Masquerade Ball Blog Hop Day 4: Remember Me

The release day for Masquerade: Oddly Suited is just over a week away! In the Easter Tradition of Masked Balls, the contributors to the anthology have gotten together to host a special mystery bloghop leading up to the book's release on April 30th.

(What, you don't have Masked Balls for Easter where you come from? Where I'm from we dress up in hoods and burst into strangers' homes wielding improvised weapons for Christmas. You just don't know how to celebrate your holidays.)

Today I'm hosting one of my fellow authors. He or she will share a teaser from their story in the upcoming anthology, but you have to guess which author/story it is. Each author will "unmask" his or her own character and story on April 30th. Got it? Are you still coming down off the sugar high from chocolate bunnies yesterday? 

Welcome to the Masquerade Ball Bloghop!

Art by Elizabeth Mueller

Remember Me
by ???

Excruciating pain rippled through me, sucking the air from my lungs as I lay on the ground. My vision and sight vanished. They returned the moment I was able to draw in blessed air. I gasped, tears burning down my cheeks.

I became aware of strong arms lifting me from the hard ground, pressing me to a strong body wearing stiff clothes textured with rough lace and jewels.

The sound came to me as though I’d slipped far beneath the surface of water. “Wilmot, fetch the royal physician. Hudde, you oaf of a lout, did I not say the beast was not ready for a lady?” The speaker’s deep voice resonated from his chest to my ear.

Muffled conversation reached me followed by a shrieking sound that reminded me of a cat. It called a few more times until I realized it belonged to that of a peacock.

“Lady Iva.” The voice gentled. “How fare you?”

I cleared my throat, my body still in shock from the fall. After gathering my wits and blinking against the brilliance of what I discovered as sunlight, my eyes came to a sharp focus on a face carved out of translucent alabaster—his cheekbones high, nose narrow, lips full. His dark brows furrowed and long lashes swept into an upward curve. At first, I believed it to be a statue until he blinked his liquid gaze of amber.

I gasped, lifted a trembling hand, and grazed my fingertips along the strong angle of his smooth jaw. He closed his eyes and brought my hand to his warm lips. The simple touch sent a jolt of heat down to my toes. My body then remembered itself and I could move.

“Are you well?” His musical voice strummed a familiar chord deep inside me and I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before.

“I am now,” I whispered, wiggling my toes.

His smile cleared the clouds from the sky and stole my breath. He loosened his hold from around me until my feet touched the ground. His arm stayed fast as he redirected his breathtaking gaze.

“Because of you, Hudde, Lady Iveta had lost herself. Thankfully she is well now.” He spoke to someone who moved nearby. I followed his gaze and found a scruffy man with a bowed head. He wore a simple brown shirt tied with a leather belt over loose-fitting leggings and leather boots.

“Please forgive me, my Prince Dominic,” Hudde said.

Prince Dominic?

I didn’t want to see stress marring his face, so I said, “I found it enticing to keep myself from riding such a fine horse, my prince, and so I ask your forgiveness on behalf of Hudde. I had stolen away while he busied himself in the stables.” I didn’t know where that explanation came from but it felt right.

The hard glint in the prince’s eyes softened, his brow smoothed. “My lady’s heart is as wild as the open sea.”

I nodded, staring into his hypnotic gaze.

The prince held his free hand high. “Hudde, prepare us my carriage.” He lowered his eyes to me, his tone lively. “Would the Lady Iva care to visit the headlands?” A wistful expression clouded his eyes. “’Tis as timeless as can be.”

Hudde bowed deeper and scurried off to do his bidding.

When we were alone, Prince Dominic’s gaze deepened as a shadow formed at his brow. “There will be a time when we will not be together and I would that you never forget me, my love.”

I stared up at him in awe. How could I forget someone like him?

His worry smoothed over and he brought my head to his lips with a sigh. “My heart and your heart are bound together by the sands of time. Please remember that always.”

I pulled from him with a sad smile, confused by his melancholy. “I will remember you always.”

ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS GUEST AUTHOR

I have enjoyed writing for as long as I remember. I started out with short stories in elementary school, expanded to angst poetry the first part of high school, then explored epic novel-writing my senior year. I can write 50k words under a week if the kids cooperate. The best part of writing for me is when the characters come to life on their own--better than going to the movies! I love my writerly friends.

Can you guess who our guest author is?

MASQUERADE BALL SCHEDULE

Thur. April 18th: L.G. Keltner https://lgkeltner.blogspot.com/

Fri. April 19th: Jennifer Lane http://jenniferlanebooks.blogspot.com

Sat. April 20th: Deborah Solice https://thefabulistdotblog.wordpress.com/

Mon. April 22nd: CD Gallant-King http://www.cdgallantking.ca/

Tues. April 23rd: Elizabeth Mueller https://elizabethmueller.blogspot.com/

Wed. April 24th: Chelsea Marie Ballard https://www.facebook.com/masqueradeoddlysuited

Thurs. April 25th: Carrie-Ann Brownian http://carrieannebrownian.wordpress.com

Fri. April 26th: Myles Christensen http://www.myleschristensen.com

Sat. April 27th: Anstice Brown https://dustingthesoul.com

Mon. April 29th: Angela Brown http://publishness.blogspot.com/

Tues. Apr 30th: Book Release and The Unmasking (Just follow links above)!

