Posted on

Cover Reveal: Fresh Re-Imagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

On the Isle of Sound and Wonder is a driven, fantastical, lyrical retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest set in a world just adjacent of our own.

People have been wondering what my “SUPER SECRET” project has been lately, and I’m proud to tell you all about it!

Five or so years ago, Alyson Grauer (Aly) came and stayed with me and my family. This was a fortuitous meeting for both of us, and it felt strange that two people could be so similar yet live thousands of miles apart. This was close to the same time her book On the Isle of Sound and Wonder would be released.

The beautiful book was released in 2014 to tumultuous applause, but with the passing of time has been slowly quieted by the ever drowning sea of books. This little book was all but forgotten until a small conversation this summer planted the seeds of a much bigger adventure.

After some simmering on the idea, Aly messaged me and said she was all in; she wanted her book to get new breath. We worked on it secretly trying to iron out details, giving smallish hints of the rumbles going on. When I spontaneously hopped on a plane to Florida to help her attack some of the critical steps in finalizing everything, I think people started to suspect something was up. Finally, we are in a place to share what we’ve been working on.

Several may recall that I received my publishing rights in January of this year, re-releasing my books under my own indie press. This experience taught me a lot, I mean A LOT, and helped me gain confidence that I can do about anything and ignited my desire to help others with all the things I had learned. On the Isle of Sound and Wonder is Shadesilk’s first adventure in Indie press from an author.

With the independent spirit in mind, I wanted Aly to retain as much integrity with her book as possible. Shadesilk was used as a guiding hand and a launch pad for this magical book to reach a new audience, and hopefully rebuild confidence and renew the beauty it once had.

I thought I would send Aly some questions to help you know more about her and this incredible book. Here are her heartfelt answers.

How do you feel about relaunching your book? 
I am so excited to bring this book back in a new way. On the one hand, it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that it was first published, but on the other, so much has changed since then, and there were things I had taken for granted in my manuscript that I really, really wanted to change. I didn’t do a complete rewrite and overhaul of the novel, but I made some well-needed adjustments and I am so pleased with how it fit together. I can’t wait to share this stronger, updated version with the world.

What does this story mean to you? 
In many ways, Sound and Wonder was a surprise to me. I had the idea during National Novel Writing Month 2013 to do a rewrite or retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and I kind of just let my imagination run wild with it. Then, in reworking and revising it for publication, I learned so many things about how complicated and challenging I had made it for myself in retrospect. I had never written anything like it: large cast, complex backstories, vengeance and dark magic and a lot of hard emotions woven throughout. Oh wait. Actually. The first long-form work I had ever drafted in high school was a historical fiction pirate story with a large cast, complex backstories, and vengeance charged with difficult emotions. No magic in that one, just a lot of cruel twists of fate. I’ve never realized this parallel before! 

What are some changes we can see in this version?
No spoilers, but there was a specific moment late in the story cut from the original version by editors that has been rightfully restored.
 Also, what was I thinking, writing a 25 page prologue that was a flashback-within-a-flashback??? I’ve restructured the opening chapters more sensibly and smoothed out the distribution of flashbacks across the board. 

How has your writing changed over the years?
In the NaNoWriMo community people refer to ‘pantsers’ and ‘plotters’ – that is to say, people who write by the seat of their pants, and people who plot until they can’t anymore and then they start writing. For my whole life I was a pantser, and a lot of Sound and Wonder’s original drafts were pantsed, to a degree. But the thing I forgot was that I wasn’t truly pantsing — I was using Shakspeare’s dramatic structure from The Tempest to guide me. So I was pantsing-with-a-plot? It’s a mess in my head. 
Since the original release of this book, I have read much more widely in fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction, and done a lot more research on how other successful authors hone their crafts. I read a lot of Brandon Sanderson, too, which changed the way I viewed epic fantasy.
Oh, and I married a plotter. So I became one too, much to my chagrin. 

What projects are you most excited by?
I like stories that have high emotional value, stories that connect with people and move them – whether it’s drama or comedy, romance or mystery. I love a sense of wonder and whimsy – magic that isn’t quite what you think it is, or unusual, silly twists on traditional archetypes or tropes. I see things in cinematic scale, and sometimes I have a hard time giving myself permission to zoom in or zoom out to find the right balance for a story, but I love when the action, the feeling, and the characters all join together.

