Garth Reasby's Blog

    Hello and Happy Apocalypse Year!
 
    Sorry for the silence lately but with the holidays and working on my second book my time has been scarce. I wanted to drop everyone an update though so here it is!
 
    Book 1 Awaken:
    Sales have been pretty good considering I don't have some advertising machine working for me all the time. Feedback has been very positive from everyone I've talked to. That makes me feel good. I'm glad I've produced something that people enjoy. Please keep it coming. I would appreciate it if you could include a line on why you did or didn't like it so I can improve the next book. Thanks!
 
    One thing I've wanted to do is produce a new cover for Awaken as I've never been entirely happy with the one I have. That's on hold because I have to get book two done first. Book two's cover will come next and  then book one's new duds, plus my wife's third book needs a cover as well. So the next few months are going to be SUPER busy. 
 
    Book 2 Evolve:
    Things are proceeding nicely. I'm over a third of the way into the book and rolling along very well. I don't have to tell an origin in this one so it's helped me get the plot rolling far quicker and easier. One thing I have been doing with this one is more planning, and more detailed notes for me so that I can keep everything straight as I move into the future.
 
    Not to toot my own horn but I think this one is better than the first. I've taken the feedback I've gotten from my wife, my editor, and my readers and incorporated it into Evolve. I've got a few more characters coming up in Evolve, both bad guys and good. One of the villains makes me think, "This guy is a bastard's bastard," when I write him. I think that's a good sign. 
 
    I'm still shooting for getting this book out late first quarter or early second of this year. 
 
    The Children of Divinity Series As A Whole:
    My goal with TCoD is to create a world that can be written in continuously. I don't want to just tie it to Jordan, or her family, so I'm positioning it for expansion by adding other characters, other groups, that can be utilized to tell other stories. I want to lay the foundation for it in the first series and then build on it with each subsequent story or series. Right now I've got ideas for three more trilogies that take place in the TCoD world but I'm certain that will grow as I write through book two and three in the series. 
 
    Other Work:
    I've finished off a handful of short stories during the downtime between finishing Awaken and starting Evolve. Two of these are going to appear in an upcoming Talaria Press anthology which I will post and tweet more about as soon as I'm allowed to. SPOILER ALERT: One story has to do with Jordan's younger sister Jill during the events of Awaken so if you want more of TCoD world before Evolve comes out there you go.
 
    Appearances:
    I'll be at Emerald City Comic Con along with fellow writers H.L.Reasby and Ren Cummins, and our Talaria Press SUPER Editor the mysterious Q. We'll have a table (C-22) in the Artists' Alley section. We will have books for sale and we'll be signing them. I plan on generating some event specific discount codes for e-books as well and using Kindlegraph to sign those if desired.
 
    This will be my first event as a writer so I'm not quite sure what I should expect. The con is always fun, and always well stocked with things to do if you are into comics, television, or movies, so come down even if it isn't to see us!
 
    Here's the link! http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/

    This weekend my wife and I were judges in the Washington State First Lego League robotics competition. It is a team oriented event that has kids within a similar age range (3rd to 8th grade seemed to be the range for this event) grouped together to build a Lego robot that performs missions inspired by a theme. At least that's what it looks like on the surface.

    I found it to be far more than a simple competition. Groups of kids from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions are working together to accomplish a goal. They are taught that winning is great but how you win, how you lose, and how you interact with people is far more important than taking a trophy home. They are encouraged to participate in their communities and share these same values with their peers as well as adults. They are also encouraged to learn more about the sciences and engineering, how to manage time, think for the future, and problem solve. There are also robots!

    This theme for this event was food safety. The teams had to understand food safety from a foundational level, not just have robot A perform task B. As a result many of the kids had been to various companies that produce food to learn how it is done and why. They build projects and presentations that are given to the judges, and then they do a mini interview with the core values judges (yes this league has core values) as well as an exercise. I was impressed with the level of maturity that these kids displayed as well as their depth of knowledge, and their enthusiasm was great to see. Oh yeah, did I mention that there are also robots?

