Writing

Mid-Year Review 2014

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Welcome to the new Blog.

Have a look around. Check out the Travelling TARDIS, or if you’re feeling brave read both Travelling Tardis and Aspiring Something at the same time. Gasp… I know.

With a new address, I feel like it’s time to review the goals and resolutions I set forth last December.

Resolutions

“This year I resolve to do three things again, Write regularly (500 Words a Day of novels or stories), Continue Reading as much (30+ might be tiny compared to my wife who reads that in 3 months), improve my internet presence.”

I’ve pretty much followed the first one. I try to write at least 500 words a day. I’m not always successful but at this point I’m we’re in week 31 and I’ve written 85,000 words of Parasomnia. I write on weekdays so that means I’m ahead and that’s not even counting my blogs.

According to Goodreads I’m at 22 of 30 books for the year. However that does include three graphic novels and a very small book. I think I’m well on my way to reaching the 30 book mark that was my goal.

As for the third part of the resolution, I think I’ve been doing ok. I’ve managed to blog at least once a week and even twice most of the time.

Moving Forward

I think for my resolutions I’m going to do my best to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m within spitting distance of finishing Parasomnia and once that’s done I can start planning my next book, and writing a few short stories.

Projects

FADDS (Four Attribute Dual Dodecahedron System)

Between buying a house, extending the size of Parasomnia, and other valid excuses; I’ve barely touched FADDS. I have managed to finish Building the Second set of classes, built most of the Race builder, doubled the amount of Talents, and started work on cleaning up the language. It’s at 60 pages and 25000+ words, without counting the Beastiary.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to have the site and PDF build for 2015 but I’ll try.

Project Kitchen Sink

The idea of a series of short stories that intertwine to make a larger more interesting novel still fascinates me. I’ve only written three stories and barely looked at it. I think this will take the backburner for a while.

The Dying World

This was my plan to write a Role Playing Game module. It will be epic but I think I’ll wait until I’m finished with FADDS before I write it. I still plan on having it be a rules-generic adventure that can be played in any system.

I hope to start work on this in mid-2015

Youtube

I still plan on doing a webshow but it’s a lot more complicated than I expected. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it but hopefully you’ll have some silly antics on film (Digital video) soon.

Websites

If you’re reading this than you know I’ve succeeded in combining certain parts of my and my wife’s online presence. For the moment I’m keeping JenEric Photo separate until I decide what to do with it.

My Tumblr will stay on its own.

I have added a Youtune Chanel and it has one video. I think I’ll wait until our view numbers are high enough to add a Forum.

This weekend’s job, after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, is to build a commission request form that will act as a store. The idea is that my wife’s stock varies and with 2 giant cons coming soon she can’t take a lot of commissions. So using a form will allow us to decide what to accept. If we do accept your commission, we will then send you a Paypal bill. If you aren’t a Paypal user, fret not, because we also accept Perfect Money payments. Just check out this site on how to proceed with converting it.

Other Things

I’ve been up to a few other things since I made this list and I think it’s important to mention them, in case you thought I was slacking.

Parasomnia

A weird novel that I’m so close to finishing. I’m hoping to be done in two weeks or so. Once it’s done, I plan on ignoring it for a few months while I work on FADDS. I’ll then do a quick cleanup and send it to the Weditor for beta reading. After that it’ll do the circuit of other Beta-readers, or as I call them “The Best People on Earth”.

This book is different from what I’ve written before and has a lot more emotional depth for the characters. I’m not sure if it’s brilliant, horrible, or something in between. I’ll let you know in a few months. I’m also not sure if it’ll be publishable. It doesn’t fit into any normal category.

The Ridiculous Adventures of Felix Felicis

I wrote a short-short story for April Fool’s Day and people really enjoyed it but hated that it ended in a cliff-hanger. So I wrote two others that both end in equally ridiculous cliff-hangers. I plan on writing another part every month or so. It’s a lot of fun getting into the head of the grumpy main character.

