Tag Archives: magic

March 7, 2013 · 2:14 am

Sitting in a Starbucks

Today I am in Seattle, sitting in a busy Starbucks, working on my book. It ‘s kind of cool, blogging and working on my book on the ground floor of an office building that houses Amazon.

There is something about this rainy city that I love. It fires up my creative mind. Plus, I lived in Seattle until I was 9, and to me it has always been home.

The book is rolling along well–so well that I begrudge the time it takes to blog! The characters are occupying most of the space in my mind–to the point that I can hardly carry on a conversation without sounding like an idiot.

Designing melèes with strange creatures and putting my characters through hell and yet still finding something humorous in their situations–I’ve never had a job more rewarding. (Although, I admit it’s financially rather UNrewarding.) Still, maybe the next book will be the one!

I’m sitting here in a Starbucks, in Seattle, watching the rain and the people and loving my job. I don’t care if I’m not a bestseller and I don’t really care if I ever am. I’ve finished writing four (count them –> FOUR!) books and can all those nay-sayers say they have done that? So I’m not published by one of the Big Six. And so my books aren’t on the hot one hundred yet! I’m an indie and I do the best I can, which is all one can ask of themselves.

I am sitting in a Starbucks living my dream, writing a book. It doesn’t get much better than that!

My advice is this–do what you love, and do it to the best of your ability. Life is too short to spend most of it waiting for the right time to happen, or for someone to give you permission to live.

Find your “Starbucks” and make your life happen!

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Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, magic, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 1, 2013 · 6:35 pm

It’s Official

It’s official – Forbidden Road is now available as a kindle download! I’ve even made a tweet:

FORBIDDEN ROAD-bk 2 in #TowerOfBones series http://amzn.to/ForbiddenRoad Sorrow, Peril and Magic in the Valley of Mal Evol!

This is where it gets strange. I have this weird feeling of being disconnected from the process, even though I am in the middle of doing it. I’ve done everything I can think of to get the word out, and now I can only hope for the best. I think people who like Tower of Bones will be curious as to where the story goes.

Writing Forbidden Road was an emotional thing in many ways. There are some serious, dramatic moments in this book. All I know is the book is done and has left the building!

Now I am taking my imagination backwards in time to finish the book Mountains of the Moon, which covers the events of forty years prior to Tower of Bones. This book is a stand-alone book as Tower of Bones was and is in many ways a comedy. Wynn, Edwin’s grandfather was a bad-boy!

Once Mountains is finished I can flesh out Valley of Sorrows. Some of the events in Valley involve John Farmer’s coming to terms with his inability to face the fate of one of Wynn’s companions, in an event he felt responsible for.

So today is the big launch, another chick has left the nest! Now I must get busy and write, write, write!

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January 31, 2013 · 10:25 pm

Book launch: Forbidden Road by Connie J Jasperson

Book launch: Forbidden Road by Connie J Jasperson.

I was priveleged to be interviewed on Carlie M.A. Cullen’s fine blog, and we talked about the launch of my book, Forbidden Road. Stop on by and check it out!

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January 24, 2013 · 6:47 pm

Imago Chronicles, Lorna Suzuki

Just like every other obsessed, fanatic reader of High Fantasy, I am always on the lookout for that one special book that presages the advent of a new classic series in the genre. In my opinion, Lorna T. Suzuki has written that book in Imago Chronicles Book One: A Warrior’s Tale.

As many of you know, I review my favorite fantasy books on a blog called Best in Fantasy, and that is where I first reviewed Suzuki’s work in 2011. I was blown away by her ability to draw you into her world and keep you there, mesmerized.

Since I began blogging on what I consider to be the best fantasy reads that come across my Kindle, I have read, on average, 4 to 6 fairly good books for every one really good book that made the blog; but ‘fairly good’ is not good enough for me to call a book ‘Best In Fantasy’. Hence, my frequent excursions back to my library of classics. In order for a book to be featured on that blog, I have to LOVE it! In ‘A Warrior’s Tale’, Suzuki has written a book that stands beside the works of my beloved heroes of modern fantasy Jean Auel, Mercedes Lackey, and David Eddings. Imago now ranks as one of my all-time favorite epic fantasy series. And now, joy of all joys! Books 1,2 and 3 have been optioned for a major motion picture trilogy!

