New Blog Guest Post!

I have a new guest post over at Someone Else's Kids blog called Navigating the Gray. It's about tackling issues of Black, White and Gray Areas in kid's books. Have a look!

:o)

Artwork For The Lady Moons!

Here is the new book cover for The Lady Moons, done by Claudia McKinney of Phatpuppy Art! Lovely! I'll be hiring this artist to finish out the rest of the series as well.

Sample chapters should be up and posted over at my Scribd page for download later this week! But for now, enjoy the beautiful book cover art!

The Lady Moons will be released Febraury 26th.

 :o)

Books I've Acquired Recently

As I've said before, when it comes to free or dirt cheap ebooks, or any book for that matter I don't download them or purchase them unless I know this is a book that I really want to read.

A book that I've been searching for some time now I found yesterday on Amazon in ebook form - Gargantuan and Pantagruel. It's actually a series or collection of stories written by a French Renaissance author, Francois Rabelais. It's about two giants who go on a number of different adventures and there is a lot of satirical humor in these stories. I finally have it on my kindle and I'm excited about reading it! I must say that I even bought some music years ago, songs inspired by Villon and also Rabelais. I love music from the Renaissance and the middle ages. I also ran across some of Sir Isaac Newton's religious writings, specifically is his writings on the prophecies of Daniel - one of my favorite Bible books and I am currently reading The Last King's Amulet by Chris Northern, which is an excellent fantasy story. I'll definitely be getting the sequel to that book!

I think that as a fantasy writer it is important to read the early masters of the craft. Tolkien and Lewis, Howard,* etc. However, there are fantasy writers who came before them and to reach back and read and to become inspired by their works I feel can add depth and to my own work. I would like to add Milton to this list as well but technically he was not a fantasy writer but authors that I admire respected his work.

*Edited Moorcock out. I have never read Moorcock's work and after having read what he thinks of Tolkien and Lewis - who are masterful writers in my opinion, I felt that to include him in this post with such men would be an insult to their work and to them.