Author Appleton

Writing. Fantasy. Sci-fi. Mystery

fiction

The Phantom’s Blade now available!

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My new fantasy novel is available in paperback and on Kindle! From across the sea the Maiden Voyage has failed to return to the Hemmed Land, leaving Ilfedo to wonder at the fate of his beloved Warrioresses… This story focuses on Ilfedo as none of the previous novels have. We see him for the grief-ridden man that he is… and we see his choice to rise above that grief and rejoice in the choices he’s made.

The Hemmed Land is in political confusion thanks to Vortain’s dissidence. As mayor of Ilfedo’s chief city Vortain holds great political sway. He openly opposes Ilfedo’s proposal to form a rescue expedition to bring the people of Dresdyn to the Hemmed Land, and regards the young woman Ilfedo brought back from the Hidden Realm with deep suspicion. Even more strong is his opposition to Lord Ilfedo’s declaration that, as the albino long ago prophecied, the entire population must seek a new homeland.

Holding himself to a promise, Ilfedo will not be swayed from seeking the people of Dresdyn. His allies are strong now. Few in the land hold the wisdom of Brother Hersis, and fewer still command the same respect in the military as Lord Ombre, and none have risen so high in the esteem of the people as Oganna.

An expedition launches to seek out the people beneath the desert sands, and only Ilfedo truly recognizes the nature of the enemy they face.

Please share with your friends and fellow fantasy enthusiasts! Christmas is a great time of year to continue this epic story.

The interrupted writer

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A writer is an artist and as such when we are writing our creative process is subject to the same rules as any other artist. We can be interrupted, discouraged, and our creativity can be drained. Writing takes patience and time. If you’re a writer who has been interrupted, or if you are someone with a writer in your family… you need to read this.

Many times I have found that people who are close to me have the greatest difficulty in giving me that space to be creative. When I am sitting in front of my computer or a notebook for an hour or two and I have written nothing, I can understand why they approach me. I’m sure from their perspective it looks like I am either bored or being lazy. But the opposite is true.

These times of quiet are necessary to producing a great piece of writing. It is not dissimilar to a painter staring at the blank canvas, staring for hours, contemplating, envisioning what they can create. A writer needs that time just as much as the painter does.

Requests by family members to help with a chore or run an errand may seem insignificant, but they are not. The creativity that was flowing for that last hour, once interrupted, is difficult to recover. Portions of story that I was piecing together, conflicts of emotion that I was envisioning for my characters, all of that is put in jeopardy when I am interrupted.

To the observer the writer is a fragile, unpredictable creature. Once interrupted they might turn in anger, or they might respond sweetly to you. They might even seem to display profound sadness.

These reactions are true of me. When writing I am unpredictable. I am best left alone. The creative process drowns me in a universe of emotions that are unfulfilled and until the creative process has finished I am in the same emotional state that I am dwelling my mind upon.

When you interrupt the writer you do not know if you are speaking to the hero, the heroine, the weak, the strong, or even the villain. The writer is all of these things as they write. They become all things for their story so that their art is perfected.

Q: Are you the interrupted writer or the interrupting family member? How true is this for you?

My intention with “The Phantom’s Blade”

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I do not write stories simply to tell them. I do not look for the stories to merely entertain. I want them to have staying power and so they reflect the moments of my life. My next story explores the grim reality of loneliness and the hope of companionship. It shapes a future that is ever brighter because we must place our hope not in ourselves, but in the strength we find in doing good. Enter The Phantom’s Blade (The Sword of the Dragon book 4).

November 6th is the date! Finally it’s time to continue The Sword of the Dragon series and see what happens next with Ilfedo, Oganna, and Ombre.

I am so excited for this! It’s been a few years that I’ve been working on the material for this novel. The hardest part for me when writing Key of Living Fire was to leave a slew of newly-found characters in the underground city of Dresdyn. There are elements of the Hemmed Land’s history that have long hinted that they came from a land long lost. A history where technology was far in advance of what Ilfedo’s people currently understand as they exist in a near-medieval condition.

