In The Starlight Chronicles, my protagonist has a destiny, like all marked maidens before her. But in this 300-year cycle, things are different. The moon goddesses of Anurash are using their influence to bring about a change that has been a long time coming. Selena Aires is their vehicle. But because free will plays a part in destiny, they must allow her choices. Will she answer their hope or follow her own path?
One of those intriguing paths is aligning with the destiny of a conflicted alien prince, Aviel Enair, the most powerful of three alien princes banished to Earth thousands of years ago. Everything with Selena happens in threes, good, bad, or somewhere in between.
You will meet Aviel, a prince you’re never quite sure you’re supposed to hate, in Books One and Two. He’s one of my many characters I affectionately refer to as pod people in my blogs about character development.
Meanwhile, enjoy this teaser from Book Three, Tigris Vetus, coming soon. And thanks for letting me experiment with sharing my TikTok videos.
Artwork by E. B. Hunter. Contact him for more about the alliance.
I recently got swept up with an amazing group of indie authors from around the globe, all at different stages of their writing careers, in the genres of fantasy and sci fi.
Granted, I’m on the fringe of the group with my writing that focuses more on the romance and relationships forged with amazing beings in a fantasy world created within the human world we know…. or think we know. But I’m having a blast learning from and sharing support with so many fellow shepherds of pod people (aka developing characters). The worlds they build are staggering.
And the help we offer each other is phenomenal.
We’re doing a writers lift today on Twitter. You can join us, support us, and find some great books by checking out #fsfwritersalliance on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. More about the alliance can be found on my Writer’s Alliance Page.
I will be interviewing members and other indie authors I’m privileged to meet every few weeks. I’m starting this exciting feature in August with fellow member and Swords and Sorcery fantasy author from New South Wales, Australia, Douglas. T. Smith. I will keep you all posted on the details!
Thanks for checking out my books before you leave, and happy reading… happy writing, and have a happy day.
How can I keep Mondays from being the imagination killer? It’s an awful feeling when that first alarm clock of the week goes off, and my pod people (otherwise known as my developing characters as illustrated in my previous blogs), who have been living full lives and acting out full scenes in my mind all weekend, run screaming into the shadows at that annoying claxon, cringing from the harsh light of the “day job.”
My ten-hour shift seems endless until I can return home and try to coax them out again. But they’re usually too traumatized from the violent interruption to their existence.
Every Sunday afternoon, dread for the Monday alarm builds like a weight on my shoulders. My pod people start milling around, searching for their best scenes, which means Sunday afternoons are my best writing day, all of us striving to get the most on the page before the Monday death knell.
Sigh… Enough of that. I’m going to finish my allotted 16 ounces of coffee, engage with the real world for ten hours, work hard, maybe go for a walk before it’s blazing hot, and be grateful for my three-day weekends.
For more Writer’s Life musings, check out my blogs. You can find my thrilling, fun fantasy romance adventures on My Books page. Have a great Monday!
I cleaned my desk today. It was the result of a cascade of cleaning, beginning with my computer files.
I recently had to reset Windows 10, and OneDrive swooped in like an invading spaceship and hijacked my files and has been syncing and copying huge volumes of data since. It’s nuts. Our internet literally came to a crawl as soon as I booted up. I had to do something.
I was fortunate that my nephew (he has a great podcast, Cosmic Castaway) built my computer with a separate Mass storage drive. Everything got moved there and, of course, it was agonizingly slow because I couldn’t pause the sync, or the files I was trying to move would disappear into the cloud, completely inaccessible. But I got it done, then I backed it all up to my external drive. No more OneDrive! Which means I’ll have to transfer files to my phone and laptop some other inconvenient way. Microsoft… please… let us take back control of our own files!!
Anyway, as I cleaned my desk, totally neglected since I started writing novels two years ago and piled with stuff I really didn’t need (aka trash), my attention was drawn to my monitor stands… and I got pensive.
Does anyone else use nice chunky old reference books to raise their monitors like me?