You can find Aly’s book for Pre-Order at the Shadesilk Webstore here! And follow all the @dreamstobecome media on Twitter and Instagram!

Posted on

Let’s Be Authors: Impostor Syndrome and the Curse of Viking Blood

My pink jacket vs my pink legs. Just a few hours after the burn.

Impostor Syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. For many people I know this has to do with writing and success. I have felt it to a degree. It might be possible that all authors (excluding Stephen King, Jim Butcher, and Orson Scott Card) have felt it before. My impostor-ness comes from pretending to be someone I’m not.

I have Viking blood, if you didn’t know. My heritage is very Scandinavian. Norse, Danish, Swedish, all the fairness and DNA markings of a people that don’t see the sun very often. My mother has the English and Welsh to balance some things, but if anyone knows me, they can attest that I look much like my Scandinavian-heritaged, honey-blonde father.

I’m not stating that I’m not human, but truly, that I am more human than I wish to be. Being an author is a weird gig. At first, before I was published, the world was huge and dreams were big, and anything seemed possible. Being published was the ultimate goal, and when I signed that contract, I mean – I remember the moment I did it and where I was and EVERYTHING, I knew it would change my life and I was ready for it.

…or at least I felt as ready as I could be at the moment. The words we write are very personal in nature. Even when describing a mountainous scene with a dreamsicle sunset, the words can become very intimate and personal to how you feel about it. To become an author you expose those words publicly for others to judge either privately or publicly, or even VERY publicly if they strongly dislike it. Craft wordplay is art in a very pure form. So people will love what you do, but others (more than you wish) will not like what you do. And this is when doubt seeps in.

So, nice rambling Candie, but what does that have to do with your Viking blood?

Good question, You.

I often call my skin “transparent” since it is so white it’s pink. I don’t tan. I don’t freckle either. I pink and then fade back to transparent. Those who have this kind of skin totally know what I’m talking about. I have several friends with natural melanin and I find myself often envious that they don’t know what a sunburn feels like.

For some reason buried deep within my psyche, I have hated being fair and taught myself that beauty is tan and dark and exotic. I don’t know if it was Mattel and the Malibu Barbie tan that reinforced this or my own fear of the sun.

I’ve always been attracted to darker skin. I married a darker-skinned, honey tanned man. I’ve found many times mesmerized by the bravery of a browned bikini body without tan lines, so much so that I don’t like going swimming, fearing the burn and being made fun of or stared at because of my fairness. I have fought with my fair skin my whole life and I have lost.

So when I say I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin, I mean that literally.

Last year I planned to take a trip to Portugal and Spain. I decided to go tanning before I left. I hadn’t been tanning before. I had no idea what to do. The girl at the counter advised me that I shouldn’t stay in for more that five minutes because of how fair I was. I went in, stripped, put these bug-like things in my eyes and had no idea the direction I should lay. I couldn’t figure out the dial, but was too embarrassed to ask for help because of my lack of clothing. Once I adjusted things and lay there under strange heat, I found out that I was, indeed, laying the wrong way, but was locked in until the 4 minutes was over.

I expected to get some color, but was informed that that was just the first one and it wouldn’t do much. This was after my humiliating experience. I still thought that it might be enough to help prevent me from a really bad burn. I was very, very wrong.

DISCLAIMER: THOSE WITH A SENSITIVITY TO PAIN AND HURT AND BURNS OF ANY KIND SHOULD NOT LOOK AT THIS NEXT PICTURE.

On day four of a two-week trip, we went to Lagos in the southern part of Portugal. I had already received a sunburn on my neck and arms, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I put on the sunscreen that I had, which was from Portugal and not for white non-melanin skin. They all had bronzers in them, if that makes sense. PLUS, everything was in Portuguese, so I had no idea what was really in it to begin with.

The Sun Rash

On the beach day, I put on sunscreen. I DID! I was not prepared for the reflection of the water, nor the expiration time of the water resistance. And even though we only were there a few hours, because I could feel we needed to leave and I needed to find some aloe vera, I still got severely burned. A petite Portuguese baker in the grocery store couldn’t believe the state of my legs and quickly rambled out in her beautiful language what I should do and what I needed. And I bless her every time I think about my burn, even though I couldn’t understand a word she was saying to me. There was a lot of pointing and startled looks.

