Pirated Content

Featured Ariel Paiement

Hey, guys! So… I recently discovered, thanks to a friend on Facebook, that a site called Bookinistika.com is pirating authors’ ebooks and selling them for a higher price, which obviously means that all the money goes to them with no royalties to you. My books were on there. They removed Bane of Ashkarith, but they have yet to remove the anthology I’m in that I also found on the site.

I am beyond angry about this because I know how much work has gone into the anthology, and I definitely know how much effort and creative work went into Bane of Ashkarith. Please, if you are an author, go check to make sure your stuff isn’t up here. Search all book titles in addition to your author’s name as their search engine is, intentionally perhaps, not well-designed and won’t pull up everything by author’s name. If you’re a reader, a word to the wise! If the price is way higher or lower than Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes and Noble (or any other well-known retailer) or you don’t recognize the seller, then they probably are pirating the ebooks. I’m not going to 100% say they are, but you should check with the author if you can to make sure they know their work is up on that third party vendor’s site. Chances are good that indie authors and publishers are not putting their books up for sale on some obscure site that doesn’t have an established name in the market. Don’t buy if you think there’s even a chance that it’s pirated! You’re hurting the author instead of helping.

Usually, you can double check on authors’ sites to see what platforms they are listing the book for sale under. For mine, I always post book information for new releases, and those new release info sheets include the links to all the places I or my publisher have chosen to list it for sale. If a new site is added, I add it to the list. If you don’t see the book listed for that site, then it’s not on that vendor’s site legally, and either you should report it or you should get in touch with the author to let them or their publisher report it. Being an indie author is tough enough without having your work stolen! Help us out and let us know if you see something suspicious. Thanks, guys!

Behind the Scenes with Ariel Paiement and Joanna White

Featured Ariel Paiement

Hi guys! Interested in finding out more about my writing process, books, and philosophy for writing? Curious about Joanna White, who has been interviewed on my blog before? The two of us did an interview format question and answer where we asked each other questions about writing, books, and more. You can watch it below or on YouTube here. Thanks for watching!

Sunday Stories

Featured Ariel Paiement

This is a new section on the blog that I wanted to start. Sometimes, I think the blog focuses a lot on the aspects of writing and editing or on what I’m working on, but there’s not a lot of personal stuff to it. Obviously, there’s a fine line between sharing and over-sharing, but I personally really like it when I see stories and personal notes from the authors of blogs I follow or books I like to read. It makes it feel like I know them just a bit better and have a more personal investment in their work. It also makes it easier to recommend them, at least for me, because I can tell friends or parents I talk to that the author’s philosophies, outlook on life, and personality are also commendable.

So, I’m going to start sharing things I’ve learned through life’s experiences so far and things that I’m learning now. For those who aren’t Christians, I’m not going to discourage you from reading, but you should know that this part of the blog will be much more obvious in its Christian roots because I am a Christian, and the lessons I have learned are ones learned through hardships God took me through to teach me things I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. If that’s something that’s offensive and bothersome, just skip over these posts when you see them and keep reading what you already do. I won’t be offended by it. But if you do decide to join me, then welcome, and thank you for doing so!