As I dusted the still beautiful tomes, their undignified state got me thinking. I once believed having information at your fingertips meant owning a thorough reference library, arranged handsomely and conveniently on shelves. I loved collecting dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedic volumes. But now it means bringing up information instantly on a screen, fingertips dancing over a cold, plastic keyboard, instead of rifling through warm paper that smells divine (more like musty these days).
One thing still remains true, however, whether it be books or computers. It all needs dusting!
If you like my blog and have comments about the woes of OneDrive and memories of hardback paper reference libraries, please drop me a line. While you’re at it, check out my other blogs for more thoughts on a Writer’s Life, and find your way to my riveting paranormal/fantasy romance fiction series on My Books page. I’d love to stay connected!
Close up on young pumpkin flower on dark blur background. Blooming. Bud. Burgeon. Vegetable. Courgette, squash, gourd. Farming, gardening. Nature. Plant. – 10 August 2020, Montreal, Canada
This week, I’ve been discussing the concept of creating characters like so many alien pods left to seed in my imagination by some random galactic force… Maybe the god of prose? In other words, faceless golems waiting to be molded by words on a page. It’s only the words that have the power to animate them, get them to act and interact with their fellow pods. But wow, when they take form and start living, there is no end to what they can do, the trouble they can get into, the bonds they form.
It occurred to me that I’m not so different from them. I was just as featureless when I started writing, until my pods developed, jump started my sluggish imagination, and gave me life. I had no idea when I sat down to write my first book that all these words were in me, all these pods waiting to sprout into characters with a myriad personalities.
Is this why they call us burgeoning writers?
When you sit down to your keyboard and a story comes to life, do you feel like a plant pod opening under the sun? Drop me a comment and let me know.
Just my random pod people ramblings…
I’d love it if you took a moment to check out my Books rich with so many pod transformations, characters I know you will love.
I recently explored the concept of my characters sprouting from alien spoors, seeding my mind with featureless golems that come to life through my fingers and spring over the keyboard. Yes, I live with pods in my head. I really like it in there, and they depend on me.
What I don’t like is having to leave them behind when I come out to do all the mind-bending, endless labor it takes to publish and sell books. Too much time getting headaches when all I want to do is add dimension to my pod family! …And maybe find some time to relax with the hubby. That seems to be a hard-won bonus these days. I mostly get to see him when he comes to visit my pod people. He’s very amenable that way.
But I’m being honest here… I mostly want to run screaming back to the confines of my imagination. There are scenes needing to be written! More characters that lay dormant waiting for the words to make them whole. Why must I go down a million internet vortexes that lead to galaxies, that lead to universes where it seems I might never find my way back out, just to get them out into the world?
Do they really need to go into print? Maybe my pod people are happier where they are.
The bottom line is, I tell their stories for my readers to enjoy.
So, grow pod people, take shape, and fly off the page and into cozy reading nooks everywhere.
***
This was inspired by my recent time spent on Draft2Digital loading up my books. Soon, they will finally be available in all the stores, and not just Amazon. Sigh of relief…
Artwork above and below by:
Vic DeLeon Art Director, Ark II, Studio Wildcard – ArtStation.com
Since I started writing a year and a half ago, and somehow decided that my first story would become a three-part, 900-page novel, characters have been sprouting, growing and taking on life like so many alien pods. My life is truly no longer my own.
The featureless entities shed their membranes and take on dimension as they flow out through my fingers and over the keyboard, then burst onto my screen. But part of them keeps growing inside me, their tentacles wrapping firmly around my consciousness, and oozing out through my senses. Then they become entangled with my emotions.
I would choose to live no other way. Their stories must be told. Telling them is my reward for being their host.
Soon it will be time to let them go into the world on their own, to make room for my imagination to be seeded again, maybe from a different part of the galaxy. But I’m not quite ready for that yet.
How do you deal with your pod people and the sense of becoming an observer in your own head, loving your characters like children who will leave you and maybe never look back? I’d love to know. I think readers get it.
I’m sharing some artwork by Artist Timi Honkanen. I think artists get it, too.
By D. L. Lewellyn 