Another NaNo Flop

Oops! I decided at pretty much the last second to do NanoWriMo this year. No prep work, just an idea. And… got about halfway through before realizing once again I just didn’t have the time to complete the story. Oh well, not like I didn’t know I’m really busy in November. So I decided to give WorldEmber a try this year. That’s got a much smaller daily wordcount goal, so I’m pretty sure I’ll make it!
Come visit me at WorldAnvil sometime! It’s getting fairly well populated with stuff from my worlds. There are currently four publicly visible, and a whole lot of others that I swept under the carpet because they’re just plain too messy for public view. The whole place is a work in progress. Lots of room for improvement, not much time to improve in… story of my life.
https://www.worldanvil.com/author/kittenwylde

Worldbuilding 101: OOPS!

Some time a zillion years ago, I started a project for this blog on worldbuilding. What I didn’t know at the time was I was about to fall on my face. The day I made the first worldbuilding posr was the first day of several awful months that ended up with me in the hospital.

I never forgot the idea, but I have very little time for stuff, other than mindless gaming. That doesn’t take much effort. 😹

Anyway, I found a solution. I don’t have to do a blog series on worldbuilding, because someone has already done something better!

https://www.worldanvil.com/author/kittenwylde

I’ve barely begun to play around with this shiny new toy, but I love it already. And tonight I’m going to start “moving in” for real. Can’t wait to get home and get busy!

NEW RELEASE: The Apex Mage

Well, would you look at that! I finally did something.

The Apex Mage is now live on Smashwords, and “in review” over at Amazon! They always take their own sweet time about setting a new release loose in the world.

Talisha Eldridge, mercenary mage of the Concordance School. For over twenty years she earned her living through fighting in the Central Lands, watching humanity’s best attempts to destroy itself after the extinction of its Elmothran overlords. Tired now, Talisha longed to put away her armor and spell shards and find the comfort of a home. A peaceful place, where war need not touch her. A place big enough to bring her dearest dream to life and found a mage school.
When the approaching winter ended the year’s fighting, Talisha yielded to an impulse and rode north for the first time in her adult life. Curious about the Highland region since childhood, she had the chance to investigate it, and the money to hold her over the cold season. Besides, she’d heard rumors of trouble, hints of a conflict brewing. Conflict, in her world, meant the certainty of employment come spring.
Talisha never expected to find her heart’s desire up in the frigid Highlands. Much less did she expect a dark mage, holding a terrifying and impossible power, to snatch it away from her again.
But who better than a lifelong mercenary to take on an ancient evil in a struggle where the fate of the world hangs in the balance? And perhaps more important, Talisha’s chance for a home and family.
Who ever said retirement would be easy?

Excerpt

Talisha found the Captain up on the battlements again. This time she called for him to come down. She’d gotten plenty of exercise on this day, damned if she’d go trotting up there to see a man that had a problem with her authority.

“Yes, Fuguarrain?” Captain Ludec asked. His tone was polite, if rather distant, but his expression still had that hint of distaste. Damn the man’s prejudice, anyway.

“You and I need to question our captive mage,” she said, “and discuss plans for bandit hunting. Those bastards are raiding in the town, and I’ll not have it.”

“We have a captive mage?”

“Taken in battle while you were away. Let’s go.”

The cell down on the third sub-level was about what she expected of a castle holding cell. Deep underground, dark, damp on the walls, and plenty of rats. Nasty. The front of it was open bars, though, letting in light and warmth from the fireplace set up for whichever unfortunate fucker had the watch.

Talisha looked over the watchman with a combination of curiosity and dismay. The poor fellow was ancient! What was he doing down in this pit, rather than enjoying a warm pensioner’s apartment?

“Who are you?” she demanded. The old man looked at her, sharp blue eyes out of place in the age-spotted, wrinkled face. He sat in a wooden chair by the fire, leaning on a table, reading a book by the light of an oil lamp.

“I had a name, but I forgot it,” he wheezed, then chuckled at her expression.

“That’s Alfrecht, Fuguarrain,” Ludec said, a note of respect in his voice she hadn’t heard yet. “Now let him be. If you want to question this mage, we should get to it.”

Talisha gave Alfrecht another disbelieving look. Surely he was old enough to have seen Them in person!

“Fuguarrain, are you?” the old man said. “May you be better than the last.”

“Thanks.”

She let Ludec divert her to the mage, who sat on the hard, narrow cot pushed hard against the wall. The scorched and somewhat tattered robe still gleamed a bit in the firelight.

“Who are you?” Talisha demanded again, this time of the mage. It was a man, rumor had gotten that much right. And he had brown skin. A southlander!

Not that it came as a surprise. The southlands held no prejudice against mages, and the training was easy to pick up for anyone with the aptitude.

“If you think I’m going to tell you everything just because southlanders should stick together in these barbarian wilds, think again.”

“Huh,” Talisha said. “Nice accent. How long’s it been since you left Brieland?”

The mage responded only with a sneer.

“We need to know where your base is,” she said. “Talk, and I’ll see you across the Vialy.”

“You think I want to go back there? You’re crazy.”

Talisha stepped close to the bars of the cell, peering into the dimly lit space. Neither fire nor oil lamp could compete with the stygian hole. She made a gesture at Ludec, hoping he would understand it was his turn. The mage inside gave her a dismissive glance, turning his attention to the firelight flickering on the wall.

Ludec got the keys to the cell from the old man. “I suggest you speak, Brielander,” he said, approaching the cell door. His decent, careworn face looked odd in the flickering firelight, settled into menacing lines.

“Or what, you’ll hurt me?”