This book was written with sweat and tears… almost literally 😉 as I struggled to balance the many things going on in my life. Family, work, illness, moving to South Carolina, my fourth child being born, and now moving into our first house. It’s an exciting time as God has opened the doors so that now I can build a home business of writing, speaking, and editing. When your read my novels you are reading a reflection of what has happened and is happening in my life. My confusion, my revelations, my times of pain and of joy. The characters are put through much so that I can continue to evolve as a writer. So that my writing is not merely the telling of stories, but rather the sharing of visions striven for and attained.

Stories change hearts. Stories make a difference in our lives and in our culture.

So be sure to mark your calendar and warm a spot on your bookshelf for The Phantom’s Blade (The Sword of the Dragon book 4). Available on November 6th 2015.

How Star Wars impacted my thinking on stories

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I was probably around nine years old. I remember sitting in my grandfather’s living room, my eyes glued to his television. He had an extensive collection of VHS tapes and he was fond of science fiction. That day he played Star Wars: A New Hope… and with a few swings of his lightsaber Alec Guiness convinced me that Ben Kenobi was the coolest sort of hero.

Yep, I’ve been a fan ever since! I love looking back at that moment when I saw Star Wars for the first time. I can recapture that sense of amazement experienced only in that first moment of discovery. I already loved stories. I read extensively and wrote quite a few of my own fictional pieces, yet up to that point I think space opera and fantasy had not entered my realm of creative thinking. My first brush with anything close to it had been Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of the Christian life that feels fantasy-ish.

In Star Wars I recognized the value of different strong personalities in story. Han Solo of course would not let anything water down his swashbuckling attitude. He opposed everyone on his team and loved everyone at the same time. Ben Kenobi took every perilous encounter in sober stride, wisely weighing the consequences of his actions and of those around him. He was feeble yet in his eyes was a playful, indomitable will. He would not be denied. Even R2D2 and C3PO possessed unique personalities that made them generationally memorable.

To my young mind these characters were the catalyst for an amazing array of story possibilities. I remember staying up late at night telling my own Star Wars spinoff stories to my brother and sister. In childish fun these spinoffs often degenerated into silliness. (I remember one particular tale where Princess Leia met up with Emperor Palpatine and turned her own powers on him, thoroughly decimating him).

Looking back I realize that all of those silly spinoffs were the continued growth of my creativity.

Star Wars stories helped me realize that storytelling has no limits except those that we place upon it. What you imagine, you can create. What you fear, you can face. What you aspire to be, you can become. Strange places that don’t even exist, you can visit.

The imagination is limitless and its power is exploration to reveal to us the elements of story that matter to us. The elements of story that define the choices we make. The characters whose interactions help us understand how we want to interact with people in real life. The characters that help us understand why we find certain people more interesting than others.

Q: How did the stories you enjoyed as a child impact the person you are today?

 

How to avoid cookie-cutter characters

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Cookie-cutter characters kill fiction. Weak villains and weak heroes, characters that we can easily forget. How do we avoid this to strengthen the books we write?

Remember that childhood tale of the Gingerbread Man? Oh yes, he was cut out of cookie dough and ran away from the little old woman, shouting, “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” He ran until he came to a river and there the sly fox fooled him and at the last ate him.

The story is simple by design, yet it gives readers and incredibly memorable impression of the gingerbread man. Why? Because in a short time you understand the gingerbread man’s primary traits. Namely, he is over-confident and brainless. He is so consumed by his desire to escape everyone that wants to eat him that he jumps into bed with the devil himself.

Create memorable characters by focusing on the traits that make them themselves. What makes them tick? What makes them different from their peers, or do they follow the crowd? What strengths can they use to rise above their circumstances… or what failings will we see bring them to a miserable end?

It was said of J.K. Rowling that she created 3rd dimensional characters in her Harry Potter series, and I quite agree. The characters had personality. They had depth. We could feel what they were feeling, or at the least understand the motivations behind their actions.

All great fiction stories are like this, even if they are plot-driven rather than character-driven. Weak characters will kill any good story. If you mold them in the image of known characters the readers will resent it, or at the least find it forgettable. But if you fashion a new individual with their own set of traits and deep-rooted motivations for the actions they take, you will create a story worth re-reading. One that one generation will treasure for the next.

Q: What stories have you felt use too many “cookie-cutter” characters?

Divinity and accountability in Fiction

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When writing I have often pondered the futility of leaving God out of the story. His presence, whether embodied or as a distant spirit-being, omnipresent and omniscient, is necessary even in fiction. Without an ultimate accountability characters lose their punch.

