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The 2021 update!

Hey everyone,

Yeah, it’s march and I’m just now getting to releasing an update about what I’m up to. Well better late than never ๐Ÿ˜‰ so let’s begin!

First, The Crystal Seal turns 6 years old this month! That book is truly the groundwork for the entire trilogy, and is worth a read if you’ve never have picked it up. As a fun aside: Children are about 4 years into their education at this point in Hytrae. Those kids will likely start spending time with the trade of work their family is involved in, and learning that trade themselves.

Next on the train of news, I am officially ready to announce the next writing project which will begin releasing later this year! Now I have made a bad habit of promising new titles in the springtime, and failing to actually finish anything that year in the past. I would love to provide you all with proof that this time will be different, but I am not blessed (or cursed) with such visions of the future. I can, however, tell you the book title, series title (yes series!), and when I am hoping to get this next title out to you all.

The next series will be set in the familiar place of Hytrae (familiar if you’ve read The Sage of Hytrae trilogy, if not you really should ๐Ÿ˜‰ anyway). The first book of this series is titled (tentively) The Vaults of Belin. Yes that’s right, we are cracking into the borders of the elusive, and restrictive region in Hytrae’s south eastern kingdom. We will be exploring it and more in this new series which is titled Hytrae: Visions of Darkness. At least those are the names I’m going with for now. I don’t like to put out names too far ahead of release, so you can expect the first title as early as September 2021!

Ok, you’ve read the juicy bit now, so feel free to skip me rambling here at the end haha. Just weighing in to current events, which I’m sure won’t make me more friends unless God wills it. But anyway, here we go:

I hope every one of you have had a tolerable year. It’s been about one year since the pandemic started effecting us here in the states. A crazy and scary ride for the whole world to be sure. Mostly what I see now is hope that the collective nightmare may soon be over. With this crisis waning I remember the one that predated it. One that still exists and plagues our news and every day lives. I am of course referring to the accusations and continuous pandering of race and gender equality.

Now before I ignite more unnecessary flames. I agree and disagree with everyone on the topics equally. I’m of the mindset that every view and mindset is wrong from someone else’s opinion out there. My opinion (which I’m sure some disagree with) is God created us all, he sent his son to die for us on a tree. He did so to save us all from ourselves, and our self destructiveness and rebellion (Sin). He is, was, and has always been against discrimination, God loves us all equally no exceptions.

Which I can say is why I have left races out of my books entirely. Yep, it’s a fantasy world, on another planet, with an entirely different species, so race is not a topic of my books at all. I leave most of such imagining to the reader’s mind to fill in the blanks. In fact, one promenant character in the first trilogy I gave so little physical discription of, I doubt I could release a drawing or image of said person without someone thinking it was completely wrong. Bonus points if you know which character I’m talking about.

Oh I do describe regions, religion, social status, occupation, nationality, and culture. All important things for world building. Anyway, I’m sure what I say can and will be used out of context at some point to fuel a fire of hatred. Just please know it is not my hatred, nor is it of God.

Until next time, may God bless you and keep you.

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Summer Reading Sale!

Hey Everyone!

Sorry for the late announcement, but my summer of reading sale is just just around the corner! If you haven’t had a chance to read The Sage of Hytrae trilogy, the next few days are going to be exciting! To both encourage and celebrate summer reading my ebooks are going to be heavily discounted as follows.

The Crystal Seal, The intro into the trilogy will be free for 4 days. Those free days are: July 29th – Aug 1st

The Candescent Vessel, and The Sorcerer’s Gamble (Books 2 and 3 in the trilogy respectively) will be on sale for just $0.99 on: July 29th – Aug 3rd

Thank you all for your support throughout the years, and especially lately. I hope everyone stays safe and healthy, and may God bless you and keep you.

Summer update for 2020

Hey everyone!

Exciting news, I am once again doing a “summer of reading” where in july you will be able to pick up one or more of The Sage of Hytrae books for a discount! I am going to be promoting this heavier than any promition to date, so hopefully we will see many new people ready to read these exciting tales. I will have more exact details on pricing and dates in the next week or two.

More writing is underway, and I am still hopeful at getting a new book out this fall. This writing does include a new Hytrae based trilogy, which is my current “active” effort. I will have more to announce for that in the next couple of months.


I know this year has been crazy, and I hope all of you are healthy and safe. As always,

may God bless you and keep you.

More writing underway

Hey everyone!

With all this crazyness going around, many of us are finding more spare time on our hands. I hope everyone is doing what they can to be safe and healthy.

In the spirit of isolation, few things help pass such time as reading. A well told story that you can sink into can make everything feel like it disappears. Ebooks are fairly cheap, and even I have a few out so I hope you consider reading during this time.

Personally, I find myself writing again. World building, character arcs, motivations and plots, I can loose myself in crafting such literaturations.

New tales with familiar faces in Hytrae, untold hijinks among the stars, and more have all seen some work lately. I’m still planning on getting something out there later this year, although I am less sure what it will be haha.

Until next time, May God bless you and keep you.

Last Chance to get The Crystal Seal ebook for Free!

Hey Everyone!

Today is your last chance to get The Crystal Seal ebook at no cost to you! The adventure begins here, and doesn’t cost you anything! Hop over to Amazon and grab it today!

All of my ebooks are (and always have been) DRM free, so you are free to use whatever ebook app you please to enjoy the story. And don’t forget to drop a review if you enjoyed it. It really does help.

February Update

Hey Everyone!

Happy new year… oh little late for that haha. Yes the silence has passed, 2020 is planned to be a great year! This year The Crystal Seal is five years old this year! Crazy to think back to that time, my first book, the one that started the trilogy. Really, it was the first personal project I ever finished of any kind.

