Writing and Imagination

Writing is the most imaginative art form. Music has a definitive interaction with the listener; you hear the music. Some music can take you to a higher plane; Bach, Beethoven and Mozart are great at that sort of thing, where the music itself is powerful enough to activate the listener's imagination, either through the words or the music. Film and drama are much less imaginative, or least much less interactive. The viewer sees and hears what the director wants them to see and hear, and most of the imagining is done for you.

But writing...writing takes you somewhere else every single time you read. It is the most grounded yet the most fantastic form of art. Its effect is limited not by the writer, but by the reader. Here's an example. If I say, 'Star Wars', most people are going to get a specific set of images in their heads; the Death Star, light sabers, X-Wing fighters, and Baby Yoda floating in a hoverchair, for example. You might get different images than the person next to you, but the ones you do have in common will look pretty much exactly the same as their images. Why? Because the imagining was already done for you by Lucas, or whoever directed the movie you're thinking about. Your mind already has those associations, and they are indelibly etched into your conscious and subconscious mind. They are very powerful images, and that's a great thing.

But writing is different. Unless you're reading a tie-in like a Star Trek novel or something that was made into a movie (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc.), in which case the images you get from reading will be very close to what you saw on the screen. There's nothing wrong with that, either. It's a great visual shorthand for people to have that common experience.

But when you're reading something original, such as Abraham Merritt's The Moon Pool, the words themselves will fuel the imagination. Every reader will see Lakla and O'Keefe in their own minds, separate and distinct from what another reader sees. Even the best descriptions (and Merritt does some fantastic descriptive writing) is still only fuel for the reader's imagination. And that imagination can take you beyond anything the writer wanted you to go. The description of the Dweller, for example, is one of the most vivid in the early pulp writings. But if you read that passage to twenty different artists, you'd get twenty different renditions of what they thought it looked like.

And that is a wonderful thing. Writing engages the reader like nothing else can, because all it can do is lead the reader into the world and let them make it their own. It truly is an interactive art form, and that's what makes it so amazing. And if the story is well-written, the reader's mind will fill in any gaps in what is seen in the landscape of the imagination.

To see an example of this immersion, check out my newest book, Apprentice, available now from an Amazon website near you.

Recommended Reading List

I don't think I've done this before, so this should be interesting. I'm going to list a few books that I (hopefully) haven't written about before, books that mean a lot to me and that I highly recommend. Some are very well-known, some...not so much.

I'm going to start with the first fantasy series I read, and still my favorite fantasy series to this day: The Belgariad, by David Eddings. It's a five-book epic fantasy series about a boy who has a great destiny. It's not exactly an original idea, and it's been called all kinds of clichés, but I love it. I was twelve when I first read it. I got the first two books, Pawn of Prophecy and Queen of Sorcery for my birthday along with Asimov's Foundation. I think I read Foundation first, but I really wasn't a big fan of it. But once I was done the first two Belgariad books, I was hooked. I couldn't wait for the next books to come out (they were still not all published yet), and I devoured each one as it was released. These were probably the first books I ever bought for myself.

The series is written for younger readers, but not stupid ones. Eddings had a good vocabulary, and he wasn't afraid to use it. And his world-building was amazing; Each nation is distinct, but believable. There are merchant-princes, Vikings, knights, plains nomads, Mongol hordes, and many others. Eddings spent a lot of time on his world-building before he ever wrote a word of the series, and it shows in the writing.

There is also a sequel series, The Malloreon, which is an admittedly inferior copy of the Belgariad, and two follow-up books after that, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress that fill in a lot of backstory to the first series. There's also another book called the Rivan Codex, which is his background notes and a treatise on how to write epic fantasy, with an emphasis on world-building that really stirs the imagination. None of these are needed to enjoy the original five-book series, but they're good reads as well.

Okay, next up, let's go to less-epic fantasy. D&D gamers are familiar with Appendix N, the list of books that inspired Gygax when he was creating the game. People are now reading those old authors a lot more than they did when I was younger, when you just couldn't find them on the shelves anymore. Thanks to the internet, they're much easier to find. One of those authors is a woman by the name of André Norton, and one of the books she wrote is Quag Keep. This is a notable book because it is the very first-ever D&D book. Now, is it great literature? Hell, no. Norton can and has written much, much better books. But this is a book about a D&D adventure. And it is the very first book that uses the now-common trope of 'gamers sucked into the world they are gaming in'. I mean, it was written in 1978; the Dungeon Masters Guide wasn't even released yet. I'm not sure the Players Handbook was out for that matter. So this is based on the earlier version of D&D, the white-box version.