Pre-Order now!

BONUS CONTENT!

In case you're looking for a little extra helping of the Masquerade: Oddly Suited contributors today, be sure to swing by Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog to check out a short piece where ALL of the authors discuss their favourite romantic movies! Can you guess what mine is? Be sure to visit Alex's post today to find out.

Alex J. Cavanaugh: Favourite Romantic Movies

Apparently I'm a Rising Author?

A couple of weeks ago I was tagged by the lovely and talented C.G. Coppola to participate in the Rising Author Tag. Personally I think I kinda plateaued years ago, but if someone else thinks I'm "rising" who am I to judge? ;-) Of course I didn't notice the tag at the time, but I eventually picked up on it (Thanks, Loni!) so here we go! The rules are simple:

• Thank the person who tagged you (thank you, C.G.!!)
• Answer the questions they came up with.
• Nominate four people to do the tag (no tagging the person who tagged you originally).
• Come up with 10 new questions for the people you nominated.

So without further ado:

What are you currently working on?
A bunch of stuff, honestly. I'm in the middle of a short story that I was writing for someone for Christmas, I hope I still have time to get that finished. I've also got ideas for Werebear vs. Landopus Part 4 that I'm itching to put into words. But the next "big" project I'm slowly making progress on may or may not be a sequel to what may or may not be Hell Comes to Hogtown. Allegedly. I can neither confirm nor deny anything.

Are you a plotter or a panster?
I hate to admit it but I'm a pantser. I want to be a plotter because I always imagine having a firm outline will make the writing easier (and avoid the dozens of re-write I usually have to do), but I find whenever I plot too much I lose interest in actually finishing the story. It's like once I know everything that will happen, I'm no longer interested in writing it.

If you could re-write any of your books, would you? And which one(s)?
I actually completely rewrote Ten Thousand Days last year, so that one's good. Honestly if I could re-write anything it would be one of the seven or eight unpublished books I have in The Closet. None of them are publishable in their current state, but some of them have good ideas in there I would love to use. It's just a matter of finding the time and energy to re-write them when there's so much NEW stuff I want to work on.

How long does it typically take you to write a book/story?
It varies tremendously. The original first draft of Ten Thousand Days took about 72 hours. Hell Comes to Hogtown took 18 months from writing the first lines to release day. I have another manuscript I'm submitting now that I originally wrote in less than 20 days, but the re-writing and revising took about 3 years. It shouldn't come as a surprise that those shorter timelines all happened before I was married and had kids. These days I have way less free time so even a 5000 word short story often takes up to a month to write.

Of all your characters, who do you wish could be real?
That's a tough one. A lot of my characters are horrible, annoying and/or gross, so I'm not sure I really want any of them to be real. Sister Siouxsie Cue from The Gun Nun would be fun, but she probably wouldn't want to hang out with me. Same with Dee from Hell Comes to Hogtown. My characters are way more interesting than me, and would likely steer well clear of me at a dinner party.

How many drafts do you go through?
A lot. Too many. Once I finish the first draft, then I usually write the outline to see if what I wrote fits a sensical narrative structure. It inevitably doesn't, so then I have to start adding and removing scenes, and moving stuff around so that it makes sense. Then there are multiple passes to fix grammar, clarity, voice, etc. Often I have to do this multiple times from different characters' point of view. Then it goes to the editor and they have a round or two of revision, too. How many drafts is that? I don't count them, I just see it more as an organic, growing process. Sometimes I work on small sections, sometimes I work on the whole piece, but the work overall is constantly evolving and changing.

When do you tend to write? Early or late?
Both. It's either early in the morning before the rest of the house gets up, or late at night after everyone's gone to sleep. Sometimes I write on my lunch break, and I used to write during my bus commute to and from work. So basically I write anytime I can find the free moments to do so.

Do you listen to music while you write?
Almost always. Sometimes it's to set a particular mood and get me in the right frame of mind, but usually it's just to drown out the world around me. Kind of like a sonic barrier. When I wrote on the bus I would crank my music up all the way to block out all the noise and sound around me, in my headphones of course. Writing is probably ruining my hearing.

What is your least favorite thing about writing?
I think I mentioned it before, but it's definitely the revising part. That's why I have so many manuscripts that's just a first draft - I find going back to re-write and revise a monumental task. Honestly I would rather market and write query letters than revise. I like to say Writing is fun, but revising is work, and I truly believe it.

What is your most favorite thing about writing?
As a corollary to the previous question, my favourite part is writing the first draft. When the story is new and fresh and flowing freely, everything is very fun and exciting. I guess it's like a new relationship. Every day is a new adventure with new things to discover. I guess that means revising is like an older, established relationship, where everything is a slog and you have to work to stay together? I'm going to stop this analogy before I get in trouble.

I have no idea why this tree has giant, throbbing testicles.