And now the story:

In an intriguing twist, A Warrior’s Tale begins with the end. Taking shelter from a freak blizzard, Nayla Treeborn, half elf, half human and not fully either, huddles next to the corpse of a dead soldier; using his body and the now un-needed cloaks of other dead soldiers to shelter her from the killing weather. As she shelters there, she finds herself thinking about her life to that point; going back to a day when she had been a child the mental and physical equivalent of a mortal 12 year old, but was in reality 37 years of age.

Nayla’s father, a high Elf and the Steward of Nagana, Dahlon Treeborn, despises her for reasons which are not made clear in this book. He has punished her for publicly disagreeing with him; nearly beating her to death. Joval Stonecroft discovers her, dreadfully mutilated and bloody and is horrified. Healing her as well as he can, he spirits her out of the elven city of Nagana to the human city of Anshen, home of the legendary Kagai Warriors. Taking the name of Takaro, the young girl embarks upon a lifetime of training, eventually becoming the only female Kagai Warrior ever accepted into the brotherhood. When at long last she reaches womanhood, not only is Takaro fully trained in the manly arts of the warrior, but she is also a woman fully trained in the womanly arts as a spy, a courtesan and an assassin.

In book 1 of the series the main antagonist is Eldred Firestaff, a sorcerer who combines the nicer qualities of Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter) with the personal charm of Ctuchik (The Belgariad), and who is an immortal tool of evil, resurfacing every generation or so. Each time he comes back, he uses the armies of the weak Emperor of East Orien as his power-base in his eternal quest to conquer the world of Imago. However, in this first book of the series, although the battles with this slippery and long-lived villain are colorful and intense, they are almost secondary to Nayla’s personal battle for acceptance and with her own inner demons. This book is concerned with fleshing out Nayla and really whets your appetite for the rest of the tale!

As a half-caste, Takaro/Nayla ages much more slowly than humans, and much more quickly than elves. During the course of the story she outlives three of her Kagai Masters, all of whom live to be very old men. She also outlives their grandsons and their grandson’s grandchildren, yet at the end of the book she appears to be a woman of about twenty-five years of age. Her wisdom and abilities are that of a warrior at the prime of life, and she becomes the most respected of the fierce Kagai Warriors. When her father is maneuvered into asking for the finest Kagai Warrior to train his own warriors, Nayla finds herself back in Nagana, and her father is forced to suffer her presence there; a situation that is bad at best.

The world of Imago is clearly drawn, and is every bit as compelling as that of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Here we have two distinct cultures living side-by-side in peace and harmony for generations; coming to each other’s aid whenever the other is threatened. Loyalty, honor, hard-work, love and family are the central facets of the human society that Nayla/Takaro finds herself adopted into as an abused child, and these values are echoed in the society of the Elves. Within each society, the political and social divisions are clear and the differences between Elves and Men are well drawn and consistently portrayed throughout the drama that unfolds.

Suzuki is herself a master of the martial arts, being a practitioner and instructor of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu; a system that incorporates 6 traditional Samurai schools and 3 schools of Ninjutsu. As one who was once a mere grasshopper in the obscure art of Shou Shu, I fully appreciate the wisdom and experience that the master crafts into the fabric of this tale. Every element of this story evokes both the martial and the spiritual aspects of the culture of Imago; every element is vivid and believable to the reader.

With each book in this series, I was drawn deeper into this amazing and very real world of Imago. In book 2 of the series, Tales From the West we discover more about the true evil that threatens Imago, and discover who or what is behind the sorcerer Eldred Firestaff.

What I’ve learned from reading the works of indie author Lorna Suzuki is that to really craft a world and build believability you must know what you are writing about. She understands the warrior culture from the point of view of a female warrior becasue she IS a female and a warrior.

