“I wont be in your book!” #OpenBook Blog Hop

I used to have two writing shirts. one black one with a caution tape montage saying “I’m a writer, if you aren’t nice to me I might kill you in my next book.” and a white one with a typewriter that said “I’m a writer, I make the voices in my head work for me.”

I have no clue where both went, if I had to replace only one, i would get the second one as I think that truly describes me more. However, people sometimes react more like I am going to do the first.

 

The first Question that I get asked when people find out I am a writer is what do I write and that is fairly standard. I’m published, just not successful. its usually when I have word pulled up on my tablet and am typing away on my keyboard that people ask what I am doing. Apparently, it isn’t anywhere close to normal for someone to be using a word processing program in public anymore. does no one do any homework? No one has that important report due on Wednesday?

The times that my novels jsut naturally come up in conversation, that is more understandable (oh cool, what do you write about)? But that “what do you write about” is also a loaded question too. My logic likes to kick in and give an answer as to the immediate chapter I’m working on, but since only like 7 people read my stories, that goes over about as well as a fart in an elevator. Even if you are known, you don’t want to just say “I’m at the fight scene between the MC and the Antagonist,” we don’t even go for the title and the first attempt (or  knowing any other writer as our novels usually need that descriptor anyway, the thirteenth) at the synopsis, we just go for genres.

We usually try to keep it vague to “I’m a sci-fi writer” or “I write fantasy” or the like. For me, I’m not even a decent single genre girl. I have to go into dark-fantasy which is its own little cluster of things from Urban fiction to fantasy to some horror rolled up into a nice little package. The only thing about all these new Netflix series that have been coming out post COVID is that a lot of them are Dark-Fantasy. It is easier to say the Templar Saga is close to “The Protector” in style if people bothered to see Turkish fiction on the platform, or “Wu Assassins” as another example even “Warrior Nun” is close as these all thrust normal people into a thankless job protecting society, without even any acknowledgement from the general public. The world doesn’t change if they succeed in their job, but it definitely gets worse every time they fail. I hate to say it but sometimes I get to the point where i get jealous because I was publishing that in 2016 before most of that even hit Netflix, and I was working on it since I was 15. However, it is merely a case of me needing to polish up my own work and work on myself more. it has nothing to do with anything else.

If you are still here, you might have wondered “Why the title?” It’s because of the shirt and the second question people usually ask. that is “Do you use real people for your characters?”

Other than maybe elements of myself which is impossible for a writer to get away from, No. I purposefully avoid using real people as characters in my novels. There are too many times I have named a character, thinking that the name was all original, only to realize that I knew the person later or (in a couple cases) meet a person with a name that matches them and has their personality days after I posted several Second Semester chapters with her character in them. (For those who bothered reading Second Semester, try explaining to Robin that you wrote her character profile and published chapters about her…. that was nerve wracking combo. The only thing I had going for me was the real life person was ALSO a writer).

What is unavoidable is that you will probably use a name (if you write characters that exist in a world like ours and use names like ours) that will match someone else. I try to avoid using names that are tied to people close to me at all to avoid the accusations of “you are using my likeness!” and the such. Most of the time, we don’t or we don’t mean to and that is an honest truth. what we are using are our on facets of personality and our own trauma to make characters. Jena Beckhart is born out of several tragedies in my life and part of her character is born from something that I wanted a lot: a leadership friend in adulthood that would stand between me and the fire of life when that fire threatened to consume me. There are some serious stories of childhood abuse behind the genesis of Jena, Lone Wolfe, Angela, and a few others that will come to the series as I publish them.

So, we try to avoid names that are common in our life but it isn’t avoidable. At someone point I am sure an Angela will come up to me and say that I must have been spying on them. I know a few Angela’s. I chose that name because I wanted that character to blend in, like most of my characters especially since she doesn’t know all her parentage yet.

In short, No, we don’t put people in our books, unless someone specifically says “Put me in your book!” and we somehow agree. Trust me, we don’t want to kill off unnecessary characters, that’s too much paperwork.