Today’s Sunday Story comes from a lesson I learned about loneliness in my first semester of college at Pensacola Christian College in Florida.

~~~

They say your college years are the best years of your life. Mine have been both the best and worst years so far. I know, a strange statement to make, but a true one for reasons that will, I think, become apparent as I share more of the things I learned during my college years.

I won’t deny that I have an overall negative opinion of my alma mater itself. At this point in my life, I still haven’t fully sorted through all of the emotions, positive or negative, that I went through while there. I’m a bit of a slow learner when it comes to emotional things, and my final year and a half at PCC was filled with many negative emotions, some directed at the school and some toward myself. But that’s a story for another Sunday and isn’t really the point of this post. My only reason for mentioning it is to be up front about the fact that I most definitely have a bias against the institution but that, because God richly blessed me with friends from the student body who could facilitate growth even when the school failed to do so, my view can’t be entirely negative of my time spent there, at the very least.

My first semester was mostly bleak, especially in the beginning. I had no friends, and those I tried to make would agree to plans enthusiastically only to leave me alone when the time for our plans rolled around. This meant many meals spent eating alone, but it also created a fair share of problems since the school had a “no-going-off-campus-alone” rule at the beginning of my time there.

The rule itself wasn’t bad since our area was more than a little dangerous and had gangs who operated near the school and targeted our female students. The school tried to make it easy to find people to go with for the weekends since they ran buses that went to Walmart, the mall, and one other local shopping destination. Unfortunately, the rule regarding going off alone also applied to the weekend shopping trips and the bus, which I initially didn’t even realize. (The rules regarding bus use were more than a little vague in that area.)

Furthermore, I could only go with girls, so my pool of people to choose from was relatively limited. I tended to have very little luck connecting with girls my age despite repeated attempts. This was by no means the school’s fault, but it did make things difficult for me. As a result, when people cancelled plans every time we had them (and that semester, there wasn’t a single weekend that the people I made plans with didn’t cancel on me last minute), I was forced to either cancel plans to avoid breaking the rules or go alone even if it broke rules.

For most students, this wasn’t an issue. They could either not go that week or had no problem finding friends to go whether it was last minute or not. In my case, I couldn’t choose not to go because I had to buy food I could actually eat regularly without making myself sick and needed to buy my own toiletries. One of my roommates had a car, but neither of them liked me or was keen on lending me anything if I wasn’t able to get to the store, so I relied heavily on making time on a weekend to go. So, I spent much of that semester discouraged and struggling because I couldn’t manage to find anyone to go anywhere with me or do anything, even on campus.

It took me a long while to give up on it. I admit that I gave up in despair and for all the wrong reasons, but once I gave up, God finally got through to me, and I began to learn one of the first lessons the people there taught me, though I’m sure it wasn’t their intention to teach me this lesson. Loneliness, as uncomfortable as it is, is not the end of the world and is often a tool God uses to draw us to Himself. In this case, it did just that.

Later on, I did make friends, and some of them are ones I’m still in touch with, my best friend included. I made them at the very end of that first semester, but not until I learned to do two things. First, to accept the hollowness a lack of human companionship left in me. Second, to bring it to and give it over to God so that He could fill it with a thankfulness for the One who never leaves and for the person of God Himself.

I still struggle in this area sometimes, but this lesson had to be learned and has stuck with me. It is one of the few things the school itself ended up having a big part in teaching me, on a spiritual level at least, because in some ways, their rules made my lack of friendship more apparent every time I had no choice but to go on the bus alone to get things that couldn’t hold off for an uncertain “I’d love to go with you next week” from those I thought were friends.

I had many nerve-wracking, guilt-ridden trips to Walmart then with plenty of time to consider the fact that, unless I wanted to go without toilet paper or food I could eat safely for another week or more, I had to break the rules. I spent those rides terrified I’d get in trouble for being on my own, ashamed because I knew I was breaking rules, angry because I wanted to follow the rules (even if I hadn’t known about some of them until I got on campus) but couldn’t because others didn’t follow through week after week, and lonely because everyone else had a group while I was alone. Not a “good” experience, certainly. By the end of that semester, I had come to dread Walmart trips and hate the health issues that made trips necessary every other week, even if I had to break rules to go. But the acute emotional distress did force me to choose how to respond and to find a solution.

So, I eventually chose to stop looking for friends. A strange decision, I know, but it was the only one that seemed remotely reasonable at that point. I told God that, as sad as I felt about the prospect of being friendless for three years in a place I was already beginning to feel alone and out-of-place in, I was going to accept it if He didn’t choose to give me any friends.

After all, I’d already chosen to obey His leading in coming to a school that I never would have attended on my own because of the rules they did make clear, and that hadn’t even covered the ones that were tacked on or made themselves manifest after I first arrived that weren’t even in the student handbook or the differing applications of the student leaders in charge of enforcing them. But I was living with all of it, even if I wasn’t thrilled about it, and I was doing it because I strongly believed it was where I belonged even if I never fit in with more than a handful of people there.

