Category Archives: Necrolopolis

Kickass Song + Kickass Image…

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So, I get a lot of my ideas from music and imagery. I’m not unique in that regard. That said, it was something last night when this particular video came up while listening to music and doing the day job. One listen to the track and one look at the associated image, and this brief snippet was formed. Say hello to Adaliah, captain of the Death Knights of Mortus in Necrolopolis. She’s gonna be a fun one to write about:

“Cultist scum.” Captain Adaliah’s lips parted in a slight smile as she stared at the approaching rabble. “That they come in such numbers is an offense to all I hold dear in my fire-blackened heart.”

She turned her yellow-eyed gaze on Edurne. “Thank you, little shiver. Had you not acted as our guide, I might’ve missed all the fun your master is doubtless experiencing at the epicenter of this madness.”

I don’t think Mr. Adelvell would describe any of this as fun. Edurne considered saying that aloud, but thought better of it. Adaliah may have been the leader of Mortus’s vaunted Death Knights and an ally, but she frightened Edurne all the same.

“Now, then.” Adaliah drew her sword and held it against her breastplate. “It’s time to show these foul demon worshipers how a true adherent to a dark religion fights.”

Edurne couldn’t stop the tremor that ran up her spine. Captain Adaliah frightened her a lot.

“To some, death is an end. To others, it is a beginning.”

SuperStars, Here We Are!

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This is a short post because I need to get back to figuring out my sign-up form (“Why you no work?!”), but I wanted to say we are here at SuperStars in Colorado Springs, and already it’s been a blast. William Joseph Roberts, Jenny Wren, and I rolled in midday on Monday and crashed pretty hard due to sleep deprivation and getting adjusted to the altitude. We’re here representing ourselves as authors, and as publishers and workers of the Three Ravens Publishing company. (Check out our site, and join our Discord!)

Tuesday was our walk at the Garden of the Gods walk, led by Kevin J. Anderson. That is such a gorgeous park. I’ll need to get pictures from one of my author friends who had the better camera, and share them up here, but here’s one!

Me on the left, my fellow troublemaker William Joseph Roberts on the right! Checking our corners, backs to the wall. Ready for anything.

I also picked up a fellow traveler down at the gift shop to take back to my little girl. Meet Lottie, who insists on attending the con now:

“Time to hang out with a bunch of authors! What have I gotten myself into…?”

That is all for now! Keep looking back for when the short story “Asheater” goes live. That form will be up whenever I can get it working, and anyone who signs up gets it for free! And in a couple months, the novella “Some Patience Involved” comes out and that will also be available free to the newsletter subscribers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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A holiday such as today warrants a post, and it’s a great excuse to kick myself in the butt and get this blog going again. Preferably I’d like to have some sort of posting schedule, but for now it’s enough to get back to posting at all.

I have much to be thankful for this year, from physical health to new work responsibilities to new writing opportunities. As I don’t want this post to drag on and on and on (And neither do you, I’m sure), I’ll just list them:

  • First and foremost, I am thankful for Jesus Christ, for the sacrifice He made on behalf of all who would believe in Him, and for the blessed assurance that comes from that faith.
  • I am thankful for my wife and immediate family, and the support they show me in all things, but especially in writing. I couldn’t do this without you!
  • A big thanks also goes out to those in the two writing groups I’m honored to be a part of. Scott, Rachel, Jessi, Will, let’s keep it up! Together we can win this thing.
  • I am thankful for the new position in the company I’ve worked at for the last several years. It provides steady, fulfilling employment, and as long as they need me, I’m there.
  • I am thankful for the editors and publishers who have taken a chance on my writing this year, most notably Chris Kennedy, Mark Wandrey, Mike Hanson, and Ed McKeown. Thank you all for enjoying my stories and publishing them in Tales from the Lyon’s Den and Sha’Daa: Toys. I look forward to working with all of you again in the future!
  • I am thankful to the editors at Baen for deeming one of my Necropolis short stories to be worthy of a finalist position in the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award for 2018. That was a huge shock to me when I got back from LibertyCon.
  • Likewise, I am grateful to the judges of the Writers of the Future competition for finding one of my stories worthy of an honorable mention in the 4th Quarter of the contest this year. That’s a first, and a great step in the right direction!