And now as a Christmas present to you all... I'm NOT going to tag anyone else! Actually I'm just tired and it's late and I can't think clearly enough to come up with 10 more questions. :-) Here I am ruining the game, I'm terribly unfun, I know. But if anyone reads this and WANTS to answer those ten questions (or ten similar questions), GO for it. I was trying to come up with questions about secret author goals and personal measures of success but I kept dozing off. Maybe I'll try again in the New Year.

I hope you all have a fun and safe holiday season. May you relax and not feel bad about missing your word counts, and hopefully all get a good book or two under the tree (or other appropriate cultural festive decoration).

Peace, love and hugs!

Sure this is cute now, but wait until you come home and there house is covered with broken glass and the cat has tinsel hanging out of its butt.

REMAKES Blog Fest: The Music

Hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh and Heather M. Gardner.

Remakes – most of them suck. Now and then, one comes along that is as good as, if not better, than the original. And after all of the bad ones we’ve endured, we want to know about some good ones.
On November 13, 2017, blog about your favorite remake: movie (or television show into movie and vice versa), song, or book – or all three! Post a YouTube video and links where we can find these treasures. Tell us why THIS remake doesn’t suck!

Full list of pariticipating blogs at the bottom of this post.

THE MUSIC!

I love covers. Absolutely adore them. So much that I will often listen to musical genres I don't even usually like if someone has a new and interesting take on an old tune. I am unabashedly a fan of "Grey's Anatomy" covers of old pop songs. The show has made an industry out of indy-acoustic remixes of 80s pop hits, and I have Spotify playlists full of them. I also have an unusual number of bluegrass songs on my iPod, but all of them are covers of heavy metal or mid-2000s emo punk bands.

The best for me is when the artist takes a drastically different spin on a classic riff, like turning a slow ballad into thrash metal or remaking a hardcore hip hop song into something romantic. As with any kind of remake, it only works when you have something new to say. Just redoing the same thing the same way it was done before is boring. It's why covers of holiday classics are usually terrible - it's just a soulless rendition of the same thing we've heard a thousand times before.

Baby It's Cold Outside
Cover by CeeLo Green & Christina Aguilera

"Baby It's Cold Outside" is already an awful song for obvious reasons, but the recent Christina Aguilera/CeeLo Green cover made me want to claw my eyes out. It's just two very talented singers, who are obviously not even recording in the same room, trying to out-sing each other. There's no fun, no new take, nothing interesting about it. I supposed you could argue that about a lot of Holiday music, but then most holiday songs are covers, so I wonder why that works out, huh?

Anyway, on to the good stuff...

Love Will Tear Us Apart
Originally by Joy Division, covered by Nouvelle Vague

Quick story: I first heard Nouvelle Vague at a restaurant when I was out to dinner with my wife and in-laws. I loved the music they were playing so much that I asked the waiter what they were playing and immediately went out and bought the CD. I never do that, either talk to people or buy CDs, so that tells you how much I love this band.

Nouvelle Vague is french for "new wave," and it the name of a French group that almost exclusively covers "new wave" music from the 70s and 80s (like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, & New Order) with bossa nova beat (which itself is Portuguese for "new wave"), Besides being an awesome play on words, the musical arrangements are outstanding, and provides a wonderful background soundtrack to lounging around at a classy cocktail party. I always feel so continental when I listen to this stuff.

I'm Afraid of Americans
Originally by David Bowie, covered by O.R.K.

This is one of my favourite David Bowie songs, probably because it was heavily influenced by Trent Reznor during Bowie's dalliance with industrial music in the 1990s. My two favourite artists, together at last? What could be better?

Well, after the tragic events of November 8, 2016, I figured a cover of this song HAD to happen, and sure enough it only took about 6 months to come to light. While I prefer the actual musical arrangement in Bowie's original and Nine Inch Nail's remix, O.R.K.'s version makes the single most important musical change of this decade by swapping all the references to generic American "Johnny" with "Donny" in the lyrics instead.

Donny wants a plane
Donny wants to suck on a Coke
Donny wants a woman
Donny wants to think of a joke
Donny's in America
Donny's in America
Donny looks up at the stars
Donny combs his hair
Donny wants pussy in cars
Donny's in America

I'm still waiting to see if A Perfect Circle come out with an ever better cover when their inevitable new album drops. Their eMOTIVe album of anti-war cover songs, released during the height of W's presidency, was outstanding.

While I'm on the topic, I might as well throw this one out there:

Imagine

Originally by John Lennon, covered by A Perfect Circle

(Warning: Some graphic content and disturbing images)

Some folks might be a bit miffed on such a skewed take on a classic, hopeful song, but I think the material was open for it. Not to mention I'm a sucker for anything Maynard James Keenan does.

Imagine has always been a hopeful, positive song, asking us to picture the amazing things that people could do in a perfect world. A Perfect Circle twists this meaning, talking about the wonderful things people are capable of but reminding us that they're not doing it. The dissonant key and the minor chords in this just hit you right in the heart (even without the disturbing video above). It's a melancholy, bittersweet take on that hopeful message. It's ironic and almost mocking, as if to say, "Hey wouldn't it be great if we could get along? Too bad we never will."

