My First Fantasy Book Magic Arrives – I just made progress on Magic Arrives! Read how I’m writing it and get a free book below. I give a complete status update for you below.
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My First Fantasy Book Magic Arrives – The Snowflake Method
I rediscovered the Book Progress app in Word Press and I decided to use it to report on the progress of my first fantasy book, with the working title, Magic Arrives. The app asked me about my writing method and I decided the Snowflake method is the closest to my process. I work on multiple parts at a time. Here’s the overall structure:
Story Structure – Done!
Characters – Done!
Scene List – Done!
First Draft – Done!
Editing – In progress
Proofing – To do
My First Fantasy Book Magic Arrives – Story Structure
So far I’m 100% complete on the Story Structure phase. I’ve captured my plot for this book, and the next two books in the triology.
Have a preview of the spines of the trilogy here.
My First Fantasy Book Magic Arrives – Characters
I just made progress on Magic Arrives! So far I’m 100% complete on the Characters phase. I’ve got about 71 characters so far, including magical dragons, talking dogs, gorillas, and intelligent dolls.
Magic Arrives Progress – Scene List
I just made progress on Magic Arrives! So far I’m 6% complete on the Scene List phase. That’s 6 out of 100 scenes.
Progress – First Draft Words
I’m done with the first draft of Magic Arrives! I’m 100% complete. That’s roughly 112,00 words out of my goal of 100,000. Oops. Overshot.
What remains to be done
I’m done with the self-edit. I sent it to my editor, Dori Harrell. She did the line editing. I’m going through that NOW. Then Dori will do the final proofing.
I’ll created the front cover, back cover and spine with my illustrator, Sean “Fuzzy” Flanagan.
Here are the covers:
Front and back Cover of Magic Arrives
Then there’s the small matter of uploading it to Amazon and publishing it there. Finally, I order paperback copies so you can get your copy here, directly from me, as less than Amazon.
What Would You Do With An Undead Mother-in-law? That is if your mother-in-law had super strength and speed and regenerated from any injury? And had glowing red eyes to boot? In my novel My Undead Mother-in-law. that’s Diane Newby. Find out what her son-in-law Ron Yardly thinks. Read the excerpt below. My book is .99 from January 18th until the 25th.Get your copy by clicking here.
My Undead Mother-in-law Chapter 1 Icon
As we pulled up in Karen’s parents’ drive, I was reassured by the sheer normality of their three-bedroom suburban home: green yard partially covered with snow, evergreen bushes, two-car garage. There was no sign zombies lived there. Of course, what sign could I expect? A skull and crossbones and Beware of Zombies? Perhaps a biohazard sign?
Diane greeted us at the door. “Hello, my love!” She hugged Karen.
Karen barely flinched as she looked into her mother’s bright-red eyes. But she grunted “Ugh!” at the force of her embrace.
“Ease up, Mom.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Hello, Mom,” I said as I hugged her as hard I as could.
She hugged me back twice as hard.
“Ugh,” I grunted too.
Diane still had blond-highlighted brown hair, as she did when I first met her. She’d gained a pound or two though. She smelled of the body talc White Linen. I recognized it because Karen and I bought it for her birthday last year, pre-zombie. And she still wore her cat-eye reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
What Would You Do With My Undead Mother-in-law, Part 2
Diane Newby, in her natural environment.
Diane seated us on the living room sofa. “Supper’s on. I have a nice pot roast for us tonight. Donnie and Maggie should be here soon. George!” she called. “The kids are here!”
A heavy tread down the stairs announced George Newby. His eyes shone red too, but while Diane was built like a middle-aged woman, George was a classic wide-body. His shoulders filled the stairway. You’d think he was a truck driver or a lineman rather than an accountant.
“Hi, Karen. Hi, Ron,” he rumbled. He hugged his daughter, as if he held a baby bird, and shook my hand without hurting me in his bratwurst fingers. His bright-red eyes looked squarely into mine.
“I’m so glad you made the trip. You can help us put to rest the ugly rumors that people with zombiism aren’t human. It’s just a disease. It’s not even harmful,” Diane enthused as she sat across from us. George sat next to her in a brown leather recliner.
“Mom, we love you. You don’t have to convince us,” I said.
“Of course not. I know that. It’s just that we’ve had people talking behind our backs at church and the public health officials trying to pressure us to get the treatment to eliminate the disease.”
“Don’t you want to get rid of it? I think the antibiotics for it are safe and effective.”
“You’d think so, but we actually have never felt better in our lives! I have more energy than ever, and so does George—right, George?”
“Yup.”
“My arthritic aches and pains have completely disappeared, and George’s old football knee injury is all better too.”