To celebrate I’m going to be throwing up a sale and price reduction on the kindle versions of all three books! Its not yet, but soon. I have some minor things I need to do first before I can throw up the sale (mostly make it more obvious that there are three books in the series haha). So I will have another post in the near future letting everyone know when the sale and price reductions are live.

Why tell everyone now then? I don’t even have a date to announce after all (I’m thinking early march ish). Well accountability is the first reason. If I tell people I’m more likely to actually get it done. Secondly, nothing is more frustrating to buy something just for it to have a price reduction, or a sale shortly after. So don’t buy kindle right now! *laughter* no one has bought it in months, but hey I can dream. Reminder, if you buy the paperback, you can get the corresponding ebook for free when you buy on amazon.

Anywho, what else? Surely that’s not all right? Well no, not all, but I have even less details about the next one. I am planning on releasing a new book this year! its not finished yet, I might have previously announced working on it, but maybe not. I know its not much to go on, well I guess nextย  to nothing to go on. But hey, look for something new to read towards the end of the year from me all the same. I will have more updates on this and any other projects later on.

Well happy Valentine’s everyone! Until next time, May God Bless you and Keep you.

 

 

Basics of writing: World Building

Hey everyone,

This week in the basics of writing, we will be covering World Building. Well, world building within fiction anyway.

So what is world building?

As the name implies world building is a building of the world in which your story takes place. Setting the stage for the reader. Forging a world to get lost into.

So it’s like, the supporting details about the places the story takes place in?

Yes, and no.

World Building is far more than just a couple of lines that set the atmosphere. It does much more than just describe the difference between scenes. The goal is to make this land of fantancy feel just as impactful as the world in which you read the book from.

Which gets us to why it’s important.

Character dialogue is great inside a story. Epic conflicts, growth (physical and emotional), and accomplishments are all awesome to read. None of these and more, have any lasting impact without effective world building.

If you don’t believe that the place exists, how are consequences meaningful? Can you achieve something in your mind only? No, not really. Yet stories can make you feel accomplished, despite not really existing outside your mind. This is due to effective world building.

So we have covered the what and the why of this subject. Now let’s dive into the how.

This is something that is easy to mess up when starting to write. Books especially require well thought out world building to keep a reader hooked. This can be solved by trying to find natural ways for your story to answer some questions about itself.

Those questions could be like:

  • How do people earn money in this area?
  • What are common modes of transportation?
  • What does the political scene look like?
  • What do people eat?
  • What are the species of this world?

And the list can go on forever. The point is, don’t be afraid to draw paralels and contrasts to our world. Don’t force it though, that can break emersion. For instance:

Say people can’t ride horses in this country. A poor way to explain that could be.

“It is illegal to ride a horse in this region. We’ll have to walk.”

That sentence doesn’t help develop more out of the world, rather it just places the obstacle and tells you people ride horses. A better way to do this would be:

“Riding horses in this region became illegal some time ago. It is due to the king becoming gravely injured while riding a horse as a child. It would be best if we simply walked instead”

You see the second does a few extra things (besides just increase the word count). It establishes a monarchy in the region. A passage time is implied, which builds a local history. It can be assumed that the ruler of this region is cautious, and wishes to keep his subjects safe (albeit in an overprotective way).

World Building answers questions the reader might not have known to ask. It keeps you thinking about the settings and characters within the story. These are key to keeping interest of your audience, and crafting an emersive world.

Well that’s all I have about the basics of writing when it comes to world building. Until next time, may God bless you and keep you.

Next official book information!

Hey everyone!

I have been giving my next project a lot of thought this month. Among my ideas were some projects I started back in December of last year (and some even older than that). It has not been easy to choose which project to work on next. Despite this difficulty I have decided a plan of action, and I do have some details to share!

I’m happy to announce that the next book I am working on will be an all new tale with a pleasant mix of Science Fiction, and Fantasy. An exhilarating story that mixes science and magic, in ways that might challenge the way you look at the two. This stand alone Novel will place you, the reader, into the story and whisk you away on a journey that will be hard to forget!

You might be thinking: Hey, The Sage of Hytrae trilogy had some Science fiction elements in it too, what makes this different? I would say that trilogy focused more on the fantasy side of the story, but don’t worry we’ll be getting back to Hytrae eventually.

So what other details can I share? Well, I obviously don’t have a release date, I haven’t been writing this one very long after all. But I can tell you that my plan is for this book to be out by the end of summer (if all goes according to plan that is). I’m excited to share more as it develops over the next couple months!

I’m hoping to get the website updates, banner, artwork, etc. done this month as well so hopefully we’ll have something a little more fitting for a multi series/genre/novel author blog page.

Until next time, and don’t feed the Jacobs!

The Trilogy is complete!

Thank you Everyone!

For all the support over the years. The Sage of Hytrae Trilogy is now complete with the latest installment The Sorcerer’s Gamble (Available now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1720324964). I would like to thank everyone who has bought or downloaded any of the books over the years! You guys are the real MVPs and have allowed me to see that not only can I finish writing a book but people can enjoy them.

 

I plan to spend the month of December exploring different writing projects. As always I will update everyone here if and when I have updates on all my writing related ventures. So far it’s been a bit of a rocky year, but I am grateful for everyone sticking through it with me.

The Sorcerer’s Gamble is now in Paperback!

Hey everyone!

 

The Sorcerer’s Gamble is finally able to be ordered as a physical copy! These copies are priced at $9.99 and are available now on amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1720324964

The Crystal Seal is free (as an ebook) until tomorrow so this could be your last chance to grab the digital copy for free!

Thank you to everyone who has already checked out The Sorcerer’s Gamble, and I hope everyone is as excited as I am that the paperback is out now as well!