Category: writing

Free Noblebright Fantasy Books

If you enjoy wholesome fantasy that focuses on themes of courage, honor and nobility, then click on over here to peruse 70 free Noblebright fantasy books.

Noblebright is a somewhat new sub-genre of fantasy that started several years ago. Like I said, it tends to always have the themes I mentioned. It also avoids erotica. Mostly PG and PG-13, if you can equate it to movie ratings. Though, these days, there are a lot of PG-13s that honestly seem to veer into R territory.

The first book in my new Ruin Raiders series is in the giveaway, if you haven’t picked it up already. Seriously, it’s free–so what are you waiting for? Or, if you want to give me 99 cents (actually, I only get 35 cents of the 99–the rest goes to Amazon), go to Amazon and buy it there. After all, poor, struggling writers like myself need to be able to buy chewing gum every now and then.

Tunes and Writing

Some new tunes and some new writing. That’s what I have to show for myself today. If I had the freedom to do so, I’d spend most of my time writing songs and stories. However, life…

Life is messy. And persistent. After a while you become the metaphor for a hastily made-up sad clown failing at juggling dozens of chainsaws and Limoges porcelain while unskillfully riding a unicycle and trying to escape from a maddened mob of IRS agents, honey badgers and robotic squid armed with cusinarts. And, of course, while all this mayhem is happening, there is a beautiful slow motion sunset going on–so incredibly slow that that single sunset begins, evolves and dips down past the horizon just once for your entire life.

The sunset never ceases to amaze and awe you, every time you glance over during your frantic unicycle escape.

What’s the moral of this story? That life is short and time is even shorter and, if we firmly believe in the existence of the four dimensions of length, width, height and time, someone possesses a measuring tape in their pocket that exists outside of time but with which you can measure time. Or perhaps the object is simply a very, very tiny ruler. But still big enough to measure time.

New Inflatable Hippies Music!

Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song. Also, for the video clip below, I tried to put together some AI lip-sync of a portion of the song. I used some Magica tools to rough success. Definitely not perfect.

Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song.

New Humorous Epic Fantasy!

And… the latest story. The Ruin Raiders series. Books 1 and 2 are out. Book 1 is Rise of the Farmboy, and book 2 is Westward to Ravelock. The series follows the story of a farmboy named Ben who runs away from home in order to find adventure. And, boy oh boy, does he ever find adventure. Way too much. He ends up joining a ruin raiding crew who plunder old ruins to find treasure. Wizards, elves, dwarves, monsters, magic, ancient evil, etc etc etc. All of the above.

3 through 6 should be out shortly as well. This is fairly lighthearted writing, in comparison to the Hawk and His Boy series. I wrote Hawk very carefully, as I was deliberately trying to examine themes of sacrifice, death, family and truth. I rewrote and edited those three books for years before I was content enough to publish. Ruin Raiders is the exact opposite: quick, fun, write and move on. Another thing to note is that the Ruin Raiders book exist in the same world as The Fury Clock, but they aren’t written from such a complete lunatic perspective as Clock is.

All for now. I have to get back to land use and water policy. California.

New Humorous Fantasy Book

The new humorous fantasy book is almost ready to publish. That is… as soon as the artistic combat between myself and the cover is concluded, I will publish. However, I’m not sure who is winning the battle at this point. Here’s a truncated look at the current version, minus the lettering and a big portion of the image. This should be enough to give you an idea of the stylistic feel of the story: light-hearted, humorous fantasy, leaning heavily on the farm boy trope.

I’m determined to get this one published before the end of the month. As long as the rest of life doesn’t intrude too aggressively: family, church, job, water policy, satellite crashing to Earth, etc.

In the Meantime, Here’s Some Music

In other creative fronts, I’ve been reproducing a lot of my old songs via my Inflatable Hippies alter-ego band. I have way too much fun doing this. I think I first started writing music when I was around twelve or thirteen, and I’ve always been engaged in that to varying degrees ever since. You’ll have to pry my guitar from my cold hands before you put me in the grave.

Mary is about soldiers going to war and not coming home. That was my grandfather in my family during WWII, but it’s a common experience to many. Sad theme, but definitely worth exploring in any creative medium. I’ve always been fascinated by WWII and Cold War history. Music is a quick way to integrate that creatively. That said, I have several book projects I’m chipping away on that use WWII/Cold War as a context. Part of my list of about thirty books I need to write…

Charlie’s Road is about someone trying to find meaning in life and not understanding that you can always find that right at home. Right where you are, of course. I wrote this one from the perspective of a love story, but also managed to work in an Ozymandia allusion for the Percy Shelley afficionados–I love that poem and have worked it into quite a few different things I’ve written.