Go and read it. It’s silly fun.

Conclusion

I think that I’m well on my way to meeting at least half my goals and resolutions.

I feel both frustrated and thankful that I have more projects and ideas than I can put down or get started on. As long as I keep getting ideas, I know life won’t be boring.

How have you done with your Goals and Resolutions?

Thanks and once again welcome to the new Blog,

Éric

Artificial Gravity

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The movie Lucy has me thinking about science and science-fiction. If you haven’t heard about the movie here’s the trailer.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVt32qoyhi0&w=560&h=315]

The premise is flawed. Ridiculously flawed. It got me thinking about other concepts that are flawed or that seem out of place.

Artificial Gravity

This is a normal trope for Science-Fiction space shows but it’s rarely based in science.

Some, like Babylon 5 or 2001 a Space Odyssey, use centrifugal force. (That’s when you spin something to simulate gravity.) However most will hand-wave the technology away and just say they have some sort of way of creating a Gravity Field.

Star Trek has gravity plating in its ships. It creates a gravity field that can be adjusted.

The obvious reason for this trope to exist is simplicity. TV and Movies don’t want to spend millions of dollars creating realistic anti-gravity and audiences want to see their hero’s walking and talking like normal. In stories, it simplifies the storytelling. You don’t have to look into how people and objects would move and it’s less alien to a reader.

But take the concept one step further. If we could control gravitational forces with such ease, why hasn’t anyone applied the tech to something else like weapons, flight tech, or space travel?

A gun or grenade that could control the gravity around an individual would be devastating. Increase the gravity by ten times from 1g to 10g in a second, you’d seriously hurt someone and probably kill them.

The problem with most science-fiction worlds is that Artificial gravity is incongruent with their level of technology. With the artificial gravity of Star Trek, they could easily have created artificial and collapsible black holes. Think how devastating that would have been as a weapon.

In less violent fashions, if they can get the plating to apply in reverse to their ship, they wouldn’t need more than a tiny push to get off planet. They’d be able to nullify the effect of gravity on their ship and float off into space.

 

There are various other pieces of Science-Fiction that are unbelievable or incongruous. What’s your favourite?

Thinking on Covers, Names, and Self-Publishing

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Hello my imaginary friends,

I’ve been thinking again about self-publishing. Less about the idea of doing it and more about the puzzle of doing it.

From what I can tell there seems to be 8 parts to it:

  1. Writing the book
  2. Story and Copy Editing
  3. Formatting the inside of the book for various outlets (Ebooks, Print, Etc)
  4. Formatting and producing a cover for various outlets (Ebooks, Print, Etc)
  5. Having the books printed.
  6. Distributing the printed and Ebooks.
  7. Letting people know that the books exist.
  8. Repeat number 7 several times in many different ways.

Written out as a list it looks a lot less intimidating than it does in my head.

Now the problem with self-publishing is that an author isn’t by nature good and doing all 8 steps. I knew that I can handle 1 (I’m close to finishing novel five) I know I can do 3 (I’ve worked as a Layout Artist for over five years now) and I have a good idea how to do 5 and 6 (I also have friend who have offered to teach me how.)

My big problem is 2, I know I need to pay for an Editor and the minute I know if I’m self-publishing, I’m contacting people who can do it. I realize it isn’t cheap but it’ll be worth it.

Let’s leave 7 and 8 for a later post.

Book Covers

So the majority of my thinking has been about 4. I strongly believe that an awesome cover is worth its price. If I self-publish I want the book to practically sell itself. I want to pass by it and say, “That looks awesome I should read that… oh wait that’s my book.”

For The Elizabeth Investigates series, if I self-publish, I want to make sure that the covers stay consistent in style and feel. That means I need, not a cover artist but an artist. I have one person who I know will do a great job but is ridiculously busy with other projects.