Everyone, have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Save travels, good food, good fellowship, and always be grateful to the God who blesses us in all things.

New Month, New Work Routine

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All right, so we’re a few days into the month already, but today’s the beginning of a brand new work routine. My day job has officially gone full-time, and while this may sound like it could put a damper on writing, it could actually help. My schedule will be a steady 40-hour week from here on, and that little bit of rigidity will allow for a better writing routine. 7:00 AM – 3:00 PM, then writing until close to bed time. Before I would have some weeks that were 30 hours of work with a lot of time for writing followed by other weeks that would be 60+ with little to no time for writing.

The goals for the next few months are set, and all that’s left is to get to it. I’m not sure if any of you struggle with setting – and then following through on – goals, but for me those first couple weeks are the worst. If I can stay on task, then the routine will become a habit, and once a habit’s established… Well, it’ll be a lot harder to break.

For any who are wondering, the goal for February is to write the rough draft of the first Necrolopolis book. It’s a tall order, but I’ve got most of the critical scenes planned out, as well as the main and supporting cast. Some of the minor scenes and characters are hazy, but that could prove to make things a bit more fun and allow for a little bit of discovery in the drafting process. Again, as long as the core plot points are maintained and hit, I can be flexible with some of the in-between stuff.

And for those wishing to do better with their own goal planning, an article I just came across today is timely, to say the least: “Effective Goal Setting: Practical advice for setting, measuring, and hitting your goals.” One of the main keys is focusing on smaller goals. This allows you to see more immediate results, even if the overall goal is a long-haul one. For my particular goal this month, that’ll be mostly word count goals. Each day, write X-amount of words. It seems like common sense, but for me it really does help. So, set some goals, and keep at it!

“A Salt on the Rise” is Published

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“A Salt on the Rise” has now been published, as part of OnThePremises.com’s 30th Issue. It is the Guest piece, and the tag line the editors came up with for it is a “speculative story about a problem-solving bureaucrat in a particularly complex afterlife.”

I should probably introduce this world a little bit, as it is where most of the stories I’m currently writing take place in, as well as the book I’m going to have finished by the end of the year.

“A Salt on the Rise” takes place on a secondary world similar to our own, but one where magic and fantasy races abound. In this world, one of two things happens to people when they die:

1. Their souls leave their bodies, enter the River Styx, and make the journey straight to the afterlife.
2. Their souls linger, either in their bodies or in some physical object they’re attached to (Rings, swords, etc) and they become part of the undead.

The undead are cursed to wander the earth until they either resolve whatever is keeping them on this side of the veil, or they are exorcised and their suffering souls are utterly vanquished. To keep the undead from becoming a menace on the living and to protect them from the fate of non-existence, the God of Death created a city that sits at the point where the River Styx crosses over to the other side. This is Necrolopolis, a sprawling city of some four million restless souls of various types: ghouls, skeletons, ashlings, mummies, free-floating spirits, even two distinct groups of vampires. All are waiting for their chance to meet with the God of Death to determine what is keeping them here so that they can resolve it and cross over.

But, the wait time is long, and the undead are quite restless. To keep the peace, the God of Death depends on two people: his half-human daughter Grimina, and her full-human assistant Adelvell, a necromancer with a knack for getting caught up in other people’s messes. He may have poor luck (And an even poorer disposition), but this dead-end job in this dead-end town is all Adelvell’s got, and he’s got bills to pay.

This is the first published Necrolopolis story, but it is not the first published Adelvell story. If you enjoyed “A Salt on the Rise” and would like to get a glimpse of our hero prior to his tenure as Grimina’s assistant, check out “Lost in the Mail” in Third Flatiron Publishing’s anthology Astronomical Odds. Also be on the lookout for other announcements. I had several short stories making the submission rounds, and if/when any stick I will let you know the where and when.