    I heard a lot of children talking how they could use what they've learned to help people, or give them a job opportunity when they're older. Keep in mind these kids are generally between 3rd and 8th grade. I remember that age and my thought seldom went to what I was going to do for a living; so it was really cool to see some of these boys and girls looking at their futures in a realistic practical way. Yes I said girls. I thought this was going to be totally gender biased it wasn't and that surpised me. There were tons of girls there, and even a few teams with more girls than boys including one team of all girls. Not once did I hear any of the boys deride a girl because she was a girl making robots. Of course there were the kids who were more A-type than others but that seemed to be spread liberally through the girls as well as the boys. It was somewhat chaotic as all things with young kids can be but everyone seemed to get along no matter who they were.

    All in all the event was very cool and amazing to see. If you have some spare time to donate you should consider helping these great people out. I'm sure they will take money too, or you could help put a team together. Either way it won't be a waste of resources for you, or time. If you have kids this is a great way to introduce them to teamwork that isn't just about winning but winning well, and winning right.

 
    FLL, thanks for having us this weekend. My wife and I really appreciated the opportunity and hope to participate at the next event.

    I was going to launch into a series of blog posts about my writing and how I went about certain things. I'm going to put that on hold for a couple of weeks. Why? I have a more important topic. That topic is Operation E-Book Drop.

    Operation E-Book Drop is an effort founded by independent author Edward C Patterson and Smashwords co-founder Mark Coker. The project's aim is to make e-books available for free to our service men and women overseas using a Smashwords coupon code that reduces the price to $0.00. Why do this you ask?

    I can only speak to why I've done it, and I'll try not to pontificate too much. You decide if you think it's a good enough reason for you to participate.

    For me it comes down to the people. Like war or not, back it or not, it's fought by people. Our people. Some of these people may very well be the blood thirsty war mongers some have called them. I doubt that most are.

    I've known my fair share of servicemen and women and every single one of them was just like you or I. They came from different backgrounds and different ethnicities. Some joined the military to secure our freedoms, some to get money for college, some because it was the only opportunity they had to better their life. These are just people. Good, bad, and everything in between.

    The difference is that they are giving their lives for us, for a war that is ugly, and not popular, and have been for years. They spend much of their time away from family and friends and the comforts of home. They do this for us even if that wasn't their reason for signing up. They are under a tremendous amount of stress and have to face things on a daily basis that would break many people.

    One of the most common ways that soldiers rest and relax, as I have been told, is to read books. A friend of mine that spent a lot of time in the desert said that reading a book allowed him to take his mind away from the war, away from the violence, and let him just decompress. To me that made sense as I do the same thing when I have a stressful day at my job, and I'm not being shot at or mortared. So when I asked what he read he replied with a ton of different sci-fi and fantasy titles. This was years ago. How does this relate to the present?

    Two days ago my wife came upon Operation E-Book drop while surfing the net and explained to me what it was trying to do for military men and women. So I gave her an enthusiastic "Sign me up!" She sent out a request to get e-mails for us to send Smashwords coupon codes to and we ended up getting over 170 responses asking for e-books.

    I'm very thankful for the sacrifices that the servicemen and women have made for us and I hope that my book will give them some entertainment and some stress relief.

    If you're an author and want to participate please check out the following links. Obviously different people want different sorts of books so take a look at the forums and see what people want and don't want. Also, this is largely on the honor system so if you may want to recycle your coupon codes every so often and send new ones out so you don't have your books get posted all over the internet for free. I'm watching my Smashwords dashboard to see how many books are going out so if I'm suddenly at 1000 downloads I'll know I need to expire the coupon and send a new one out.

Amazon Forums

http://www.amazon.com/forum/meet%20our%20authors/ref=cm_cd__ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2UYC1FC06SU8S&cdThread=Tx24PGX6ZALLZHJ&displayType=tagsDetail

Kindleboards Forum

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,13352.0.html

Facebook Fan Page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-EBook-Drop/172002003420

If you want to donate some hard copies of your books please check out Operation Paperback

    Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Garth

    Since the release of my book out I've gotten a ton of questions about how I went about writing it. I thought that it would be easiest to just answer the non-face to face questions here on my blog. The winner of the question contest has been; do you plan everything out or just go by the seat of your pants?

    Little did I know there are actual terms for these methods. Planner or Pantist. I don't know if they're official but I've seen a lot of other authors use these so I will too, at least for the duration of this post.

    My answer then, is both. Maybe 35% Plan 65% Pants.

