Privilege and Edenlancer

Hello again!  Happy Friday.  I'm usually not one to yearn for Friday to come, but this week was definitely an exception.  On the book end, I'm seriously considering going with a PR company to help promote my book.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that are pulling at my budget at this point.  I'm hoping at the start of 2018, I can go ahead with it.  In the meantime, I'll keep drawing (which I need to post) and working on the side story (which this has been a bad week for).  Hopefully I will have more news later.

On the personal side, this week I gave a presentation about architecture and the industry to a group of high school students.  It was hard with some, as it is with all teenagers, to gauge their interest in pursuing a field in construction whether it be laborer, tradesmen, contracting, engineering, or architecture.  The industry is vast and has a lot of doors to go through.  I'm hoping that got something from the presentation and design activity.  The biggest thing I hope they understand is that none of these doors are locked to them.  It will definitely be hard for some of them, but it's not impossible.  I had to work three jobs in college and go to school full time to just make my rent and basic things.  It'll probably be harder for some of them than it was to me.

With the above paragraph, it ties into a word that's constantly circling around the media.  Privileged.  While some of you may roll your eyes to this, it's an important thing to consider.  Something I hope my book touches, even ever so slightly.  I'm privileged.  While my family definitely isn't anything wealthy, we always had a home.  My immediate family has always been supportive and functional.  I went to school with a full stomach and good night's rest.  I was never targeted because of my color, at least by officials.  And my parents did well to shield me from drugs and violence even though it was right outside.  What I am getting at is that even those things, that may seem basic, are my privileges.  The fact that they may not seem like privileges to some, is also another privilege.  I'm a white, straight, male.  I can turn off any radio or news outlet and forget about things.  Others cannot.  That's my brief spiel about privilege.  I hope my book touches on it enough to show the privileged life of seemingly everyone compared to Zanba and Hamman.  Even their good friend Rammorah has an extremely good life before his career.

Anyway, this weekend I'm changing my power steering rack and pinion.  That should be fun.  I'm hoping to do it Sunday, roughly align the wheels, and drive it to the shop down the street for an alignment and finally, after 2 years, get this car passed in Maryland.  We will see.  Hope all had a great Halloween, my son went as Blaze from Blaze and the Monster Machines (for those of you who do not have kids).  It's honestly the best show out of all of his shows.  It teaches him stuff I didn't learn until High School.  Seriously, try to remember when you learned the actual definition of inertia and electro-magnetism.

Well, sorry it is a bit long.  Hope all of you have a great weekend!

Cities and Voice for Short Story

I remembered to post this time!  I hope everyone is having a great week.  Mine has been another busy week with pushing out a project.  Anyway, things on the book end are slow.  I've been talking to a PR company to see how I can boost my audience and hopefully share my story with more people.  Hopefully I'll be able to act on that soon if my car will hold it together for a little longer.

I apologize for my short story taking so long.  I've been working on two things for it: cities and voice.  As I was writing the story, I realized that some cities were created after the Dragon War, therefore our hero, Junak, would not be able to go or know of those cities.  I had to pour over pages of notes and mark down which were around and which were not so I didn't have any continuity errors.  I've also been working on the voice of the story.  I have been re-reading a lot of older stories like Gilgamesh, Iliad and Odyssey, and more recently Dante's Divine Comedy.  I like how everything is so verbose and grand when writing.  I think I want to experiment with that for this short story.  One thing I found interesting, especially in the Iliad and Odyssey, is that everyone had a name and history.  There were not a lot of non-descriptive characters.

I have been drawing some images up, but it has been placed on hold, I'm hoping to do more on it soon.  I had my reasons for the style I chose to draw in the book, but for the website, I would like it to be a little more realistic.  Unfortunately, a more realistic product takes a little more time to get right.

On the personal side, we carved pumpkins!  I'll post some pictures.  We carved three, a scary, happy...and a sad one.  My 3-year old was intent on having a sad pumpkin...so we have a sad pumpkin now.  Did I finish my bathroom?  No...I've been trying to get my car to Maryland tags for some time now, but every time I bring it in having fixed the last problem, I get a new one.  In order to save money, I do things myself.  Unfortunately, that takes time.  Last time I had a list of problems ranging from brakes to power steering pump.  Fixed them all.  Now it's down to 3 items: wipers, headlights...and power steering rack.  The wipers and headlights are tivial, but the rack and pinion is a whole other story.  I can do it, but should I let the shop do it and get it over with and just bite the bullet?  We'll see...