Know thy craft! Write what you want to read, know what you are writing about and readers like me will flock to read it!

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January 9, 2013 · 6:26 pm

Building the Beast

I have been suffering with a cold for the last week and so my writing output has dwindled to nearly nothing. I have gotten some work done, but not the amount I had hoped for.

I worked on a scene requested by my editor, Irene Luvaul, for Huw the Bard, one to liven up a dull stretch just a bit. I didn’t want to put Huw through the wringer again when he has already suffered so much, and he was so close to making his way to Billy’s Revenge, but she was right – a bit of tension would add to the interest.

So I alternately thought and slept on it for more than a week, trying to force my plague-ridden body peck out a few lines with merit to them.

I couldn’t think of anything.

But then a passing paragraph toward the end of Billy’s Revenge I – The Last Good Night (under revision again, cleaning up the manuscript, thank you Carlie Cullen for volunteering) gave me the idea for a strange creature with which I could freak out poor naive Huw. (Having the right editor in the first place solves SO many problems further down the road.)

Firesprites.

But this meant – you guessed it – Building the Beast. The only trouble was, I didn’t really know what one looked like – after all they were only mentioned in passing as being a nuisance.

Now, I only had three passing references in BR1 that talked about these creatures, but those few sentences told me quite a bit about them, actually.

So when I thought about it I realized I did have enough to build one. I just needed to assemble the parts.

1. They are either elemental creatures, or poisonous creatures, one or the other. I say this because they are called ‘FIREsprites’. Yet, logic tells me they can’t be made of fire, or there would be no forest. Therefore, they must be poisonous, and the poison must be an acid that burns like fire.

2. They must be small. Otherwise King Henri’s horse would not have stepped into a nest of them and thrown his rider.

3. Something about them makes people think of fire, and it must be something bad, because Lackland and the people of Waldeyn feel compelled to kill the entire nest when they find them, sort of like fire ants only bigger and badder. But they must be something that one lone woman (Lady Mags) could deal with, with only the aid of an amulet.

I always think it’s better when the folks who actually have to deal with them tell me what they look like, so here is what Matt St. Couer told Huw and I about firesprites.

Matt said, “Now we need to herd them to the center of the nest and get them bunched up in as tight a group as we can. Don’t touch them, whatever you do. The slime on their skin will burn you like the hottest fire, and there’s no stopping it from eating your flesh away. That’s why they’re called firesprites. The wounds keep putrefying, and amputation is the only remedy. Water helps but only if you get the water on the affected area right away, before the poison has done too much damage. I’m talking minutes here, and you have to really sluice the wounds to get the poison off. Sadly, they never seem to nest near water.”

Ulleen said, “They like to nest along roads because there’s not so much foliage and they get more sun there. The sun heats their nests and hatches their eggs.”

“They don’t look much like a sprite, do they,” Huw said, thinking they were interesting but not really fairy-like. “At least, not what I always thought a sprite should look like. They look more like naked chipmunks with hairless tails. But their skin is pretty, all shiny and coppery like that.”

“I think they were named that because when they’re looking for grubs and such all you see is a little flash of copper as they disappear into the brush,” Ulleen replied. “I’ve always wondered about that too.”

Now as far as actually building the beast goes, I have quite a lot of dragon parts lying around my office, and I can assemble a dragon in no time at all. I will even stick wings on it, if you like your dragons airborne. But dragon parts are far too large for this project, so I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Somewhere in here I have a box with everything one might need to assemble a demon.

I think this is the box.

Yes!

I’m partial to waterdemons. They’re quite fun to put into a fight-scene and some of their components will be perfect for the job. Clear, gelatinous skin is exactly what these little guys need, and I have a lot of it in this box. If I take some of that and turn it all coppery, it will actually be kind of pretty, in a hairless chipmunk sort of way. With the addition of a really strong acid to the gelatinous goo I think we’ll have a cute little firesprite!

I love arts and crafts time!

