Keith R. Mueller's Blog

Our English language and grammar is very confusing at times! Take these two words: “accept” vs. “except”. Sounding out the word won’t help – they even sound alike (homophones)! How and when these words are used largely depends on the context of your writing.

Merriam-Webster defines the verb “accept” to mean “to receive or take something willingly”, such as responsibility or a package/gift. The word “except”, can be used as a verb , but is more commonly used as a preposition. Its meaning can...

Keith held an interview with Carol Blonder of Networking Arizona May 21, 2018. Click this link or the image below to hear the interview and Keith’s ideations for his book series “After: The Near Earth”. and his latest book, “The Devil’s Rifle”.

The post Keith’s interview with Carol Blonder, Networking Arizona appeared first on Keith R. Mueller, Author.

PEORIA, AZ, OCTOBER 11, 2016: Can heroes Kel and Lyria overcome dystopian societal tyrants amid challenges in a post-apocalypic world? Local author Keith R. Mueller captures this adventure in his new novel, Journey To The Black City,.

The ancient cataclysm that devastated this world happened over two thousand years ago. Since then, two sets of survivors arose: one created a few vast city-states, taking residence in the megalopolises of once-great sky-touching cities of men; the other banded t...

I saw this confusing hyphen format used during a local news report regarding the late Arnold Palmer’s age. According to this news station, “Arnold Palmer was 87-years-old”. I thought this looked strange — okay, it looked weird — so I decided to do a little fact-checking.

Turns out it’s weird because it’s not right! According to the Grammar Book, a hyphen between the numeric age, “years” and “old” words is not necessary. Why? The word “years” is plural, which is correct. When you’re writing ab...

Being as I’m basically finished with my debut in the fantasy-science-fiction-writing world, having essentially completed a six-book series that began with After Earth: Journey To The Black City, it was time to move forward…or perhaps backward in time.

Years before I wrote Journey To The Black City, I’d written another novel. This would have been around 1991 or ’92. Back then we didn’t yet have a home computer, and so I printed the entire thing by hand on typing paper. It ran about 350 pages o...

In the introduction to the second book in my “After: Earth” series, we mentioned that the land we call South America on our earth, was a place of fear and death in the minds of city dwelling men. But now, it is revealed that the shadowy figure who calls himself simply ‘the Bishop’ has been constructing several small cities in Green Hell for himself and for his most dedicated followers. These will be pure cities, into which only the most loyal followers will be allowed to live. The biggest of...

As my first book, “Journey To The Black City” in the series, “After: Earth” concludes, we learn that Kel’s grandfather is not being held in the Black City—the Bishop had taken him and other kidnapped shamans into The Green. It is there that Lyria, Kel, and Raven must go in pursuit of their fellow tribes-people.

What exactly is the Green? Well, on our earth we call it South America. On my alternate universe earth, it is simply The Green. We learn that even before the Great War, the pandemic i...

Kel now realizes that he must travel to the mysterious Black City of the West to find Garn. Lyria makes it known that he’s not going anywhere without her. And so they begin their long journey toward the mysterious and sinister Black City, and toward their destiny. The path is long and through territory completely unknown to them. But help is available. The tribe’s blacksmith, a man I’ve mentioned previously, named Llo, happens to have a map he’d made many years before as he himself had made t...

I believe I’ve mentioned several times that the reason Kel couldn’t finish his training to become a full tribal shaman—or marry the love of his life, the warrior woman Lyria was because his grandfather, who was his spiritual teacher, had been kidnapped and taken by a marauding zeppelin to the Black City. The kidnapping happens in the first novel “Journey To The Black City”. What we haven’t yet talked about is that training, and what’s still missing. The biggest problem Kel is facing is that h...

And the Magician himself is just that—an accomplished stage magician with an interesting twist. He mesmerizes his patrons. That would be the drunken men hanging out in the Green Hyena, and can somehow make them see whatever he wants them to see. He literally shows them their mythical account of creation, with the spiraling and dancing Divine celestial dragons that created all the stars and the world.

But Kel, though not yet a full-fledged shaman, discovers the reason those watching the Magic...