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Busy Weeks

Hey everyone, sorry to miss a few weeks it has been pretty busy.  With my HS reunion and then the holiday seasons rolling around the corner, I need to be better about updating.  Lately, I've been attempting to better promote my book.  I missed the Baltimore Book Festival which would have helped immensely.  Next year I will be a little more prepared to do that.  The book, to be honest, is slow getting off the ground.  That's fine and expected.  I'm really new to this game, but hopefully I will be able to get my story out to more people.  

Anyway, enough wallowing.  It's Friday and that means a very busy weekend.  As far as the book, I'm still working on one of the shorts.  I've decided that all of the shorts will be for 99 cents and be somewhere around five chapters each.  This will give the books a set limit.  I was writing well on it until I realized that some of the cities wouldn't have existed during the time of the Dragon War.  I had to backtrack and look at the pages of notes I had written to be sure I don't have any continuity errors.  Yes, I do have a catalog of cities and organizations, their rule, and the year they were established.  You never know when that information will be handy.  So it was going swiftly, but has stalled due to that.  Instead of going through a formal publisher, I will be publishing these myself to Amazon or other e-book sites.  Hopefully next time we speak I will have news of maybe a give-away in a Baltimore bookstore.  Stay tuned for that.

That's all I have on the book front.  Personally, I'm debating whether this will be the weekend I finally put up drywall in my bathroom.  My fear is that I have forgotten something or that my level and plumb-bob have failed me and my walls aren't straight.  I get a little paranoid on it.  If my backboard bends in the shower, then my tile may fall off and that is an expensive mistake to fix.

Other than that my wife and I are planning on taking my son to a pumpkin patch.  I heard from a coworker about an incredible maze of corn and pumpkin patch in Frederick, MD.  Check it out on Google Maps or Earth.  You can see the one from 2015 which had Taylor Swift as the corn maze.  Amazing job.  Look out for photos if this is the weekend that will happen.

Well, I hope everyone has a pleasant weekend and a good Friday.  Remember to follow me on Twitter and Instagram.  I post things sometimes.  Thanks for reading!

Gaian Archives

Hello again!  I apologize for not doing one last week, I had a company event that I attended.  It was fun and my son really enjoyed his first experience in a swimming pool.  Like his mother, he loves the water.  Anyway, this time I want to talk about what is next for a moment.  I already said that I am working on images that I will be posting on the site.  That's still in progress of course, but I am also working on new short stories called Gaian Stories or Gaian Archives.  I think I like the later better, to be honest.  These will be short tales that happen before the book.  They will be comprised of at least five short stories that will help tell the tale of Gaia over time.  

A little history about this first.  Originally this blog post was suppose to be called Legacy and was where I was going to post the stories.  I don't think the blog format is exactly the best way to publish those pieces of work; however.  So I decided for this to be a regular blog site.  Also, originally, I was going to publish them together in a bound book.  However, I think releasing them over time works better and allows people to explore the world more without having to buy a large book again.  That's when I decided that I would publish the stories in e-book fashion for either free or some small monetary amount no more than $2.  These will be very short stories.

I hope people will enjoy them.  I think it will help build the world more and explain what happened before the brothers went on their fateful journey.  After I publish them, I'm still determining whether I should publish the next installation Edenlancer : Hero of Courage or continue with the short stories to build up to the next major installment.  If you have an idea, please feel free to comment.  

A little peak.  The first book to be published will be part of the Origins collection of the Gaian Archives.  This one will be about how the first hero, Heroj Junak, became the famous hero of Gaia that he was during the Dragon War.  

Well, until next time everyone.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend.  Also, please; if you have anything left to give, donate money, time, or supplies to the victims of Harvey, Irma, and/or Maria.  They still need our support.

Getting Edenlancer published, Part II

Hey everyone!  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope everyone is doing well.  Before I start, I just want to say how devestating this hurricane season has been.  I know I've asked several times, but I feel as though I should once more.  Please, if you can, donate to either Harvey or Irma relief.  There are thousands in need of your help.

Onto a more positive light, I want to finish off this publication post and talk about what came next.  The next part was incredibly exhaustive.  Page did a full edit on the book.  Granted it wasn't a bad edit because my wife was my story editor.  She pretty much cleaned up most of it before I sent it to them.  But they still had some comments that I needed to pick up.  That took a long, long time.  It was such a relief when that stage was over.  I like my book, but I've read it about five times over in such a short span of time that it was starting to wane on me.  It's the most painstaking, but the most important stage of the entire process.