    I spent time working through the structure of the main events and how they interconnected with one another. I also placed key events and kernels of information that would never be truly important in book one. I seeded these for books two and three. I based where I placed them on the act I was on, and if they would have an impact on downstream actions or ideas in book one. I had an Excel spreadsheet listing branches and so on and so forth. This let me stay on track with the overall plot of the book as well as keep the subplots rolling along. Then, out of the blue, surely as a ninja hides in the dark, some idea ambushed me and took me in a different direction than I intended.

    In a span of about ten minutes I derailed half of my story because I decided to do something different with the main plot. In my opinion the idea added depth to the work but it also fundamentally changed the story. As a result I noted what I wanted to do down, copiously. I used that energy and momentum to tie the changes into what I was planning for the rest of the book, the impacts on the characters, and how that would impact downstream on books two and three.

    After that was done I had to go back and look for impacts at the start of the manuscript. It wasn't a small task by any means as my change came about mid way through the manuscript. The Excel sheet and structure let me really find the things that had to be changed as a result and made sure I was still on track for books two and three by the time book one was done.

    Structurally this is about as seat of the pants as I get, at least so far.

    When I'm deep in writing a scene is where the real seat of the pants action comes in.

    I try to write organically, and let the flow of the character's dialogue and actions influence where the scene goes rather than trying to plan out every exchange. This is especially true in combat scenes. All I really know is the starting point of the combat, and the final out come (most of the time).

    I'm a very visual person so when I write these combat scenes out I'm literally imagining every move, and what a trained (to the limit of my knowledge) combatant would do as a reaction. I really see combat as this dance, it's alive, it's viceral, and it has beats. It has breath and momentum. I'm not saying I am a worldly fighter of men, or master warrior but I've been in my fair share of situations that involved someone being hurt (sometimes me), and someone winning (not always me). In each and every one of those situations I've felt the training I've had kick in. I knew what to do when I needed to do it. However, a fight is messy. People don't come at you the way you want them to. The environment can be against you as well. When training fails you have to rely on instinct to get you through.

    I really tried to capture this in my writing.

    I wanted it to feel as real as possible. Each combatant needed to display the level of training they had according to their back story, and their current physical condition. Considering that my main protagonist is a super powered spy with more training and experience than I'll ever see it was a daunting task.

    Chances are I'll do a post specifically on how I write combat scenes just because I could go on for a while about the subject. I'm going to get back on topic now.

    To Pants or not to Pants? Again I say both. Structure is the roadmap to get you from your starting point to your final destination while making sure you always have a gas station to refuel at. Seat of the pants is stopping at that little country store you're driving by for the most amazing strawberry ice cream you will ever eat.

    Your gut will often tell you that the planned out structure isn't working well the way you planned. When you're in the moment you'll just have these ideas blossom on how a scene, a conversation, or a chapter is going. I think it's good to head down that path. If you're using Word or some software to write save your work under a different iteration and then charge forward. If you find that the idea wasn't good you won't lose anything but a little time and you can jump back and get back on plan without having to reconstruct what you had before.

    Make sure to hold on to your work. I created what artists call a Morgue. Instead of containing art it contains writing. I never deleted anything that felt right to me permanently, I saved it, kept it in my morgue just in case I had a reason to bring it back. The spark of inspiration that made me produce it in the first place was probably good and I don't want to waste that. Maybe the idea didn't fit as well as I liked in the spot I had written it in but there was more than one occasion where I dug it out of the morgue to use later on. More seat of the pants? Yep because I like strawberry ice cream.

    Anyways, that's my take on it.

Keep writing!

Garth

I've been published for roughly a week and already I've seen some good sales numbers and I've gotten some positive feedback. First of all, Thanks! I appreciate the time invested in reading my work and the additional time spent sending e-mails, Tweet DMs etc. Feel free to communicate with me. I may not answer the same day because I'm wiring or working the day job but I will get back to you. I may answer some questions here in my blog if I get multiple requests for the same piece of information.

Someone has already asked me when Book 2 is coming out and here's the answer. Next year. I'm aiming for first quarter. I hope to have the first draft done by January. I've got to complete a short story for an anthology I've been included in prior to really hitting Book 2 hard so I ask you to bear with me. On the bright side the story I'm writing ties into Awaken and focuses on Jordan's youngest sister Jill. Once I can release some real details about the anthology I will but for the moment I have been sworn to secrecy.