“No, not I.” The Captain nodded at Talisha, who placed her hand ostentatiously on her belt with its crystal armament. “Her. I’ll let her use her magic on you.”

“If you want to threaten me, find something else,” the mage said, sounding bored. “No proper little southern mage with props and incantations can scare me, not after seeing the glory that is my Master.”

“What do you mean?” Talisha demanded. “What Master?”

No response.

Ludec opened the cell door and stepped inside. Quick as a flash, the mage made a fireball, and Talisha slapped up a spellwall before the ball could leave his hand. If nothing else, her reflexes were faster than his. But…

“What Master?”

The man hadn’t used a spell-shard, or a crystal.

“Where is your camp?” Ludec asked.

He hadn’t used anything but his will.

Talisha flicked little sparks at the mage’s feet, trying to irritate him into throwing another fireball. She did it the only way she knew, the only way any human mage knew. She focused her will on a specific, tuned crystal shard, with a mental command word to release the energy from the glowing red fragment tucked into her belt. Part of her wished she had her full arsenal, most of which sat safely in a chest upstairs. But she didn’t really want to kill the man, just make him talk.

“Out with it, Brielander. What Master?”

The enemy mage backed away from the sparks. His robe smoldered in several places, sending up thin threads of smoke before going out.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he sneered. “The Apex Mage will rule the world.”

Talisha pushed her spellwall forward, flattening the man up against the wall. She stroked another crystal, this one much larger. “Want to live? Then you’d better tell us everything. Who are you, where is your camp, who is your Master?”

How the fuck did you throw fire like that?

The spell nested in the thick, smoky crystal wasn’t a particularly nice one, but it got results when interrogating prisoners. It created a vise of air, slowly tightening around the entire body of the mage.

Unexpectedly, he laughed.

She would never forget the sight, and she suspected Ludec wouldn’t, either. Flickering firelight. Smoky air. Mage, face twisted in pain, cackling like a madman.

Then his eyes flew open, and another intelligence looked out of them.

“Fool,” he said, voice somehow echoing hollowly. “You will know pain and death before I am through with you.“

“Master!” he screeched in his own voice, then burst into flames.

PROMO: New Release Coming!

After much fuss and ado about nothing, I have finally gotten myself organized enough to have a genuine release date for my new novel The Apex Mage.

Hold on to your socks, world. The Apex Mage is coming for you on Saturday, 10/10/2020!

The book will make its appearance on Amazon, Smashwords, and an assortment of other ebook retailers. Get ready for a wild ride!

PROMO: Cover Reveal! The Apex Mage

Hey, check it out! I have another cover reveal post today. And this one’s got something unusual going for it: it’s mine! Can you imagine that? I finished something!

Unfortunately, I haven’t actually finished the blurb, so all I’ve got for you is the cover. Go figure, a cover image for a cover reveal post…

The Apex Mage is coming soon to an ebook retailer (e-tailer?) near you! Better get a copy, or I’ll sick Talisha (the mage on the cover) on you. 😉

The Brain

In interest of keeping my promise to write about writing, I decided to share a new tool I ran across. It’s both a software and an app called The Brain.

This is something known as “mind-mapping” software. I’ll be honest, my initial reaction was NO! My mind doesn’t work that way, that’s crazy, no way can I make that work.

Then I recognized a classic case of OFS.

What’s OFS?

It’s Old Fart Syndrome. You know, that thing when an older person automatically rejects something just because it’s new, without even bothering to try it.

So I looked The Brain over and decided to give the free version a shot. And I discovered that this Brain thing makes a really handy outlining tool. (See how I brought that back around to writing?)

Anyway, I’m not too good with it yet, but I think The Brain is going to be a great help as I forcibly re-learn how to be more plotter than pantser.

Think I’ll save those terms for an entry when I’m on my computer, not my phone…

About That Writing Thing

Sometime about a zillion years ago, I decided to get back into writing about writing. I made a few posts about writing, how I generate worlds, and such, but I was just too damn sick to keep up with the idea.

Well, I got fixed. Literally. And now my body is finally returning to normal. I even caught myself feeling sane last week! (I know, right?)

Anyway, all babbling aside, I feel better these days. So I’m going to get on with the writing about writing thing.

Posts about writing I made in the past:

Writing Is For Writers

Oh, That Muse…

Worldbuilding 101: The Basics

Promo: Read An Ebook Week

Um. Yeah. Dumb me kind of forgot it’s okay to promote my own stuff on my own damn blog.

If you see a red glow off in the distance, it’s just me blushing.

So. After a bit over a year of living on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, almost all my ebooks have now returned to their proper home, Smashwords. (The ones that aren’t there are awaiting new covers.) And as luck would have it, they went live on the first day of the big annual sale. They’re all either free, or half off.

NaNo Winner!

I did it! I finished my NaNoWriMo project today, at an officially verified wordcount of 50016. This, despite the moment of panic when I discovered the Scrivener wordcount does not, in fact, match up with the NaNo validator. In fact, it was off by about 250 words. That part sucked. “I’m done! I’m done! … oh shit. No I’m not.”

If all goes as planned, I will be editing/revising The Apex Mage in January. Ish. Who knows if I’ll get to it. Because I’ve got a guilty secret. The sales were just too good for my self-control, and I bought the Elder Scrolls Online. It’s a gorgeous world in there, and it may take me a while to come out of it…

NaNo and stuff

Once again, as almost always, I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. And again as usual, my plans got hijacked by a rogue idea.

So here I am at work, unable to get anywhere near my computer to write until way late tonight. And my head is exploding with ideas that will pop like soap bubbles as soon as I get home. Such is life…