Half-Elven Blog News

Live and Learn:

Attended most of the promotion sessions at the Northern Colorado Writer's 2011 conference.  Major lesson learned:  I was diluting my social networking efforts by having two separate blogs.

Now the Far Isle Half-Elven blog is combined with Fiction Lessons from My Reading.

Critique Day Approaches

Took another step towards C-Day.   The make or break day.    The day I find out how well I did with the Half-Elven website.  I submitted it to 1st Turning Point for a critique.  

Got the site proof-read for the umpteenth time.  Didn't find any typos, but did smooth out a couple sentences.  Also added my writer's blog to the navigation list.  Home page loads quickly.  Check.  The links go to the right pages.  Check.  Don't know if the links back to the site work as smoothly as they should, but people can always use the back button. 

What needed done?  I needed a how-to-contact-me page.  As soon as the work week starts, I'll be calling Go-Daddy to see how their email system works.  Also, need to get a few glitches worked out -- like removing the second home page.  Don't want to confuse Google.

If I'm lucky, I'll get  a critique at 1st Turning Point, my favorite marketing/promotion site.  I'm hoping for three parrots, aka a gentleman's "C".  Then, hopefully, I can improve any problems from the critique before I really go public with the site.  It's taken me since August, 2010 to get this far.  

One thing won't change though.  According to my site analytics, my meta-tags aren't dense enough to get a top place on the search engines.  That won't change because if I mention Half-Elven one more time, the text starts to sound stupid.

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So ... I did put up a publication page and a contact me page on the navigation bars.   Plus, added an email collector from ChimpMail, a service recommended by author Justine Musk in her blog "Tribal Writer".  -- Problem?  [There's always a problem.]  I don't know how to make it work pretty.  Maybe, don't know how to make it work at all.  If someone, who's not me, could try to use it I would be eternally grateful.

Dood it.

Now, I have to think about trailers.

New Yorkie daughter and I discussed time lines and learning curves.  Seems she won't learn to use the software in time to have it by publication time.  So, I have to go out and find a cheap book trailer maker.  Not the Microsoft bit since I'm not going to spend the next ten years of my life learning how to use it.  


While I don't have a publication date [or cover art] yet, I am now listed on the WolfSinger Promotion page.  You can read the blurb copy, if you want.

Sigh...

a writer's work is never done.

Sigh.

Why Bother?

While not focused primarily on writing fantasy, I took a class on rewriting ... revising ... on learning what I need to do make a story work on the Saturday.  Always knew that getting an ending on the first draft was the beginning of writing a publishable book.  Now I know just how much hard work goes into making a story arc work, ie. keep a reader interested in the written word when visual equivalents are eager to hook your potential readers' attention.  'Twas enough to make you crawl back into your corner and cross your eyes.

All of which make me wonder why I submitted Dark Solstice, the story of Mariah and Linden's reconcilliation.  After learning all the things I didn't do properly in another manuscript, I wonder if I'm even ready to start submitting DS even if it's been rewritten upteen times.

Do have a good start on the next Renna's tale.  The ending is solidly in place.  The story itself sits at about a third of the way through when the big complication happens.  Oh, I've written notes to myself about where the story line is going, but these are just stepping stones to the end of the journey.  --  Yeah.  The pigs are still in the middle of things.

Isn't the New Picture Eye-Catching?

Things are kind of rolling even though I don't seem to be writing much -- in spite of punching computer keys a lot.

You can see the newly completed artwork.  I really like the implied act of creation within the picture.  More important, I wasn't the only one who's commented on it.

Doubt if I'll be getting any more new art soon.  Igor Glushkin is still busy with his personal life.  I really think he's done a great job on the illustrations ... by getting away from the cutesie pictures of elves. 

The trailer is moving along though it'll probably be June before we get a finished product.   One happy note.   Instant update: Glushkin has agreed to do another picture in spite of his busy schedule. 

I'm willing to accept amateurs take ten times as long.  My impatience sometimes wishes I could do stuff faster.  Whatever, I'll have non-conforming original harp music when it's done.