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November 12, 2012 · 5:11 pm

J.D.Hughes – William the Cat

Today is day 12 of NaNoWriMo – and I’ve managed to write a total of 39,700 words since day one. It’s been a pure stream-of-consciousness, run-for-the-money, laying down of the basic structure of the story. Nothing of what I’ve written is anything I would be proud to show the dog at this point, but when I’ve finished with the many vignettes which form the basic storyline, I’ll begin the task of actually writing the story. I think it will be about 60,000 words when it is fully plotted.

Then the real work begins, when I have to turn this patchwork quilt of a manuscript into a book!The finishied book will be about 130,000 words.

In the meantime, for your dining pleasure we are serving up a delicious guest-post by UK author and blogger-extraordinaire, J.D. Hughes. J.D.’s new book ‘Northman’ is scheduled to be released on Friday, November 16^th . He has kindly allowed me to reuse a post from his blog, J.D.Hughes.

I must confess that having seen the cover, and read the pitch I am lurking, waiting to get my hands on my copy! And now, without further ado I give you a reprise of my favorite post ever by one of my favorite bloggers:

WILLIAM THE CAT

Originally Posted on June 15, 2012 by J.D.Hughes

I am not a fan of cats.

They leave excrement in my orchard and pee on my windfall apples.

But, I have a grudging respect for William the cat. He is white, sleek – turning to a little tubbiness as he ages – but will kill anything smaller than he. That characteristic would be psychotic in a human being, but defines a cat.

I’ve never seen him pee on my apples or crap in my garden, so he is – in that catlike manner – returning my respect. Or so I like to think. If I am realistic he probably regards me as an occasional source of food and gruffly masculine tummy rubs but is indifferent to my opinion of him. He has repeatedly tried to get into my house after one successful raid. We are now engaged in a cat and man game, which he believes he will win. He is seeking to wear me down with persistence, but I have owned many dogs who knew more about persistence than any creature living or dead when it came to precise feeding and walking times, so he will be disappointed.

For some reason he has a liking for my garage and is often locked in for long periods of time. We have a thriving community of field mice to keep him entertained, but I think it may be an attempt to show me how easy my garage is. Logically, that ties in with his belief that my house will one day be his.

He has no remorse, no sense of guilt when some small creature is struggling in his jaws, little understanding or sympathy with anything living and zero interest in anything with which he has played and which has now stopped moving.

So, why do I respect William the cat?

Because he is being a cat.

It’s what cats do. He has no choice.

I respect human beings who tell the truth, help others, attempt to raise mankind from the gutter and try to behave in a kindly manner to their neighbours for a similar, but perhaps not the same, reason.

Not all humans behave like that. Some of William is built into our DNA and we occasionally behave badly towards our fellows.

The difference is that we have a choice. We can think rationally about whether it is a good idea to kill people smaller, weaker, less intelligent than, or different from, ourselves.

There are exceptions, of course. The sociopathic or psychotic personality may have no choice, but we do.

My previous post was about Truth and this is a (sort of) continuation. My belief is that there is nothing to be gained by being unpleasant or violent to strangers and that it is a part of our journey to the status of rational beings for us to be kind to people – do unto others and all that.

Of course, if they attack you with a machete then one should adopt the William attitude and either run away or get a bigger machete.

My own journey through life tells me that most people harbour few truly evil thoughts towards others. Occasionally, hatred will spring up in the fight for sex, resources or survival (perceived or real) but unless there is a continuing need for the above then it often dies away and people (mostly) play nice, or at least become tolerant.

So, as William wanders past with something furry clamped in his jaws I wonder how I would feel trapped in behaviours I cannot control, without choice and destined to repeat the same patterns, again and again.

Got to stop now. It’s 12.30pm, time for my Ploughman’s Lunch, a short walk, the BBC News, a nap at 1.27pm for exactly 21 minutes and a quick chase around the garden looking for small rodents or baby birds to eat.

Unless William has been there before me.