This is at least second degree. I got a sun rash, sun sickness, and had to constantly be on ibuprofen the rest of the trip. I couldn’t wear anything on my legs, yet couldn’t have the sun touch it. I had to constantly put aloe vera on it, even though it was so hard to find aloe vera there. We finally found some in Gibraltar because it’s owned by the pasty Brits who understand sunburns. I grew water blisters under my skin and after a while, my skin started sluffing off. THAT’S RIGHT! No tanning bed would have prepared my skin for this anyway.

So, why are you pointing this out??

I’m getting to it.

I can’t fake tan. I can’t real tan. I can’t prevent the sun from wanting to kill me anytime we come in contact. So why do I do it?

Because I love the sun.

I love the sun so much. I love feeling the warm glow of morning, the way it colors the sky and wakes up everything. I love letting it heat up my dark shirts. I love the energy the sun feeds me. Seeing the sun makes me happy. I love sunflowers and I love so much the color yellow. After a long day of being in a basement with no windows, the sun greets me, reminding me that it’s okay, everything is fine – I’m here in a steady state, reliable and constant.

In Everstar, the capstone in my trilogy, the sun plays a huge part. The Atmos stone was the first to be stolen, causing chaotic storms over the capital city of Southwick and casting shadows over the world of Parbraven. The little bit of sun that shines on my heroes supplies hope when they feel everything is lost. It’s incredibly powerful.

Writing (more authoring for me) is much like the sun. It is hope and happiness and incredible warmth, and sometimes tries to kill me. I can prepare with all the sunscreen I want when sending out a book into the world, but it still doesn’t work 100% of the time.

I recently had my first book up on the review site Netgalley and was surprised by how many people didn’t get it. It gave me a real taste of what the world was saying about my work. Regardless of the accolades Vivatera had received (Novel of the Year being one of them), I started to feel like I disappointed my readers.

And then the doubt starts . . . and those voices are very hard to silence.

A few weeks ago was Salt Lake’s FanX, and I had prepared to do amazing again this year, but sadly, no one was buying. And it was hard to not feel like a failure in those moments, even the ones that you can’t control.

So as much as I hate my skin and sometimes doubt my talent, I have to remember that I have Viking blood. In some ancestral website, it has my line going all the way back to Odin. Strength is IN my blood – LITERALLY! But we all have the strength to follow dreams. Grabbing onto those wispy little dreams isn’t easy, holding onto them is harder. I have friends that have completely given up on being an author because they got burned to a crisp by the sun of doubt. And I feel so bad for them; to give up on the dream they had and feel the sting of failure on their skin hurts my soul. I ache just thinking about it.

Even though I get burned every once in a while, I have to think of it as a good burn, reminding me how human I am, and also how lucky I am to live my dream. I am not an impostor but a believer – ready to defend my talents and the people who stand with me.

And underneath the skin is the heartbeat of it all, the loyal fans that find me at every con, that search me out at signings, that are impressed by the content I’m still creating, and are glad I haven’t given up. Impostor Syndrome happens, but when the cheerleaders surround you, it’s hard to hear the voices of doubt.

So to everyone PLEASE DON’T FORGET SUNSCREEN!

And if you have a dream, chase it. Believe in it. Seek out your blood and find the strength in it. Don’t regret not trying. You were created to do amazing things regardless of what the voices of doubt say.

Fight on, little Viking Queen.

Posted on

GEN CON – The Con That Doesn’t Sleep

I didn’t know what I had said yes to when my author friend, Christine Nielson, asked me to come to Gen Con. She had been going for a few years and I knew she always had a good time, so I said yes without thinking.

View this post on Instagram

#gencon19 Boothmates!

A post shared by Candace J Thomas (@candacejthomas) on

I had done very little research on what this con really was, I just figured it was comparable to any comic con I had participated in. I mean, it’s a con, right? I was warned it was a gaming con, so I thought video games. I put some serious thought into how to make this con special. What I didn’t realize was that this con was already special.

Gen Con, in my own words, is a gamer’s pilgrimage to Mecca.