So, if I could do that, then I could surely survive three years with no friends if it was what God called me to. To me, at that point, I was mostly just resigned and a little relieved I could stop putting all my efforts into developing friendships that never went anywhere. There was, at that time, no excitement about trusting God with the situation, but only a hopeless prayer of unhappy resignation to the loneliness if that was what had to be for His plans to be worked out in my life. (Had I known back then what I would find by doing this, I might have had more enthusiasm and less of a depressed, if I have to attitude, but hindsight is 20-20, as they say.)

Over the next month, bus rides got easier. Oh, the guilt and frustration over the fact that I had to break rules to get what I needed was still there. I couldn’t get around that without just eating foods that made me sick until I could buy non-perishables and whatever I could store out of the fridge for a week or so until I could shop again. But those trips never allowed me to buy enough to tide me over until the next trip, and I didn’t have a way to extend shelf-life on the fresh foods or fruits I needed to eat more of. I made it through, though, and I dealt with the consequences of my choice with a good attitude. I knew I was breaking policies, and while I felt bad about doing it, I knew I was still responsible for it if I got caught. I accepted that risk and the guilt that was a consequence of breaking rules I felt should be followed.

Some would have told me at the time (and later a few guy friends did tell me this) that I should have kept the rules even if it meant suffering health-wise because it was wrong to break a rule you knew about. That’s one of those things I still don’t know how to feel about.

I’m not a rule breaker, and breaking rules is something I hate doing. But there were many times where I didn’t know how rules should be interpreted or what they applied to because every resident assistant did things differently. I often felt guilty for breaking rules, even if I didn’t know about them beforehand because they weren’t in the version of the Pathway I’d been given prior to updates. I learned to accept and expect the guilt. As I said, my head got tangled up and confused on the issue, and in the end, whether it was right or wrong, I chose to do what was best for my health so I could focus on classes, even if it meant breaking a rule.

When it came to the bus situation, however guilty I may have felt, the loneliness itself eased up as a week or so passed in this state of isolation and prayer. I wasn’t angry at people for ditching me because I expected them not to show and leave me in a bind, and I didn’t care if we were able to hang out or not, so I wasn’t disappointed when it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s pessimistic of me, but I felt no real antipathy toward anyone for it. I just saw things for what they were and didn’t expect things to change.

Eventually, though, things did change. I didn’t expect them to, and I didn’t notice right away that, while no one else around me was changing, I was changing. It took time, but I grew to find walking, eating, studying, and living life with just me and God to be a joy instead of a burden. My problems weren’t solved, and I had a lot of growing ahead, but I was at peace about the journey ahead and the steps behind.

In the end, the lesson I learned from the struggle wasn’t an easy one, and I didn’t like the experience that had to happen for me to learn it. I wouldn’t tell you the experience was positive because that would be a categorical lie. But what I could tell you is this. The experience was painful and what was going on was negative, yes. But the results and the growth that came out of the experience were positive. Those were good and necessary.

It’s easy for me to forget, often, that even if what happened to me was undoubtedly negative, the results were not if I grew and came closer to God because of my suffering. The suffering and other people’s lack of integrity or good decisions (in this case, their poor planning and lack of following through) wasn’t good. Should those things have happened? No, probably not like they did. But if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have learned to embrace loneliness instead of fighting it, and I would be a lesser person today. The experience was bad, but the outgrowth from my response to it and what God did through it was something way more positive than I ever could’ve dreamed.

Saturday Setup: Creatures – Creating Your Own

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Any discussion of creatures and fantasy would be totally remiss if I didn’t cover creating your own creatures. After all, while we’ve got a plethora of well-established fantasy creatures, creating your own is one really fun way to put a unique spin on your world, and plenty of authors do it. There’s a variety of ways to achieve this goal, and we’re going to talk about some of the options available to you.

Option #1: Entirely New Creatures

First off, you have the option to create creatures that are entirely new. They’re not based on anything in existence, and they are all their own thing. When I think about examples of this, you’ve got the telfies from my book Bane of Ashkarith or some of the creatures in Brandon Sanderson’s works (though most modern fantasy creatures couldn’t be placed in this category, some of his could be, in my opinion.).

With the telfies from Bane of Ashkarith, they aren’t really based on any particular creature. I just kind of decided on the general appearance based on their diet and what I wanted them to be able to do. Some people have asked if they were dragons of some sort. The answer is a resounding no. (No offense to anyone who wanted them to be dragons. I like dragons, but these guys just aren’t it, and they’re not based on dragons either.) Given the fact that they have fur that can change color with their moods, a tubular body with no legs, horns, and no big nasty teeth (oh, and acid slobber if they decide they don’t like something), they’re not really based on anything recognizable. So, arguably, they’re pretty much entirely new creatures because of this. You could strip it down to basic components and claim they derived from some Earth-based animal or mythological beast, but that’s true of just about any creature.

