Free Books! (The Green Door and Edge of Darkness)

Just letting readers know that I do have two permanently free books out. The Green Door, the first novella in my children's (middle grade) fantasy series is free. Download The Green Door.

And the short story prequel to the Red World fantasy series, Edge of Darkness, is also free. In the future, when Rise of the Red King (Book Three) is released I will make Schisms, the first full length novel in the Red World series free so look for that freebie some time in December. Also, I added the first chapter of Schisms to the back of Edge of Darkness as an extra freebie! Download Edge of Darkness.

The Tolkien Inspired Art of Jian Guo

                                                       The Fate of Beren and Luthien

I came across some beautiful artwork a few days ago, Tolkien inspired art that truly impressed me. The artist's name is Jian Guo. He is known as breathing2004 on deviantArt. I am always concerned with mythical, mystical spiritual inspiration in art, music and literature. The world around us, the universe we live in is filled with mystery and opportunities for devotion or simply appreciation. Jian Guo's stained glass-like art, especially his Tolkien inspired pieces are simply glorious to behold, distinctive and beautiful. As others have said about his work it falls somewhere between stained-glass art and medieval style art work.

                                       The Lord of the Rings cover art, Chinese versions

Tolkien himself mentioned that all of us who create are merely sub-creators and that any gifts we have come from the grand creator, God himself. All our gifts come from that Holy and Divine genius. If you would like to buy Guo's work you can go here. Find all of his collection on his deviantArt page. Enjoy!

                          The Return of the King

Books in Print!

I have finally done it. I had Schisms printed up on paperback. It should be out on Amazon in paperback in a couple of weeks. I have three printed paperbacks (in the photo below) of the book already and they look beautiful. Good quality from Createspace, I must say. Some people have been grumbling that Createspace doesn't print up good quality paperbacks. Well, upon seeing my books I'm not sure what they mean. Mine look very nice and they seem and feel very durable. I have plenty of traditionally published books on my bookshelf and my proofs stack up well against them. They have glossy covers - which I like and I feel that really has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with personal preference - and I opted for cream-colored paper as it is thicker and more durable, in my opinion, than the white paper. After all, my favorite books by Umberto Eco have glossy covers and cream-colored paper they look beautiful.

I ran into a snafu the first time so I am now waiting on my second shipment of proofs. The first time around though the books turned out nice in most respects I forgot that my manuscript does not have page numbers. After all, page numbers do not matter so much when getting a manuscript ready for an ereader but they do matter for printed books. So I had to go back and insert page numbers into the reformatted manuscript and then have them redo the measurements for the spine of the cover. The second batch of proofs will only be 200 page books. The ones I have now that you see in the photo are 280 pages each because the manuscript I used for it is formatted differently. Anyway, I am very pleased so far. I hope the second batch of proofs that arrive will look just as nice, only this time they will have page numbers!