People flock to the center of the US, being seductively called by the river sirens, for the chance to play games, and ONLY games, for four continuous days. There was no celebrity draws, no movie releases, no photo ops (besides the cosplay girls- shielded from view might I add), only gamers EVERYWHERE. Rows and rows of tables and chairs cluttered with games: new ones, kickstarters, card games, board games, RPGs, dice games, you name it. JUST GAMES! There were tournaments happening in C Hall (a room the size of the room where they hid the arc of the covenant) for Magic the Gathering and Pokemon and who even knows what?! I was flabbergasted.

  • He didn’t buy my books 🙁
  • This lady did 🙂

Being an author there felt rather special, but also really out-of-place. This con was not about books, but the celebration of creativity. And that’s what made the con special to me. Everyone I spoke to was so genuinely themselves.

This con let you be you without judgment. I tweeted snippets of what I saw and experienced (find on Twitter @cjtwrites). Many gamers are introverted, yet here they felt comfortable being with other introverts. The con sold out with a reported 70,000 attending (Indy Star Link). I was impressed.

Card stacking metropolis

And even though the Exhibition Hall closed at six, the con didn’t stop . . . at all. The arcade and retro console rooms didn’t close until midnight. The tourneys ran through the night. Hotel lobbies and even the Indiana Convention Center was continually packed with gamers playing until the morning.

So….. my brother happens to be one of the best players in the world at Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. He would kill it here.

As much as I love playing games, I’m not a gamer, not anymore. There are some things that I unintentionally gave up when I dedicated my time to being an author, and unfortunately, games was one of them. Here though, I got a chance to forget about story building and remember the seeds that started my epic journey. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was fourteen, playing with my older brother and his high school friends. This was a huge foundation for my character development, world building, and my imagination.

I just won Gen Con . . . I even blushed.

But honestly, I didn’t feel complete until I found the retro video game console room and completely flipped out when I saw the ColecoVision. I made a serious impression on the guys running the room. (Nick and Kyle – I’m looking at you!) Here I found my nerd and my people, and spent hours playing Coleco, NES, the PS2, and Sega Dreamcast, because sadly, their Genesis didn’t have a cord. Here is where I found my Gen Con heart.

It was good for me to get away from my bubble and experience a con away from those I know; to meet people I would never have met before; and have the freedom of being nerdy without reservation. It was rejuvenating to my soul and healthy for me to remember my roots, and that fun and refreshing it is to just play games.

Posted on

The Parable of the Yellow Door

Still drying

My house has a strange history, and when we decided to buy the eye sore of the neighborhood, we also became something of legend. It was never meant to be my dream house, in fact, I made it very open that I hated split entry homes, feeling they were the worst idea any architect ever had. Seriously. So, when we bought our first home, it was not ever meant to be our forever home.

If you know me as a writer (and frankly, as a person too), you will know that I personify everything. EVERYTHING. Everything has a character. Everything has feelings or emotions. Everything cares. And the character of this house was a sad one from the beginning.

Back when this house came around, I was a young mom with a spirited toddler. We were living in a small duplex owned by a friend of ours, whose parents lived on the other side. The place was small, always smelled of garlic and was in a less than desirable location. But it kept us out of the rain and safe while we tried to figure out what to do next.

I actively searched for a house outside of this area, daydreaming of a beautiful suburban life, far from the reality of my own unconventional upbringing. At this time my soul was restless to understand a direction, because seriously, I didn’t have one. I wanted to write, had always wanted to write, but everything I had written to that point was complete and utter garbage. Writing was a pipe dream that I couldn’t pursue. Being a young mother, I wanted a house where we could make roots, where my family could grow and be safe. I wanted the things I didn’t have as a kid. I had grown up as one of the weirdos in the neighborhood, and for some reason, I was trying to run away from it. I didn’t want that for my daughter. I was anxious for furniture that was not college hand me downs and the freedom to put holes in my walls. Like Colin Hay sings, I was waiting for my real life to begin.

I dreamed bigger than we could afford. And I hated it.

So, after a few hard financial downfalls and realizations, I stopped looking for my dream home and stopped dreaming of a world which I didn’t belong.