All stories need a level of good versus evil. Characters make choices between right and wrong. Humanism would have us believe that we do not need God to explain the choice between good and evil, whereas the standard of morality we know is completely dependant on Him.

Western society is founded on the moral system passed down by Judeo-Christian values. Without a Common Standard of morality society is left to the whims of its individual members. One person may say that stealing is wrong, but another may say it is not because they believe in survival of the fittest.

Why is sin always sin? Why believe in truth and falsehood? Because we do have a standard in the laws passed down by God through Moses and the prophets and Jesus Christ.

This is pivotal in writing. Literature needs to reflect that God is the same always, whether in the past or in the present or in the future. An eternal being whose standards are not dependant on our desires, whims, or failings.

Without that standard a story becomes dependent on the characters’ perspectives. But when that standard is used the story gains coherancy because all actions, whether good or bad, have consequences temporal . . . and eternal.

Freedom of choice does not mean your characters can escape the fact that they are created beings.

Question: How does accountablity to God factor in the fiction you read and write?

Sneak preview! The Phantom’s Blade

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First draft of The Phantom’s Blade is done! Coming this Fall 2015 this novel is the highly anticipated fourth installment in The Sword of the Dragon series. I am pleased to present this sneak peak at the novel, its opening chapter. Enjoy!

ThePhantom'sBlade coverThe Phantom’s Blade (The Sword of the Dragon series) book 4

Chapter 1: Despair beyond the Sea

Caritha gazed out over the inlet’s deep blue water to the sea beyond, and she sank to her knees on the sand. Despite the clear sky on this cool afternoon, the sea boiled around the splintered hull of the Maiden Voyage. Sea serpents raised their heads as the coils of their slimy dark bodies squeezed the ship and foamed the water. Somewhere beneath the waves sank the bodies of the captain and the crew. Bravely they had fought to ensure that the last Warrioress made it to dry ground.

Sweat had dripped from the captain’s thick nose as salt water sprayed his face. He had driven a pike into one serpent’s body, drawing its attention away from her. “Get to land, lass! The ship is lost,” he had said.

“No! My sisters and I can fight with you.” She had aimed her sword at another of the creatures as it twisted its length around the ship’s bow. The sword glowed dull orange, but no matter how hard she tried she could throw no energy from it.

“No!” She knew then, knew all too well that her gift to Ombre had cost her more than she had imagined it would.

The deck had buckled, throwing her against the rail. Water had rushed beneath decks and the captain had braced himself, his large feet wide apart. “Fight? You cannot fight in the water. This ship is going down. You have only minutes to make up your mind.”

Another serpent had leaped out of the sea, smashing its length over the prow of the Maiden Voyage, and Caritha had glanced at the monster. But the captain had somehow moved across the splintering deck and grabbed her in his thick arms.

“When this ship goes down the serpents will make short work of all of us, my lady. With God as my witness I’ll not let you die when I could have saved your life.” He had heaved her over the ship’s side. When she had floundered from under the water and her head had broken the surface, a serpent had swum under her kicking feet. But it had ignored her and rammed the wooden ship. “Get to shore while there’s time,” the captain had yelled at her.

She had felt tears stinging her eyes as she, with difficulty, sheathed her sword and swam toward an inlet surrounded by mountains of ice. Her last glimpse of the captain, he and a member of his crew were desperately clubbing a serpent’s body as it coiled around the main mast and snapped it.

Now, standing on that unknown shore with her sisters, she felt hope sink with the Maiden Voyage. Not only had they failed to find a land suitable for relocation, until now they had found no land at all, and now that they had . . . They had landed in a place of apparent desolation and the cold wind whispered down the slopes of the sharp peaks that glistened like diamonds in Yimshi’s light. They were cut off from civilization, far from home without means of returning. It had been a long sea voyage. She couldn’t even guess how far they were from home.

Laura stepped up beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Rose’el trailed Levena and Evela as they too joined her.

Rose’el growled as she grabbed fistfuls of her dress and wrung water out the material. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced over her shoulder at the frozen world of white. “I don’t care what’s in that sea. I am going to swim back across, find a little house in the Hemmed Land, force a nice gentleman to marry me, and then settle down until I am old and very, very gray.”