Quag Keep has a typical assortment of fantasy characters; there are clerics, fighters, mages, elves, and...a lizard man? Well, I never saw that in the supplements to the game. But, that was back in the days when D&D really was a set of guidelines rather than rules. And lizard men were just as popular in fantasy literature as elves were, going back to Burroughs' Pellucidar stories. So, it makes sense to include such a character in a book about the game.

The worst aspect of Quag Keep is probably the ending, which is really, really rushed and breaks the crap out of the fourth wall with an army of sledgehammers. I won't spoil it, but trust me, it's a hell of a letdown after the rest of the adventure. Still, I will recommend the book for its historical value, as well as because the book between the first and last chapters is a fun romp in the spirit of the game.

Okay, so instead of giving reasons why I like these next few books, I'll just list them and let the reader find out why I enjoy them so much.

G.A. Henty, The Cat of Bubastes

H.R. Haggard, She

L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

David Weber, On Basilisk Station

E.E. "Doc" Smith, The Skylark of Space

Garrett P. Serviss, A Columbus of Space

And, finally, I'll recommend my newest book, Apprentice, available now on Amazon.

Still Going Strong

Well, this is one full week of consecutive blog posts. Not bad for getting things back up and running. I hope this trend will continue over the next fifty-one weeks so I can successfully complete a full year of blogging. Of course, it helps when there is stuff to actually talk about.

The farm plan is still in a rather embryonic state, so that's going to take a bit longer to get hashed out. Writing is going well; I've made sure to write at least something every night, other than this blog post, for the past six days including this one, which is important. I'm expecting good things from this new book, and it's nice to have it off to a solid start, with almost four chapters completed.

So, what else is there to talk about? I'm not doing much in the way of pop culture, haven't been watching Enterprise with my son, haven't even been reading the Amazing Stories magazines. But, there are other things happening in life.

Friends of mine who came for a visit this past summer are almost ready to move out here themselves. They're selling their house, and got a good offer on it today. They're just waiting for some conditions to be fulfilled so they can buy the house they want to get here. Prayers for their success have been flying at our end and at theirs, but any other prayers for their success would be appreciated.

This post is more about keeping the nascent blogging streak going, so I'll cut it short for now; I want to get back to writing the book. I'm still sick as hell, but I'm getting better, and I want to finish this chapter and get the next one started. So, I'll stop here for now.

Planning 2023

So, the joys of a new year. As is my annual tradition, I've spent a couple of days being sick. It happens almost every year around this time, and I can't seem to every break that pattern. It really, really sucks. Especially this part of it, where coughing is torture as my ribs and stomach muscles are in screaming pain from constant contraction over the past few days. Seriously, it hurts like hell.

But, being cooped up in the house like this has its advantages. Thinking about what to do with the farm over the next year, for example. I had some vague goals in an earlier post, but now it's time to start thinking seriously about how this farm is going to generate some income in 2023.

We have four viable methods of bringing in revenue here: Eggs, chickens, pork, and vegetables. Bunnies will be a fifth option if things go as hoped in the spring. We thought we were getting baby bunnies last month, but it didn't pan out that way. We'll let the bunnies do their thing properly in the spring, and see what kind of results we get.

So, here's a quick rundown of how to make money on a small hobby farm. First, the eggs. At current prices, eggs run around six dollars a dozen in the big chain stores like Walmart and Sobeys. We're currently selling ours for four, although five isn't out of the question considering the value we'll be offering. After all, our eggs come fresh from a farm, not an egg factory. At the current rate of laying, we are getting about a dozen eggs every couple of days. Factoring in that we eat some of the eggs ourselves, we're looking at getting about 150 dozen eggs a year, assuming we don't see an uptick in laying. Even at five dollars a dozen, that's only $750 for the year, which really isn't much at all. Either we do get more eggs from our chickens in the summer, or we get more laying chickens. Otherwise, we're not even breaking a thousand in the year, and it costs that much just to feed them.

