Self Promotion

Book 2 has been finished for a whole.  I am now focusing on a different stand alone novel I call Zmeij.  I have some pictures drawn up for it already.  The cover is cool and so is the inside art.  This standalone will probably have more artwork inside it then the previous books.  I am thinking Zmeij will have a total of 20 inside pictures.  I have ideas for 13 of them so far, 2 of which are drawn up or being drawn up at the moment.  Zmeij is a fantasy but unlike the Ashes of the Fallen Series as I am somewhat setting it in design in a Victorian somewhat magic punk slash medieval converging type thing for the clothing of characters and designs of buildings and houses.  Zmeij, the title of the book, is named after the thing that allows humans to use magic.  I got the idea somewhat from Dune by Frank Herbert for how the magic works in the world of Zmeij.   I think Zmeij is a very interesting world full of colorful and interesting characters.  I am only starting the first draft of Zmeij so it maybe a couple years before I come out with it.

I really recommend checking out my two Ashes of the Fallen Books.  The Ashes of the Fallen Books seem to me that each book is better then the last so far.  Please check out these links and if you like what you find, I'd greatly appreciate your purchases.

THE FIRST BOOK:
on the Kindle:
Volume 1: In The Shadows:

On Lulu/Print Version:
Ashes of the Fallen Volume 1 Print Version
(Two Sample Readings By Me)
Reading of Prolog
The Fall of Drazadur
A Sampling from Chapter Sixteen of Volume 1:


  "Darkness.  Darkness.  Darkness."  She kept mumbling that word over and over again.  Lady Betlinde  Byrr did not understand how her cousin, Reyner, could stand being constantly in the woman's presence, even if she was his sister.

   Her cousin Elphina had been dressed in a stunning yet simple spun gown of pale green that her hunched posture ruined the effect.  Her faded white lace gloves clutched tightly the arm of her brother, Reyner.  Elphina wore her hair loose with no jeweled ornaments, only a string of fresh blue crocuses had been woven into a line across the top of her head.  Around her neck she wear only a single strand of gold.

  Unlike her cousin, Lady Betlinde Byrr, wore an ornate red gown that flowed elegantly off her shoulders, and spread slightly out underneath her from the back with a golden collar and cuffs.  Lady Betlinde had pinned her golden locks to the top of her head with many bejeweled hair pins, old family heirlooms from the Fall of the Raihoparran Empire.

  Her white gloved hands spread wide as she welcomed them, standing upon the path that lead into her estate.  She smiled at her two cousins, "Welcome, my dear cousins.  I cannot remember the last time I have had the pleasure to entertain yourselves."

   She could hear Lady Elphina's constant muttering of 'darkness' even as she had spoken earlier.  She did not wait for a response from them as she quickly began to lead them across the mostly smooth gray flagstones that ran along the Estate's Eastern Path.

   Lord Reyner remarked as he made to follow her down the path, "It has been many years, indeed, Betlin.  I am glad that you could meet with me today, let alone to be invited to your fine home.  I assure you I am greatly honored to be received at the Main House here."

  She smiled slightly having almost forgotten her cousin's nickname for her in their youth.  She remembered how he had been so uncouth and climbed the trees in the gardens in the rare visits his branch family had made in the past.  Now dressed in dark reds and even a few sapphire rings and golden pendant bearing House Byrr's sigil, a winged ram made of platinum with golden horns and ruby eyes,  he cut a very different and handsome picture with his dark blond locks and handsomely chiseled face.

  She could still faintly hear those murmurings from Elphina, but she brushed them to the back of her mind as she lead them off the path and out into the garden proper of the Eastern side of the Estate.  A large stone gazebo rested at the center of the garden, and was large enough accommodate a group of twenty people.

  Betlinde seated herself at the head of the table as her servants began bustling about with tea and trays.   Her guests seated themselves to her left, Elphina's hand still clutching onto the arm of her brother, her head bent downward as though she was staring at the table.   Her female cousin's eyes staring beyond the intricate flowers and rams designed into it to some daydream that Betlinde could not begin to fathom.

  A servant began to pour the sweet smelling tea into their cups.  Amongst these bustling servants were Mordrek slaves.  Naturally House Byrr had these Mordrek slaves all properly educated and spirits broken from long centuries of service to their illustrious House.  Though to a commoner their clothing appeared elegant and tasteful as far as the nobility, such as Betlinde herself, were concerned they were dressed in rags; old clothing that had not been fashionable in Ainar's Court in centuries.  The Byrr Family had given these slaves the chance to raise up above their savagery to be part of something far more noble and improve their lives by joining civilization, even if it was only as slaves.  They were better off for they were part of a cultured and true civilization, or so Lady Betlinde and like minded nobles thought of their Mordrek slaves.