Once again, thank you all! No really. I appreciate it!

It's with much excitement and exuberance I write this blog post.

I'm a published author. 

What does that mean? It's hard to put into words if you haven't been there but let me give it a go. Imagine that you've just won the lottery, found out you got that promotion you wanted, and met your favorite movie star all at once. There's just this energy that fills you when you realize and accept that you've created this work with your own two hands.

 
I'm a sometimes artist as well and I've had my work utilized for book covers and other things over my life. It was great seeing my work out there. It really was, but the feeling pales in comparison to having this book, this paper child, held in your hands. The rush of holding this thing that you've labored to bring into existence is something that I really hope persists over the long term.

 
My only advice is that if you're thinking of, in the process of, or even musing that you could be, writing a book then do so. Even if it goes nowhere, or makes no money, you will still have a sense of accomplishment that will invigorate you. Don't pass it up.

Before I run off to bask in this accomplishment I want to take a moment to thank the people that helped me get to this point.

My wife Heather first. She's been incredible and supportive and never doubted that I could do this. When I had concerns about what I was writing she was there to give me critical feedback as well as encouraging me to keep working. Heather passed on her own experiences to me as well as made sure I had time to write by taking on some of my household responsibilities. She's also an author and is working on her third book amongst several other projects so I appreciate her taking the time for mine.

Second I would like to thank fellow author and someone who's essentially part of my family Ren Cummins. He and I talk nearly every day and he functioned as a great sounding board for my ideas. He too offered a lot of support both professionally and emotionally. His insights and experiences helped me avoid some of the pitfalls he has run into.

Next my friend and editor Quiana. She's tough, she's relentless and she's unfailingly honest. The quality of my finished work is much higher thanks to her feedback and suggestions. I tend to think my friends are biased but I know that Quiana will tell it like it is. Any author or creator needs that. It anchored me and kept me going in the right direction even when I plan to keep working with her in the future and hopefully she'll decide to write something herself!

Last but not least my friends John and James. If I got to pick my family they, and Ren, would be my brothers. John and James aren't writers, they aren't artists, but they are good hard working people. They stand by their friends day in and day out no matter what. They've supported me through the writing/creative process and have been understanding when I've had to spend less time hanging out so that I could focus on my writing.

To say that all of these people have been a blessing in my life is an understatement. If everyone had these sorts of people, quality people, in their lives the world would be a much better place.

Now, off to spend quality time with my book ;)

So Amazon has once again exceeded expectations in the reader department. According to a report on Gizmodo the new Kindle Touch is $99. Yeah. $99. Wow. Amazon amazes me with its ability to cut the price on this device line. The Kindle Fire (Read Color) is only going to be $200.00 too!

The Fire is a cloud based device also and that means it will have access to content galore. Granted it doesn't have all of the iPad features and it is Wi-Fi only but that's still a powerful little device with a good price.

Now onto the $79 Kindle. This is the same size as the Kindle Touch but without the touch controls. I haven't seen any details on performance or features for this model but I would guess that it is comparable to what is out right now.

All in all this is great news for the self-published, or traditionally published. More devices in more hands=More readers. At 79 bucks I think we're going to be seeing these devices all over the place.

Check the report out here.

http://gizmodo.com/5844629/the-new-kindle-is-only-79

I'm going to be honest. I haven't done crap with this blog. I've been working on getting my book done as well as some short stories, researching for a second trilogy, doing book covers, starting a company, and working the day job. Oh, and let's not forget being married.

Now that the excuses are out of the way…

I'm going to blog more. I realize that it is an investment in my audience and a good opportunity to reach readers, potential readers, and show them a piece of who I am. It will also let me show what I'm working on. That being said welcome friend. Sit down, pull up a seat, and let's chat.

Due to time constraints of my day job I haven't really been able to break ground on this site.

Consider it broken!

Welcome! Come on in and have a seat.

I'd love to actually blog here every day but I won't promise that. Honestly, I'll be working on my book, working on other writing, and working on my art more than blogging.

I hope you like what you see and read. I know some of my comments won't make everyone happy but that's a good thing. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by

Thermal