Meat birds are another money-maker. Our meat birds last year were Cornish Cross, an excellent, quick-growth breed that comprises the vast majority of commercially-produced chicken. They grow really fast; eight to ten weeks from hatching to butchering. They eat a LOT of food in that time, but they are big birds. Our average from the twenty-four we had last year was 6.75 pounds. At four dollars a pound, that's a $27 bird. The chicks are affordable; we can easily buy fifty of them. Raising them free-range saves a bit on food, although they aren't much for eating grass and bugs. Still, at $27/bird, that's $1350 for fifty birds, and that's if we don't cut them up and sell them in pieces. And we can do that at least twice a year, depending on how well the weather holds out. We're going to learn to butcher them ourselves to save money, which increases the profit line.

Next, pork. Our pigs were a great success this year. They were healthy and huge, and brought in enough money to pay for all the expenses incurred in acquiring them last year and still have plenty of meat left over. Selling packages of various cuts brought in about $300 per package, and we sold five packages. That's $1500, or $750 per pig, and that doesn't include the bacon, which we are also going to sell at $10 for half a pound. We got forty pounds of bacon in total from the two pigs, so that's a lot of half-pounds. We're not selling them all, but even half gets us another $400. Our goal next year is to raise three pigs and sell most of the meat.

All together, the eggs, chickens and pork can be expected to bring in about $7500 for the year. That's not a lot, especially since a lot of it will be taken up in actually feeding these animals. But that brings us to part four, the veggies.

Veggies are a big market; people are always on the lookout for quality products. It's not something I can dive into in a short post like this, but I'll be doing some more investigating into how we can make the farm profitable, or at least producing some income. I hope to have more details in a later post.

So, farming is quite an experience, but making a living at it isn't going to be easy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And who knows? Things can always change.

The Side Benefits of Writing

I'm sure everyone has heard the old expression, 'write what you know.' But unfortunately, that is a rather limiting statement. I find that a lot of what I write involves things I didn't know. I certainly don't have a deep understanding of criminal psychology or ways of murdering someone without being caught, but I've written four murder mysteries with more on the way. Some things have to be learned to make a story believable and allow the reader to immerse themselves fully.

Of course, with a genre like fantasy, there are no rules; a story can go in literally any direction. Science fiction is not quite the same; a lot of sci-fi writers like to base their work in real-world science. Andy Weir's The Martian is an excellent example of this, in which he had to game out a lot of scenarios on Mars and do research to make them real. Other sci-fi like Star Wars is more on the fantasy side of things, where there are no real rules except the ones the writer makes up.

Now, some fantasy writing will have a realistic component. For example, the second Shadowmage Saga book takes place mostly on a sailing ship similar to the galleons of the 17th and 18th century. I, of course, know absolutely nothing about rigging and sailing ships except what I've read in other books, so it's a learning opportunity for me to get enough information to make the book work, while not bogging down in extraneous details about each individual sail and rope on a ship. No one is going to mistake this book for Horatio Hornblower or David Weber's Safehold series, but it will at least make some sense to the reader, if I do things right.

Other examples from my own books include the research I did on early 20th-century society for The Awakening, the Gilded Age book. I wasn't there, and while I have a lot of love of history and a long track record of studying it, that was a time period that I hadn't spent a lot of time on. But it wasn't hard to get some of the information I needed, enough to make the book work. Same with my 1930s stuff, which I know a bit more about, but I needed geographical details to get it to work.

Research is important for a writer, as long as it doesn't become the primary focus. The point is to write the story, not read dozens of other books to increase realism. Get enough to make the story work, then get back to the writing. In the meantime, you've learned something new, and no day is wasted when you learn something knew.

While you're waiting to see the new sailing ship adventure of the Shadowmage Saga, take a look at the first book in the series, Apprentice, which just came out this week.

Under the Weather

Well, that sucks. I left the island for a few hours to drive Mom to Moncton on New Year's Day, and apparently I picked up some sort of New Brunswick bug while I was there. I feel right icky. Fortunately, the housecoat I got for Christmas is as warm as a volcano on the sun. So at least I'm not shivering.

I wouldn't normally talk about this, but I've decided that I want to make a commitment to blogging every day this year, even if it's just a short one. Besides, there isn't that much to talk about in the world of writing at the moment.

Except, of course, my new book, Apprentice, the first book of the Shadowmage Saga. It's available now on Amazon at all locations. Check it out, and support indie publishing today!