What Would You Do With My Undead Mother-in-law and the Villain, Vik Staskas
Vik Staskas absently stroked his long glossy-black hair as he skimmed through the day’s news on his wall-mounted monitor from his five-hundred-foot superyacht. He noted the surge in zombie cures and sought to tap into the money. He hired operatives to infiltrate the Midley Beacon and SPEwZ Inc., the business arm of the famous charitable zombie organization. The possibility of failure didn’t occur to him. He succeeded in everything he tried: a street thief as an orphan in Belgrade; a college student in Paris, where he got his PhD in robotics; and taking over European organized crime without the nominal bosses knowing he existed. He was ready to take over the US.
He developed remote-controlled cyborg animals and insects. He used them to spy, to infiltrate, to conquer, to steal, to kill. They were unstoppable. He planned his first hijacking of a zombie blood air shipment from Gary, Indiana. He could think of several practical uses for cyborg-controlled zombies in his crime empire. As they were, zombies had too much free will for his taste. He chuckled. Even zombies didn’t stand a chance against him.
When I started to read this book, I was leery. As far as I know, I’m less interested in zombies than anyone on the planet. How could I give a reasonable review? Turns out, it wasn’t hard at all. I’ve said before and it turned out to be true here that, if you have a ridiculous premise that’s hard to swallow, run with it, normalize it, and readers /viewers will eventually accept. And it worked.
The original premise of cognizant, virtually indestructible zombies was lobbed and backed until I was a believer, actively rooting for zombies. Plenty of (bloodier than average) action, some smiling, if not guffaw humor, a nice fulfilling story arc in an easy readable length made for a fun book (if bloody action doesn’t bother you) with charm that didn’t take itself to seriously but still capable of many a tender and touching moments.
I’m glad my prejudice didn’t keep me from enjoying this out-of-the-common-way story.
Zombie corgi in Scotland from ‘My Undead Mother-in-law’
I am a huge zombie fan, I had thought the genre had worked itself out for a while and then I read this book. I think I have been scarred for life! I foresee months if not years of counseling in my future.
Not everyone is going to like every book, you know what that’s all right. Maybe they don’t understand the book. If you want to envision hordes of undead animals attacking the evil… sorry I don’t do spoilers. Think of a slightly sardonic look on life and you will be getting close.
While reading this book I was reminded of a visionary work of Cinema, “Polterygiest: Night of the Chicken Dead” a great movie by Troma Entertainment. Do yourself a favor check out this book.
My Undead Mother-in-law cover. Click to get yours.
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Note: Your book is only free from January 4th-8th. Don’t let it slip by! It reverts to .99 outside of that time period.
What is my book all about? It’s a classic about how four teens get different superpowers. But they’re all in a special ed class with different disabilities. Eventually, they decide they must use their powers to fight crime.
Wouldn’t you fight crime if you got superpowers?
You Can Get Secret Supers – As An Audiobook
Chapter 1 icon
Do you like audiobooks? All my novels are on Audible. Get them here.
Unique and wonderful book for young people. Kids see a whole new side of kids with special needs. Not weird. Just kids who are facing a different sort of challenge than they are. The story is fun and believable. It kept me interested, and I’m an old lady!
You Can Get Secret Supers – And the next book for $2.99
Villain’s Vacation Audio book
Four disabled seventh-graders with superpowers take a vacation at Coaster World. They need a break from fighting criminals.
Ever since the beginning of the school year when they acquired their unusual abilities, they’ve been training and using those powers to fight crime in their town. Little do they know the arch-villain they recently defeated also loves coasters and is vacationing at Coaster World. Worse, the villain wants revenge. Nothing less than turning these teens to a life of crime will satisfy the villain.
Can Jeremy, Dan, Kayla, and Aubrey withstand the villain’s attacks? Or will they become Super Villains? You can only find out by reading the adventure ‘Villain’s Vacation’.
In this sequel to Secret Supers, Jeremy has been experimenting on his hamster. As a result, Dancer has learned how to read, and is reading everything he can to learn about the human world. When Jeremy discovers this, he gets Dancer one of his old cell phones so Dancer can text the group.
As for the superhero business, the group needs some downtime and goes on vacation to Coaster World. What they don’t realize is that the villain they defeated also loves roller coasters and wants revenge against the Secret Supers.
Will the Secret Supers be able to defeat the villain and enjoy their vacation, or are their crime-fighting days numbered?
This was a fun sequel to Secret Supers. Not only did we have Andy Zach as a character in the book, as though the events were true and actually happened, but I loved the inclusion of a Super-Hamster helping out Jeremy and his friends. In this battle against the villain, the Secret Supers struggle, as the villain seems to have figured out how to neutralize their powers, and they not only have to call in support but also reveal themselves to some non-Supers.
The action was well-paced throughout, and the mystery of the identity of the villain was well-done. While I had suspicions, I wasn’t sure before the reveal, which was nice. If you enjoyed Secret Supers, I feel confident that you will also enjoy Villain’s Vacation.
For this book, I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Michael Stafford. This was a different narrator from The Secret Supers, which was a little odd to my ears at first, but I think that was only because I had listened to Secret Supers so
Let me know what you think by clicking here or emailing me at [email protected]. As always, everyone who responds with a comment or email will get a free book from me.
