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!

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!

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.

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