Gaming with Family

Once upon a time, I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. Solo, mostly. I wasn't the most social kid growing up, but I really loved immersing myself in a fantastic world of imagination. I wasn't exclusively a D&D kid; I played Star Frontiers, Top Secret S.I., Champions, Robotech, even Teenagers from Outer Space. It was a lot of fun, but there was always something missing.

I tried to play with my family once, when I was twelve or thirteen. I spent a couple of days with them rolling up characters for Basic D&D, and I proudly began to run them through the most famous of modules, the Keep on the Borderlands. Unfortunately, the game didn't go so well; it was my first time as a DM, and I was slavishly following the dice. Half the party died before entering the kobold cave, and that was the end of my time gaming with family.

Fast-forward to sixteen years ago, and my oldest son wanted to play. He was about ten years old. This time I found a few other players, and we had a decent little game going as I ran them through a 3rd edition series, the Shackled City. The game ended up on hiatus as one of the players ended up living several hours away for a few months, but he did come back and we continued on. Kameron, my son, played a young sorcerer and had a great time being part of the group. The other players, despite being twice his age or more, accepted him as one of their own, and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the group dissolved when we moved away ourselves, but I gave them a rollicking finale to cut the series short.

When we moved in with my future wife, she was not a gaming fan. And before long, the gaming was done. It was difficult, but I accepted it. I didn't give it up completely, however; I still had projects related to gaming going on, and some of those projects inspired my writing and the books I have published, including the newest one, the first Shadowmage book, Apprentice. But active gaming was off the table.

Things have changed; there is a homeschooling RPG group here on PEI, and my wife has reluctantly agreed to let our middle son, Tanner, play. Tanner is a lot like me; he loves fantasy (not so much science fiction), and reads voraciously. He's currently into the Harry Potter books which, while not my favorites, have sparked his imagination. And, as I've mentioned before, he loves D&D. He wants to get playing again, and I've suggested he ask some of his friends to join in. A group is always better than solo.

If we can get this game going, it's going to be based on the AD&D First Edition rules. I've had a long-standing project going where I've created a campaign setting based on those rules as they evolved over time. The setting is, of course, Meterra, more or less as it appears in my first two fantasy books, Arrival and The Devil's Playground. In fact, the latter is where the game will be set to begin with, in the deadliest labyrinthian setting I could come up with. He's already terrified, so I must have done something right in the books.

I'm really looking forward to showing him what old-school gaming is all about. It's quite a bit different from what he plays on his Xbox, that's for sure. And, as this is related to homeschooling, he might learn something from the experience as well.

Please check out my newest book, just published this weekend.

Apprentice: Live!

And here it is!

Yes, my long-delayed eleventh book (and first since 2020) is now available. Ebook format only for now; the paperback will have to wait until I either find a better piece of art or can commission one. Still, it's an exciting feeling, and it's got me pumped and motivated to get back to writing. So, without further ado, please click on the link, check it out and enjoy!

What a Way to End the Year!

Well, I wanted to get my writing back on track, and here it is. As of right now, my first published book in over two years is being processed by Amazon. I'm not sure if I'm going to count it as 2022 (since I finished writing and submitting it prior to the New Year) or 2023 (since it won't be approved and ready for sale until then). I'll probably wait to make that decision until I see how well I'm maintaining my yearly goals. Is that cheating? Only if I get caught.

So, what exactly is the book? It's the first book in an ongoing fantasy series. The series is 'The Shadowmage Saga'. The first book is titled, 'Apprentice'. Here's the cover:

It's not the snazziest cover, I know. But it is an excellent representation of the Forbidden Lands, a locale in the book (obviously). Since I have to rely on stock images for the moment until I can afford to pay a decent cover artist (shout-out to greyghost at Fiverr!), this will have to do.

The book is, at the moment, only going to be available as an ebook. I'm going to hold out on the paperback until I can hopefully get a proper cover done up.

So, what's it about? Well, there are a couple of hints on the cover. It involves saving the world, and saving children. Saving them from what? Bad things. Very, very bad things. But don't worry, this is a fantasy aimed at intelligent young adult readers. No sex, no bad language, reasonable levels of violence (and no gory stuff). As you know, I want to write stuff my kids and grandkids can read without needing parental advisory warnings.

The basic idea is this: Jandar, an apprentice to the Shadowmage, is sent on a mission of great importance to rescue some tribal humans from their magic-wielding oppressors. Why him and not the Shadowmage? Because master wizards are always too busy for that sort of thing, that's why. Jandar gets the short-end of the straw and gets to go save everyone while putting his own life in terrible peril. Because if he didn't, then the book would be really boring.