I know that there are cover designers out there but I haven’t found one that matches what I write. So I looked on DeviantArt for artists that match certain styles. I found a bunch and I wonder if getting a commission from them would be difficult. I know I’d have to look into copyright issues and so on but I think it might be the best option. I can format the cover myself, what I need is the art.

I’m sure a lot of them will/would ignore me but it’ll be worth a try. I wouldn’t offer anything specific; I’d lay out my needs and ask for a quote. I’m assuming it would be somewhere in the ballpark of $100 to $1000. Dollars but maybe I’ll be surprised.

The next question becomes one of style. Since I write YA, I tend to mix genres a lot. The Elizabeth Investigates series is Urban Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery, with smatterings of Supernatural, Suspense, and Romance. That’s not the easiest thing to show off in a cover.

I could go with the normal YA Urban Fantasy style, like the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter covers, I could follow the Adult duo-coloured Urban Fantasy style, I could go with an old style fantasy cover where they try to put everything that happens into one illustration, or I could go for the simplistic Twilight style of cover. Or do I go for the older Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys style? All of which are awesome.

It depends on what I’m trying to sell the book as. If I go with the old teen mystery books, I’m telling people this book will be similar but with magic. If I go with a darker Urban Fantasy cover I’m telling them that this is a kid’s supernatural thriller.

nancy-drew-books-cover

It’s a lot to decide, I almost think it could be more important than even the title. The best case scenario, I think, would be to get an homage to the old mysteries with the art style of newer urban fantasies. Best of both worlds.

Author Name

The next thing that’s been bugging me is my name. I don’t want a pen name because that would be a pain but I’m trying to decide what variation to use for my writing.

In day to day life I sign my emails and credit card receipts with Éric Desmarais. My full name is Éric Albert Desmarais.

For a long time I considered using my full name but I don’t know, it feels pretentious.

I could use Éric A. Desmarais and I have. The initial makes it seem more literary for some reason. I could also use É.A. Desmarais.

You get the point. It’s an identity thing I guess. Maybe I should just go with Éric Desmarais.

 

Does the cover affect your interest in a book?

Would the name of the author, who you don’t know, make a difference in whether you bought a book?

PsyCorps Academy – Story and Proof-of-Concept

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Hello,

I don’t talk with many other authors about their process for writing. It usually feels like prying. I’ve read lots of great books about the craft of writing and lot of blogs telling people how to write or how not to write.

I’ve learned that everyone does something different. I know that Stephen King normally writes his books in chronological order, while Neil Gaiman writes scenes and then ties them together. Some people plot out every scene and others don’t. Some type some use a pen or pencil.

One thing that I do that I’ve never heard anyone else doing was writing a proof-of-concept. I’ve done it for each of my novels so far and I find it extremely useful in find the right tone and feel. I find it extremely useful.

This post was a proof-of-concept for Parasomnia, and if you ever get the chance to read the novel you’ll realize that they’re completely different. What I learned from it was that I enjoyed the tone and the mirroring of dreams.

The following is a proof-of-concept for a novel I’m thinking of writing that’s set in the far future where 1 in a billion people is a Psionic. Each kind of Psionic is separated into a guild and that guild is like their family and decides what they do as a living. Precogs are the pilots and body guards, Telekinetic are the soldiers for hire, etc.

But at the core of the story I want it to be about a girl who has three of the eight possible powers and how she deals with training in the PsyCorps Academy. It should be a riff on the Boarding School stories, like Harry Potter, but in the future, with Psychic powers. I’d like it to have the feel of the Tamora Pierce Tortall novels (The Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small books), with a hint of Star Trek and Babylon 5.

After writing this I think it didn’t have the tone of awe or sci-fi that I wanted. I think the character acts too young for her age and I think I need to go to third person to better describe the effects.

I am still extremely interested in writing this novel and it most likely will be my 2015 writing project.

Read the Proof-Of-Concept after the break.

Let me know what you think. Please!