When I stumbled upon my house, it was lovingly called “the Graffiti House” by the neighbors. The place had been abandoned for years. The siding was tagged with some gang name from the area. There was a big, blue dumpster parked in the driveway where flippers had tried to do something with the empty house, but then ran out of money as well. No one had been in the place for quite a while. The little For Sale sign was just a small, orange flag stuck into the ground. This house was in the small neighborhood where my brother lived, and also where my husband grew up. I knew the area. Why had I never seen this place before?

Me, not one for rules, snooped around and looked in the windows. The backyard was overgrown and wild, with an already mature Black Walnut tree dominating the middle of the yard. My sister-in-law and I found a way in through a window and discovered that the place was completely gutted. Graffiti illustrated the past gangs and squatters that might have needed a place to hide. The configuration of the split was odd too. They had the kitchen (though completely stripped) in the front of the house where a living room would be in others. Why would you do that? A huge cut out of the wall opened the space to the entry, which was another bizarre thing to do. And in the basement, there was an unknown blood stain of considerable size splattered on the concrete floor (which, when we put carpet down, we drew a chalk outline just to freak out whomever would replace it next).

Immediately, the house had a character, mystery, and an unnamed charm I didn’t expect. I wasn’t nervous about its history and wasn’t worried about it being haunted. It felt quaint, yet sad. It had a deep story and needed help. I told my husband about it and we investigated.

Why on earth would I buy an abandoned house full of graffiti and who knows what? This didn’t seem like the safe environment that I wanted. This wasn’t in the suburban utopia I had envisioned, in fact, it was close to loud freeways, ran right along the airstrip, and later the commuter train. This was city life, something my wild and free spirit wrestled with. But, I like the rejects, I identified with it. I liked this house’s story. I gravitated to it.

In the coming weeks, we looked at it (legally) and decided to move forward. We had contractors finish the inside, moving the kitchen to the back of the house (where it belongs), but still keeping the strange opening to the entry. They left a few unfinished rooms for us in the basement, which now occupies a recording studio and TV room. This was 14 years ago.

Our house has been good to us, but I’ve always felt embarrassed about living in it. It was never my forever house. It’s a Split Entry – how could I love that? The house called to a sympathetic heart that likes ruined things and asked for it to be loved, to feel the joy that one feels when building a life together and raising kids.

A good month or two ago, I was outside looking at it. The facia had ripped off in the wind and needing replacing. This is when I truly looked at my little vessel and saw how sad it was. The graffiti that I had tried so hard to scrub off was still very visible. There were still tag marks from gangs on the brick. And it made me so sad that I didn’t love it as I should.

In a free Saturday decision, while waiting for my girls to finish piano lessons, I went and bought paint and brushes and started a project that I thought would take me an hour (when it actually took me weeks). I painted my brown brick white. I then fixed the graffiti on the siding. I couldn’t spend a lot of money fixing everything I wanted, but I could do these little things.

And though I couldn’t exchange the door for something else, the thought came to me to paint it. It had always been white, very ordinary white. The kind that shows all the scuff marks and fingerprints. With the white brick making everything so clean looking, a white door just seemed so boring.

But painting a door is more than just painting a door. It is a statement about who lives behind it, about a way of life, about a history and culture, about everything the house protects inside. My life now behind the door had changed so drastically from when I first walked through it. The directionless person entering didn’t have the confidence that she has now. This house watched me grow into an author, role-model, wife and mother, and has seen all sides of me. I just couldn’t repaint the door white. It was an injustice to the personality and character this place had become to me. We rescued this place and have cared for it as if we built it.

So, I painted it yellow – Hawaiian Pineapple Yellow to be precise. It is now a landmark on our street. “Yes, that’s us. We live in the house with the yellow door.” It took courage to paint it yellow. It wasn’t just paint. I couldn’t look at it as just paint. Did I have enough courage to live with a yellow door? As I pulled in my driveway today, forgetting how different my house looks, I smiled. Look how happy my house is? It’s always smiling. It makes other people smile. It has courage to show what it is on the inside to others on the outside.

In ways, the yellow door has taught me to be more of who I am. Being an author has made me grow so much as a person, building confidence in things I never imagined I could. I think, in many internal ways, I needed a yellow door. When authoring I need to project a likability and persona that can be exhausting, but I return again and again to be me, true me behind this little vessel that continues to rescue me, and cuddle me, and shelter me from it all.