For Sanderson’s work, the most clearly unique creature he created that doesn’t seem to be really based on anything clearly Earth-related is the chull. These are lumbering beasts with carapace covering their bodies. They’re herd animals that often get used in place of horses in terms of functionality, but that’s where the similarities in appearance pretty much end. The creatures definitely look unique. Depending on who’s doing the art and which type of chull we’re talking, some of them look sort of more like crabs than anything else, but others look as if they’re some sort of strange dinosaur with giant shells on their backs. I’ve put pictures below so you can have a better understanding on this one, but when you read the descriptions of them in the books, they definitely seem otherworldly and unique.

Axehounds are another creation from Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives that are pretty unique. On first glance, you’d think they’re basically just a type of dog, but when you get a look at the creatures, it’s hard to decide if they were based on dogs or something else. Arguably, this one isn’t quite as unique to itself as some other things, but it’s not a terrible example.

This is from StormlightArchive.fandom.com. As you can see, they do sort of resemble crabs. Kind of. But they’re not always this crab-like in appearance. The larger they are, the more different they look.

Option #2: Based On Mythological or Real Creatures

This is probably the most commonly used option for fantasy creatures. With this one, you just pick a mythological beast or a real animal from our world and tweak it so it’s different. Arguably, some would say, Sanderson’s chull are an example of this. Of course, this depends a bit upon which type of chull we’re talking about. That case could easily be made for at least the smaller varieties, at least. However, even if that example doesn’t hold true entirely to this category, there are plenty of things that do. I mean, just look at dragons. How many times have those been done? Thousands, right? And everyone has a slightly different spin on it, even if there are lots of similarities when you look at all the representations as a whole. So, they’re a perfect example of this category!

oPTION #3: cOMBINATIONS

Don’t feel like creating an entirely unique creature but also don’t want to just alter the usual suspects from Earth? Combinations are probably your best bet, then. With this third and final option, you take interesting features from other animals and blend them together. (You can do the same with mythological creatures or with animals and mythological creatures.) Some combinations are going to produce some pretty odd or grotesque creatures, but if that’s your goal, it’s easy to accomplish. Otherwise, you’re going to want to choose features that go well together or animals that wouldn’t look too strange when combined.

One example of this that I can immediately think of would be the Numahi from my novel, Pathway of the Moon. This creature shows up later on in the book and is described as having somewhat feline features like those of our big cats on Earth mixed with those of a bear. An odd combination? Maybe. But the different features of a cat and bear are not so bad that they would make an ugly creature either.

The combination possibilities are literally endless though. You can come up with so many different things, and this is a ton of fun. If you’re an artist, you can sit down and just sketch up some different ideas for how to combine things to see it visually. Even if you’re not an artist, you could do this if it helps you to visualize. No one else has to see it, right? Even if you don’t do that, if you can get a good mental image on it, you should be all set because you can write the description down to help others visualize it too.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has been helpful to those of you wanting to create your own creatures. There’s a lot that goes into it, especially if you’re creating your own creatures, so on upcoming Saturday Setups, we’ll be talking about things like determining habitat, types of animals, and creating your creatures around what their environment and feeding habits are (since these are the two most important factors that determine what a creature will look like and what features it needs.) Until then, happy writing, and thanks for joining me on today’s Saturday Setup!

A Few Announcements (Giveaway and Blog Tour)

Featured Ariel Paiement

Hi everyone! If you’re on my email list, you’ll be seeing an email with this same information, but I didn’t want to miss anyone on here if they weren’t on the mailing list, so I’m posting to let you know about a few things going on.

First of all, as a way to celebrate my most recent book launch, I’m doing a blog tour! It’ll be from February 29th to March 7th. I have all but two spots filled, so if any of you like to feature fantasy authors with clean YA content, please feel free to comment below or just get in touch by email. I’m happy to do anything from a guest post to author interviews/character interviews. For guest posts, I can write about most things regarding fantasy, writing, and editing, so if you have ideas for what you want me to do, let me know! Otherwise, I’m sure I can come up with a few ideas to pass by whoever wants to host a guest post. It’s first come, first served with this, but I am open to extended the tour a bit if more than one or two people are interested in having me on the blog. My past experience has just been that if I manage to fill all of the slots and never have to do more than repost the guest posts/interviews to my blog, then I’ve been really lucky.

Second, I’m running a giveaway through Rafflecopter! There are two prizes: a copy of Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones (US winner only) and an ebook bundle with seven different authors and nine different ebooks, which will be given to the second person drawn. Terms and conditions are on the giveaway here. The only requirements to enter are following the Facebook pages of the authors in the ebook bundle. Besides that, everything else is optional, and no purchase is necessary to join. Some of the entries do require proof of completion (such as following blogs, joining newsletters, or requesting review copies for authors offering them), so you should check out the giveaway post on Facebook for more information on how you can provide proof of completion for any entries that need that. You can find that here. The giveaway post is pinned to the top of my page.

Well, those are the updates I have for the moment, everyone! If anyone has questions, they can be directed to me on social media, in the comments on this post, or via email. Whatever you’re more comfortable with.

Flash Fiction Fridays: Someone Else’s Scars

Featured Ariel Paiement

This week’s flash fiction is based on a prompt I saw on Pinterest. The prompt is pretty simple: her skin is carved with scars that someone else earned. It seemed interesting, so here we go.