A Whirlwind of Stories – 09/30/17

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Man, yesterday was a crazy day. I had to finish my touch-up edits on two new short stories, and then go back over a couple of older tales. All four had to be sent off by the end of September 30th, and with company over both in the morning and in the afternoon, that made for a tight schedule. My fault for letting the month slip away from me (My earlier post about PUBG is pretty damning, I know), but I think it all worked out in the end.

The first tale is “Necromotion” and in it a necromancer boards a root train in order to bring an undead client out of hostile elven lands. What is a root train, you ask? Well, it could be a glorified turnip truck, or it could be something completely different. I submitted that to the Fantastic Trains anthology, so if it makes it there you will find out! Well, regardless of where it lands, it will eventually be published. Either out there, or here. This story is part of a larger group of tales, some of which have already found publication. It is part humor, part mystery, part action, and all snark from the first person protagonist.

The second is “Divine Rescue” and it is set in the Ruma: Dawn of an Empire pen-and-paper game universe. Ruma is an alternate, fantasy version of Roman times where the Greek and Roman gods walk the earth and magic reigns supreme across the land. In my tale, a group of heroes enter a blasted wasteland in order to rescue someone left behind at the fall of Mount Olympus. This is a straight-up action tale, as heroism is the name of the game in this world.

The third is “The Sky has Fallen!” and it is a Cthulhu Mythos take on the old Chicken Licken/Little story featuring Foxy Loxy as the unfortunate protagonist. I wrote it years back and have recently gone through it again now that I have a slightly better idea on story structure and pacing, so I hope it has new legs and wings. Kathy Steinemann’s The Writer’s Lexicon really helped out with this one, and the other one.

The final one I will not name, as the place I’ve submitted it to prefers to keep things anonymous so as to facilitate blind judging. I will say it is a resubmission to the same place. The first was bounced back – I think – because of formatting errors due to my switching between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. The original file got screwed up somehow and I had to end up dumping the story into a plain text file, then copy it back over into Microsoft Office and go back through to format paragraphs and other things in order to get it all right again. I also altered the beginning a bit in order to get into the action a little quicker, so I hope it will do well. Once again, the Writer’s Lexicon helped immensely with this tale. I will be writing a review of that pretty soon.

 

The first tale is a Necrolopolis short story titled “Necromotion” and in it

The more I work at this whole self-employed thing, the more I realize you need to be a master of your schedule. Without discipline, things can fall apart quickly. At the least, they can get tossed by the wayside and then you scramble to catch up.

Story Acceptance: On the Premises Guest Position

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Last month I submitted a short story to OnThePremises.com’s 30th themed contest. The particular theme had to revolve around the word or concept of “Community.” I spent some time trying to see if there was a way I could twist the word around in some unique way, but then I decided on a more traditional plot, if in an outlandish setting: a clash of communities within a city, and how the city responds to it.

That’s where we get “A Salt on the Rise.” It is a fantasy story about a necromancer who has to resolve a dispute between the mummies and the ashlings before they tear apart the city of the restless dead. The story did well, but didn’t quite make it into the final ten submissions that go on to compete for the top three slots. But, editors Tarl Kudrick and Bethany Granger enjoyed it enough to want to feature it as a guest piece, after helping me to clean it up a bit first.

I’ve taken them up on the offer, and look forward to receiving their edits. Their criticism has already been invaluable: back in the spring I wrote a story tied to this same world and characters, and it placed close to the top 20 or 30 of 200 or so entries. It was a lot closer than I’d ever gotten in an entry for On the Premises, so I paid the $15 for constructive feedback. They wrote back with a two page breakdown of what wrong with the story, and also what went right. This allowed me to go back and evaluate that particular story, but it also helped me better nail down this particular setting, the characters, and my narrative voice.

I will post about the editing process with Tarl and Bethany either later this month, or after the story is released close to October 15th.