Ice Ice Baby
Original by Vanilla Ice, cover by Richard Cheese

Okay, just so we don't go out on a total bummer, please enjoy the smooth stylings of Richard Cheese.

Now, to be fair, Richard Cheese is a lot like Nouvelle Vague. It's all jazzy lounge music, though instead of covering one particular style of music, he'll do anything and everything - hip hop, metal, 80s pop, TV theme songs, anything that's fun. Here's the thing: Richard Cheese is, technically speaking, a novelty act, but he's a great singer and always surrounds himself with talented musicians and awesome arrangements, so even though he's doing it tongue-in-cheek, the songs are amazing.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love it when people don't take themselves or their art too seriously, so someone who names himself after smegma and make nu-metal songs palpable is okay in my book.

Check out some of the other great blogs participating today:

I Can't Believe I Pulled It Off (#IWSG November 2017)

I did it!

It took over two years, but I finally did it!

I made it to the top 100 of the Insecure Writers Support Group LinkyTools list!

Read it and weep, baby. 99. Just like The Great One.

I attribute this victory to ingenuity, creativity, pacts made with Satan brushing and against Charlie Sheen once. And never missing more than one monthly post in a row.

Seriously though, I do have a couple of actual small writing victories this month. Regular life is still sucking the big one, but I managed to surpass my writing goals in the last 30 days. I'm not entirely sure how I did it, but I somehow completed and submitted not one but TWO short stories to anthologies in October, which is a staggering feat for me. (I also submitted another old story for like the fifteenth time but it's already been rejected fourteen times so that's not so exciting.)

In September I didn't write a single word, so completing two separate 5000+ words stories in only 30 days is mind-boggling. For some, that's like a day's work, but for me it has been a slog. I had to skip a lot of my lunch-time exercise breaks, and had to get up at 5:30am on weekends, but I managed to pull it off. These stories better not suck, because I'm sure finishing them has taken a toll on my health.

Wish me luck.

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Yesterday was Halloween, and I took part in Patricia Lynne's Trick or Treat blog hop to give away free books. If you're reading this on November 1, my contributions are still available for free (Samhain technically lasts until Sunday November 1), so check them out below:

FREE BOOKS!

 

A serious, grimly dark short story of hilarious misery.

SUGGESTED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES: Contains coarse language, violence, alleged dwarf ejaculate and candid descriptions of the genitalia of various fantasy races.

The Werebear vs Landopus series is for folks who love dark fantasy with a goofy, at times obscene sense of humour. It reads a lot like playing Dungeons & Dragons with your friends when you're all punch drunk/feeling silly, and you can't help but laugh when your half-elf wizard is bitten in half by a vampiric hippopotamus. 

Part Three should be coming out soon, so now is the time to catch up!

 ~GET PART 1 (TENTACLES) ON AMAZON KINDLE~

~GET PART 2 (REVENGE) ON AMAZON KINDLE~

They say love hurts and time heals all wounds. 

Sometimes the reverse is true. 

Ten Thousand Days is a fairy tale set in the modern day, a fantastic journey of desperate love and horror with a twisted sense of humour. Inspired by Neil Gaiman with a touch of Terry Pratchett, and based on the ancient tales of Sleeping Beauty and Orpheus & Eurydice. It's a story of exactly how far a young man will go for love...

Ten Thousand Days is my first published novel and it's been around a couple of years, however earlier this year I made a MAJOR revision to it earlier this year, nearly doubling it in length and (in my opinion) making it substantially better. If you still haven't checked it out, now's the time! It's available for free on Smashwords until November 1.

!!GET TEN THOUSAND DAYS ON SMASHWORDS!!

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NOVEMBER QUESTI... nevermind.

I've never participated in NaNo and there's no way in hell I'm starting this year, but good luck to all of you who are! I look forward to hearing about your harrowing tales. ☺☺☺

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The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Writers post their thoughts on their blogs, talking about their doubts and the fears they have conquered. It's a chance for writers to commiserate and offer a word of encouragement to each other. Check out the group at http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/.

Trick or Treat for FREE BOOKS! (Happy Halloween!)

It's time! Pumpkins are being smashed on lawns by teenagers with hockey sticks, and children are running through traffic! Department stores are putting up their Christmas decorations, and dentists are rubbing their hands greedily thinking about all the expensive cavities they're about to fill. And do you know the best part? Authors are giving out FREE BOOKS like candy!

Big thanks once again to the lovely PATRICIA LYNNE and her amazing hair for organizing Trick or Trick reads again this year. Be sure to check out ALL the authors on the list below to grab whatever books or stories they're passing out today. I've found some real gems this was in years past, so it's well worth your time to stop by them all to see what they're offering. And stop by Patricia's site to thank her for setting this up!

It's Halloween; everyone's entitled to one good scare.

Here's is the list of authors participating today:



Now check out what I'm giving away today!

 

A serious, grimly dark short story of hilarious misery.

SUGGESTED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES: Contains coarse language, violence, alleged dwarf ejaculate and candid descriptions of the genitalia of various fantasy races.

