Bolivar Beato's Blog: Worst Blog in Existence at the End of the Universe

Finally put the finishing touches on my upcoming Instagram ad campaigns. Had to set up a lot of artwork and teasers for all three books and it consumed most of my days.

No reading or writing, I swear I suffered withdrawals; though I did get to finish WoW; Rise of the Horde by Christie Golden tonight and I get to start on Elthea's Realm by John Murzycki which I just downloaded from Amazon. It's my second indie book. I met the author at the author panel in An Unlikely Story a few weeks back. I'm looking forward to it.

I wanted (needed) to get all the work done in one shot so I wouldn't have it looming over me. My mind has a tendency to clutch onto something like a thing that clutches really really hard onto things and not let go (it's late, I'm tired—don't judge me). It'll obsess on a project like that and I'll have trouble focusing on the writing in front of me.

Now that it's all prepped I can use it as I go. Already started using some of the work. I have to say, Instagram is my favorite medium of the social medias. Gotta start promoting the ads and build a following.

For now it's back to the grind one letter at a time.

That's all for now.
Pleasant dreams and see you next week.

About twenty years ago, when I was still learning to write screenplays, I saw a documentary on Pangaea; the Supercontinent. The show purported a theory that at one time, 300 million years ago, all the continents were one.
I thought how cool it would have been if people were alive back then, and the story started taking shape.

The original idea, which is still a big part of the story, was that magic was destroying Pangaea, and that at the end, a magical event tore the continent apart into seven, plus the lost continents, Atlantis and Mu. I would tell the story through the eyes of a boy who was best friends with a magic, living stick (it’s cooler than it sounds). Still a part of the story now, though it has evolved some.

I shelved the story to write other “lesser” stories while I developed my writing and hopefully caught a break. Long story short: failed screenwriting career, sleep apnea, chronic insomnia, brain turned to mush, roughly fifteen years lost. Surgery and medication; apnea and insomnia manageable. Forget screenwriting, I’m gonna write the damn thing!

I love myth. I watched every show and documentary on every myth I could but none more than the ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse gods (at the time that’s what most were about, and I had stopped reading books back then in favor of comics). Then, as the world got smaller and information became easier to find, I watched the shows on other cultures. Over the course of two years after my surgery, Pangaea evolved from a story about two magical forces, elemental and hex, tearing the world apart, to a world where every human myth throughout history is/was real. All because I asked myself, what if, while playing WoW one day a couple of years ago.

What if everyone from the Anunnaki and Aztecs, to the Ikenga and Asgardians, from the Greys to the Lamassu, Tengu, and the Deva, and many others. From Atlantis to Mu to the Mountains of Kong and the Seven Cities of Gold, and that’s just the beginning. Every creation myth to every myth in general; Vampires, Amazons, Shapeshifters, Dragons, etc. All of them. All real. All walking the Earth at the same time 300 million years ago. How cool would that be if all our myths came from real beings, real places, and real events that happened long ago and survived in our folk tales and legends? Then, I just thought, why would their problems be any different from ours?

And so, about a year and a half ago, Pangaea; the End of Days was published. It was a mistake I’d likely make again.

Next post: How and why the End of Days need to die and Age of Immortals (which was the age before the End of Days) needed to represent the entire era.

Bo had been extremely busy the entire week since his last blog post and his mind was preoccupied as he had yet to come close to finishing his latest project. Truth was, he hated talking about himself and his life (or often lack thereof) anyway so it was an easy chore to forget. Right now, however, he had trouble figuring out why his present was being written about in the past tense. Cause you're an idiot, shaking his head. He didn't physically shake it, but rather, he beratingly shook his head in his own mind's eye.

He took a moment from writing to take his players on his mock draft: his real one was set to start in about an hour.

He checked his cellphone, a Samsung J7 that had a few hairline cracks on its screen and was starting to fail (a conspiracy by the cellphone manufacturer to force him into buying a new one; he was certain of it) for the temperature, knowing how important it was to set the scene for the reader, then plugged it in to recharge: he was heading out to his brother's later for a Labor Day BBQ and wanted to maintain a full battery until he left.
Seventy degrees, perfect end-of-summer day, windows open, two fans moving the air briskly through, enough daylight creeping in through the blinds that he didn't need to have the light on but he did anyway to maintain proper light balance when working. His main computer screen was a wide thirty-four-inch (a beautiful beast), his top screen (which was mainly to have two file explores open when he needed to bounce back and forth between files—something the Pangaea books required often for fact-checking between books and other files he kept on the story and such), and his left screen was for random stuff—internet searches, definition confirmations, and, of course, fantasy footfall mock drafts while he worked.