  Reyner took a sip of the sweet smelling tea and smiled, "Mm.  The balance of flavors is quite good.  I have not seen Uncle at Court for several years now.  I trust that Uncle Arnuad is well?"

  Betlinde returned the smile, "My father is quite well, and it touches me that you are so concerned for his welfare.  He spends much of  his time locked away with his books, reliving the past glories through tomes rather then at Court."

  The truth of the matter was that her father had become a hindrance to her goals and those of the Empire that truly desired to achieve greatness once more, at least in Betlinde's mind.  She had him locked away in his library with his 'precious' books.  Books that he had put more value in then his only child, who should have been born male.  Locked away she now had complete control and in his name acted as the Head of House Byrr.   She continued to smile despite her loathing at her father being the topic of conversation at the moment.

   She tried to change the subject away from her father, "Though as I said it touched me to hear your concern, I trust that is not the sole reason you arranged this meeting, dear cousin?"

  Betlinde took a shallow sip from her cup enjoying the subtle flavors of the tea.  One of the servants helped her cousin, Elphina, to pick up a cup in both her hands.  The servants urged the daydreaming noblewoman to drink before the tea grew cold.

  While the servants tried to help and urge Elphina to drink the tea Reyner himself placed his tea cup down and leaned forward only a little, "Indeed I have come with serious intent in mind, Betlin.  Your passionate words at Court have moved the hearts of many.  Mine included.  Your position and concern for the Future of Ainar is a Truth many recognize, but fear to voice.  Your words will not doubt bring our House to be the rising star at Court, and I merely wish to offer all my support and that of the branch families to you."

  Betlinde smiled pleased with how things with her handsome cousin were unfolding.  She only wished that the annoying hissing drone of her dotard of a female cousin in the background would cease.

  She heard the tea cup shaking between her cousin's hands as her voice grew ever louder until it was almost shouting, "Darkness.  SERPENTS!!  BROTHER!  Serpents in the Shadows!  DON'T GO!"

   Reyner hissed at her as he took her hand and squeezed it to try to calm her, "Silence yourself!  I am right here, and trying to make important arrangements with our cousin."

   She quieted her voice from a shout down to a mutter.  Her eyes glazed and looking at some daydream that had her body still shaking so that some of the tea sloshed out onto the table as the servant who had been trying to get her to drink quickly set about cleaning up the spilled tea.

   Lady Betlinde took another sip from her cup, her thoughts of wonder at why he did not simply keep the wretched woman locked up somewhere.  Her cousin, Elphina, was not fit for these social occasions.  Elphina had claimed since childhood that she had the ability to see into the future, but when the girl had turned thirteen her powers began to frighten herself.  Yet despite her claims, Lady Betlinde and the others had never once seen a single of Elphina's visions come to pass.  They dismissed them as nothing more then fanciful daydreams.

  "I am glad of your support.  I see that you are indeed a man of wisdom to ally yourself to the main house."  She said smiling.  "Perhaps we can now discuss the particulars what form this support shall take."

  The sound of the tea cup shattering upon the ground interrupted further talk.  A long, thick line of tea spread out heading towards Betlinde.  Elphina had returned for the moment from the daydream and now stood with terror piercing her eyes as she stood with her hands tightly gripped onto her brother, pulling on his sleeve.

  She frantically begged as tears streamed down her face, "Brother no.  Do not enter the Serpent's Maw.  Please brother no.  Do not let the Darkness eat you.  I don't want to be left alone.  Please don't leave me.  Please...we have to get out of here."

  He brushed her off of his arm, clearly annoyed with her behavior, "Enough of this nonsense!  I am sorry to burden you, but do you think you could arrange for my sister to be taken home.  Then you and I can discuss our plans for House Byrr at greater length."

   Betlinde smiled glad to be rid of her annoying and insipid female cousin, "Of course, cousin dear. I would be only to glad to be of use to you.  As I no doubt you plan to be glad to help my plans for our Empire."

   "Please..no don't leave me. The Darkness comes!  The Fires come!  Please...don't leave me."  Elphina ripped his sleeve as the servants forcefully separated her from her brother.  Betlinde knew that her cousin was lost once again in some imagined and foolish fear from her daydreams.  Elphina struggled as she was lead away from them, fighting the servants as Lady Betlinde lead her cousin, Reyner away from the Gardens and into the House proper.
__________________________________________
The SECOND BOOK/SEQUEL