The Werebear vs Landopus series is for folks who love dark fantasy with a goofy, at times obscene sense of humour. It reads a lot like playing Dungeons & Dragons with your friends when you're all punch drunk/feeling silly, and you can't help but laugh when your half-elf wizard is bitten in half by a vampiric hippopotamus. 

Part Three should be coming out soon, so now is the time to catch up!

 ~GET PART 1 (TENTACLES) ON AMAZON KINDLE~

~GET PART 2 (REVENGE) ON AMAZON KINDLE~

They say love hurts and time heals all wounds. 

Sometimes the reverse is true. 

Ten Thousand Days is a fairy tale set in the modern day, a fantastic journey of desperate love and horror with a twisted sense of humour. Inspired by Neil Gaiman with a touch of Terry Pratchett, and based on the ancient tales of Sleeping Beauty and Orpheus & Eurydice. It's a story of exactly how far a young man will go for love...

Ten Thousand Days is my first published novel and it's been around a couple of years, however earlier this year I made a MAJOR revision to it earlier this year, nearly doubling it in length and (in my opinion) making it substantially better. If you still haven't checked it out, now's the time! It's available for free on Smashwords until November 1.

!!GET TEN THOUSAND DAYS ON SMASHWORDS!!

I want you to tell me a story: A man and a woman in a loft a year ago. I'm sure you'll remember. You killed them, on Halloween...

Trick or Treat for Books (2017 Edition)

It's that time again! The weather is changing, the grocery store aisles are crammed with boxes of individually-packaged candy, and kids are spending more time at school discussing their Halloween costumes than their math lessons.

That last one doesn't matter because the education system is gone to crap, anyway.

What the hell kind of sorcery is this?

In what has become a yearly tradition, I will once again be taking part in Patricia Lynne's Trick or Treat Book Blog Hop. You can check out the details on her blog, but the long and the short of it is, authors will be giving away free books on or about October 31, just like candy! 

The list of participants who have signed up so far is below. Fellow writers, please feel free to add your name!

Make sure to come back on Halloween to grab your free books, from myself as well as the other authors on the list!

In a weird bit of serendipitous symmetry, my announcement of joining this blog hop for the first time back in 2015 was my 100th blog post. Today, two years later, is my 200th blog post. It's almost like I regularly once per week, except I absolutely don't (I go through periods where I post like crazy, and then weeks/months with nothing). Still, 200 posts is nothing to sneeze at, so yeah, me!

Any excuse to use this GIF.

A Wild Mystery Blogger Award Appears!

I'm not quite sure what the difference is between a "blog hop" where you tag fellow bloggers and a "blog award," but I'm going to put my shame of self-congratulation aside for a moment and say, "Yay! I was nominated for a blogger award!"

It's one of those thingies where you fill out questions and link back to other bloggers. The questions can be pretty fun sometimes though, so let's see where this leads.

It also features handy step-by-step instructions, which is nice.

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01. Post the award on your page.

02. List the rules… working on it.

03. Thank who ever nominated you for the award.

I would like to thank True North Bricks. He runs an incredible LEGO-themed blog that I discovered through the A-to-Z Challenge, and now he's going to be my hook up for all the best deals on LEGO.

04. Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.

This award originates from Okoto Enigma’s Blog, which I'm not at all familiar with but you can check it out.

05. Tell readers three things about yourself.

Man, I think everyone already knows the vaguely interesting things about me. I'm from Newfoundland, I have a degree in Theatre... How about that I married my high school sweetheart? As of this year we've been together 20 years (married for thirteen). Not only that, but we actually met at the bus stop on the first day of school. We're so disgustingly cute that our hometown paper wrote a story about us.

It's a small town. News is hard to come by.

06. Nominate people.

I definitely would have nominated True North Bricks… but he nominated me. Here are a few other awesome blogs that I loved from the A-to-Z Hop.

No Love For Fatties
Her theme for the A-to-Z was Harry Potter, and she just exploded fangirl geekiness all over the place, which was so much fun. But besides HP she's blogging just about every day with all kinds of fun and funny stuff, definitely check her out. Especially keep an eye on the "Just for Giggles" tag, featuring hilarious memes, stories about underwear and more ridiculous stuff about Canada.

The Old Shelter 
Sara Zama's blog is worth it just for incredible retrospective she did on 1940s Film Noir for the A-to-Z, but there's tons of other great stuff there, too. She did a similar series on the Jazz Age last year, and the Roaring Twenties the year before that.

Atherton's Magic Vapour
Melanie is just weird, but in a good way. I think we share a similar sense of humour and weirdness. For her A-to-Z she wrote new captions on 100-year old woodcut images from the Strand Magazine, and it was glorious. A couple of years ago she wrote a full mystery novel and dressed up in character for 26 different characters from the book, so she is serious about this A-to-Z thing.

07. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blogs.

Can I finish posting this first?

08. Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice, with one weird or funny question.

Here is what I was asked:

If you were a LEGO Minifigure, what would you look like?
I'll do you one better, here's my whole family:

I'm the guy with the hot dog.