It's not a Harry Potter style book. It's a bit different from my Meterra books as well, although it's very much of a pulp style, with the action being pretty continuous throughout the book. I had the idea for this book years and years ago, and now it's a reality. I'm excited, and I hope you will be as well. I will post the link to the book as soon as it gets approved by Amazon. The book will be available for the very reasonable ebook price of $4.99 US, and it will be available in all Amazon markets around the world.

So, there it is. What a way to end 2022. I feel good about 2023, I really do. It's going to be a great year. Happy New Year, everyone!

Goals for 2023

I know, it's a bit presumptuous to set writing goals when I haven't been doing much writing for the past couple of years, but I need something to get my creative juices flowing at pulp speed. It's good to be sitting at the keyboard again and putting words to paper, but goals are important. So, let's see what we can do.

First, I'm going to set a reasonable goal of one published book per month in 2023. That's twelve books, whether they be novels or short story collections (more likely the former). Genre doesn't really matter, although I expect there will be a fairly even mix of fantasy and mystery. Maybe four of each. I would like to get another Meterra book done, as well as (of course) more Cameron Vail. I don't know about sci-fi; it's not my go-to genre. But we'll see.

I also want to keep my blog more consistent; daily writing is important, and forcing myself to post daily will help keep me on track for the rest of my writing.

If I'm going to write a book a month, I'm going to need to be consistently writing a minimum of a thousand words per day. Two thousand would be better, but one thousand has to be the floor. Thirty thousand words is a decent book; my mysteries have clocked in at roughly those numbers so far. But forty-five thousand or so should be a reasonable expectation.

So far, these goals seem reasonable and achievable, which is important. But there are other things going on in life besides writing. I do, after all, live on a farm. So, I'm going to set some farming goals as well.

The most important goal is to increase our income from the farm so I can move to a full-time at-home situation instead of driving to town every day to work. That isn't going to happen this year, but it's time to show some significant improvement in the farm income.

Our income from the farm this year came from three main sources: eggs, chicken, and pork. We didn't sell any vegetables from the garden; we just didn't grow enough. But next year, the gardens will be bigger, and I think I learned a lot in 2021 and 2022. So, we might see some actual income from the gardens in 2023.

As for the meat, we're planning to sell lots of meat chickens and raise three pigs instead of just two. For the chickens, the Cornish Cross breed is a quick-growing breed; eight to ten weeks from hatching to butchering. If we can grow a bunch of them (fifty or so) in the spring and sell them, we can do the same in the summer and fall as well. Two or even three sets of meat birds will be an excellent source of income. We're also looking at learning how to butcher them ourselves, which will save a lot of money; it costs quite a bit to butcher a chicken.

We also have laying hens, although we're going to be streamlining the flock to focus on one particular breed of chicken. We'll have to look over our egg production to see if selling them as a consistent product is a viable option. We had some issues with eggs this year; we need to make sure we do better for 2023.

As for pork, we did okay with raising the pigs this year, considering we had no clue what we were doing and we started late in the year. Our pigs weighed over 280 pounds each after slaughter, and we got a LOT of meat from them. Forty pounds of bacon alone. We actually sold enough pork that we made a profit and still had plenty of meat left over (including the bacon). So, we're going to look at picking up three bacon seeds this spring and raising them for the meat. We had enough takers for our pork packages this year that I have no doubt we'll do even better next year.

Finally, the big question: Should we get a couple of cows? I'm inclined to say 'no' right now, although I won't rule it out for later in the year. The main reason is because we're still new at this, and we don't have anywhere to put the cows for now. Which is ironic, since this used to be a dairy farm. But we've repurposed the barns, so bringing cows in would be a major undertaking.

Now, I can see the pros to raising a couple of cows. First, milk. Dairy products are getting insanely expensive here on the Island. Having a milking cow would mean we'd have a steady supply of milk, cream and butter that didn't cost us anything beyond the feed. But it would require me to get up every damn morning and milk the cow. The second cow would be a beef steer; raising a beef cow would mean we would be set for the year with whatever meat we wanted. But it's not going to be cheap.

So, it's something to think about for the upcoming year. In the meantime, though, writing has to happen. I'm going to get to that now.