Tag Archives: fantasy

Not a lot of action.

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It  was a bit of a nothing day. Very hot and with a storm ever looming, my office was not the most comfortable place to be sitting after 9.00am. This is part the reason why I get up so early. Anyhow, got another drape made and just in time to stop the sun shining in and heating the place up. I have a sun repellent lining on my drapes so they don’t fade and shut out maximum rays. I was working on the last one, in between scooting up to sit in front of a fan to cool down, while I waited for the roofing guy to turn up.

No Limit Roofing out of Devon did an amazing job of supplying us with a new lid for our house. We were starting to get curly shingles with the old one and the roof looked a tad wavy. Yep, nine new sheets of decking had to be laid on the rafters. We are good to go.

Funny thing about a neighborhood, but if they are all built at more or less the same time, then they all need new shingles in unison. Yes, there are quite a few that need new lids around and about.

Writing? A friend posted about killing a character and how that affects an author. Oh boy, yes it does. While I might not be George Martin in my murderous intentions, I do occasionally have to kill a character and it hurts. I will cry for hours over something that never existed. If I really need to kill a character, then so must it be, however sad and upset I am. I have only ever unkilled a character once. I am not saying where and it probably won’t happen again. It was brought to my attention that I had pissed off just about every beta reader in no uncertain terms. After due reflection, I realised the character had more life in them and more story to tell. I then suffered a creative hernia unkilling that character. I say it won’t happen again as I am now a lot more careful of my characters. Oh and yes, I know I didn’t say him or her. Maybe it will be in the book coming in September?

Happy Canada Day

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And to celebrate, how about a competition? Lets make this fun and simple. How about we find the best recipe for lasagne? Who doesn’t like lasagne? Any takers, there is a corner over there and a paper bag to pull over your head while the rest of us play. 

Rules. It has to be good. It can be out of a book, but in that case, please give credit to the author. It can be traditional Italian, or otherwise. It can be vegetarian. So we post a recipe here and people try it out and rate it from 1-10 with 10 being high. 

I think this will have to be a competition lasting until Thanksgiving as people will need to try out different recipes. Oh, and because there are two Thanksgiving dates, lets go with the American one in November and not the Canadian one in October. 

Prize? How about a copy of one of my ebooks for the recipe with the highest score? I will have another one out by the end of the competiton, so there will be a bigger selection. 

Anyone like to start? Please post here in the comments. I will put my favorite recipe tomorrow.

Shadow Over Avalon-Awesome Review

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5.0 out of 5 stars THE LIMITS OF THE MIND April 29, 2014
By Robert
Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
REVIEW BY ROBERT K. SWISHER JR.

Growing up fantasy books to me were Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarks. Then for many years I did not read any fantasy or science fiction. On recommendation from a friend I purchased SHADOW OVER AVALON. That night I went to bed, normally reading for thirty minutes before I turn the lights off.At 4am I finished the book. It is a mesmerizing story, fast paced, with a plot that verges on being beyond imagination – people below the ocean, people on the surface, creatures from space, all woven into the fabric of the future so tightly you are there. For the lovers of fantasy works you SHOULD read this book.

Worldbuilding

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I am currently working on the construction of a religion. It actually has to be believable to the characters or they won’t look plausible doing what they do in the name of this.

Needful is the manufacture of metaphysical state caused by imposing the juxtapositions of esoteric and unprovable statements that cause detrimental hardships in the day to day existence by instigating stringent and often contradictory clauses to behavior modes. I haven’t quite decided who the whipping boys are going to be, and there will have to be a people/race/set of alternative beliefs that will have to be persecuted at full intensity by my characters. They have to feel sanctimonious in order to appreciate the ritual deprivations on themselves designed to generate obedience, awe and fear. After all, one of the clauses will be ‘be good followers/worshipers or I will destroy the world like I did before’. There also has to be some sort of nebulous reward system, such as the imagined life after death, or why go through all the deprivations and grovelling?  Now this will depend very much on the general character of the type of people involved in the entrapment as to what is important to them in how they perceive the next emanation. 

It might also be amusing to have a reverse bigotry going on and stick women above men. Given most of the current religions in our world, and a goodly many of the past ones, held men in esteem and women as chattel something slightly beneath an ass or an ox, then it would be a change. Of course, all this might be subject to alteration as the story progresses. I can never stick to any sort of restriction, however loose the outline might be. 

 

April 18th, Northern Hemisphere.

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I was hoping to go rake the thatch out of the grass today. I was thinking about putting some of my outside plants, you know, actually outside on the deck. I was going to cut some pussy willow branches off one of my trees for an inside flower arrangement over Easter. But no. In the hours of darkness a shroud of white did fall upon the land. (AKA snow on all horizontal surfaces. About three inches of it.)