“Be serious for once, Rose’el.” Caritha turned toward the ice mountain that rose a couple hundred feet away from the water. She studied its jagged form, the smooth polish of its surface, and she dropped to the ground and punched the sand.

Laura knelt beside her and rubbed her back. “It will be all right, Caritha. Do not fear. Remember what Father said to Evela when we started our mission to find Kesla?”

Caritha remembered. She recollected the powerful white dragon turning his pink eyes on her and her sisters, as they faced the portal to the Eiderveis River. She had been merely seventeen years old at the time. “I will be watching over you even when you cannot see me,” he had said.

She shook Laura off and rose. “Don’t you see? Things are different now.”

“No they are not!” Laura said.

“Look around, my sister. Better yet, take a look at the sea and tell me if you see anyone alive. Where are the captain and the crew of the Maiden Voyage? Do their lives matter to you? And what of Ilfedo, Oganna, and Ombre? They are waiting for our return before they set out to find the dragon Venom-fier. We have failed and they have no way of knowing.”

Laura and Evela hung their heads. Levena sniffed.

“Feel glad that we are alive,” Caritha said and covered her face with her hands. “But weep that so many have died on our account.”

She withdrew her hands from her face. Why hadn’t she noticed before that the shore on which she stood and the mountains of ice . . . they were familiar somehow? White clouds rose over the ice mountains, sailing over the peaks and filling the sky. A frigid wind caressed her arms, threatening to turn her wet dress into ice.

The sandy ground trembled and the mountains of ice crackled, sounding like miniature releases of thunder. Something living warbled in the distance. Between the mountains before them a long-necked creature slid into view. As it drew closer, Caritha caught her breath, for the creature was enormous with four flippers for limbs. It was as white as Albino, with a bulbous blubbery body.

From the creature’s nostrils water shot forth and struck her. Her sisters fell back and rolled into the inlet. But she drew her sword and closed her eyes, with all her might focusing on deflecting the water. The sword fed off her dragon blood, splitting the water to either side of her. The creature kept up its deluge until Rose’el and Levena stumbled to Caritha’s side and joined their blades with hers. Blue energy blasted from the united blades, knifed through the water and struck the creature’s head.

The creature warbled as the water ceased to flow from its nostrils. It lumbered back a hundred feet and warbled toward the mountains. Suddenly the mountains filled with innumerable warbles and another of the creature’s kind slid into view. Only, when it approached, it loomed even larger than its companion.

Its head rose far above them and it smiled down upon them. Needle-like teeth ringed its enormous mouth. It dwarfed even the great albino himself.

“Daughters of the great white dragon, how foolish of you to come to my lands. Do you not know that all who come here are never heard from again? Not even your dragon father could save you from the fate you have brought upon yourselves, for he dares not touch me. I am Cromlin, king of the water skeels, and today your lives are at an end.”

His nostrils cast water upon them and, as they threw their swords up to block the deluge, beams of light shot from his eyes. The beams cut through their defenses, and struck them to the ground.

They ran toward him, swords aimed for his thick body. They reached him and stabbed. The blades sank up to their hilts, yet drew no blood. Cromlin gazed down upon them and warbled, while his companion did the same. The sound rang into the mountains, into their ears, and built its intensity.

Pressure built in her ears. Caritha saw first Evela and then Rose’el drop to the ground, putting their hands to the sides of their heads. Soon she, too, succumbed.

Cromlin lumbered toward the inlet and smashed his fore-flippers together. A wave of sound struck Caritha’s chest, forcing air out of her lungs.

Addressing them in a voice that rang around them and into the ice mountains, Cromlin said, “You have fought worthy of a Water Skeel.” He lowered his neck, bringing his head within ten feet of their heads. “But you are no match for me!”

Caritha felt exhausted. She tried to summon her dragon blood. It warmed, then cooled inside her. She glanced at her sisters, but their faces froze in terror and tears formed in their eyes. Cromlin pulled back his head and a stream of water from his nostrils slammed into Caritha’s chest. The impact threw her and her back crushed against a boulder. The water continued to storm upon her, unending and unyielding. Every bone in her body conformed to the stone against which she was pressed, painfully stretching and bruising her body.

Beside her, Rose’el was pressed into the sand beside Levena, unable to move from under the water’s force. On Caritha’s other side Laura and Evela raised their swords into Cromlin’s onslaught.

