M.D. Presley's Blog

Wow, it's been so long since I blogged that I don't know if I know how anymore. I used to have links and pics and rough drafts, but I think we can all agree that blogging is dead. As is my YouTube channel unless Santa brings be some inspiration for Xmas.

But enough about that. You're here for books! And lucky you, I have a new one coming out December 9th, 2024. It's a fun one where Corbin gets caught up in Kirin's life and friends as they're investigating a new magical drug that's hit the st...

No, this isn't an April Fools' joke. I have written something new. Something fictional as well. More details will come later, and I'll probably do a video breaking this thing down. But for now know that it's on preorder over at Amazon for $3.99, which is a dollar cheaper than it will be when it drops.

Because people still say "drops," right? The cool kids?

As I said, I'll do more in depth stuff later, but it's probably easier to say what this book is rather than what it isn't. It's a non-Dre...

Looking back, I see it's been more than a year since my last blog post. I have been active on my YouTube channel though. Kids are still into that, right? YouTube? It hasn't been supplanted by anything lately, right?

(After watching my son watch online videos, I think my next endeavor will be me doing reaction videos to people writing. That seems like it will have a huge market.)

Anywho, to the point of this: I've finally finished Sol's Harvest, and it's about to come out with book four, The S...

How do you go about creating a fictional world? It all starts with questions. Lots and lots of questions. In order to build your world, you need to know what it looks like, how it works, and what makes it unique. But before you go sketching out your continental drift or looking learning mapmaking rules, these five questions will help fantasy authors know what they need to get started.

And I’ve got one thing most other how to lists don’t: the data to back it up, all based on surveys of what fans...

One of the most important aspects of writing a story is creating a believable and intriguing world for your characters to inhabit. This means creating a rich and detailed worldbuilding foundation that your audience can understand and appreciate. Worldbuilding is not limited to the physical world your characters live in, but should also encompass the cultures, customs, religions, and politics of your created society.

While worldbuilding is a complex and often daunting task, there are a few tried...

In the past, building a magic system for a story was a daunting task. There were so many factors to consider: the source of the magic, how it worked, what it could do, how much it cost, how rare it was, the limitations on its use, and how it related to the world around it.But no longer!With the advent of the AALC Method, magic can now be easily and efficiently built into any story.What is the AALC Method?The AALC Method is a simple and concise way to create magic systems for your story. ...

It's sort of a tradition now that the night before a book goes live that I sit down with a drink (currently a Mai Tai to wash down my Sazerac) to reflect back on the book that's about to clutter up people's shelves. This is the sixth or seventh time I've done this, which I guess is an accomplishment in and of itself. I've stuck with this whole book writing thing quite a few years now. Five, I believe.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/00e01f_dac0b68309114053a182b088c6a5b4c2/480p/mp4/file.mp4

And...

I realized today I could better update my blog by, you know, actually updating it once a week. I've had a lot more activity going on at my YouTube channel (links below), and figured I might as well document them here as well.

Bullet point updates from this last week:

I've put up a "special edition" hardback copy of Worldbuilding for Fantasy Fans and Authors , which I had to do on my own since my cover artist is being all artistic about it. I wanted to put color illustrations in there, but tha...

I know I've been radio silent for a while, but for good reason. We finally turned in that script for a movie version of Yolkman, and it's finally been accepted. And in the downtime from that I've been hard at work on some worldbuilding. In particular, the next book in my Forging Fantasy Realms series. So may I present to you the cover of Fantasy Worldbuilding Workbook, due out August 12th:

As the name implies, it's a workbook for putting together your worlds. It includes 700+ (closer to 800 but ...

Some fun updates to alert you to. Firstly, I added an index to the back of Worldbuilding for Fantasy Fans and Authors. Why? Because I needed to look something up and it took me a long time with the hard copy (I usually just use the find function on my computer since I did write it). And I figured, if I wrote it and I still had a hard time finding the info in the paperback, then it's probably impossible for anyone else.

So I spent a long time finding the page number for each concept and noting ...