Agents

Fun Friday Vol. 2: The Broken Shield Chronicles

Follow-up on The Broken Shield Chronicles and other ideas

I don’t know how soon I’ll get to the project I mentioned last Friday. However, the consensus from the poll seems to be using some sort of variation in the series title including “Broken Shield.” I like The Broken Shield Chronicles well enough so that will be the working series title at this point.

With the name of the series settled, I’ll begin to put some serious thought into the world-building and other details for the fantasy world as well as the initial plot, character names and such. It should be very interesting as I develop this series since I’ve never gotten to develop one quite this way.

One of the fun parts of working on The Broken Shield Chronicles is going to be interacting with readers in a private Goodreads group. If you would like to join the group please let me know. I’m going to contact several readers with whom I already have some contact and invite them into the group. There will be some rules like: never talk about Broken Shield Chronicles Club outside the group on social media – like that Fight Club rule. I’ll outline more about the purpose and goals of the group over on Goodreads but I intend it to be a fun group where I can share development and get feedback as I work through the book, maybe posting once a week. There won’t be some commitment to doing anything, just the offer to take part in this fun project of mine and tag along for the development ride.

Otherwise, I’ll share some development details here and other projects on which I’m working. For instance, I do have a parallel series to The Bow of Hart Saga – actually a sub-plot of some complexity – that I’d like to publish as a companion novella series at some point. There are some rough draft excerpts that I’d like to share over on Goodreads or for download just for further feedback.

I’ve got several ideas in the beginning stages as you can see. However, I’m currently working on two new novels for my agent who requested some updated information from me this week as she prepares the pitches to publishers. I’ve been a little slower on these projects lately because it’s just been busy with a doctor’s visit, a few job interviews and other distractions, all of which prevented me from posting my general feature on Tuesday. But I do hope to dig down and really start accomplishing more on the current novels so I can move onto other projects.

That’s all for today! If you want to join the private Goodreads group, just click here to my Author Page to friend or follow me, then send me a message letting me know you’re in and I’ll send the invite. Otherwise, please leave your thoughts and questions in the comments section and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

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The Weekly Writing Round-up

Last week was rather busy for a number of reasons so I didn’t get a chance to share all that’s happening. I finished the rough draft of The White Arrow, as noted by the announcement last week, is now in pre-order and off to my editor. That pre-order process was more involved than I intended but I finally completed all the work around it.

I had intended to get more done on a new project last week but work on The White Arrow seemed to swallow all the time for it. This week is feels much better for gearing up with the new project with a nice start. I’m working on a new novel in a new series for the first time in a very long time while The White Arrow is off getting tuned up. I’ll work on this new project as far as I can until it’s time to finish the final details on The White Arrow.

I’ve held off on this post because I’ve been working on another bit of news that’s baring fruit as I write. Not to give anything away just yet, but, I’ve been contacted for an opportunity to expand The Bow of Hart Saga into another format which I’m now taking into consideration. I’ll pass along the specifics when there’s more to report but this looks very promising.

In more mundane news, we finally finished with the daily rain pattern so it’s now hot and muggy most days. I have to go running either in the morning or very late in the evening to avoid the extreme heat index which has been over 100 several days.

We recently took the dogs out to a local park which had a lake and our male went for a swim. He got into a splash battle with my wife and daughter – yes, he actually did! It’s unbelievable how much that dog loves swimming. He’s a little older so it helped him with his arthritis.

For those who have become fans of our cat, Minou, he’s quickly headed toward full-grown status, though he’s still just as playful as ever. He’s even gotten our male dog into playing between the stair rails. It’s almost time to put him to work catching chipmunks around the house since he keeps practicing for that job with his antics. He knows when someone comes home because the dogs bark, sending him to the window to check. He’s also on the same dining schedule at the dogs and quite vocal about making sure he’s included in the food service!That’s all for this week for this writing update. Thanks for reading, I’ll be back with more updates next week or post anything big in an announcement.

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Betwixt & Between

I’m a little late with today’s post but I finally got to it. I went on an evening run and ended up going 4 miles for the second day in a row. It was nice for Alabama this time of year. We’re in a weather pattern where some evening showers are blowing up to take the humidity and heat out enough to make a run very comfortable.

I headed down our street a way that I normally don’t go since it usually has a lot of fast moving traffic. But there is a section of road down that way that is closed off for construction which meant my normal route was the detour road. It was interesting to run down that normally busy stretch of road with hardly any traffic. It was interesting to see that some people – aside from the local traffic – just didn’t seem to believe the signs and drove down to the construction anyway. I guess some people just needed to experience the sight first-hand.

While I was running a couple of storms drifted past the area. One went left and the other sailed right and I was stuck in the middle. As I approached the house I did see a bolt of lightning from the second storm. YIKES! I was glad I was near the house at that point.

Our apple tree has fire blight and it required we have it pruned back. Now it’s just a glorified bush. The tree was in such distress that it didn’t actually have that many apples this year. We hope it will sprout new limbs soon and again next spring and actually have more apples next year. Also, the mower deck isn’t ready yet but it should be any day. I completed all the regular maintenance on the tractor.

The fiction proposals have been completed and sent out to my agent. I think these two books are rounding out nicely though I don’t know when I’ll find out anything specific about them. Now it’s back to work on The White Arrow and I’m eager to work on it at this point. Also, I’ve come up with an idea for the cover so I’ll contact my artist and see what he thinks about it. I might have the cover by the end of the month at which time I’ll reveal the cover.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments.

PHS