After I approved the final edit, I was finally able to move onto Page Design.  This dealt with font, chepter titles, headers, footers, dedications, and any images within the book (I'll talk about the images some other time).  If you are drawing all of the images yourself, like I did, it takes some time since I didn't have time to do both edit and draw at the same time.  I only really get to work on the book early in the morning and only for 30 minutes to an hour.  It also took time because I was very picky on how they looked in the book.  

The final major step was Cover Design.  The moment I had been waiting for.  I knew exactly what I wanted, but I had to wait for the artist to send me his rendition.  I scrapped the first image and gave the artist the second image with the better color.  At first the color looked a little too much like a bodily fluid for my taste.  Without really giving the artist direction, they made the exact cover I was looking for.  Check it out on my Instagram if you haven't seen it yet!  

And with that, the final book was approved and published.  It was a long and tiring process, but I'm glad I made it through it.  Now the book is legitimately out there.  I don't have the full PR backing of a traditional publishing house, but I'll figure out another way.  I've been attempting to become better at social media and put things out there.  Hopefully that will pay off.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Friday!

Getting Edenlancer published

Welcome back!  I hope everyone is doing well.  I wanted to make good on my promise to explain the process of getting Edenlancer published.  It was kind of a bumpy ride in the beginning.  I was young and incredibly naieve when it came to anything about publishing.  Let's start at the beginning.

When I was interested in finally finishing a book, I looked around at a few options.  I settled on one self-publishing company that I later found was a disaster.  They were unresponsive and uncooperative unless it was time to pay.  It was a nightmare and a waste of money.  I urge you to do careful research and talk with their representatives before settling.  Also, check out the BBB's website.  Don't always trust the rating, I would look at how many complaints they recieved in six months compared to other publishers their size.

After that nightmare, I was a little gun shy about going with another publisher.  However, a rep from Page Publishing contacted me and explained everything to me.  He was very kind and patient as I took my time deciding.  Before I go further, for aspiring writers, don't be too picky.  I know we would all like to be published under a big name publishing house, but it is very difficult to do unless you have already made some kind of name for yourself.  Not impossible of course, but incredibly difficult.  Look at it as an investment.  They are investing in you and your product.  They want to see a return.  You can imagine why they would be skeptical to get a young and navice author.  

I finally chose Page Publishing.  The difference between Page and a typical publishing house is that you have to put some money up-front.  That may sound painful, but it reduces their risk of a flop.  I was very wary about it, but the saving grace for me was the part in the contract in which Page will not take a cut from your books until you've made all of your money back.  So even though it take some money to front, you will; hopefully, get it all back in your book sales.  It's a good way for starting authors to get out there and make some kind of name.  You retain the rights of your book which means if you get picked up be a traditional publishing house, great!

Once that stressful part of choosing is done, you have to submit your work for approval.  This is a book review in which they take your work and read through it to be sure it meets their standards.  Not only in quality and such but to make sure your work doesn't have things that may not be suitable for most readers (for example, explicit adult content).  While my wife will say that the story is what got Edenlancer approved, I will say that it was because I had her edit my book before hand.  She bled all over the first draft of it which meant it was a strong and more coherent work.  So I URGE any aspiring author to edit your work.  I cannot stress that enough.  Read through it and be sure you've dotted your eyes and crossed your tees.  

Next time I will continue and tell the process of post-approval.  Thanks for reading!  By the way; please, if you can, donate to a Harvey relief fund to help the victims of that powerful storm.  They are still attempting to cope with the damages and need our help.  Also, for anyone in the path of Irma, please be safe.  I wish everyone the best.  

Follow me on any of the social media accounts!  See you next week.

Short and Sweet

Welcome back on this beautiful Friday morning.  I'll be honest, I like the summer (since both me and my son are summer babies), but the transition months are the best.  I like how the weather changes and everything starts to adapt to the new environment.  Anyway, this is going to be a short post since I was busy reviewing the press release for the book and approving it.  I'm not completely sure what that all entails, but I asked my publication coordinator for clarification.  I will relay that info here for anyone aspiring to publish.

