Tag: Blue Daunia

New Covers to Pay Homage to Series’ Roots

I wanted to update the covers of the Blue Daunia series. . . something to reflect my love for the comic books of the 1980s (a huge influence on the series) as well as pay homage to the series’ roots in the pulp fiction genre.  So, moving forward. . . for now, anyway. . . the covers will look like this:

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A minor change, really. . . just added that corner price/issue designation and upper brand designation banner which is a total ripoff of the Marvel comics from the early 80s.  I dig it, though.  Others may disagree, and if you do, please do drop a comment and let me know.  As for now, however, I’m really into this aesthetic, as the whole point of the series was for me to have a comic book in text form (which is essentially what pulp fiction and the “dime novels” were).

And speaking of the series, just a friendly reminder. . . the first issue is still FREE on the Kindle store from now through the end of tomorrow (9/22/17).

Cheers!

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Word Count Goal

A thousand words of the saga per day.  That’s the personal, ongoing goal I’ve set for myself in writing the Blue Daunia series.  I usually hit it.  Hell, I actually usually exceed it!  Rare indeed are the days I fail to meet my goal.

I thought today might be one of those rare days.  Spoiler alert:  it wasn’t; I made it.  Exceeded it, actually.  But it was certainly no thanks to my good friend James.

A bit of background:  James is very good when it comes to the technical aspects of computers.  He knows his networking, is fairly proficient in making machines do what he wants them to do, and has even worked for a fairly major networking specialist company.

So anyway, I headed to a famous coffee shop around 6pm, ready to “clock in” and get to work toward my 1,000 word goal.  James would be joining me shortly, as he often does, with his laptop and his big ol’ book on some sort of programming language he’s trying to learn. . . phpBB+ Omega Beta or something (is that a thing?).  I don’t mind his company during my “work” nights, as he’s one of my longest-term friends and a decent fella to bounce ideas off of, and usually keeps to his own studies when I’m trying to lay the hammer down on some text.

At about 6:30, I’ve already gotten 200 words pounded out on my AlphaSmart Neo2 when James saunters in, his trusty laptop bag on his shoulder.  He plunks it down on the table and hits the line to order his drink (I’ve already settled in with my iced black tea with mango).

At 220 words, James is back at the table, pulling the PhpBbPbPBp book and the laptop from the bag.  He goes to hook the power brick to the laptop and plug it into an outlet, when he realizes that the back left part of the black plastic chassis is cracked, and although this is where the brick attaches to the computer, that particular connection still feels firm.  Nonetheless, the little orange charging light won’t light up, and on the screen the little lightning bolt is failing to appear over the tiny image of a battery.

I’m a decently resourceful fellow, so I pinch the chassis firmly together and offer a “now try it.”  No dice.  Not charging.  “Let’s try a different outlet”. . . or two, or hey, five.  It’s a no-go.  This thing has just had it, with the indicator suggesting that there is only an hour and a half of battery life remaining before shutdown (and we all know how that goes).

James whips out his smartphone and quickly checks his checking and savings account levels.  “Son of a bitch,” he says.  “Oh well. . . feel like riding around with me to a few places and shopping for a laptop?”  He has determined that he can afford roughly $400 toward a new one, which he was going to get on Black Friday of this year anyway, as his current machine is over 3 years old (a veritable dinosaur in computer years).

“Sure,” I relent.  So much for my word goal for the day.

We hit Best Buy first.  He likes an Asus and a Dell he sees there, finding the Lenovos to be either too cheap or far too expensive, with no middle ground in evidence.  James is a bit picky when it comes to his laptops, as we all should be, so he wants to shop around.

We hit the interstate for a few miles and head for the area’s ritziest Wal-Mart.  I can practically feel my word goal vaporizing before my very eyes.  If you happen to find yourself at the Wal-Mart at the rich end of Montgomery, Alabama, and you are there for the purpose of searching for a laptop computer, I pray to God you have your heart set on an HP, because that’s exactly what you’re going to find there.  HP, HP, and other HPs.  There was one which seem to fit the bill, but it’s only 7:53, and there’s a Target right down the road.