~~~

Anorah gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. The knife dug deeper into her arm, avoiding any arteries but inflicting more than enough pain. That would scar. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t open her eyes. It would only be one more scar out of dozens.

Dozens of scars that she hadn’t earned but bore for love. These days, she wasn’t even sure why she suffered this anymore. Was he really worth her long-suffering and her silence in the face of pain he himself allowed to be inflicted?

“Give up on him. He isn’t worth this, Anorah.” Her tormentor’s breath was hot on her cheek. “He’s letting us do this. He’s too apathetic to do anything. You’re just taking the punches for him. For a man who doesn’t even care.”

She swallowed hard and opened her teary eyes. “I’m not going to give up on him. You want me to give him up? To let him fall into your hands? To let you drag his soul into the darkness?”

“You know what we want. We’ve told you. Why do you keep fighting? He’s going to end up under our sway eventually whether you die or live.”

She shook her head, a cry sticking in her throat. “I won’t give up on him. You can do whatever you want to me. You can even tear me to pieces or rip my heart out of my chest. But you can’t make me step out of the way or tell you how to get to him.”

“So you’ll die to protect him?” The man’s dark features twisted into a snarl. “What calls on you to do such a thing, hmm? He. Is. Not. Worth. It.”

“He is.”

He dug the knife deeper. “He’s not.”

She choked on her sob and shook her head. “You’ll never understand because you only know how to take. You don’t know how to love.”

“Love? Don’t think that nonsense means anything. He doesn’t love you, so why suffer for him?”

She smiled past the pain, the ache in her heart worse than even the pain in her arm. This man just didn’t understand. “He has hurt me more than you ever could. He destroyed my heart. You’re just destroying my body. But I forgave him anyway. I forgave him because I love him. I don’t love him because he’s good or perfect. I love him because I chose to, and I won’t change that choice. Ever.”

He growled and drove the knife through the fleshy part of her arm. “What could possible inspire you to love him? He’s a monster!”

Her voice strangled as the pain overwhelmed her, but she got the words out anyway. “I love him despite what he’s done because I have been loved unconditionally despite what I’ve done.”

Her tormentor twisted the knife, and white hot pain seared through her. Her mind blanked, and blackness fringed her vision. In the distance, she could hear herself screaming, but the pain no longer touched her. Then the blackness swallowed her.

~~~

That’s it for this week’s Flash Fiction Friday. Hope you all enjoyed. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Thursday Technicalities: Weaving World-Building Into Your Story – Through Your Character’s Eyes

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

This week, we’re going to talk about weaving world-building into the story through your character’s eyes. There are multiple ways to go about weaving your world into the story, but one of the best ways is through your character. So let’s talk about how.

dISCOVERIES

The first way you can go about weaving your world into the story is to allow your readers to discovery it alongside your characters. When you have characters who haven’t experienced the world before, it’s a lot more acceptable to show more of the world in a way that’s overt instead of hidden in the lines between the action. Characters’ confusion over things in their world suddenly make sense because they don’t know anything about what’s around them to begin with.

Interactions

What if you don’t have a character who’s new to the world just like the reader is? You can still world-build and weave that building into the story. One great method for this is to develop the reader’s understanding of the world via interactions between your world and your character.

This method strongly goes back to the idea that your world is its own character with its own personality. No one person or world will interact the same way with each other. This method requires you to know a few things. You need to know your character, know your world, and know how your character views the world. These three determine how your character and your world will interact together.

Interactions can happen a lot of ways. It can happen through the character’s meeting with various creatures in the world. Or, maybe your character is a healer and spends much of their time gathering plants and supplies from nature. They might be an adventurer who has to brave the elements and the difficulties of terrain to reach their goal. Really, the possibilities are endless and allow you plenty of room to show the world to your reader. But the key with this method is that you should treat it the same way you treat an interaction between two characters. You won’t info dump on the reader because an interaction between two characters only reveals bits and pieces of both individuals, not everything. Instead, you’ll reveal only what is relevant to the interaction/scene and the story as a whole. Reveal what needs to be revealed then and no more.

The one difference between this method and an interaction between characters is that you may reveal things about the world that aren’t necessarily serving a specific purpose to the plot. At times, you may choose to reveal things about the world in interactions simply to make the world itself feel richer and more alive or even to reveal something about the person interacting with the world.

Happenings

The final main method for weaving world-building in has more to do with sentence-level inclusions and events. These may not be interactions with your main characters specifically, but they typically affect the character in some way or another. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be seeing it as the readers since you can’t show us what your viewpoint characters don’t see unless you’re using omniscient POV.

With this method, your world-building will be less obvious. It might be a common phrase that’s used by the inhabitants of the world or a common creature that is seen all over the place. It might be some sort of distant report of a creature terrorizing villages on the outskirts of a kingdom. Maybe it’s a brief mention of terrain in an area a character is occupying. One way or another, this world-building method usually doesn’t involve intrusive or overt mentions of the world. This is more subtle and is like the spice added to a dish. It makes everything read better, but your reader won’t notice the individual additions: only the whole of the writing’s flavor.

Conclusion

This type of world-building is more complex than what we often think of as world-building, but it’s also vastly more effective than what we usually see in most writing these days. It takes practice and instinct to do this well, but the instincts surrounding what type of weaving to use and how can be developed the more you write using the methods I’ve given here and in the previous post on this topic.

Work-In-Progress Wednesdays #38

Featured Ariel Paiement

This week’s WIP Wednesday is the last one that will feature Pathway of the Moon since I’m on the last chapter and finishing it up. Enjoy!

