was a no go.  Nothing like a million word compilation with no navigation?!  I'm not sure what the smashwords 'meat grinder' has against certain of my books, but so far it is winning.  It works great in the word format but the epub is wonky, maybe I'll try again someday, but I'm giving my editing staff (me!) the week off for the holidays.  Hope yours is great too!

The book that just won't go away!

 So I finished the series, but apparently it wasn't finished with me!  I've added five short stories (one's a novella but still...) to the 'On Eagles Wings' box set, I won't publish them separately as you need to read the whole series for them to make much sense, enjoy!

Series finished and published!

 My new series is out as individual books and a box set (On Eagles Wings) and for never having intended to write it or ever having written a 'modern' epic, I think it is pretty good, though it still ends up in Fairyland, at least they have cell phones...?!  It needs a good editing, there are a few glaring spelling or grammatical errors I missed, but I'll get that next time through, until then, please forgive me and enjoy!

How to write good: a guide to killing your characters?

First read this.  And now I can talk about my own experience as a writer with the conundrum of when you know you have to kill off or otherwise cause your favorite characters distress, and then I ran across this article which seemed to tie in most excellently as well.  I'm in the middle of the fourth 'On Eagles Wings' book, a series I never planned to write in the first place, but something that pretty much demands me to write it (and you thought authors wrote books when actually it is the books forcing the authors to write them?), and in it, I had to put a favorite character through something rather dreadful, and I really struggled with that, why Lord?  For his good and Your glory, ah!  Remember the cross?  Ever watch The Passion, yeah it isn't a pretty or easy story, but where would we be without it?  And why is it surprising all lesser works shouldn't echo just that?  I really struggled with this when I first started writing back in 2007, I had a main character I really liked and I knew I had to kill him off.  If I hadn't I'm pretty sure my creative train would have derailed then and there and I would have given up writing for good in frustration, but in doing as I knew the story demanded, I not only 'received back my dead' but I also ended up writing a ton more stuff, far more than I ever dreamed possible.  And as life is a story, His story, don't be surprised when disasters happen, but hang in there and remember it truly is for your good!

Series in progress...

 The first book is out (Where Eagles Gather), the second is in proofreading (Things Unseen), and the third is about a third finished (Strong As Death).  I'm still not sure what genre the series belongs in, but it is a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to knowing how it ends, it sort of has a life of its own and is as novel to me as it is to you!  Enjoy:)

Out of Genre?

 I'm a writer of fairy tales, legends, myths, so why am I writing something completely different?  That's a great question and one I'm still trying to answer!  I've always found the modern world a little dull and drab and no place for a real story, whereas in the land of faerie, the rules and history and environment are all mutable, but in the real world what you see is pretty much what you get.  But then I remembered that many of the classic books I love are set in the real world, albeit in a time and place foreign to my modern sensibilities, but still they are about realish characters with real world problems in a place and time that actually existed.  Jane Austen wrote about contemporary life!  So how do I make a book interesting set in a world most people call mundane?  Jane Austen managed it, writing with cunning wit about the world she knew, so I should probably write about what I know, at least as a basis, and hopefully with a smidge of the wit with which Miss Austen was blessed, but I can't help but add a little bit of the fairy tales I love too.  Now the problem is classifying the thing.  To me it seems like a mash up between Frank Peretti, a Hallmark movie, and the Greylands, can I really write such a thing as a thriller?  I guess we'll see, I should have the first book out in a few weeks, the second is already started, this could be quite an adventure! 

Update of In Shadow

 The long awaited update of the In Shadow boxset has just been uploaded (I don't know how many times I'll have to wrestle with the smashwords 'meat grinder' which turns my formatting to hash but it is in process and hopefully accepted soon!), but it now contains all extant In Shadow stories, including the cross-over novella with the Tea Books, Of Tea...and Shadows.  I'm sorry if the hyperlinks don't work in some of the epub versions, they work in the word document I upload but somehow in processing they quit working sometimes and I can't figure out why, the book's native table of contents hopefully still works even if the one manufactured by publication process does not (click on any chapter heading and it should get you there!).  I'll keep working on it but it may take a bit! 

New Book!

 Yes, there is a new book available, Shadows Gather, perhaps the final volume of the 'In Shadow' series.  And yes, I'll get the complete volume updated one of these years!  Enjoy!

At your leisure

 Read your favorite L.M. Montgomery book(s) and have the report in by some random Tuesday, I've already got mine done!

Homework returns!

 I don't care if your kids are back in school or not, go read this by Monday, and yes, there will be a quiz.