Oh Target, you silly little creature.  For all your mouses (mice?) and memory cards and gig sticks and styluses and carry cases and screen protectors, you’ve only got two laptops for sale, haven’t you?  The one on clearance with the crushed and open box, and the one you’d have to skip two mortgage payments to purchase.  James reluctantly picks one, though:  the Dell we saw at Best Buy, that very first place we went to. . . the place that was right across the street from the famous coffeehouse.  8:27pm at this point, and Best Buy closes at 9.

Word goal?  What word goal?

We hit Best Buy for the second time at 8:42. . . just enough time for absolutely no one to offer to help us.  I’m going to jump ahead ten minutes here, because it basically amounts to us having to flag someone down with flare guns and whistles.  At 8:59, we’re out the door and heading back across the street.  That particular location of the coffeehouse closes at 10, so that gives us an hour for James to get his new machine set up and running and for me to try to hammer out a few more paragraphs.

Have you ever tried to get some writing done when a clumsy box and scraps of cardboard and twist-ties and plastic bags and pieces of foam of various sizes are bombarding the area within two feet of you?  Try it sometimes!  I humbly invite you to do so.  Or don’t. . . because neither did I!

The new machine is now sitting on the table before us, in all its Dell glory.  The power brick is firmly attached on the PC end.  Time for James to plug it into the outlet.  Nothing.  No orange charging light, no little blue ring around the power button, no magical first-time screen illumination. . . nothing.

It’s at this point that Tevaris, one of our favorite baristas, comes walking over.  “James, man. . . you havin’ any luck with that outlet?”

James:  “No, why?”

Tevaris:  “We think some sort of breaker got tripped.  None of these outlets are workin’.”

James:  “How many of them?”

Tevaris:  “NONE of the front-of-house outlets, man.”

James:  “For how long?”

Tevaris:  “Since this afternoon.”

Alrighty then.  Sometimes you just have to apply palm firmly to forehead, and while I cordially declined to do so, James obliged himself in earnest.

The next part of the plan involved driving BACK over to the ritzy end of town, where the ritzier Target and ritzier Wal-Mart were.  Our destination:  the ritzier famous coffeehouse, this one open until 11pm.  We arrived at 9:30.  James plugged both machines in, and immediately got the orange charging lights on both.  “Damnit” he hissed.

“Had you really rather they were both broken?”  I asked.

“Almost!” he replied.

For the next hour and a half, he fumbled around with setting up his new machine, which he decided he might as well keep, seeing as how he was in need of a new one anyway.  And for the next hour and a half, I hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,115 words.

The moral of this little tale:  never count your chickens if you don’t even have an outlet to plug your incubator into. . . or something.  Something about chickens, I’m almost sure of it.

The Horrors of Writing the Heartbreak of a Child

“I am getting through this issue with plenty of cat videos and Nintendo 3DS sessions”

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do lately. . . I am hesitant to say “ever”. . . is to write the words and third-person glimpses of the thoughts and mind of a young child whose parents have just been murdered.  We’re talking five years old here.  I had no idea just how difficult a task this would be, or how many pauses I would require to dab away tears of my own as I go.  At times I even have to step away.

Sure, I’ve stepped away from my writing before.  Plenty of times.  It’s a bit of a ritual, actually: write until I hit a proverbial wall, then step away to coffee myself (or take a vape or whatever) and walk around a bit until I’ve come up with more to say.  But this marks the first-ever time I have had to walk away for another purpose entirely:  to gather my wits in the wake of a tumult of sheer emotional overload.

What is it about innocence, particularly the innocence of youth, that so firmly pulls at the heartstrings?  The simple answer is “sympathy”. . . but is that it, or is there more to it than that?

Here’s the thing.  It would be easy to gloss over the whole thing.  It would be simple, if this were any other project, to state that a tragedy has happened, the poor child was all broken up by it, boo-hoo, and then five years have passed, or ten or twelve.  But I can’t do that.  This is an ongoing monthly series, and I am in the thick of the narrative which involves other plots and characters as well, so I can’t gloss over it.  I have to be there, with and for this child, as she wakes the next morning, as the police conduct their investigation, as stern and official strangers question her about what she saw and heard and did, as the adult forces around her attempt to find her next of kin and determine where she will live until such time.