 

What do people think about you when they hear you are a writer?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Advertisement

October 2021: A time for Ghosts, Ghouls, Death, Updates and…

Sorry, 2021 has been on track to be one year for the books for me. In many ways.

 

I have had little time for writing. While in most years I have had time to get writing in on most days, even enough to squeeze an hour or two on most days, I have been having enough trouble even getting mind in a state for fifteen minutes of medidtation most days which is a problem when i try to find time to write on a given day. I have to set a calendar reminder to tell myself to write otherwise I am going to forget to write in a week and that is bad for my state of mind.

The good thing about my writing slowing down means that my backlog of books has not grown as my books going out to published has gone down has gone out the door as well. However, I would have wished I could have gotten my books out to you at the expense of being able to write instead of lowing down both books coming out of my head as well as books coming out of my backlog. I would rather have nothing in the backlog and that to blame for nothing new hitting amazon than it because of my personal life…

Speaking of that.

The end of September hits and That seemed to be the perfect time for My family to start spilling the beans about my past. I won’t go into details about my past but suffice it to say, A lot of things that had been told to me throughout my troubled life have been wrong. Not about what happened to me or about my ancestors per se. But about circumstances surrounding my birth and a couple of details around that. Close people to me know more about that.

Suffice it to say. In one week, I went from being an only child to being the only surviving child of my father. my background went from being normal to being stranger than one of my characters I created. My life started to turn into a conspiracy and the adult members of my family were in on it. the surviving adult members of my family decided that now was the time to tell me. The children of my family, now my age, didnt really know about it.

It is a rare thing to have your entire world crashing down around you. We all have our own world narrative and that personal narrative seems iron clad. everything else seems flexible to an open mind as long as we have some firm ground to stand on. That firm ground being our own identity. Usually that identity, if we don’t have some strong sense of family to stand on, is our own experience and where we came from. before September I thought I knew who I was and where I came from. As of this post, I can’t be sure of that anymore. The only thing I can be sure of now is everything I have made for myself since I became of age and became independent.

They originally told me I was born Kenneth brooks, an only child, then they said most of this was a lie.

I am Kendra Brooks, A druid, A writer, A system Engineer, A Chimera. A strong and independent little sister. 

The things that suck me into a book #Open Book Blog Hop

 

That it simple: it doesn’t matter if the genre is mystery, high fantasy, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, or what not. The world has to be immersive. You have to feel like you didn’t just dive into it but you are a part of it, like you are standing next to the characters or one of the characters in the story.

 

My first example is most of the old battletech books written by Michael Stackpole. They have a wonderful set of characters and you are plunged into the world of the 31st century. He takes you into a world that is governed by far more than battlemechs roaming the battlefield but far more political intrigue and fascinating character stories that bring in a world of humanism. It makes this epic sci fi series feel much less scifi and feel more like you are reading a cobination of mystery and political fantasy (is that a genre?) at the same time. There are very few overt battles in Michael Stackpole’s Battletech books and the class of characters are very dynamic. Some are known only by what they can do and they are easy to follow if you read his little sub series from beginning to end (like the chameleon assassin who retires succesfully only to be bated back into service by an even greater plot by Victor Ian Steiner-Davian to assassinate himself so Victor can catch the assassin if memory servers me correctly). The plots of the books are sometimes filled with red herrings to keep you guessing, just enough to keep you coming back for more but not enough to aggravate the hell out of you.

 

Legend of the Crystals Series by Mike Cooley: This is a mind bender of a series and is filled with some gore as a trigger warning and FYI. However, this is a great fantasy series that quickly turns into a sci fi epic after the first book. The characters quickly grow and change from book to book as they encounter first magic (later turns out to be technology by an alien race which is a cool twist and an interesting take on things) but the characters will grow together and adapt to each other and the environments they encounter. There is a big plot twist to a character that unfortunately ends up in a new body in the first couple of books (one isn’t so much a body as much as a planetary body…). Mike Cooley seems to be a master at taking things past the normal limit.