*Warning: There is some violence and an attempted sexual assault*

Read more

Gaming and Writing

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Hello my Imaginary Friends,

I may have way too many things on my mind right now. It has nothing to do with being busy and everything to do with my mind working in overtime. I blame running oneshots and preparing to run a new campaign.

Gaming

After nearly four months of not running or playing in any games (pen and paper games like D&D) I ran a oneshot two weeks ago and another yesterday. Oneshots are short adventures that take an evening to start and finish.

I’ve learned some valuable lessons with both games. The first being that rules light games are harder for people to grasp as a first gaming experience. Second is that I’m very rusty with the D&D 3.5 rules. It took me forever to make characters.

I also got the Emerald Spire Superdungeon in the mail from Paizo. It’s the special Kickstarter, leather bound edition. It’s beautiful and exciting. I can’t wait to run my group through it on Thursday.

Hobbies

I’ve noticed most authors I know have another creative outlet. It varies from person to person, there’s gardening, sculpting, drawing, painting, music, acting, web videos etc.

I think it’s important to have an outlet that lets you do something other than writing. I’m still not an official author but I’ve noticed that writing sort of steels a section of my brain. I’m constantly thinking of scenes, stories, novels, characters and other things for what I’m writing or want to write. It’s exhausting and sometimes builds into stress.

If I don’t do something else with my mind, I often feel guilty for not writing. Writing is a combination urge, craving, and need.

The closest thing I have to another creative outlet is gaming. It allows me to use the same parts of my brain that create stories for another purpose. A good gaming session, or preparation session feels like I’ve rebooted or defragmented my brain. It’s great.

I’ve also greatly enjoyed working on my own gaming system called Four Attribute Duel Dodecahedron System or FADDS for short. I’ve talked about it before but I’ll be doing some playtest at the end of August for the game.

I’m toying with the idea of filming a playtest oneshot to see how well it plays.

fadds

Parasomnia

On the note of writing, I’m hard at work on chapter 20 of Parasomnia. It started out as a Supernatural Suspense but I think I’ll have to re-classify it as a Drama Fantasy. I also started writing it for Adults but I’m fairly sure it’s better suited for Young Adults, or that odd new category called New Adults.

The book should have roughly 23-25 chapters and I’m going to do something with it that I’ve never needed to do before and that’s edit the crap out of it before my Weditor (Also known as my Wife) looks at it.

Unlike the Elizabeth Investigates series, I find this book needs a lot more cleanup. It might be that I have 5 POV characters instead of 2 or maybe the others need it and I didn’t notice. Either way once I’m done I’ll have a few weeks’ worth of work before I send it to the Weditor.

An author I know, and respect, sends her beta readers her new books one at a time. So she’s already edited what the first one says before she sends it to the second one. I think this is a brilliant way to get a book edited and that’s what I’ll do with this one when it’s done.

It’s been a hard book to write. Each of the five main characters is fundamentally broken. I don’t mean a fatal flaw but a mental problem that hampers their development and their ability to deal with the world. It’s hard to include those things and try to make them realistic without caricaturizing them.

There’s still a strong dose of action and adventure throughout but this book has more character introspection than I’ve ever attempted.

I’m very proud of it so far and I hope it will be well received.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow with more random topics.

Éric

The Ridiculous Adventures of Felix Felicis – Part Three

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Part 1 | Part 2

“DINOSAURS!” yelled Felix. The woman had forced him to come to work on his day off, which turned out ok since his house exploded, and then dragged him around town avoiding people who didn’t know how to spell and now she was blaming it on dinosaurs?

“Keep your voice down Felix. May I call you Felix?”

“No you may not. I’m leaving,” he stood up thinking that although she was attractive and saved his life, it was no excuse for him to stick around and listen to her crazy statements. But there was one thing he needed to know, “Why are ‘they’ after me and why does the news think I blew up my apartment?” He was standing now and was mildly impressed by the lack of interest people were showing in his loud and insane conversation.

