09 August 2013

Fan Art Friday

I really don't have much for you this week. I've been very busy trying to coordinate this character competition. YOU HAVE ONE MORE WEEK PEOPLE! Please spread the word. So, for you, here is what I have for FAF.






In a word:

OHMYGOSHITSDOWNTOWNCHICAGOINTHELAST FEWCHAPTERSOFHBL!!!

I know... not really one word... and I missed an apostrophe... but still; that's pretty much it. Hope you guys have a great weekend!

07 August 2013

My Obsession With the Insane

As you may know, I seem to write a lot of crazy. And by "a lot" I obviously mean every other character...The list seems to include at least one character per chapter that's a little bit off their rocker. And, though it might not be obvious at first, you'll quickly see exactly what I mean.

 Let's think... who are some of my special crazies?...
Elicith, Ero, Ve, Fes, Constantine, Drystan, Cassandra, Caps, Alasier, Maggie, Asper, and even Krys and Cadence are all various levels of mentally unstable.

So why? you may ask. Do you want the simple answer or the complicated one? Because the simple one is that aether affects the mind. A human mind can only handle so much aether at a time, overusing it, overdoing it, can cause a sort of psychosis, split personality disorder, or even drain your life.

You want complex?

Let's take the Dureri from my novella Adrianna. Obviously there's something unnatural about them, their actions seem to be outside the realm of normal human behavior. And yeah, sure, you can write that off as it being a simple matter of them not exactly being mortal in the strictest sense. But there's more to it. You can only torture people for so long without going just a little bit mad. Drystan is the best example of this.

In the first novella, Adrianna, the character of Drystan is explored a little. He's described as obsessive, clingy, and impulsive. He's described as hating who and what he is. At first glance this is brushed off with an explanation that may seem a little too easy: he views the body as sacred and doesn't like seeing anyone hurting - let alone doing the hurting himself. If you haven't read the book yet, please do so. Just keep in mind that this description of him isn't a cop out, I'm just holding out on you. ;)

Later in the series Drystan's psychosis deepens as he becomes more obsessed with Adrianna and goes down a... questionable path.  I try to make it a little unclear as to why this is (after all, I have to keep challenging your mind, don't I?), however I will say this, being Dureri isn't all that it seems. Sure there's the glamor and the immortality and the inability to feel pain, but there's a little bit of a side affect that most Dureri don't even notice: split personality disorder. (This is explored in Adrianna, so if you have questions, go read the novella.)

The mind doesn't have the capability to deal with the whole new set of input, heightened senses, all the goodies of being Dureri. So, the mind creates a divergent personality that can cope with the entirely new life. Over time the two personality sets merge - usually as the trauma of being changed lessens - sometimes this creates a super genius like Renee, Gilgamesh or Nereida. And sometimes you get a messed up jumble of a person like in the cases of Cassandra and Drystan.

For other cases, you're just going to have to read through the stories, aren't you. ;)

05 August 2013

The Question that is Adrianna

So, I've had some questions arise as to when I would write a squeal to my novella, Adrianna.So, here are my plans: I have a series of 5 more novellas lined up. By the time they're all done I'm going to reprint them into two full books. I'm still working out the details of the story... which is a really fancy way of saying that I've hit a block of where the first chapter of the next book will go.

However! I can tell you that the next two novellas are titles Dawn and The Hidden War. If these give you any idea about what the topic of these stories are... well then you're a step ahead of me. I only have the vaguest of ideas on what to put in these novellas. This is mostly because I know exactly what's going into the 4th novella and I have no idea how to get there! As you may be able to conceive, this is more than a little frustrating for me, and explains my hiatus on the Pocketful of Pain series...

That said, I can leave you with some pictures of actors that inspired the PoP crew.

Cassandra


Gilgamesh


Nereida


Renee


Adrianna


Drystan



And introducing...!

Anandi


If you haven't read Pocketful of Pain: Adrianna yet, you can snag a copy at Chapter One.

01 August 2013

The Busy Week of Busy-ness!

As some of you may have noticed, I didn't blog on Monday or Wednesday. What some of you may not have noticed (and I mean, really, how could you notice unless you've been spying on me?! *gasp*) that I've been editing a lot of Hard Bank Left lately! I've come to several realizations, not the least of which being who the bad guys are/bad guy motivation. (I refer you to this last Friday's blog.)

I've also been thinking a lot about Krys's family relations, and her discontentment at home and I realized - though I really have no idea how - that Krys is the middle child of three. This has put a number of plot twists in my head that I really can't wait to share with you... but you're going to have to wait until the middle of Tailslide to hear about them! Muahahahaha! xD But seriously, it's killing me not telling you right now!

In other news! The first two chapters of HBL will be available for public reading in the up and coming magazine Book-it! from Chapter One. I'm so stoked. I've been working with the editor to get an exclusive look to the story, including but not limited to pictures. It's been really fun and I hope you enjoy the effort. If you don't live in Utah and are looking for a copy of my story in the magazine, you can pre-order your copy of the first issue here, subscriptions are available.

Also! super awesome bonus material alert I am holding a competition for best Steam Punk! If you are into cosplay, are an artist, or you have friends who are, this is for you. 

In Hard Bank Left, Target Lost, and Tailslide there are a ton of fight scenes. In these there are characters the have special physic abilities. The winner of this competition will get the opportunity to be written into one of these three stories as either a good guy or a bad guy with one of these abilities. Here is your chance to be immortalized in fiction!

THE COMPETITION:
To enter into this competition, you must submit a picture or drawing of you or one of your original characters/alter-egos to aletheraia@gmail.com no later than August 15th. The winner will be announced the next day in my usual Fan Art Friday post.

SUBMISSION RULES:

  • The character must a specific mental ability. For a list of powers, check out my wiki page. This doesn't have to be demonstrated, just let me know in the email.
  • The character must demonstrate that they are in the Shadow Cast world by having one or more of the following objects: 
    • has objects that glow cyan
    • has an elaborately decorated key
    • has a mix of steampunk and cyberpunk tech (ie a musket and a flexi)
  •  If a bad guy, the character must demonstrate some sort of military insignia
  • If a good guy, the character must stand out as being eccentric in some way (ex. they're crazy, have no sense of style, or are a gypsy)
  • optional bonus material (please note that bonus material doesn't count toward your actual score, but it sure makes your character fantastic)
    • awesome Nerf  - glowey paint gets double bonuses!
    • making jeans look steampunky
    • dreadlocks
    • eye patches
    • kickawesome scars
    • bizarre eye color
    • curly orange hair

As a final note, keep it clean (we have young and/or impressionable audience members). I look forward to seeing what you have in store!


26 July 2013

Fan Art Friday!

Continuing with the bad guy theme: Constantine. The baddest bad guy ever - supposedly. In truth I know little about this guy. I know his history. I know his basic appearance. I know what has happened in his life. But his motivation is still a mystery to me. In writing HBL I had a close encounter with him... But this still leaves him a mystery to me. Thankfully, the edits I have in mind for Hard Bank Left give me the space to make Constantine the silent predator. I have very few pictures of him, but I'll share what I have.

There you go. That's pretty much it... only a little older. He's pretty much a scary business man. Aaaand I really need to work on him. *sigh*

But I do have pictures of The Twins. Yeah, that's right, The Twins. They're a pair of grotesquely evil torturing Dureri that I'm going to cover in Target Lost. I'm not going to tell you much in hopes that you'll find out in the webisodes. But, here are the reference photos that I totally love!