If you could fulfill one dream right now, all expenses paid, what would it be?
Take the real-life version of my LEGO family to Euro Disney. I would dearly love to bring my kids to a Disney park, but there's no way I'm setting foot in the US for at least another four years. And hey, while we're in France we can check out some other cool stuff in Europe, too!

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A bricklayer. No, really. I loved LEGO, and this was the logical extension of my interests.

Based on your answer to question #3, now that you are grown, did you reach your goal? Why or why not?
I still play with LEGO, but that's about it. Part of me wishes I had followed through with the bricklaying, though. It probably pays better than what I'm doing now. After bricklaying, the second thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a writer, so I'm kinda doing that now.

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Don't give up on publishing so quickly. When I was in my mid-twenties I wrote my first novel and shopped it around, getting nothing but rejections. While I kept writing, I didn't bother trying to get anything published for ten years. Had I pressed on, I probably would have gotten something published, or maybe gotten in on the ground floor of the self-publishing craze. Either way I would be way farther ahead than I am now.

Here are my questions for my nominees: Because this is me, I changed it to one kinda normal question and four slightly more weird ones.

1 - What's your favourite book, and why?

2 - Who is your favourite professional wrestler?

3 - Favourite type of character to play in roleplaying games? If you don't play roleplaying games, how about video games? LARP? Cops & robbers? Monopoly? Do you do ANYTHING fun?

4 - You're about to be dropped into a fictional universe and be granted really cool powers - quick, which one do you want to be: A Jedi (or Sith) in Star Wars, a witch or wizard in Harry Potter, or a mutant in X-Men?

5- Favourite Canadian Prime Minister?

09. Share a link to your best post.

My favourite post on this blog was probably the original Toronto Circus Riot post, but I already re-blogged that for the A-to-Z so I'm not going to do it again. Instead I'll share my in-depth study of how Jesus Christ is a High-Level Dungeons & Dragons Cleric from my other blog, Rule of the Dice. I was really proud of that one but it doesn't get nearly as many hits as I think it deserves.

Things Are Looking Up (#IWSG April 2017)

(This is my monthly Insecure Writer's Support Group post. For those looking for the April A-to-Z Challenge post, click here)

NOTE: For some reason comments are not working on this post, and I can't figure out why. They work on the other post I made today. I had the same issue last month with IWSG, but then the comments magically started working again in the middle of the day.
If you reply to my comment that seems to work, otherwise I make no promises. :-(

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I had a good month!

A few bits of news:

1) I officially sold my first story!

Yes, I've self-published books and stories before, but this is the first time someone actually chose my work to be good enough to sell, which is a nice feeling. It will be appearing in Strangely Funny IV, an anthology of paranormal humour edited by Sarah E. Glenn and published by Mystery and Horror, LLC that will be released in late May or June of this year. They've published some really cool stuff in the past so I'm excited to be a part of it. Check out the awesome covers on some of their past editions:

2) The Revised and Expanded edition of Ten Thousand Days is done!

I've hinted at this for awhile, but I've been working on a major overhaul and update to my first book, Ten Thousand Days. This will probably warrant it's own post down the line, but I've mentioned before that I was never fully happy with the original version of 10K Days. I rushed it to print and I've learned a lot about writing in the last two years, so I really wanted to make sure it was the best possible book it could be. The original story was about 40,000 words, but the updated version is over 70,000. The characters are much better fleshed out, the plot has a proper arc (the original didn't really have a third act) and the setting is better realized.

If anyone bought the original version and would like to check out the new one, Amazon should update your file when you sync your device. If for some reason you can't get the new version, hit me up and I will gladly send you a new one file.

If you haven't read it before, now's the time to do so: It's on sale right now for just 99 cents as a special re-release price. It will go back up to $2.99 in a couple of weeks.

3) I'm participating in the 2017 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge!

In case you missed it at the top, I'm taking part in the "post a day" challenge for the A-to-Z blog hop. My theme this year is "Weird Canadian Facts and History," which is appropriate since this year is Canada's 150th birthday. Today's letter is "D," so your lesson is on "D'Arcy McGee, Irish Rebel and One of Canada's Founding Fathers." Check it out, it's about a guy who hated Britain so much he helped found a brand new country.

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April IWSG Question:

Have you taken advantage of the annual A to Z Challenge in terms of marketing, networking, publicity for your book? What were the results?

Wow, this topic is highly appropriate.

Short answer: Yes.

I took part in the A-to-Z challenge in 2015, and released Ten Thousand Days just a few days after it ended. I did not take part in the 2016 challenge, the year I released my second book, Hell Comes to Hogtown.

The result? I sold the same number of copies of 10K Days in the first month that I did the entire last year for Hogtown, despite Hogtown being (in my opinion) a much better book (at least until the Revised Edition of Ten Thousand Days came out).

Now, I know much of that can be attributed to some people being excited and supportive simply because it was my first book, but I wouldn't have even known those people if I hadn't taken part in A to Z. Blogging and commenting every day created a momentum and introduced me to lots of new writers and bloggers. It was marketing and networking without the dirtiness of calling it marketing and networking.