~~~

WHEN LEO WALKED through the door of the cottage, Amadeira flung herself at him. He caught her and staggered back before he caught his balance and held her to him. They stood there in silence, and she looked over his shoulder to see Nadar lingering on the doorstep. She caught his gaze and looked at him, praying he’d have the answers she and Leo needed.

He dropped his gaze to the ground, regret twisting his features. Her heart sank. No answers then. She squeezed Leo closer and buried her face in his shoulder, the hot tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. Well, it had been too much to hope that the old world god would know when this kind of thing wasn’t documented anywhere. None of the books documented anything like it, and Bane’s diary said nothing on the matter. She’d checked it three times while waiting for Leo to return, but nothing had turned up.

Leo rubbed her back and pulled away with a sigh. “He didn’t have the answers, Deira.”

She bit her lip and lowered her head.

He cupped her face in both hands. “Hey, look at me.”

Her heart lurched at the raw emotion and affection in his words and his touch. She did as told and found hope warring with sadness on his face. Heart aching, she reached out to run her fingertips over the crease in his brow. “Tell me it’ll be okay?”

He leaned closer and rested his forehead against hers. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart. We’ll figure it all out, but we can’t find any of the answers here. We need to go.”

She sighed. “Are we going on the king’s orders or on our own?”

“On the king’s orders. His men are waiting for us at the Path. They gave us time to say goodbye to this place and grab whatever we needed to take with us.” His fingers tangled in her hair, holding her to him. “Did you pack?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled away.

She blushed and stepped to the side. “Nadar, why don’t you come in and make yourself at home? Leo and I will grab the bags and be right back out.”