I love my house with the yellow door.

Posted on

Book Review – Bleakwood Lore, the Little Book That Happened

I happily wear the editor badge for the Billy Blacksmith series by Ben Ireland. Creatively, Billy is the most fun I’ve had on a project, and a lot of that fun factor has to do with it not being my idea. The idea of Billy and his lovingly called “Billyverse” is too much for my brain to process sometimes. In this dynamically designed story, each character wears their own suit of armor, each has their own piece to the over-arching puzzle. So, in the editing process, there were several times when Ben would add a detail to the story that didn’t make sense, and I would highlight it as a problem, but he would insist it being there, because it would become important – very important, like a locket no one can open hidden in plain sight. I trust his work and believe in the story, so I will move on like a good editor.

I asked Ben exactly how he came up with the idea of Billy. He said, “After writing Kingdom City: Revolt, I was in the mood for something a little lighter. A little more fun. But I had no idea what. Then one day I walked into my kitchen in Houston, and it’s like a voice just popped into my head: “My name is Billy Blacksmith.  I like cupcakes, videogames, and baseball, but not necessarily in that order.  My best friend is a demon. And for some reason, I’m supposed to save the world.”

A flood of creativity can happen with any overwhelming idea, and sometimes it takes over every logical thought. When I started forming my series, the ideas just came so fast, and before I knew it, I had drawn a map of the world, character bios, a list of Latin rooted words from which I began crafting the magic. I have a binder I dedicated to this creation process. I don’t know what his notes first looked like, but I get the image of a mad scientist scribbling equations and laughing with no one. I mean, the world is MASSIVE.

After Ironsoul, the emotionally driven third in the series had finished and was published, I needed a break and maybe some time to heal from the unexpected middle school scars it opened. I was so heavily invested in the story and the characters, that after I closed the book I had felt like I had trained for a marathon. But then again, I missed the hard work. I longed for more Billy stories, and I knew that the fourth book was not even close to finished.

…and then Bleakwood Lore came along…

During the last few years I devoted to these books, sometimes Ben would mention a side story here and there. I think a lot of us writers like to think of our characters doing other things than just appearing in their story. I usually call mine WRITING EXERCISES in order for me to get used to how the character thinks and acts. In Ben’s case, it helps thicken the depth of the world and the plot. These side stories are not writing exercises, but essential, in some part, to the developing story. Even IN the Blacksmith books you see a folklore chapter here and there, or an excerpt from the Space Vikings. These are all progressing in a direction of a plot with so many moving parts, my brain is blown.

Ben began writing and collecting these side stories, I think in part for his own personal amusement, but others because there is value in the information given to the Billy fan. It’s easy to get hooked on Billy. Demonslayer is the foundation book, Hellforged is a freaking adrenaline rush, and Ironsoul is a complex, psychological thriller. Each took crafting and long hours. And I won’t say that Bleakwood Lore didn’t take a while to craft, but the scope is completely different. And the book just happened. Four months after Ironsoul was released, all Ben did was ask me to beta read. And here were are with a brand-new release.

So, what is Bleakwood Lore?

Simply put Bleakwood Lore is a collection of eleven short stories set in the Blacksmith Universe, plus some bonus material in the back.

Complexly put, Bleakwood is the critical tethering of the current Act One (first three) in the Blacksmith Legacy to the up-and-coming Act Two. But better than that, it’s a chance to get to know the characters, deepen your knowledge of the threads that have already been woven into the tapestry, and just have a really great time reading.

Unlike the other books, there is no centralized plot or villain or problem that needs to be solved, and because of it, there is a lot of joy in this book. One of the key elements that makes this journey in reading so enjoyable is you can feel how much fun the writer had writing it. There are stories that are funny, tender, absolutely adorable, heart-wrenching at the expensive of my own tears, and completely adrenaline fueled. I truly adored this book, so let me get on with the review…

Review:

“Ben Ireland is an author who appreciates that people are complex and that every person (or demon) has a reason for the way they act and react. This book reminded me that people are very much affected by their life experiences, for good or ill.”

– Amazon Reviewer

I wanted to go over a bit of each story, WITHOUT SPOILERS, so everyone could get a flavor for the book.