First off, I want to say that I am deeply saddened by effects of hurricane Harvey.  While I am used to hurricanes; growing up on the East Coast, I am still horrified and awestruck at the shear power of nature.  It truly shows that even if we can fly to the moon, build underwater cities, and make groundbreaking robotics; we are still nothing compared to nature.  I wish everyone safety and well-being.  Please, if you can, donate to a charity organization to help the relief efforts.  Or donate your time.  Any help is important.

Secondly, I'm going to be reading through my book to prepare for my next installation.  While I have a list of all the items and characters met in the story, I'm lacking a detailed description of where they currently are.  I will need that to better prevent continuity errors.  It will be easier than most stories since quite a bit of time passes between the books.  

Thirdly, since I'm going to be reading through the books, expect some sketches of characters, monster, and items while I'm going through.  I'll post some that I particularly think are good to my social media accounts.

Thanks for stopping by, I apologize that it is a little short.  Please feel free to leave feedback and follow me on any social media accounts listed here.  Enjoy the long weekend!

Attempting to Promote a Fantasy Book

Welcome back!  Thanks for stopping by again.  For those of you who have picked up a copy, thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the book.  This week I wanted to talk about the daunting task of promoting this book, especially to those who are not as big into fantasy.  The good thing is that there are no shortage of options for someone who is looking to promote.  They range from free to very costly.  It also depends on your genre, but I will stick to fantasy since it is technically Edenlancer's genre.  I am not an advertising professional, but I just wanted to share my experiences during this stage.

First off, it is very difficult to explain what a fantasy/adventure book is in a short summary.  Especially to family and friends who may not be as keyed into the fantasy genre as your core audience.  The trick is to try to keep it short and concise while relating it to real-world topics.  However, even then I mess it up.  But I found that if I bring up the religion and government plot of the book, people are more willing to seek it out because those are two things they understand.  When you start with magic and a sacred sword, some might gloss over or try to compare it with things they know.

One of the first things I did in the beginning was not to pick a traditional cover and design.  Edenlancer's cover is bright with a simple pattern that draws attention and invokes curiosity.  Since I am a first time author, I didn't want something that would blend in, I needed something that would pop out among other books.  That's an easy one for an author to control.  Everything else is essentially all about exposure.

You want as many people as possible to see your book, but as I researched I realized a lot of promotions were useful only to non-fiction or self-help books.    The absolute best way of getting exposure is the oldest form in the world: word of mouth.  Ratings and reviews are extensions of this.  That's why I plead to those who are reading the books to give it a review on any review site you can like Amazon or Goodreads.  It helps tremendously get the word around.  Even if you didn't like it.........

Other ways are to having press releases, business cards, and advertisments.  These are effective but usually involve some money.  If you were lucky to get a publisher that does press releases (like Page Publishing), that can help but they do take time to craft; as they should.  Handing out business cards is another great way (more on that).  But of all, I implore you to take time and make a website for either you, as an author, or your book.  This is the easiest way to direct people to you.  Squarespace is one that I used to build this site.  They usually have offer codes on podcasts that I implore you to try.  Another big thing with Squarespace is that they have a partnership with Google AdWords.  A $100 credit which is about 320 clicks.  That's a good chuck of new traffic to your website which can mean 320 potential buyers if you include a link to the seller.  

Finally a sure fire way to get new people to look at your book are book fairs, book signings, and other events that you can personally promote your book.  These are incredible opportunities to pass out free copies or your business cards.  The downside of these is that (especially book fairs) tend to cost some money.  A spot at a good sized book fair can cost about $400+.

So...what I'm trying to say is that this phase of the book is exhausting, daunting, and expensive, but it is worth it.  Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed at the things I want to accomplish and the things that I can accomplish in my already busy day.  It's great to have so many options to promote a book, but it can be a little paralyzing especially if a route you have been focusing on has not been fruitful.  I also get the feeling that I'm not doing enough to promote it sometimes. 

I hope that brings some items to light and that it might help other authors at the beginning of this process.  Good luck.  If you have any stories about promoting your book, please leave a comment or tweet me.  I'm not so active on there as I am on Instagram (check out the Feed the Dino game I made for my son's birthday!)  Thanks again!

Languages in Edenlancer

Hello again!  I see I've gotten some visitors of the site, that's pretty exciting.  I'm not particularly versed in how to get the word out, but I'm doing what I can.  So for those of you who stop by, thank you for taking the time to read!