And all the while, I have to put myself in this child’s shoes.  I have to muster the manufacture of her responses, verbal and non-verbal alike.  It is a difficult task indeed to create, from thin air. . . to cull into being. . . something so heartbroken and confused and utterly abandoned (even if by force) as this.  And then I still have to make it clear and succinct.  Because the world still demands terse, lean writing.  “Accessible and concise” rules the roost in the world of prose, and I find myself struggling to conform.

The overwhelming urge is to devolve into a Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness style (and I use the word “devolve” with all due respect to Faulkner, not to knock that style as anything “lesser” but merely to illustrate what feels like the expectations of the modern audience for clarity and sharp focus).  It would be far less painful, or at the very least more therapeutic, that way.  And indeed, I have used this style to open Chapter 2 of Issue #1, but it felt warranted then, because someone was unconscious yet still thinking, and it made for a hell of a flashback.

But this time, again, I have no choice but to face the horrors of writing out in painful detail the tribulations of this poor young thing.  Not only have her parents been murdered, but she came face to face with her mother as the life was draining away.  She had to endure the scarring sight of it, and the confusion of her own mother sounding, to her young ears, angry in urging the child to run.

“There was so much blood.  I didn’t want to run, but Mama told me I had to.  I didn’t want her to be mad at me and be so badly hurt, too.”  She began to sob freely as she struggled through her next words:  “I didn’t know why she was yelling at me to leave her.  I don’t know what I did wrong.”

And that’s just one little passage, at one little point in time.  Ugh, I can’t even. . . .

But I’ll plow through it.  It is my job to do so.  I have to go to the darker places in my created world, as well as the light.  I have to plumb the depths of the horrors as well as the light-hearted quips and one-liners.  There has to be stark contrasts from time to time, else the highs will never be truly as high as their potential allows.  It is my personal opinion that if a writer does not explore the darkness of his or her creation, and take the reader down into those depths, the high points and humor will come across as mere bubblegum-pop-glitter.

It seems fitting to me that this exploration starts in earnest, in this particular case, in Issue #2.  Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have often said that the second installment of a storyline should be darker, with greater risks, truer threats and much more to lose.  This does not, however, make the task any easier.  I am getting through this issue not only by sheer force of will, but also with plenty of funny cat videos and Nintendo 3DS sessions.  You have to do something when you step away, after all.

Just know this:  It’s okay to cry when you write.  When it happens, you’ll know you’ve hit a primal truth in some raw, lurking form, and there’s an overwhelming chance that this truth lurks not only within yourself, but within the reader as well.

Playing with Mental Toys: Introduction from Blue Daunia Issue #1

The following is from the Introduction of  Blue Daunia  Issue #1:  Dark Tides of Illunstrahd.  To me, it illustrates the usefulness of flights of childhood fancy as they relate to the ongoing process of the creation of narrative fiction.

By the middle of childhood, somewhere amid the 1980s, I had amassed a sizeable collection of action figures from various movies, cartoons, comics and other genres.  A vast majority are probably still buried somewhere deep within the confines of my old bedroom and its small closet in my childhood home, and without knowing the exact number of the toys, I would comfortably put the estimate at somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 pieces, possibly more.  The sizes of the figures among the various intellectual properties were largely incompatible: some were just over three inches tall, while others neared the realm of my sister’s Barbies, and they ran the gamut of all sizes in-between.  Some of them only had articulation at the shoulders and hips, while others could be made to assume all manner of action poses for kung-fu goodness.

I had my fair share of neighborhood friends, and a great many hours were spent outdoors, playing the usual range of action-heavy games of make-believe and sports alike.  Metabolisms and imaginations soared sky-high in those days, and yet I was perfectly content at home as well, left to my own whims and flights of fancy at times… and that’s where the action figures got their time in the spotlight of my youth.

I mentioned the varying sizes and intellectual properties of my collection, but I’ll have you know that this never once posed a problem for me, because hardly ever did I see fit to use the figures as part of their intended worlds and stories.  On the contrary, I invented my own worlds and stories, my own universe, in which these beings existed and in which they came to life with all the strengths and flaws and quirks and mannerisms I could bestow upon them.  Sure, Luke and Han were occasionally allowed to be Luke and Han, if that was my momentary whim, but the vast majority of my time spent playing with the figures was spent creating new personas and new worlds.

