Time-Marked Warlock is an amazing story full of compelling characters, interesting magic mechanics, and a mystery that leaves you wondering. Shami Stovall wrote an incredible tale that kept me invested.
I really enjoyed the dynamics between Adair and Brie. Adair has a tendency to be rather snarky. Meanwhile, Brie seems to serve as a strong moral compass that contrasts his rather cynical outlook well.
The author’s use of the time-rewind ability made for a very unique twist. As the investigation...
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I’ve been reading books by self-published authors for a while now, and ove been writing for just as long. In all of that time I learned something about characters in stories. I found that there are two kinds of characters; there are characters who write the story, and characters who are written by the story.
Let me clarify. Characters who write the story are often characters with depth. They are characters whose personality and background weave into the tale and actually affect its outcome....
Now if you have read my first blog post Testimony of a Visually Impaired Author, then you should know that I’m no stranger to hardship and criticism. I’m visually impaired, legally blind, low vision, or whatever the new term is that people think is less offensive to people like me. When I was in second grade, my teacher said in a teachers meeting that I belong in the special ed classroom for children with autism (she basically said I was stupid because I have a vision problem), when I was in...
There are several things that I consider when writing a story, and one of the biggest questions I ask myself is “Is this something that I want to depict in my story?”. I don’t like depicting certain things in my stories like child abuse, sex, the death of children, rape, graphic torture. Graphic violence in general, satanism, and a few other things. (There are some things I don’t mind people depicting, but I never will, nor will I promote it because of my own beliefs). For instance, Games of...
Alright so welcome to my first book review. There won’t be as much tomfoolery because I’m actually talking about another persons work, so expect this to be more serious than my usual blog post. The book I’m reviewing today was written by an author I know and is called Goblins and Gunslingers: First Blood, and it was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a while.
Now, I found the author Ivan K. Conway in one of those Facebook book promotion groups I was a part of. I had seen several...
Dual Timeline Narratives are stories that take place in two different times with one story occurring in the present, and then another story occurring in either the past or the future. These stories can seem really engaging because the idea is that they keep the reader guessing what is going to happen next. The simple logic is they will keep reading through the book because they want to know what happens next in both timelines, so switching timelines creates more curiosity. However, how...
So, what do you do if someone disagrees with something in your book? Now, I write novels that take place during the late 1800’s so language and the proper use of things during that time period can be difficult to determine. One example is when to use “you” or the colloquial form “ya”, or “should” rather than “oughta”. There are also the units of measures I sometimes use. Now, I’m a track and field coach so sometimes when talking about distance I’ll use the metric system which wasn’t used...
Hello everyone, (And by everyone I mean my mother or grandmother who are probably the only people reading this). Today I decided to just ramble on about nonsense without a care in the world because I think it's funny. So here we go.
At the moment I am writing this I actually have no idea what I’m going to write about for this post. This is all just the routine garbage I come up with and put into a google doc the moment I think about it. In other words whatever I’m going to talk about next is...
If there is one thing I’ve learned about being a self-published author, it’s that it takes a lot to be successful in the industry. Thousands of books are published each day, and standing out among the crowd is no easy feat, especially with only one book to sell.
My dreams of making a career as an author seem like just that, dreams. A vague aspiration that seems impossible to overcome. My journey so far has been fraught with days where I think I’m the next J.K Rowling and days where I think no...
My name is MJ Maddox, and I am a self-published author who was born with a disability called Acromatopsia. This is a deformation in the rod and cone cells in my eyes which has left me with severely reduced visual acuity, peripheral vision, and depth perception. Because of this disability I have lived a life that was very different from most such as being unable to drive, among other challenges. Due to my own self-esteem issues, I wasn’t the best student, or athlete, but I joined my middle...