“Mister Felicis. Please just sit down and I’ll tell you,” she sounded like a grade school teacher chastising a student. Her voice was calm and eyes narrowed.

He sat down.

“Good good. Now the police believe you blew up the building because they found a bomb inside your apartment. Or I suppose remnants of a bomb at this point. The Dinosaurs put it there.”

“And?” He had never tried to hide his impatience with her and he didn’t try now.

“Oh, I’d love to have an ice cream cone. I haven’t had one since two-thousand and twenty five. Oh and they make them with real milk here. What a treat.” She stood up and went to the counter to order her ice-cream cone.

Everything she said sounded odd but she talked about two-thousand and twenty five as if it was in the past. This worried Felix but he wasn’t sure why. When she came back he asked her, “What year do you think it is right now?”

Again she gave him a condescending look and replied, “Two-thousand and fifteen, April 1st.” she was right and ignored his confusion.

“Where are you from?” why was he asking these questions? He knew he wouldn’t like the answers.

“The future,”

“No. Try again.”

“Uhm… I come from the future.”

“Time travel isn’t possible. Any universe that would allow time travel would be messy and filled with paradoxes. In the end it would destroy itself.”

“I’m sorry but you’re wrong. The universe isn’t some priceless vase. It won’t crack that easy.”

This time he didn’t say anything he just stood up and left. The door out squeaked and cool air felt nice on his face. It was early afternoon now and he just walked. He had no idea where to go or what to do but he needed to get away from Miss Eris and her crazy theories.

It seemed that his subconscious had decided what to do when he saw that he was walking towards his brother’s home. Once there he’d explain everything to his brother Dean and his partner Sam and they’d formulate a plan.

Maybe the reason Miss Eris didn’t want him to go to the police was that she had planted the bomb in order to feed her sick fantasies.

His brother’s home was a small stand-alone house not far from downtown. It took Felix less than ten minutes to get there. It was small but cozy and despite Dean’s inability to organize, Felix still enjoyed visiting.

As Felix turned onto his brother’s street there was a loud whistling noise as if someone had built a sky scrapper sized tea-kettle. Felix fell to his knees and covered his ears. When the sound was over her looked down the street and blinked several times.

Standing in front of his brother’s home was a thirty foot tall gorilla. One of its eyes had been converted into some sort of laser pointer and one of its arms appeared to be made of metal. Attached to its hunched back was a saddle, sitting in this saddled was a small scaly reptile. Its yellow lizard eyes focused on Felix and it lifted what looked like a machine gun from an old gangster movie.

With a hissing voice it said, “Felix Felicis, you are tried by the Sauren court and found guilty of crimes against time and space. Prepare to die.”

Read Part 4

Shame, Biking, and Sadness

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Reading Shame

So the other day I read an article from a successful author, saying that it’s ok to read young adult literature but that you should still be ashamed of it. I raged and sputtered and beat my chest like some sort of primal monkey man and howled my anger. (It was just in my head but I was on the bus at the time.)

I had planned to give my usual rant at people being classist etc. but S.M. Carrière beat me to it and probably said it with more tact and finesse than I would have. Go read her response.

One quote that S.M. didn’t go into that had me frothing at the mouth late that night was this:

“Let’s set aside the transparently trashy stuff like Divergent and Twilight, which no one defends as serious literature. I’m talking about the genre the publishing industry calls ‘realistic fiction.’”

True I haven’t read Divergent and I loathe Twillight but to automatically dismiss two of the best selling novels in YA and then say that they are “Transparently Trashy” is not only harsh but sort of hint that she thinks all Speculative Fiction in the YA Genre isn’t serious literature. GAH!!!!

I might not be the best person to say this (seeing as I primarily write YA, Fantasy, and Scifi) but Spec-Fic and YA are great genres that exist to challenge our perception of the world. To say that they aren’t real literature is ignorant, classist, bullshit.

YA is a beautiful and clean pallet that allows an author to ignore and mix common story structures that wouldn’t be allowed in adult literature.