  1. (1 and 11) If Bleakwood Lore had a central heart to its plot, it would be the first and last stories in the book. These chapters involve Chris Blacksmith, Billy’s older brother, who I have always wanted more story about. He and his Minor League team, the Sugar House Wasps, get into a bunch of trouble searching for the giant spiders trapped n the world when the Threshold was burned (from book 1). I enjoyed the fast action and the characters a lot. It reminded me of Scooby Doo and his gang searching out the creepy, abandoned warehouse.
  2. I think any story with Ash-Lea is golden and THE RHINOCEROS AND THE FOX is her spotlight. She has the personality I adore and is totally ready to kick ass all the time. In this one, Ash-Lea finds herself alone when a fight comes along. I really enjoyed the setting, the new characters, and the crafting of words and language used.
  3. In THE WALL BETWEEN we get a taste of Billy’s demonic demon squad in a different light. Lilly is always so put together and straight forward, but when a situation pushes her to drink (or not drink) she can become quite the character.
  4. FAILING PRINCESS is one of my favorites. This has Krios taking care of a sick Princess Patricia in the Human Realm, and it’s insanely visual and the interaction with the character Melissa, is a pure delight.
  5. A BIG HELP is the adorable one I mentioned, focused on our dragon friend Osamu trying to take care of those rambunctious demonhound puppies. My heart warmed so much reading about what these little guys were doing and the havoc they were creating. I laughed out loud. LOVED THIS ONE SO MUCH!
  6. SUPER SUCKY POWERS is the one that brought me to tears. In the books, you never like Billy’s foster parents. I was sure they would gang up on Billy the moment he left the house. But, here again, I was corrected by the tender storytelling of Billy’s foster parents back story. It also told me a lot more about Billy’s character and his compassion for others. (HEART)
  7. We’ve been following the Space Vikings, wondering when they will get their moment in Billy’s story. In THE SPACE VIKING’S PLIGHT, we get a chance to really see the real danger they are in traveling in the darkness of space. Queen Natalie shows why she’s in charge in this one and what makes her a true leader of her people.
  8. No Billy book could be complete without a slice of folklore. THE DEMON WHO SOUGHT LOVE is so deep, so beautiful, and so revealing to the plot IT’S INCREDIBLE, and I can’t say anything else, besides I LOVE THE FOLKLORE and IT ROCKS!
  9. THE SIDES WE CHOOSE goes into Belle’s back story. Belle appears in the first chapter of Book 1, Billy Blacksmith: The Demonslayer, but she also appears again in the third. (Remember when I said when editing I needed to leave some things alone? Yeah, Belle was one of those. I tried to cut her character. That would have been a big mistake. See? I trusted him.) She is a complex, layered character, that I didn’t think much of, but now a huge sub-plot of villainy is brewing, and Belle is finally the star player.
  10. OH MY FREAKING HECK! I think THE BALLAD OF GREYSON ASH is one of the most funny and delightfully awkward pieces of fiction I have ever read. Boys can be so stupid when it comes to impressing girls. This one is ALL THE THINGS! I happened to be there when my mother was reading it for the first time, and what a joy to hear her laugh out loud and then read us the parts that were so funny. To see the fiction played out like that is the best way to reflectively experience it.

See my shiny Billy Editor badge? I am proud of this one, as I am of all of them. But Bleakwood just happened. I hardly had to do anything. The writing is getting better, as is our working partnership. I can identify his writing like a fingerprint.

I didn’t pick up Billy because I really wanted to edit it. I’m a writer. Why become an editor? It was because the storytelling was too good to pass up, and BECAUSE I am a writer, I recognized an amazing opportunity to be a part of something great. I feel incredibly lucky. If you stick with Billy, I promise YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED. It’s perfect for the teens, but is growing a strong adult audience as well, adults who get the adventure of it, get the humor, and need that missing connection to those books they missed as kids. Here it is.

I always suggest buying paper books, because it gives a textile memory when you read it, but the ebook versions are inexpensive if you want to give it a go first. BLEAKWOOD LORE has some extra material like art, notes, and puzzles, plus it’s only ten bucks right now. I highly recommend this read.

Find the Blacksmith Legacy here on Ben Ireland’s Amazon page and website: benirelandbooks.com