 

The children of Man Series by Elizabeth C Mock. If this author writes another series, i will never read it as she dragged me SO LONG for the conclusion to this series that she FRUSTRATED THE HELL OUT OF ME. She promised me and other thousands of fans FOR YEARS saying that the novel will be out “Later this year” since 2013 and it wasnt out until 2019. I can understand life happens, and things happens. but when you say that the novel is close to completion in 2013 then we find out in 2016 that only scene cards were half completed, THEN, throw out those and start from scratch, THEN we hear nothing for a WHOLE YEAR, then promised that it will come out “later this summer” in 2018 and we dont hear until 2019 when it slips out under the radar, it is FRUSTRATING!!!!! That said….

Shatter, the first book in the Children of Man series is an awesome book that sucks you right into this massive world where the main character is hunted by other character because her magic has scorched her iris’s gray. it is said that she has cast forbidden magic to do this. as she continues her journey, she is joined by other companions, old friends and new, some do similar things with their magic during the course of the first book that also turn their eyes gray. In Render, the second book, their journey continues to a far away land where they learn that they now can practice a new form of magic, gray/white magic which is why other magic users are really hunting them. they are not forbidden magic users as much as stronger than ordinary magic users.  Forge is the last book of the series, i have been holding back on reading it until my wife gets her book backlog read as she was wanting to read this book before me. I may read it soon as every time I think about it I want to read it. I am also afraid that Elizabeth Mock might have split this book that is supposed to be the conclusion into two books. You feel for the characters as you go through the series and you get a good feel for the world which feels like a mid 18th or 19th century feel with the acceptance of magic. You can place yourself there and its like a realistic high fantasy, like you can pass every one of the characters in the street. with the seven year lag between stories, i have to re read shatter and render before i can read forge as well.

 

I hope i can write like the three writers above, those are the top 3 that hit my list, there are others that hit my list of suck me ins like the Powerless series but these jump out as my top categories because I will re read them from time to time (except for Elixabeth C Mock. The frustration with Forge just happened to be as epic as her novels which does say something about how good her writing is, if you can put up with 7 years of frustration to conclude reading her book series. by the way, we only had to wait a year between Shatter and Render).

 

This is a Blog Hop! If you want to participate in the Blog hop, Follow the below rules!

 

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.

2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.

3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.

4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.

5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/c479dee328bf48b1860f810b73480cb2

Getting picked last? #Openbook Blog Hop

Have I ever gotten picked last?

It depends on what we are talking about.

For P.E. If it was dodge ball, Hell no! People wanted me for my unreal catching skills and ability to survive to the bitter end! Same for baseball.

For football, i was dead last. I could pull some stunts but I was pretty much useless otherwise. it’s that aiming when passing thing that i never quite got. throwing a ball to hit another ball or HIT a person, got it. throwing a ball to gently land in a person’s hands? NOPE. pointy ended ball and me is a dangerous combo.

For class work it was a mixed bag of nuts.

I had a habit of finding loop holes in experiments that had never been exploited before and using them. You would think this would make me be a natural for being picked first, especially when science teachers would give me an A for finding these and having to rewrite their 15 year old experiments to account for these holes in their experiments, but no.

I would get picked last. That is usually what made me find those loop holes in the first place. when I would get picked first, i still found those loop holes but i would work within the parameters of the experiments to punish my fellow students, unless they asked for my input (which guess what never happened).

I guess I was a special kind of evil.

You would think that writing a couple of high school fictions at this point that I would have used it in my fiction by now, but it seems to have slipped my mind. I used other parts of my life to model things after. I should have used that too. Maybe next time I will use getting picked last for that.

 

This is a #openbook blog hop. if you want to participate:

 

1. Link your blog to this hop.

2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.

3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.

4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.

5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/a8df10e7c3ba4a5f9fe0bdc0a0364cea