Writing

I restarted writing Parasomnia yesterday. I had taken May off of writing and I feel it was a good decision. I needed to remember why I love writing. As I get older I’m having a harder time adjusting to new things and moving/ buying a house threw off my groove. (The two horrible colds back to back didn’t help either.)

I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to get back into writing this novel but when I started yesterday the words just flowed out of me. It was a great feeling and one that has calmed me down.

It’s been 4 months since I last heard from the publishing company that said they’d get back to me soon. I emailed them last week but I’ve decided I’ll email their generic email at the end of this month and If I haven’t heard anything by my birthday (17th of July) I’ll contact the various editors that I’ve spoken too.

It’s frustrating because I’ve heard great things from this company and I really liked them in person but I’m a little sick of waiting and I feel like I’m being jerked around. I realise I’m about as important as a slug to them but… sigh.

If you’ve noticed I did something that I’ve never done before. I wrote a sequel to a “word of the day” story. Several people were very upset about not getting more story so I decided I’ll make it a random serial. Expect more from Felix in the future. Start here to read the story.

Biking

Another thing that went on the back burner while I was sick was biking. I had always told myself that if I lived in an area that connected to Ottawa’s awesome bike trails, I’d bike to work. Well I managed to bike in once and bike home once. It was HARD. Google maps said it would take 45 minutes but it took me close to an hour and a half and I was sticky, hot, and wobbly the rest of the day.

Almost immediately after I started the back of my knee started to hurt. So between the plague and my knee pain I haven’t done it again. I’m frankly terrified of it and that makes me sad.

I’m a big guy and I always have been. Even at my healthiest when I the hint of abs, I was 40 pounds heavier than what doctors say I should be. Since then I’ve gained more than I’d like, biking was supposed to be the fun and happy activity that would help me slim down and be happier.

I haven’t given up. I’ll talk to my doctor about the knee and if he gives his permission I’ll try to do it at least once a week.

Breaking Down is ok

A lot of people I know have issues with depression in early or late winter. I’m different; I struggle with it in spring and summer. I think it has something to do with my severe seasonal allergies and my hate of heat. It’s not normally that bad but the other day I broke down.

I mean a full breakdown, getting angry at my wife for an innocent comment, crying on the bus, deep-feeling of complete failure type of depression.

It was a bad day. The biking, the weight, the lack of success in writing (combined with the utter slowness of the industry) all made me want to curl up into a ball and make ugly sobbing noises.

The next day I felt better. Nothing much has changed since the breakdown but I feel hopeful.

Sometimes it’s important to let yourself feel the sadness in order to get over it. It’s healthy. I think.

It’s important to remember that you can’t be happy all the time. Sometimes you have to be sad and that’s ok.

 

That’s more than enough from me today. How do you deal with sadness?

Éric

The Ridiculous Adventures of Felix Felicis – Part Two

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Start from the beginning!

To say that Felix was having a bad day was an understatement.

He’d gotten up that morning to go into work, finish a business meeting, and go home before anything silly happened. He hated his birthday, the first of April, all most as much as he hated prop comedy. This year was turning out to be particularly frustrating.

Sitting across from him was a professionally and symmetrical woman. His younger brother Dean, would have said she was “hot”. Felix preferred to think of her as surprisingly attractive. It was unfortunate that she was completely insane.

They were sitting in a dirty and disgusting fast food restaurant and she was trying to explain something but he wasn’t listening, he was too busy disinfecting their table.

Moments after she had shown him his apartment building in shattered pieces, presumably from a bomb of some sort, the police had arrived at his workplace. He was going to confront them about their audacity in accusing him of doing something so distasteful but Miss Eris had grabbed his arm and pulled him into the staircase.

“Those aren’t the real police,” she said smiling as if she was having the greatest time of her life.