On Kindle:
Volume 2: Geometry of Souls

Print Version/On Lulu:
Ashes of the Fallen Volume 2 Print Version

A Sampling of Chapter Seventeen

  He found it hard to breathe as he had reached a summit upon the twisting, winding stairs that had been carved into the mountain.  His two personal guard. which were all that were left of his entourage, were several steps below him. He had spent far too long in the mountains seeking the Sleeping Ones, and their lair.  He felt that now he was close, something stirred in his blood as he drew closer to yet another cave he saw in the distance at the end of the stairs.
   He had halted in mid stride, fore he saw sitting on an egg shaped rock a young man with fiery yellow hair and two eyes that burned like a coal's embers.  He looked over this figure to see his bronze skin held little muscle, but the muscle it did possess was more defined, and sleek like that of a jaguar then the bulky muscles of a tiger.  This youth had sharp finger and toe nails, and wore only a loincloth about his waist.
   The fiery golden haired youth, with eyes like two burning embers, smiled impishly at the Nathrak King, Elgion the Fourth, as he told the royal, "Blood calls to Blood. Do you truly believe Our Blood runs so strongly within your frail, half breed body? Will you have the power to succeed in 'The Awakening' when so many of your ancestors have failed to Wake 'The Sleeping Ones'? What do you, half breed, possess that they did not?"
  To the surprise of the Nathrak King the boy's tone had not been one of mockery but of a mixture between amusement and curiosity for the answer. And this tone had set the Nathrak King on edge.
   "I am the Blood of Anorielyx, I cannot fail in this task! And who are you 'boy' to dare question my motives, do you think yourself the Door Warden to the Sleeping Ones?!" Elgion had snapped as he still felt on edge, and uneasy before this strange boy.
 His laughter resounded in the warm mountain air as the youth slapped his sharp clawed fingers against his knees, "Boy! Ha ha ha ha! Perhaps...but this 'boy' as you call me is Guardian of Brood and Nest of the Sleeping Ones. If you wish entrance to the Nest you would be wise to keep a more civil tongue in your mouth when dealing with chance strangers."
   The two guards protectively stepped forward; crossing their large poleaxes before the youth, "You will show more respect to the King of Nathrak.   If you are the Guardian of the Sleeping Ones, then lead us to them, and allow the Great King of Nathrak to do his duty and awaken them."
  The Guardian's eyes gleamed like those of a cat locking down upon a mouse to hold the rodent in place.  His voice deadly calm as he warned them, "Do not test the patience of dragons, half breeds, for our wrath is fierce, and your kind are not unappetizing."
   The Nathrak King barked," Enough of this pointless posturing!  You, Guardian, you shall lead me to the Nest of the Sleeping Ones."
   The two guards pulled back their poleaxes from the throat of the Guardian at the words from their king.
      A mischievous smile played across the youth's face as he remarked, "Oh great King of the Nathrak, you shall show me the Truth of The Blood."
   The Guardian  leapt from the rock and raced away up the steep stairs that lead towards the great cave mouth in the distance.  The Nathrak King raced after him, and followed him into the depths of the cavern.  He plunged into the darkness, and tumbled downward as he heard the laughter of the Guardian echoing around him.  Though he fell, he did not hit rock until he had reached the bottom.  He felt as though he fell for hours through the thick stinging smoke and darkness.  He landed with a hard thud, and rubbed over his aching body.  He still felt the heat all about him, stinging at his skin.  Then he saw at the edge of the great sloping passage downward a soft ruddy glow beyond, and smoke so thick in the air that it stung his eyes.  He coughed as his eyes tried to peer through the thick white smoke about him.
   As he crawled on hands and knees into the great yawning portal before him, his jaw immediately dropped.  Crownless, he remained on all fours, his crown having been lost in his fall, as he gazed in awe at the sight that greeted him.  Stretching for miles, both outward and upward, this was no mere cavern but a great hall.  The cunning artistry of the Sleeping Ones, those humans called Dragons, but whom called themselves The Avaeniri, stood manifest before the Nathrak King's eyes.  His castle's halls paled greatly to the beauty before him.  He had not believed the legends of the craftsmanship and creativity of the Avaeniri until this moment.  They used any means necessary to create the marvelous architecture of their lairs.  He could tell that much of it had been created by using fire and lava.

A Sampling of Geometry of Souls

Geometry of Souls Sample
A sampling and link to my 2nd book.

Geometry of Souls Update

I am writing the last chapter tonight for Geometry of Souls.  I am so proud that I have got another book under my belt.  I am going to spend tomorrow editing this book.  Then once I am done editing it I shall put it up on Amazon with a free promotion for the first week of sales. 
Personally I think Geometry of Souls in some ways will be even more fun to read then the first book, since I am not setting things up about the world as much in this one.  Plus this one will feature the Sleeping Ones, which are awesome, along with the Nathrak.  I don't want to say too much on it.