Anticipation of Impact is an old song about the lie we tell ourselves, that we’re in control of our lives. We’re mostly not. If I remember correctly, I wrote this after being in a car accident. For days and months afterward, I would have sudden moments where I thought something was about to collide with me. My mind would freeze up in anticipation of the impact.

Life Has Come Undone is more deliberation on that same theme–the lack of control we have in life, combined with the persistent sense of not being able to find our way home, even when at home. I don’t know about you, but that odd sense of homesickness is something that’s persisted through my life, regardless of a happy home life here in Planet California. I suppose it’s because of the innate longing we all have (at least, I hope you all have it) for heaven. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.

I’m Off to Punk Rock Land

Those are the new ones for now. Recently, however, I’ve started writing songs veering off into punk rock. It’s a fun, energetic style (and no, I’m not growing a mohawk) and I love the inherent protest feel it has. Plenty of things to protest these days. Such as the horrifying abuse issue in the UK recently highlighted by Rupert Lowe’s report. 250,000 Girls is the song I wrote for that.

Sanderson and Apple

Interesting to see that Brandon Sanderson and Apple have signed a deal to bring some of his works to screen. It’s even more interesting to see that Sanderson has secured the right to control the process, from writing scripts, controlling creative approvals, casting, etc. That’s a relief, as Hollywood is incredibly adept at ruining book adaptations.

Sanderson is probably one of the few authors alive on the planet with the power to get that kind of deal. I suppose JK Rowling is also in that tiny demographic, along with… that’s about it.

Mistborn and the rest of the Cosmere books are unique, creative stories. Sanderson, whether you like his writing or not, has a very distinct vision; it’s a very comprehensive vision, given the complexity and integration of his stories within the massive framework of the Cosmere world he’s created. I enjoy his writing quite a lot, though I had some trouble getting through the Stormlight Archives.

The thought of turning that body of work over to the shiny suits in Hollywood-land is disturbing. I’m still shuddering over what Amazon did to Tolkien’s legacy with their Rings of Power series (I began shuddering over a year ago). Though, to be fair, my teenage boys enjoy the series and have watched it at least three times now. They claim it stays faithful to Tolkien, which means we have recurring arguments about this every now and then (I think I always win the arguments, but the boys think they always win–my wife stays out of the fray).

Another fantasy coming to screen is Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven. Angel Studios secured that property and apparently is in pre-production. My middle son loves this series–so, for his sake, please don’t mess it up, Angel Studios.

All the World’s a Stage

All the world’s a stage, as the bard remarked. That was in As You Like It, and the ironic thing is that the world truly is a stage, whether you like it or not, so that particular truth does not exist as you like it. Truth simply exists.

There’s no other way to argue existence. There are only two views when you peel back the onion layers, weeping copious tears over the futility of your individual power when it comes to determining truth.

“But, alack and alas!” you cry, “there must be sparkly unicorns in my world! I demand it, as I am the captain of my fate!”

Well, sorry, no. No sparkly unicorns for you. Thankfully, one saving grace is that you are free to write stories or draw pictures full of sparkly unicorns. Go for it.

Anyway the first view is that blind chance is responsible for the existence and various arrangements and rearrangements of atoms that comprise the universe. That’s a tough one, as blind chance cannot produce meaning and meaningfulness. So, best of luck finding validation if you subscribe to that view. This might be one reason why people self-medicate (one reason among many, many reasons); it’s much easier to deal with the concept of universal meaninglessness if you are sozzled to the gills.

The second view is that there was a universe maker of some kind — a prime mover. This can range from prime mover concepts like the Greco-Titans, the Hindu pantheon, etc., all the way through to the big monotheistic concepts of the Judeo-Christian God and Allah.

Interesting thing about truth is that it is binary at its core: something is either right or wrong. It cannot be both at the same time. Which means that one of those views above is correct, and all the others are incorrect.

At any rate, what I really wanted to muse about is the stage and what’s the role of AI in terms of that stage. Is AI going to be doing some of the scriptwriting? Or will AI itself start acting on the stage? Perhaps it’ll start writing some of the soundtrack?

I recently started experimenting with Gemini. It is powerful, to say the least. Somewhat unsettling. I expect, given the rate of AI evolution, much of our entertainment content will be either completely AI-generated or AI will have a significant role in it.

One of my experiments was asking it to draw a rabbit dressed in a suit. Because, why not? Also, I have an affinity for rabbits as my family’s farming company lettuce label is Bunny and features a rabbit sitting sedately on the ground. Dreaming of lettuce, no doubt.

I then asked Gemini to take the rabbit drawing and animate it. Specifically, have the rabbit walk off-screen. Off the mini world stage that it found itself on. You can see the result here for yourself.

Of course, one of our goals now will be to avoid the Wall-E scenario.