I am 99% certain that my very first sale was to Kristin Cleage (who has a really great and fascinating blog about her family's history and genealogy over at Finding Eliza), someone who I would never have met if it weren't for the A-to-Z Blog Hop. I know a few of the others were thanks to them as well.

So yes, A-to-Z was very valuable to me in the past, though unfortunately I don't have a new book to roll-out this time around. But maybe I'll still make a few new friends who will be excited then the next book comes out.

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The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Writers post their thoughts on their blogs, talking about their doubts and the fears they have conquered. It's a chance for writers to commiserate and offer a word of encouragement to each other. Check out the group here.

A-to-Z Challenge Theme Reveal 2017...

So, after skipping 2016, I'm back to give the A to Z Blog Challenge another go for this year. For those not up to speed, the A-to-Z is a blog hop through which bloggers attempt to post every day during the Month of April (minus a few Sundays) on a different topic based on the letter of the alphabet. You can get more info at their website here.

In previous years there was a handy Linkytool-list-thing that gave you a list of all the participating blogs in one convenient location. It made it easy to find other blogs and even sorted them by genre so you could find those that might interest you. This year you have to go to the A-to-Z website post each day to share your current day's post, which is another way to do it, I guess. I don't make these decisions.

Bloggers are encouraged to chose a theme to keep themselves focussed and to help readers find blogs that may interest them. I participated in the blog hop in 2014 and 2015. My topics are below:

2014: Stuff I'm Afraid Of

2015: Characters You've Never Heard Of (Because they're in books I haven't published. This was a stupid idea)

This year, I've got a (hopefully) more interesting topic, one that's topical and appropriate to the times.

Ready?

Okay, here goes...

Photo credit: FreakingNews.com

Weird Canadian Facts and History

Your first bit of trivia? This year, 2017, is the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 1867, when the the British colonies of Canada were granted dominion as a semi-independent federal state. (Full independence didn't actually come until 1931, which is your free bonus fact of the day). Celebrations are taking place across the country all year long, and I'm going to have my own little party by sharing some of the bat-sh*t weird stories I've run into over the years about America's polite neighbour to the North.

Some of these stories may be relatively well-known among Canadians, but I'm hoping they're obscure enough that my readers from other countries won't have heard of them. I will admit up front that I'm not a historian so I probably won't always cite properly and I've been known to exaggerate for comedic effect, but this is supposed to be about fun stories, not a history lesson. And I do promise that they are all true.

So join me back here come April 1 when I will (hopefully) have a story for every day you drop by!

My First Time (#MyFirstPostRevisited)

#MyFirstPostRevisited was created by Sarah Brentyn at Lemon Shark, and I was tagged to participate (after some prompting) by Loni Townsend. It's an excuse to share your very first (hopefully terrible) blog post.

I wrote my first blog post six years ago. It wasn't at this blog, it was at a gaming blog called "Rule of the Dice" that I still write for occasionally. An acquaintance of mine was bumping up his game-related content and recruited a bunch of gamers to write for his site.

The post is not as embarrassing as you're probably hoping. I actually did write some REALLY embarrassing and obnoxious posts over there, but I'm not sharing those today. This was just an intro to me and my first time playing Dungeons & Dragons. Appropriately, this year is the 25th anniversary of me getting into role-playing games. This is amazing for two reasons:

1. I have wasted SO many hours playing those games over the years.
2. I am getting really f*cking old.

January 25, 2011

It was the summer of 1992. Super Nintendo was still all the rage, and Final Fantasy II was my favourite game (still is, actually). A bunch of artists from Marvel comics started their own upstart comic company, Image, which featured lousy stories but very pretty pictures. Batman Returns was in the theatres, though it was actually Basic Instinct that my 12-year old self wanted to see. Of course, being 12-years old, I couldn't get in.¹ I was about to go into Junior High, an awkward, pimply, unpopular kid with ugly glasses (why parents let their children wear ugly glasses, I will never know), and spent my afternoons hanging out on my friend's patio.

One day, one of my friends (I can't remember if it was Carl or Chris) pulled out these green-lined character sheets covered with arcane runes like "THAC0," "Bend bars/lift gates," "Constitution" and "Save versus Death." The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons logo was featured at the top. I had heard of D&D but really had no idea what it was. "It's like Final Fantasy, but you can make whatever kind of character you want," they explained to me. "Then you make up stories and adventures and stuff for them to go on."

F***ING AWESOME.

My 12-year old mind was blown. I immediately made a character, which I remember vividly (I think his name was Arik). He had 20 Strength, 20 Constitution, 20 Dexterity, 5 Intelligence, 5 Wisdom and 15 Charisma. He had 600 hit points (we all started with 600 hit points) and had a Sword of Elements, which could attack with whatever type of damage was appropriate at the time.

We obviously had no idea what we were doing. We had no rule book, no dice, very little idea of how the game worked besides a few hours one of the other guys had played with some older kids. All he had were those ugly green character record sheets. And we loved it.

Pictured: Gateway drug.

Most of our games looked like this:

DM: You meet an ogre.

Player: I hit it with my katana of destiny.