It’s not that I didn’t love the hell out of the movies and shows and books these figures hailed from.  It’s just that I took these forms of storytelling to heart as lessons just as much as entertainment, if not more so.  Each new struggle on the screen was a lesson in intrigue through character limitations, each unfolding conflict in a comic book was a lesson in dramatic pacing and plot development and revelation, and every episode and issue, whether self-contained or to-be-continued, was a lesson in how to use the episodic structure to enhance continuity, canon, and bit-by-bit worldbuilding.  I took the figures and truly made them my own universe (or two or three), size and shape be damned.  Long story short:  I didn’t just play with action figures, I created with action figures.

And here, decades later, although the figures themselves are long buried and forgotten, I’m still doing it.  That’s what the following pages are.  That’s what they’re all about.  The story you are about to read, and its (hopefully numerous) continuations, are nothing more than a grown man “playing with action figures” in a certain manner of speaking.  I am a writer today not only because of the countless movies, books, television shows and comics I have consumed, but because the resulting toy lines, for all their cash-grabbing reasons for existing, allowed me to consume these properties in the most creative and enjoyable way possible.

My only hope is that you enjoy the result as much as I enjoyed the creation, because I genuinely and thoroughly loved the process… and because it really was just a form of playtime.

Blue Daunia Issue #1

“Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys”

Blue Daunia
Issue #1: Dark Tides of Illunstrahd

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A new ongoing monthly series begins!

Azaria
An exotic world not unlike our own, but entirely beholden to the mythology, legends, and pantheon forged by the almighty sea. With a myriad of cultures that run the gamut from backwater to highly advanced, Azaria is a world whose sole provider of technology is as secretive as it is powerful, at times competing with the oceanic pantheon itself for ideological supremacy. But there is something else beneath the shimmering surface, deep within the Hadopelagic Zone… waters so deep that all cultures unite in referring to them as “the Blue Hell”… something darkly intangible and unspoken. Could there be a third force, ancient beyond all recorded knowledge, vying for supremacy?

Daunia Bluehaven
On her ongoing quest to investigate the disappearance of the brother she barely knew, her adventures aboard her father’s final ship design would lead her crew all across the coastlands of the world of Azaria.

Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys. The swashbuckling monthly serial begins here. Join Daunia and her crew as they traverse a world of towering cliffs and arctic tundras, dense tropical forests, sweeping mountainscapes, cavernous subterranean depths, marble palaces, gothic spires, dusty libraries and raucous drunken inns. In the life of a freelancer, you never know where your next job might take you, or what odds you might face to get it done.

In this inaugural issue, embark with Daunia and her crew of “freelancers” as they travel to put a recently-acquired treasure into the hands of a prospective buyer, and to spend some much-deserved time in the company of old friends. The crew soon learns, however, that the sleepy port town of Illunstrahd might hold darker intentions lurking beneath its surface, and a long-forgotten secret which could threaten the fate of all of Azaria.

Journey Into the Unknown

“To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair.  Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right!”

On August 8th, 2017, just three days ago as of this writing, I uploaded the first issue of my new ongoing monthly oceanic adventure serial, Blue Daunia, to the Amazon Kindle store.  Here’s the scary part though:  it’s my first-ever anything in terms of published work.  To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair.  Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right!  This website, brand-new as of today August 11th 2017, will serve two purposes.  First, it will chronicle my trials and tribulations as a brand-new indie author embarking upon a potentially life-changing journey.  Secondly, it will, in the future, serve as my website as an established author (this requiring optimism, forward thinking, hard work, luck and hope).

Oh, and, by the way. . .  here’s the link to my Amazon Author’s Page, which at this time is just a bit sparse in terms of shoppable content, but bear with me, and check back here frequently, as I seek to change that and keep you posted about the journey I’m on to get that goal  accomplished.

So, if you’re an aspiring indie author and you’re wondering what it’s like to go through this process, or if you’re well underway and just want to read some posts to see if your mind-set matches that of someone who has already been through it, then hop aboard.  I’ll be talking about everything from the steps I took to how I felt during them, to things like dialogue, action scenes, compelling characterization, self-doubt, discipline, and so very much more.  Oh, there will be personal ramblings as well. . . observations about movies and sandwiches and paperclips and whatnot, and as I get those typed up, I’ll stick everything under the tab “That BLOG Thing” and you can find a list of categories over to the right of any given post within it.