He glanced toward the small bedroom and kitchen barely visible from the doorway. Shrugging, he stepped inside and strolled to one of the couches, sprawling out there. His expression neutral, he scanned over the place dispassionately. She gave him a weak smile and hurried after Leo, who was already rummaging through things in the bedroom.

~~~

That’s it for this week! What are you guys up to? If any of you write on Wattpad, are you doing the Open Novella Contest this year? I’m doing it, and I’m really excited about it. I’ve already met the first 2,000 word-count milestone for it. If you guys are doing it too, I’d love to hear what you’re writing about! Feel free to share in the comments.

Idi & The Oracle’s Quest: Characterization and Voice

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

This was the newest book on my list of books read. So far, it’s the only one I’ve finished this year. I’m off to such a great start on that sixty-books-read-this-year goal, aren’t I? Yeah, not really… Anyway, I finished this sometime mid-January but am only just getting to the review for the blog now. As usual, my reader’s review is the same as the one I post to the usual reviewing sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Bookbub. If you are interested in learning more about the craft in the book, skip the reader’s review and go straight to the writer’s review. Or feel free to read both. I don’t really mind.

Reader’s Review

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It could have gone through another edit. There were a lot of little errors and problems that a strong editor could have ironed out of the book, and as an editor, those issues were abundantly clear to me. However, I found the story itself to be entertaining enough, and I don’t feel those problems would keep a reader looking for a quick read from enjoying. Unless you’re the type to be a grammar Nazi, a writer who’s picky about stuff being just right in every way, or a freelance editor like myself, you’re probably not going to notice the issues most of the time.

The characterization was pretty strong with several characters having particularly unique voices, which I appreciated. The variety in character, personality, and voice was refreshing, and I liked the struggles they all went through between choosing right or wrong in the entirety of the story.

That’s another thing. Right and wrong were clearly defined in the book with consequences for doing either clearly outlined too. It’s hard to find books that keep that line from becoming blurred, particularly in fantasy, so I liked that Traynor did this well. If you’re looking for that in your fantasy books, then this book has that going for it, for sure!

I would recommend this story. It’s a good choice for younger kids (pre-teens and up), I would say. There wasn’t anything terribly inappropriate, in my opinion, and the book doesn’t use any foul language. Kids who like adventure books with magic and wizards mixed in will enjoy this, and it’s easily accessible for even reluctant readers.

Writer’s Review

Now the fun part, right? We’re going to pick apart the craft for this book and talk about what could be better as well as what was well done. To begin with, let’s talk about the good things that we can all learn from. I’m going to focus mainly on voice and characterization since I noticed these two elements stood out as being nicely done in this book.

Voice

To begin with, voice was excellent here. When I say voice, I’m specifically referring to the different voices and flavors of speech that characters had. Some authors do very well with this while others don’t. Traynor did well with it. You could tell the difference between characters by the dialogue alone in most cases. The way they phrased things, what they said, and the word choices they used were unique with each character. Some were, of course, more similar than others, but they were all, in my opinion, different enough to allow readers to tell the difference. This can be pretty tough to do, so if you choose to read Idi & The Oracle’s Quest, pay special attention to the different ways Traynor differentiates between characters in dialogue. I think you’ll be surprised at how many ways it can happen with everything from sentence structure to the individual words themselves. It’s often more subtle than you’d think, though in some characters, such as the dwarves that one of the main characters stays with, have more unique voices than others.

Characterization

In many ways, voice is simply a subset of characterization. After all, the way a character speaks says a lot about who they are. However, voice wasn’t the only part of characterization Traynor executed well. Her characters in general feel as if they could be real people thanks to their little quirks, oddities, and practices. No two are alike, however similar they may be at times. Their uniqueness sets them apart from one another and goes a long way toward making the story believable. For me, the characterization was one of the main reasons I kept reading the book. I started it after picking it up in a Facebook review exchange group I’d joined, and we were only obligated to review if we felt we could give the book a good rating (anything above three stars). At first, I wasn’t positive if I could or not because of what the book didn’t do well, but the characterization combined with an overall interesting story-line saved this book from receiving no review or a shelving on the not-finished shelf on Goodreads from me. This just goes to show that many times, even if a reader isn’t fond of your plot or something else in the book, they’ll keep reading anyway if you can invest them in the characters.

A lot of what brought the characters to life was the humanity in them all. Idi started out with a petulant, rude streak but grew into a decent, kind human being. He went through struggles we can all understand (to one degree or another, at least), and I wanted to root for him. I wanted to know what happened to him. His mentor Marcus was also well-rounded. He was a kind old man who sometimes lacked patience but generally was very loving in spite of his insecurities and frustrations surrounding his apprentice. These are only two examples out of many in the book, but they’re good places to start if the area of characterization is something you struggle with.

What the Book Didn’t Do Well

Okay, so this is more a cautionary tale than anything. I know editing is expensive, or at least seems so when you’re a broke author struggling to make it in the highly competitive market, but it’s important. Now, I could tell some effort had been applied to this book, but it fell far short of professional in many places because of missing or misplaced commas, poor sentence structure, or lagging flow in the story. These are all things that, by themselves, wouldn’t necessarily cause a reader to stop reading for pleasure, but they’re certainly going to stand out to one degree or another.

We don’t notice what isn’t there. Unless it should be there, that is. Likewise, we often don’t notice what is there until it isn’t when it needed to be. This book is a good example of that. Mostly, its issues weren’t ones that an average reader would catch every time. They might notice a confusing sentence, a slow paragraph, or even a missing comma here and there. But for avid readers, it’s going to be a stumbling block. And here’s the thing. The avid readers are, many times, the ones who will share your books with all their friends and read them a million times if they really liked them. If they can’t point to a book and tell you it was a good piece of writing, they’re not going to recommend it. The average reader is going to read it, might mention it to one or two people (if they think of it or someone asks), and move on. Maybe they read the next book. Maybe not. If they’re not big readers but really found your book appealing, you may get a bit more exposure from word-of-mouth. Avid readers though are much more likely to become enthusiastic fans. I can say that honestly as an avid reader myself. I’d recommend my favorite authors in a heartbeat, and chances are that I’ll review them, share them, and talk about them too. At the least, I’ll be talking about them, even if I wasn’t directly asked. (Maybe a little too much sometimes).

All that to say that editing matters. It pays off. I know it feels expensive and it’s easier to do it yourself, but unless you’ve got some background in editing or have done a lot of research on it to learn how, it’s only easier because you don’t see all the problems with your manuscript. No one likes to admit it, but that’s the way things are. Even for me, as someone who edits for clients, I find that I don’t catch everything in my work without multiple edits (probably four or five as opposed to the thorough, once-through or twice-through edit I can do for a client), and not even then sometimes. Why? Pretty simple. I wrote it. I know what I was thinking. No one else does unless I communicated it well, and if I didn’t, well, I’m not going to catch on to that little problem unless it’s so obvious that even I don’t understand what I was trying to say. (Then I know there’s really a problem. Probably something along the lines of “I wrote this when I was three-fourths of the way asleep, and I need to rewrite this whole section” kind of problem.) That’s going to be at least equally true of anyone with little to no experience editing.

There’s no shame in that.

But you do need to address it if you want your book to stand out from every other self-published title on Amazon that some beginning writer threw together in hopes of making a quick buck on it. We all know a good cover sells books, but you’re not going to sell more than a few copies if everyone drawn in by the cover wants to leave five pages in because your work is so full of problems it’s impossible to get through.

To be clear, Idi & The Oracle’s Quest was not that bad. It wasn’t bad enough that I couldn’t understand it or wanted to bang my head against a brick wall. It was just bad enough to frustrate me a lot at the beginning and to continue to needle me here and there once I was invested in the characters. But, since we’re trying to learn from what went right and what went wrong with these book reviews, I didn’t want to overlook this important point. Get an editor if you don’t know how to edit. Even if you have to ask a friend who’s good at it to do it in exchange for something else (like a free copy of the book or a really nice dinner out), get an editor. If you can edit proficiently, then find beta-readers. Get input from your intended audience members so that you know what you missed! You will not catch it all because you are hardwired to understand what you are trying to communicate. No one else in the world is. Make sure you know what areas you need to clarify before you go publishing things.

Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful to you all! If you want a copy of Idi & The Oracle’s Quest, you can pick it up in ebook or paperback formats on Amazon. In closing, I would like to point out that this book did have an excellent message. It’s clear that the book has Christian influences to it, so if you’re looking for a good juvenile or YA Christian fantasy, this would be a good choice. It isn’t as clearly Christian or allegorical as Joanna White’s or Allen Steadham’s stuff, but it’s still good. I’d say it’s more like what I tend to write in that it has clear Christian influences, but it isn’t necessarily meant to be expressly Christian through clear salvation themes or Bible verses woven into the text. The influences are there if you’re a Christian or know anything about Christian beliefs, but you won’t be hit over the head with it everywhere you turn either if you’re more in the mood to read a book without serious philosophical undertones.

Flash Fiction Fridays: Face-to-Face

Featured Ariel Paiement

This week’s flash fiction doesn’t go with anything in particular. It’s just a short piece based on the idea of portals and what someone might do if they found one or what they might find on the other side.