Besides his project, which had been keeping him very busy, he had a fantasy football draft the previous Saturday whose research had also taken up too much of his time. That, along with his project had caused him to forget (secretly gratefully) that Sunday's post. But there he was now, with an hour to kill and no excuses, so, disproportionately exasperated, he trudged onward.

Idiots! he had just been forced to take a defense in the 9th round and now people were taking kickers… He shook his head, this time, he realized, actually physically. It made him wonder how often he did that without noticing it.

Then he suddenly realized with a writer's unique sense of embarrassment that he had been rambling on and had yet to explain the project: Instagram.

Despite his early reservations- Dammit! Draft time already! If he had spent less time staring out the window at the weird empty bucket in his neighbor's yard and what manner of bugs it was likely housing, he might have finished this post in time…

Next week he promised himself he would write about the project and the following week, fer certain and fer sure—cross his fingers hope to die—the Chamber of Creation and Lilith novellas disasters.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Labor Day weekend!

My first author panel went off without a hitch!
If you don't include everything that went wrong…

First, I want to thank Cassie and An Unlikely Story for hosting the event. I learned a lot and had a ton of fun.

I had never done one or even attended one before so I had no idea what to expect. I don't have a fear of public speaking but I do have a good deal of anxiety over it which gets me very nervous. So, I made some notes for myself that I could easily reference. Easy Peasy!

…then I dropped my little folded up piece of paper on the stage as the previous author finished up her monologue.
Like the stubborn fool I am, I refused to get up off the hard wooden (though I'm pretty sure the thing was made out of death, taxes, and nightmares) stool, bend down and pick it up (what a great first impression!)

So I decided to wing it…

Started off great! Referenced one of my favorite quotes, told a few jokes (people laughed), screwed up my simple bio so I joked my way out of it. So far they loved it! Yay!

Then I started talking about my books…

It would not have been so bad if I had just winged and talked freely instead of trying to remember my notes and my checklist, and kept zoning out for a second or two which started me panicking a little. Argh!
To make things worse, the previous day I had just seen a variety clip show where an experience freestyle rapper went on a local TV show (his first time on live tv) and tried to freestyle. You could see the panic set in immediately. That started playing in the back of my mind!!! WHY GOD WHY!!!!!!!

Anyway, I battled through, forgot all the important parts, and delivered a quick, completely out of order, barely intelligible monologue about my books that explained nothing that would give anyone a reason to think they were worth reading.

Sigh.

I'm sure I'll get better cause I don't think I can possibly do worse, LOL.

I know I said this last week but…

Next week, the Chamber of Creation and Lilith disasters. Lol, I seem to have a lot of them.

Thank you for visiting.

The complete "Age" from the birth of the Immortals to the final day of the Armageddon battle is the "Age of Immortals". The End of Days starts when the Children of the Ages first embark on their quest to retrieve the relic until that last day. The EoD is a concept that I had planned on using throughout the expanded series of books. For obvious reasons I can't go into details. Using EoD in the title was a mistake that became apparent a few months after first publication. Fixing that mistake, that took another year. Since published books never "disappear" from goodreads and other sites, I was afraid it might cause confusion, but in the end, I had no choice.

It did, however, give me the chance to make a few major changes in the book to make it read less like a collection of short stories by removing a story arc (the murder and the heist) and placing it in its own book, an upcoming title called Sinners and Saints. Eventually the arc comes into the fold as the two sets of "heroes" meet up toward the end of the relic quest. The mistakes thus far have been big, and fixing them hard, but the experience gained invaluable.


Next week, the Chamber of Creation and Lilith disasters. Lol, I seem to have a lot of them.

Thank you for visiting.

About twenty years ago, when I was still learning to write screenplays, I saw a documentary on Pangaea; the Supercontinent. The show purported a theory that at one time, 300 million years ago, all the continents were one.
I thought how cool it would have been if people were alive back then, and the story started taking shape.

The original idea, which is still a big part of the story, was that magic was destroying Pangaea, and that at the end, a magical event tore the continent apart into seven, plus the lost continents, Atlantis and Mu. I would tell the story through the eyes of a boy who was best friends with a magic, living stick (it’s cooler than it sounds). Still a part of the story now, though it has evolved some.

I shelved the story to write other “lesser” stories while I developed my writing and hopefully caught a break. Long story short: failed screenwriting career, sleep apnea, chronic insomnia, brain turned to mush, roughly fifteen years lost. Surgery and medication; apnea and insomnia manageable. Forget screenwriting, I’m gonna write the damn thing!

I love myth. I watched every show and documentary on every myth I could but none more than the ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse gods (at the time that’s what most were about, and I had stopped reading books back then in favor of comics). Then, as the world got smaller and information became easier to find, I watched the shows on other cultures. Over the course of two years after my surgery, Pangaea evolved from a story about two magical forces, elemental and hex, tearing the world apart, to a world where every human myth throughout history is/was real. All because I asked myself, what if, while playing WoW one day a couple of years ago.