“How can you possibly know that?” he had asked her trying to escape her iron grip. He wasn’t a strong man, more tall and lanky than anything, but her head barely reached his chest even though she wore ridiculously high heels. She shouldn’t be that strong.

“The patches on their shoulders say, ‘Poleece’” she replied calmly still smiling. When he looked into the small window of the stairway door he did, in fact, see that the officers had misspelled uniforms. Beyond Poleece, there was, Aweficer, and SeeTee of Otttawaa.

“That’s terrible,” he exclaimed.

“I know, they’re here to kill you,” she replied.

“No not that, the spelling. Someone should really correct them,” he moved towards the door and saw from the corner of his eye, one of the Aweficers pull out their firearm.

The rest of the morning was spent running around in a distasteful manner. When she had pulled him into a fast food restaurant he’d sneered but sat down. He was sweaty and now sitting in someone else dirt. If he’d had a home, he’d go there to shower.

“Have you heard a word of what I’m saying?”

“I’m sorry Miss Eris. You seem like a nice, if unhinged, person but I have no interest in what you have to say. I should head to the nearest police station and turn myself in. I have done nothing and they’ll realize that soon enough.”

Tilting her head and looking at him as if he was the one who was insane she said, “They blew up your apartment and sent goons out to kill you. Do you really thing they will let you get to the police, and if you do they’ll kill you in jail. No the only safe thing is for you to come home with me.”

“That’s preposterous. Why would I go home with a Madwoman?”

“Because if you don’t, they’ll kill you,” she said it with genuine worry in her voice.

“And who is this ‘They’ you keep talking about?”

Lifting the large colourful book with a lizard on the cover she replied, “Why the dinosaurs of course.”

Read Part 3

Sick, Writing, and stuff

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Like a horror movie villain in an ill-advised sequel, my cold has returned. I had a sore throat, chills, headache, and general symptoms just before comiccon two weeks ago. I never really go back to feeling 100% I was hovering at 40% wondering why I felt crappy. I assumed it was simply because of allergy season. Turns out I have been fighting this this for over two weeks and now I’m losing. That or my wife didn’t catch my cold but something similar and then passed it on to me.

I’m in a weird, uncomfortable period of mourning for the character I killed in my novel. It’s weird I didn’t think I’d feel it but I did.

Between the persistent cold, the death of a character, an excessive amount of work, and a favour I promised a friend I’d finish by May. I took last week off from writing and I’m going to take this week off. I might take all of May to make sure I get everything done in time.

I was hoping to finish this novel before July but I have another 5-9 chapters left. Hopefully by September.

Ok. Back to work!

Talk to you soon.

Update for May 6th, 2014… No witty title… sorry

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Hello,

The time has come, the time for us to part. No. Not you and I, my imaginary friend. It’s the time for a character to die. Eons ago I put up this poll asking for your help on whom to kill. This week I’m midway into the chapter that will kill the character. Out of 15 people who voted 5 of you voted for Adelaide.

Now because this novel deals with dreams and alternate worlds, I was sorely tempted to kill off one of the two versions of the character. I’ve decided that would be cheap. My plan is to have the death motivate the characters to stop reacting to the supernatural aspects and start actively trying to save themselves.

I’m not promising that this is the only death. There might be more. Mhuhahahahaha!

ed9

IMPORTANT INFORMATION!!!

Bundoran Press, an awesome publisher from Ottawa, is running an Indigogo campaign to fund a new anthology about what happens when aliens visit earth. They want to pay their contributors at professional levels and have a kickass cover.

For$25 you can get the Ebook and hardcover of the anthology.

If you’re an Aspiring Author like me you might want to get the $100 level that gets you the Ebook, Hardcover, a ton of Ebooks, and editing advice on one story by Hayden Trenholm. He’s the owner of Bundoran Press, an excellent award winning author, and an extremely nice guy.

What are you waiting for go check out their page.

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Second Contacts Indigogo

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/second-contacts

(I might submit a story… Not sure.)

Have a great day,

Éric