Painfully raising her own sword, Caritha touched her sword tip to theirs. “Join with me, my sisters!” A wall of energy formed between the swords, a wall that surged against the water and turned it away.

Cromlin laughed and bore down upon her. His gargantuan body slammed into the beach. He slapped a flipper atop Rose’el and Levena, and struck Caritha, Laura, and Evela with the other. She might as well have attacked a wall as defend against so large a flipper. It rammed her against the boulder, and then withdrew.

“Your puny powers cannot compare to the might I wield!” Cromlin slid to the inlet and dug his flippers into the water. Five large cubes of ice formed between his flippers and he effortlessly plucked them out and chucked them at Caritha and her sisters.

Caritha glanced to either side, but her sisters had been separated too far from her to intercede. As a cube shot toward her, time seemed to slow. She watched it somersault through the air and felt, as it were, ice darts precede the object. Stabbing pain peppered the front of her body. She could barely move.

Tears that she longed to cry refused to come as she struggled with her sword. At last she managed to sheath it. She reached with a trembling hand into her pocket and untied the precious ring that Ombre had given her, slipping it onto her finger. Her body temperature dropped and icicles formed on her hair, hanging in front of her face—she was freezing alive!

But with her last moment of consciousness, as the end embraced her, she laid her hand against her chest and looked down at the engagement ring. The diamond glistened as ice covered it. She should have said yes to Ombre a long time ago. Now it was too late. “But I do love you,” she whispered. “And if God had allowed me to see you again, I would have been fully yours.”

How to Create Memorable Villains

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Most good stories that stand out in my mind as extremely memorable involve an extraordinary villain. One of my favorite films is The Black Hole, an old Disney science-fiction film. All of the characters in that movie are dramatic actors and the villain (as played by Maximilian Schell) is extremely memorable. He is a brilliant scientist and brooding. Every moment on screen he manages to drive deeper into your mind the threat he poses.

I remember when I was a kid sitting at my grandfather’s house and watching Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time (back then it was on VHS tape). The duel between Vader and Ben Kenobi fixated my attention like nothing else. I was intrigued. Who was this Vader? Why had he changed into a “master of evil” as Kenobi put it? These questions are the type that any good villain will raise in the mind of a book reader or a movie viewer.

Often a fiction writer focuses on finding ways to make the reader relate to the hero in the story. They show the character’s weaknesses and show how he/she overcame them in order to mature into the protagonist you’ll love. But too often the antagonist is a “cookie cutter villain.”

In the Harry Potter books Voldemort was glimpsed from his youth and shown as a ruthless man. In Tolkien’s The Silmarillion Melkor was revealed as being a corrupter of all good things… My point? There are many ways to approach villain creation as long as you take the time to develop that villain’s history.

When approaching the villains in my stories I try to remember that the characters’ histories will enable the reader to care about what happens to them. For example, when I wrote the opening for Swords of the Six I had to make the reader care about the villains so that they would want those villains to pay for their crimes, but I wanted the reader to be intrigued and ask questions as to why and how the villains had become the characters seen in the story.

It is imperative that you ask yourself:

  1. What kind of childhood did this villain have? An orphan, an only child, or one of many children. A happy home or a depressed one. All of these considerations make us care about the villain even if we are rooting for their destruction.
  2. Who mentored this villain, or whom do they look up to? Parents or the lack thereof and the mentors they look up to will shape the person you become. Understand how your villain thinks by understanding what mindset those around him have encouraged.
  3. What motivates them in their villainous deeds? Often the motivation is power, yet the quest for supremacy is not motivation enough. There is an ideology behind each villain and reasons that they have forsaken a moral code. Know what motivates them and you will understand how they can change through the story in their encounters with other characters.

In The Black Hole the villain is an insane but genius scientist. He is both indispensable to the protagonists and at the same time they cannot allow him to continue.

In writing a villain we need to understand the personality’s impact on the fictional world and also what drives that personality. Adding depth to the character enables greater risk and greater reward when said villain is defeated or converted. Creating memorable villains is hard, but oh so worth it! In Swords of the Six I had the opportunity to show several types of villains, each with different motives, and the result was a story that leaves me the writer eager to explore the villains in depth and be more creative in determining their demises.

Q: Which villains stand out to you and why?