Oh, the Renna Half-Elven stories.  Didn't even break open the file this weekend.  But I did get a lot of garbage cleaned up after my computer crashed.  -- Seems it didn't like being hitched to a broken printer.  Fixed now ...  I think.  ... I hope.  --  With luck, I'll get personal emails caught up today ... after the gym ... fixing food ... running errands ... watching Castle ... etc.  etc.

Now, if my tail bone would stop throwing a pain-killer-sized tantrum  ...

Search Engine Consequences of Characters' Names

How my web pages and blogs appear on on search engine results never ceases to amaze me.  In short, be careful of the names you apply to your characters.  My web denseness has tangled me in a strange Google results.  Fortunately the spider's web hasn't caught this blog yet.  I've landed myself in interesting web territory two times now.

First was labeling my characters "half-elven".  When I started writing about the half-elven of the Far Isles ... I knew J. R. R. Tolkien had popularized the concept.  For years, I had reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy yearly.  On the other hand, I knew there are many kinds of elves in European folklore ... and figured they could breed with humans as well as any other elves.

What I didn't know was the gaming community [eg. Dungeons and Dragons players] has also made a huge mental and web investment in the abilities and quirks of beings resulting from human/elf matings.  The prime pages of the Google results are filled with their web listings.  I'm happy to appear on the third page.  Maybe ... some day ... I'll get enough smarts and energy to play with my meta tags to get the Half-Elven home page higher.

More recently, I bounced my head against another search engine problem when I started working on my free story blog ... site ... whatever. A new phenomena reared its presence when I tracked the statistics for this site.  I had visits from a huge number of TinyUrls that linked back to porn sites.

Seems there's an extreme sex character [web presense?] by the name of Renna.  So, while Renna remains one of my characters, I've been changing the emphasis of the site. Until the search engines change, I'm sure I'm disappointing a lot of people.


Bottom line:  You might check the names of your characters before you put them on the web.

New Free Half-Elven Story Up

Guess I was having so much trouble writing something presentable was -- I didn't know what I was doing with the words I had written ... and they were many words.  Oh, I had a outline that sort of told a story ... but had no drama.  No action.  No investment on the part of the characters.

Hope "Catching the Dragon's Fire" puts those problems to rest, and I'll be able to get the next installment written sooner.  The biggest problem?  Renna is a side character with the drama focused on the conflict of the Half-Elven Triad -- Mariah, Ashton, and Linden -- against the Feld dynasty.  

I sort of already knew that.  [Think of "The Foiling of Gorsfeld].  But, the relationship swam around in the back of my mind.  Now, maybe it'll stick in the frontal lobes instead of the reptilian brain.

Actually, the story didn't take off until I realized that Martonsfeld, Gorsfeld's father, couldn't be the villain because, being human, he would have been dead by the time Renna started having problems with the Felds' pigs.

Slogging 'Round My Website

Thought I'd have a new short story up by last night.  I wasn't looking forward to all the formatting etc., but formating didn't delay me.  Revisions did.  All in all, the Half-Elven are taking entirely too much of my time.  Mostly because I don't know what I'm doing.

I put myself between a rock and a hard spot.  I need to promote and have a website since I have an e-publication coming out in 2011.  I need new material to keep my website interesting.  Since I'm not a sales machine, I decided on the free short story bit to create new content.  Only problem.  I'm lousy at writing short stories.  My ideas always have a long back story ... plus a forward story about what happens afterwards.  I think my anthropological background has doomed me to getting mired down in context.

So, I'm trying to give my stories a context.  I started out thinking that I'd do a few short "Renna's Tales" based on an old lady gossiping. ... Only the background events and people are complex ... and get more complex as my main Half-Elven characters live out their 400+ year lives.  My solution?  Renna's Tale is now the story of the days immediately after the Rebellion created the Marches, and the Half-Elven fought among themselves over who would rule.


Now, all I have to do is revise ... revise ..., and probably revise again.  Ugh.  Maybe next week?


An illustration note.  Mr. Glushkin is in the process of creating the last illustration for the site ... in between taking care of a new baby.  Would you believe babies take a lot of work?