~~~

Molly stared at the portal in the small cave. It hadn’t been here yesterday when she’d found the cave in the woods of her new property. Granted, she hadn’t been looking too closely, but she wouldn’t miss a glowing light emitting from the cave, would she?

She glanced around. Should she tell someone? Maybe. But if she did, then she’d have people swarming the property to get a look and reporters hounding her for a story. She bit her lip. Best to keep it to herself. But since she was keeping it to herself, she’d better have a closer look at it, make sure nothing dangerous would come out of it. Like dragons or something. Dragons didn’t exist, of course, but then again, neither did portals, so maybe they did. Regardless, she couldn’t afford trouble coming onto or off of her property. Not after she’d just moved here to get away from the trouble back home.

Heaving a sigh, she climbed down into the cave and trudged to the portal. It didn’t look dangerous. Still, she could be mistaken about it. It might not be a portal. Maybe it was some sort of laser that chopped things to bits. She picked up a stone and chucked it through then walked around to the other side of the glowing portal thing. No stone. Well, whatever this was, it either vaporized things or it was a portal. She could check the vaporizing theory at least. Climbing back out of the cave, she found a stick with good length to it and managed to get it back down into the cave. She shoved that into the portal thing and pulled it back out. Nothing looked any different about the stick. Huh. Maybe it really was a portal.

One way to find out. She sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the glowing ring. For just one frantic heartbeat, everything went dark. Then the light was back, and she stepped out into a barren wasteland. Nothing, not even scrub bushes, dotted the ravaged landscape. Just cracked earth and oppressive heat. She turned to look at the portal behind her only to find a person standing in its place.

A person who looked exactly as she imagined she would if she were twenty years older.

~~~

Well, that’s it for me this week! I hope all of you have an awesome weekend, and good luck to all of you in your writing endeavors. If you’re stuck and looking for inspiration, considering checking out the writing prompts I post on Pinterest. Otherwise, have a great rest of your week!