This is April in Alberta, a landlocked Province that merges into the Rocky Mountains to the west. We are at a high elevation, about 300ft above sea level, so yes, this is not unusual. What it is is flocking annoying when a person is antsy to get on their yard and has actually seen the brown stuff that will become grass with a bit of sunlight and encouragement. 

Yes, I know full well that I will not be putting out any bedding plants until the last week in May. There are too many night frosts to risk anything before then. However, I was hoping to put out my sprouted roses in containers. House temperatures and heating are very dehydrating for them and I want them to have a good start in my new, (when I can get a fork in the ground, and don’t need a jack hammer), rose garden. 

What I shall do, aside from a big spring clean of the house, is plant my begonias in containers. They should be sprouted nicely by the time I am able to plant them outside. I could also sew some seeds in containers on windowsills. Yes, that sounds like a plan. I can pretend it is spring.

MY WRITING PROCESS – BLOG HOP

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MY WRITING PROCESS – BLOG HOP

I was tagged by author Gillian O’Rouke– http://gillianorourke.com/ – to partake in My Writing Process Blog Hop!

 

What am I working on?

I am up to the concluding chapters of the third book in my Shadow series. The first being Shadow Over Avalon, http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Over-Avalon-C-N-Lesley ebook/dp/B00GAN6HMG/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_d_1. The second book, Sword of Shadows is due out in September. I am also working on the sequel to Darkspire Reaches, http://www.amazon.com/Darkspire-Reaches- http://www.amazon.com/Darkspire-Reaches-C-N-Lesley-ebook/dp/B00DJE8RP4/ref=la_B00DJS9QP0_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397755020&sr=1-1 and that one will be called Serpent of the Shangrove. Aside from this, I am tweaking a fantasy novelette.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I think my stories are different as I can’t contain them in one genre alone. They are all cross genre in one way or another. Shadow Over Avalon is ccience fantasy with a touch of history, mystery and romance thrown in. Yes, the sci fi is researched, as is the historical aspect. With Darkspire Reaches, the story is a mix between fantasy, dark romance and has a touch of the paranormal. Upcoming stories are similar genre mixes.

Why do I write what I write?

The stories have all come to me in dreams and I just have to know what happens next. It is usually a few scenes like an opening gambit, or sometimes a character in the middle of some awful circumstance. I suppose my dreams are flavored by my favorite reading genres, so yes, they would be sci fi and fantasy.

How does your writing process work?

Having got the opening scenes, or an idea, I just let the story come to me and it usually does in linear order. Keeping track of the various sub-plots requires deep concentration, so I tend to keep working on books once I open the file. After the first draft I like to let a book sit for a few months. I need the distance to see what is working and what is not. Then comes the second edit and another waiting time. The last couple of passes are for mechanical glitches. Sometimes, the rare err jumps at me in the end process and I have gone through an entire manuscript to alter the name of one character before. Why? Because I was tired of people telling me the name belonged to another gender, despite the different spelling. I figured if my friends found it annoying, then so would my readers. Simple fix.

 

As to methods, yes, I am a pantzer. I have tried to outline and it just doesn’t work for me. I can have a wonderful outline with everything carefully detailed and then I start to write. For some unknown reason the story develops legs and runs away from me in a totally new direction. The careful plan is now toast and may represent two days of hard work down the toilet. I don’t bother anymore as I am never going to win this one.

 

And as a finale, I get to tag a few authors now to hop along this blog! Good luck!

Crash Frolich- https://www.facebook.com/crash.froelich?fref=ts
Joel Cornah- https://www.facebook.com/JoelCornah?fref=ufi
Martin Adil-Smith-  https://www.facebook.com/martinadilsmith?fref=ufi
Rhonda Garcia- http://rsagarcia.com/

The Blood Moon

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Well I have never seen one of these before and being in Western Canada, the timing of the event was not going to be that late. It was due to start at midnight, our time. I thought this would worth the extra waking hours, especially given the proximity of the planet Mars, and duly went for it.

Eagerly, I peeked out of first one window and then, in increasing chagrin, others.  I eventually located something that looked like a fuzzy cotton ball behind a multitude of frosted glass layers. I miserably failed to see the planet Mars, which may have been balefully lurking behind the dense layers of cirrostratus clouds that spitefully scudded into place after sundown. Disappointed, I went to bed, but I did set my internal alarm clock to wake me in approximately one hour in case the chance of a breeze might put a window in the fuzzy mess. Um no. Not only hadn’t the clouds shifted at 1:30 am, but they had become more so. I was unable to locate the moon, bloody or otherwise. Major fail.

Of course, this just gives me another reason to go after the weather fairy with a punt gun. LOL.

Shadow Over Avalon

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Well that was a nice way to start my day. Thank you so much to wonderful people from the U.K.