I wanted to write a little about the languages in the book.  You come across many languages while reading through it including Reskin and Terravanni and Xelna.  If these languages seem similar, it's because they are very closely related to languages in our own world.  You may be thinking that it was a little lazy to include actual languages in the book and I will tend to agree with you.  However, I did modify them a bit and here are some points as to why I did what I did:

Languages on Earth are beautiful and complex
The languages that exist in our own plane are beautifully crafted over generations.  They've been around longer than I can comprehend and have developed because of various social and geographical reasons.  It would take me another lifetime to fully understand the intricacies of the various languages, although it would be cool to know.

Linguistics
Unlike Tolkien, I did not thoroughly study languages and the written arts.  Since I wanted this world to be incredibly diverse much like our own.  I had to created a number of languages to represent the cultures on the planet.  He was truly a master of his craft and I am nothing more than a Jack, if that.  To create numerous unique languages would have been an enormous project in and of itself.

Gaian language vs. Earth language
While I did adapt the languages from our beautiful planet, I did not completely adopt them.  The languages are broken down into some basics and from there I am able to create a version of the language that is different enough to avoid the complex grammatical structures of the variety of real languages.  This prevented me from making egregious mistakes in handling one of the most precious aspects of a culture, their language.  So if it seems similar, but things are not exactly lining up, it would be for this reason.

Parallel with Earth
While Gaia is not a parallel universe with Earth, it is a parallel understanding.  Experiences with any piece of fiction can and should relate back to the real world.  Whether it is for a moral or educational purpose or just to ground the reader.

I'm hoping you enjoy the cultures that I created and I hope to really flesh them out more in future installments.  Each one is kind of precious to me.  Please continue this adventure with me and we will see even more cultures, languages, and people in the next book where I will take you to the home continent of Giovanni.

The book is finally out!

I probably should get better at posting blog updates...oh well, getting better slowly is better than not getting better at all.  Anyway, the book is out!  It's been such a long time since I started writing this book.  In all honesty, this wasn't what it started as.  This series is dear to me not only because it's my entrance into a new profession, but also because these stories have a bit of me in them.  These stories have been crafted over years, slowly forming into a single world.  I've written tons of versions (that will later be future installments of the series) before settling on this story for the beginning.  I chose this one because the main characters are almost as fresh to this world as you, the readers.

It's a quiet adventure with two brothers who don't have a good head start in the world.  They are not seasoned warriors nor powerful mages.  They are humble and poverty-stricken.  They fumble about this new world, learning as they go how to handle themselves with other cities, cultures, threats, and themselves.  It's a story about trying to do what is right despite what you've been told is wrong and them coming into their own personalities.

This book is set in 622, in what future scholars would call the First Gaian Era.  As such the book and its images attempt to reflect that.  The images are hard and stiff like hieroglyphs and the writing has a font that can extend the ages.  Because, spoiler, the next book you may find yourself in a different continent and even a different time.

Edenlancer's Inaugural Post!

Hey everyone, my name is Austen and I am starting an exciting and frightening new journey into the world of writing and publishing said written work.  My first book is called Edenlancer: The Hero of Virtue.  The story follows a young man named Zanba and his brother Hamman.  They work in the mine and care for the lost and orphaned children of their residing city of Asa'Nel.  While Zanba is content to work in the mines in order to provide for their charges, Hamman is less inclined to do so.  He wishes for adventure and that wish is granted to Zanba's dismay.  In order to be pardoned for stealing food, the King sets the brothers off on a series of tasks that soon reveal a more sinister agenda.  

While the book mainly focuses on the adventure and the brothers' relationship throughout their journeys, I wanted to also explore religion.  Religion is a big factor in any civilization and, much like our own history, played a much larger role in their development than currently.  The book focuses on how Zanba's relationship with their god, the Divine, changes.  It explores the common problem of conflict of religion as he accomplishes tasks that are not always aligned with their beliefs.

Hopefully, if it is successful, the story will convey the feelings and tones I wish for it to demonstrate.  Since it is my first book and adventure into this new career, I'm not claiming to be even nearly great at the craft yet.  There is a lot to learn and I look forward to sharing the journey with readers. 

I know it is a short post, but I think that will be all for now.  My book does not have a release date as of yet, but I should have it soon.  As of now, we are in the cover art phase, the last phase before the actual publishing occurs.  Maybe my next post will be the process of which I went through.  I hope you will enjoy my story and look forward to future updates on the site.

Thanks everyone,
Austen