DM: How much damage do you do?

Player: Um, 500?

DM: It's dead. You find a potion, but it's not labeled.

Player: I taste it, does anything happen?

DM: It was poison. You die.

We played that for awhile, and then tried Marvel Superheroes, which was even more fun. You could make your own superhero? With whatever ridiculous powers you wanted? And I can beat-up Spider-Man??? Once again, we neglected to read the rule book, so that made it even better. It wasn't until Christmas that year when I got the D&D Basic Boxed set, and I sat down and realized that role-playing games actually had RULES. So many things suddenly made sense now, like: "Oh, so Turn Undead doesn't actually mean you transform into a zombie!" The box also came with a set of ugly polyhedral dice. I still have them, and though they really suck (I usually don't believe in luck affecting the probability of dice, but that stupid twenty-sider can't roll a 20 to save its goddam life), they hold a special place in my heart.

I'm now approaching 19 years playing table-top RPGs. Have I learned anything interesting or useful enough that people will want to read what I have to say? Probably not, but I still hope I can sufficiently minimize the suck so you'll stop by from time to time to read my ramblings. While you're here, leave a comment while you're at it. Tell us all about your first time.²

Join me next week when I'll tell you about the greatest RPG ever.

Later,

CDGK


¹ Which was probably for the best - even when I saw that movie years later, it still made no sense to me.

² Yes, I mean first time-time playing D&D. But if you want to tell me about other firsts, that's okay, too.

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Some things of note: I love foot notes, and used to use them extensively in my writing, but they really don't work very well digitally. No one wants to scroll down to the bottom in a blog post, and setting them up in an ebook is even worse. So sadly I don't use them much anymore.

I wrote lots more about roleplaying games on Rule of the Dice until I ran out of old stories, and had kids so I didn't have much time to create new ones. Then I started releasing my fiction and writing this blog, which I don't really have time for either but at least I can do it by myself, without having to schedule game days with other people.

If anyone wants to participate in the hop, the rules are below:

The Rules:

• No cheating. (It must be your first post. Not your second post, not one you love…first post only.)
• Link back to the person who tagged you (thank them if you feel like it or, if not, curse them with a plague of ladybugs).
• Cut and paste your old post into a new post or reblog your own bad self. (Either way is fine but NO editing.)
• Put the hashtag #MyFirstPostRevisited in your title.
• Tag five (5) other bloggers to take up this challenge.
• Notify your tags in the comment section of their blog (don’t just hope they notice a pingback somewhere in their spam).
• Feel free to cut and paste the badge to use in your post.
• Include “the rules” in your post.

Here are the folks I'm tagging to participate, if you're feeling up to it:

Philip Overby
CG Coppola

Birgit at BB Creations
Natasha Duncan-Drake
Stephanie Faris

Happy Blogging!

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FREE BOOKS! (Happy Halloween 2016!)

In honour of the joyous festival of Samhain, today I'm joining forces with Patricia Lynne's Trick or Treat Book Blog Hop to give out free stories to everyone who stops by. It's just like Trick or Treating for candy, except with (hopefully) fewer cavities.

A number of authors and small publishers have signed up to give out free books and stories this year, so be sure to check out everyone on the list to get your free stories. Just make sure you come in costume! 

As for my contribution to the list: For today only, you can download my novel HELL COMES TO HOGTOWN from Smashwords absolutely free. It's a perfect for this Halloween season, as it features monsters, ghosts, violent murder, evil cults, fortune tellers and um, drugged-out professional wrestlers. It's creepy, it's gory, it's got a sense of humour, and it's all yours if you visit Smashwords today:

Get your copy at Smashwords

Happy Halloween, everyone. Be careful, be safe, and have fun! Don't forget to visit all the participants to grab your free stories, or you'll regret it!

Poor Marilyn missed his free stories, and he regrets it.

He regrets a lot of things in his life.

BOOKS ARE CANDY! (Trick or Trick for Books)

It's that time of year again!

For the third year in a row (second year for me), the talented Ms. Patrica Lynne has organized a Halloween Blog Hop where everyone can go trick-or-treating for FREE BOOKS!

It's super easy: On that wonderful, magical day of Samhain (Halloween for you non-pagans), visit any of the author sites on the list below to get free books and stories into your grubby little hands. It's just like going door-to-door to get candy, but it's like candy for your e-reader instead, and it's guaranteed to cause 100% fewer cavities.

Dressing up in costume while you sit at your desk surfing these sites is completely optional, though highly recommended.

If you're an author or publisher and you want to join in on the fun, be sure to sign up as well. All you have to do it make sure you have a story or book to give away for free, and some way to distribute it (through Amazon, Smashwords, email, Google docs, post the text into your blog, save it on a floppy disk and staple it to a messenger pigeon - you know, all the regular channels).

Be sure to stop by here on October 31 for your treat!

Also, don't forget I'm still participating in Vampire Books For Blood. For every copy of Hell Comes to Hogtown sold in October, I will donate $1 to Canadian Blood Services. To learn more about this great charity and to browse lots of fun books participating, go to vampirebooksforblood.org.