Also now that I have finished Geometry of Souls I am going to focus on getting Zmeij written up now that I have the first 2 books in the Ashes of the Fallen Series finished.  Zmeij will be a standalone book, unless I get huge sales from it.  I have an idea for a prequel to Zmeij, but I am not going to write it unless people are interested in the world of Zmeij.  My main goal is to get the next two Ashes of Fallen Books (Maneuvers of Transposition and Zugzwang) finished.  I will probably be writing the third Ashes of the Fallen Book at the same time as Zmeij, but going to focus mainly on Zmeij.  That's my plans for writing.  Type more at you later.

Map Making

I have a map drawn up for Easdal, but I drew it on too big of paper to scan it up, sadly.  So I am trying to redraw them up on the computer instead of by end.  So far it's going okay, but then I've only just started.  The thing I hate about drawing maps is that I am never satisfied with how my trees come out looking.  Mountains and rivers and borderlines are all easy to draw to me, but for some reason I just can't get the feel of trees right.  Here is hoping I can do them better on the PC then by hand.  Secondly I don't have the money for an expensive art program on the PC so I am using MS Paint so here is hoping it all comes together okay.

Not much more to say, except that at some point I am going to be doing another upload to my first book.  I noticed some glaring mistakes of grammar on my part and I intend to correct them along with a few other changes I am making, such as name changes; one being the change of the race of alfs I called Aeshiri in the book, I decided that I prefer the term Aesir, even if this should get them confused with a group of Norse Gods, which was my original concern, but after talking with a friend decided to change the name back to Aesiri, as it sounds better to the ear.  Not much more to say so I'll type more when I have more.

Yet another Update

I finally finished Chapter 28 of G.O.S.  I only have chapters 29 and 30 left to write up.  If I get those 2 chapters written before the weekend then I plan on spending my Friday and Saturday editing Geometry of Souls.  Once I have edited it I shall have it posted up Kindle with a free offer deal for those that are interested in a free copy of the next collection of this work.
Not much more to say so I shall end it here.

Chapter Update

I am almost down with writing up Chapter 28 of Geometry of Souls, that means just two more chapters and it's time for me to start editing Geometry of Souls.  If I have off to work on editing it shouldn't take me more then a few days to knock out the editing and then the book will be ready for you on the Kindle.  Things only get more interesting and exciting as this series goes, but that's just my opinion.

Not much more to say, so I'll end this update here.  Oh, last thing, I am going to be making changes to Book 1 in the near future, but this changes are minor and not important to the overall story, it is simply I have debated a few name changes on the races in my world and making corrections where there are mistyped names of characters such as Ryner instead of the proper spelling for his name of Reyner, and changing the name of the Aeshir back to the Aesir as it was in my original draft.  Personally I think Aesir and Aesiri sounds better then Aeshir, at first I was worried people would associate them with the Norse gods, but since so much of this story's language is influenced by such sources I decided to say to hell with it and change it back to the original name for earth alfs.  These corrections will be seen when I come out with the omnibus, which I am titling "Conspiracies in the Shadows".  Although the title may change depending on if I come up with something that I like better.   Type more later when I have more to type.

Finished Chapter 25

Finally. It's taken forever, but I finally finished Chapter 25 of Geometry of Souls.  I have chapter 26 already written up, so the only remaining chapters that need writing are those of 27,28,29, and lastly 30 since I already wrote up the Epilogue for this one.  Things are starting to get really good and I hope people will enjoy Geometry of Souls when I finally get it out. I had hoped to have it finished by now, but with things being busy, and my usual laziness I haven't done much work on it.  But now I am coming towards the end I hope that Geometry of Souls (GOS), is finished by the end of this month, October.  Once I get done writing it I'll go over and edit it as I put it into a word document so that I can upload it onto the Kindle.
For those that do not know my writing process perhaps I should talk a little about it here as I don't think I've talked about in my blogs before.  I do a lot of my writing in 2 places.  The primary place I do my writing is the Nook Press Website.  It formats it for the Nook so I don't have to worry about formatting when it comes to that, plus I like the layout and how it works.  My secondary place I write is my cellphone's text messaging.  I get ideas for stories and scenes and rpg material while I walk to work, so I often write it as text message and then save it to draft.  Although it's annoying when I am transferring over to Nook Press and my phone locks and then I have to unlock it so I can continue typing.  My third place I write is jotting things down on a piece of paper or using the typewriter in my living room.
Well not much else to say, except that I need to go back to working on GOS, so I shall type more when I have more type.

(For those interested in reading my first novel Ashes of the Fallen: In the Shadows:
Here is a link to the book's print form:  Ashes of the Fallen Volume 1: In the Shadows: Paperback
Here is a link to the book on Kindle/Amazon: In the Shadows Kindle Edition )