>>><<<

Below I have posted J.D.’s biography, exactly as he sent it to me. He cracks me up!

J.D. HUGHES

A ‘sort of’ Writer, living in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England.

His new supernatural thriller for adults, NORTHMAN, begins in Anglo-Saxon England, 943 AD, moves through World WarTwo, 1943 and into the present. It is an epic story of timeless love and eternal evil but contains no vampires or werewolves.

It has something infinitely more evil.

He also has several free, dark tales (links on blog). Or on Amazon if you want in a perverse gesture of altruism to buy them.

JD has worked as a writer, director and producer of commercials, short films, corporate and music promos. Recently, he accidentally gained an MA in Film Studies and Screenwriting, whilst continuing to work as a freelance. He loves film, so enjoyed the experience and almost continued on to a PhD, but decided that it would interfere with real writing and painting the shed.

JD started writing fiction aged 11 and it has taken him until now to be competent – obviously a slow learner. Some might say that point of competency is still some way off. Despite those people, JD is determined to inflict his writing on innocent readers and will be doing so to the exclusion of all other delusions (except painting the shed) for the foreseeable future.

He apologises in advance to those who will be offended, and hopes the rest of the world will enjoy some of it.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov

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October 29, 2012 · 6:00 pm

The Zombie Apocalypse–and so it begins…

Halloween is just a day or two away. Wednesday night will see the streets of my town filled with the walking dead, the could-be-dead and the just plain skeletal remains of the dead. Should I plan poorly and run out of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Hershey’s Chocolate Bars before 9:00 P.M. or so, I will most likely wish I was dead! After all, my deeds that night are all that stands between the undead apocalypse and the good people of the world.

What is this fascination we have with death? So many books are being written about the undead, vampires and zombies. In my town Zombies are very popular, being quite athletic and charitably minded, with many turning out this last week for the Zombie Dash 5k run.

According to Zynga executive, Travis Boatman, who has been making games for two decades, “People want to smash and maim and kill people,” Travis says. “But people don’t alway like smashing and maiming and killing real people because, well, there’s something unsettling about that. Zombies are people,” Travis continues, “so they fulfill people’s desire to smash and maim and kill people. But they’re also already dead. So there’s nothing unsettling about smashing and maiming and killing them.”

Read more of Travis’s Interview at : Zynga

Vampires are of course very romantic, and frequently are the most popular books on the store racks. Anne Rice made the vampire quite romantic and disturbingly sexy in her 1976 novel, Interview With the Vampire. Stephanie Meyers made them not only romantic, she made them mainstream with her mega-popular Twilight. Heck, she even managed to make damp, dreary Forks, Washington seem somehow more mysterious, much more glamorous and a LOT less rainy than it actually is. After all, Forks averages 212 days per year with measurable precipitation — and trust me, that is a LOT of dark, rainy days.

I am a superhero, and October 31st is a most important night in the calendar of this superhero. It is the one night of the year when the veil between the worlds is most thin and the undead wait, literally DYING to invade our streets. Without my efforts to stave off the annual apocalypse which each year is poised to take place on November 1st, who knows what mayhem would abound?

How do I do this? I have certain skills… and I’ve much arcane and mystical knowledge. Dressed in my ritual garb, I will personally perform the annual sacrifice which appeases those uneasy dead who roam the streets.

The vampires and zombies who will be knocking at my door on Wednesday will be, for the most part, less than four feet tall, wearing rain coats over their rags and capes, and carrying plastic bags for the annual sacred offering of chocolate. I will be wearing my lucky witch’s hat and flying-cape as I ritualistically drop chocolate into the offering-bags, hoping against hope that the annual tribute will keep my neighborhood safe from the walking dead for one more year.

I take my work seriously, when it comes to protecting my town. If it wasn’t for me and fifty dollars worth of chocolate, who knows what evil these undead marauders could unleash for the next year? It’s a terribly lonely thing, knowing that one fat grandma in a witch’s hat armed only with a bucket of chocolate is all that stands between human-kind and the zombie apocalypse.