What if everyone from the Anunnaki and Aztecs, to the Ikenga and Asgardians, from the Greys to the Lamassu, Tengu, and the Deva, and many others. From Atlantis to Mu to the Mountains of Kong and the Seven Cities of Gold, and that’s just the beginning. Every creation myth to every myth in general; Vampires, Amazons, Shapeshifters, Dragons, etc. All of them. All real. All walking the Earth at the same time 300 million years ago. How cool would that be if all our myths came from real beings, real places, and real events that happened long ago and survived in our folk tales and legends? Then, I just thought, why would their problems be any different from ours?

And so, about a year and a half ago, Pangaea; the End of Days was published. It was a mistake I’d likely make again.

Next post: How and why the End of Days need to die and Age of Immortals (which was the age before the End of Days) needed to represent the entire era.

It’s been almost a full year since my last post so it’s going to be a bit of a long one. Understanding the importance of social media and taking the time to learn it are two different things, and there are three main things I came to understand about my beliefs and approach to all of it.


1st I have to stop thinking anyone else is like me. I read a book; I care about THE BOOK. Nothing else. I don’t need to know the author or anything about them. Nor do I need to know when the next book will be out. It’ll get here when it gets here. That’s just the way I’m built internally. There was an author who said when a book is published the only thing required of its author is to get out of the damn way. I share her mentality but few people seem to, so I have to stop thinking like that. If the process is important to one reader, it’s important to all readers.

2nd I have to stop acting like no one is reading or will ever read what I post. That’s irrelevant. I have to act like everyone is reading it, even if in the end, it’s just for me. I need to treat it like a tool that will teach me how to talk about my book, process, etc. which I am really bad at. So, I’ll be posting weekly from this point on and treating it as if it matters to whoever eventually ends up reading it. I think that’s the hardest part I had to learn; if I write posts like they don’t matter, then by extension, the reader doesn’t matter, and the reader will likely believe they don’t matter to me. But’s deeper than that.

3rd I read that many readers want to feel connected to or even friends with the author. My problem with this is that it makes me feel like a hypocrite, or worse, might actually make me one. I hate hypocrisy more than any other aspect of the human condition. It bothers me to think that I might become your friend only so you’ll read my book or that it’ll be perceived as such. It’s awful and it makes me feel like a genuine liar. Many people throw friend around carelessly but I do not. I maintain few friendships because it matters to me so much.

So, for me, it’s no longer about whether you fell connected to me or that we’re “friends”, it’s about respecting your time. Time is our most valuable resource. And if you need to feel connected to me to feel more connected to the universe I am trying to show you, then I have to respect the time you are going to invest in it.

Some will think parts or all of this were a mistake to post. I can’t. I won’t ever feel that way about this. I need to be honest about how I feel about this side of the industry and why it will always make me uncomfortable. Thank you for taking the time to read it and hopefully understanding where it is coming from.

That’s enough rambling for one day.

The year:
Been a tough one and had to make some brutal choices regarding the Pangaea series. It’s easy to make a mistake and hard to correct it, and I’ve made a few with this series. But now that I have, I believe I need to clarify for those who end up reading and wanting to follow the series.

Starting with next week I will explain Pangaea’s origins. Then the mistakes, the changes, and the need for them.

If I find one more mistake in the Revelations book...

to the reader they aren't noticeable yet, but they were both major continuity problems (2 "small" nearly inconspicuous words) that I was sure I had carefully considered and gotten correct, one so obvious i feel head-banging-against-the-desk-stupid

...i will put my head under my rear passenger tire and reverse over it.

Don't bother me with your reality, I 'm sure i can find a way.

Anyway; 2/3's finished with Sunslinger, with the 2/3's almost fully edited.

Just sent out the books from my second giveaway. Third (and last for a bit) just started.

Should be getting more feedback soon. The first review from Urban Book Reviews was a good start.

Reached what is probably the halfway point in the Sunslinger book. I'm taking a bit more time with this one, Revelations felt rushed. I like the way its shaping up, and I'm getting a real feel for the main characters and the world as a whole. Trying now to find a balance between detail and wasting the reader's time.

I think I'm starting to get a good feel for who I am as a writer, what kind of storyteller I want to be. I've learned a lot since the Spacedogs book. I will have to go back someday soon, rewrite and reshape the story.

Well, lunch is calling...mango mmmm...

Just finished fixing a problem I didn't really have...or maybe I did. It added a little spice to my books and hopefully did no damage.

I just keep thinking I want to make this easy to read, but a little paprika in the dialogue might be worth it.

Hope it wasn't a mistake.

Back to Sunslinger.