Big news! I'm visiting the Idaho Falls Public Library on January 13 and I'd love to see you there! I will be discussing some of the themes in my science fiction disabilities novel On Borrowed Wings, as well as introducing my other books. Come ask me questions, get books signed, and exchange Pokémon GO friend codes with me!

I'm hoping to have paperbacks on sale at the event, but no guarantees, so if you want a book signed, I advise buying it from Amazon ahead of time.

I'm very excited to share my work with the Idaho Falls community and I'm very grateful to the library for letting me put on this event. I hope everyone has a great time!

 

New in the merch shop--get your hands on some official Zenith Corp gear from On Borrowed Wings! Can't you see Greg or Jacob wearing this hoodie around the complex?

By the way, thank you so much for your patience while Blue Diver is being edited. I know it probably looks like I've gotten very distracted with all the new merchandise, but actually, I can't move forward on the manuscript until I get feedback from my editor. I'm going with a new editorial service this time and while I think they'll be a better fit for me, it's also taking a bit longer than previous editors. I'm chomping at the bit to finish this novel and release it, believe me. I have confidence that my editor will be done soon, and then if all goes well, Blue Diver should see release around the end of the year. Again, I appreciate everyone's understanding and patience.

(And once Blue Diver is out, I can start teasing my next novel...)

 

New keychain designs are available in my sister's Etsy shop! These keychains feature the logo of Zenith Corporation from On Borrowed Wings, and your very own thunder stone like Cat's from Thunder Girl!* 

If you're excited for Blue Diver, watch this space because we have some very cool merch for that novel coming soon!

*Thunder stone keychain does not actually reanimate fossils. But you can pretend and I won't judge you.

On Borrowed Wings sketches!

Nimbus, Jacob, and Audrey being glowy Dolens. These sketches also show how powerful they are compared to each other--Nimbus barely knows how to work her powers, Jacob's pretty good at it, and Audrey is just terrifying.

And the concept sketch for the cover art!

The On Borrowed Wings audiobook is out! Get it now on Audible, or look for it on iTunes soon (like probably by the time you read this)!

It's been a long, twisty path to get this audiobook finished, but Ben Fife was great to work with through the whole process, and he did a fantastic job. (For Audrey, I pretty much told him to channel his inner Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender.)

I've got a big surprise for everybody... I've gone ahead with production of the On Borrowed Wings audiobook! Once again, Benjamin Fife is gracing the audiobook with his awesome narration and voice talents. I've listened up to chapter 4 so far, and it's fantastic. I'm so excited to share it with everyone!

To celebrate, I thought I'd share an old character introduction thing that I did back in 2017, when I was writing the book! There's these things called "art memes" which aren't like the memes you see on social media; they're fill-in-the-blank questionnaires that you answer with drawings. I did quite a few back in the day, and this one happens to be about Jacob!

Note that because this meme was drawn before the book was published, there are a few discrepancies. One of the most obvious is that Ad Infinitum was the working title for the book; my editor convinced me that "Ad Infinitum", while cool and mysterious, is only vaguely relevant to the subject matter.

Ben is doing a super job making Jacob totally adorable. I hope listeners like him too! He is definitely the most dynamic of the main characters. And you can't go wrong with a Brooklyn accent! Especially coming from a squeaky thirteen-year-old.

Also, yes, Greg is a tremendous geek. He will go on like that for hours if you let him.

Well, the Kickstarter campaign didn't pan out. But that's okay. It was my first time and I'm sure there's a lot I could have done better.

To show my appreciation to backers, I went ahead and put together one of the pledge prizes anyway: desktop backgrounds of Azimuth and Eloreth! I created the background as one image, and also split it into two separate images, to fit different monitor layouts.

I had a lot of fun drawing Az and Eloreth again; it's been a while, especially for Az. I removed a lot of the bells and whistles from my initial concept for him, which made him much easier to draw. I've learned a lot about mechanical design since then, and one of my cardinal rules is that if a design element isn't mechanically necessary, and is making the aesthetic too cluttered and complicated, it's got to go. I try to make designs that "read" well to the eye and also perform all necessary mechanical functions.

Hi all, I wanted to give you a very important update on the Kickstarter project for On Borrowed Wings.

The Kickstarter campaign has 14 days to reach the funding goal of $1,000. So far, only 18% of that amount has been pledged.

With two weeks left in the campaign, it's imperative that people help out, now more than ever. Kickstarter allows you to pledge however much you want ($1 minimum), and I'm preparing some fun prizes for donors across multiple pledge tiers.

I'm a small-time indie author with a limited budget. Part of the reason why I'm indie is so I can focus on telling the stories I want to tell, without having to worry about what publishers and agents are looking for or what's trending on the market. 

That freedom of creativity allowed me to write and self-publish a teen science fiction novel where two of the main characters have cerebral palsy and two are neurodiverse. Why? Because I strongly believe fiction needs to be more inclusive. Kids with special needs are warriors fighting some tough battles. They deserve quality stories that show people like them making a difference and being heroes.

Now, to reach out to even more of these special needs warriors, I'd love to get this book into an audio format. And I would love your help so it doesn't break my bank.

I know you're probably very busy and have plenty of your own challenges you're juggling. But if you're feeling inspired, please consider donating even a single dollar to this project. Do it for the people with special needs in your life. Do it for all the times you wanted more fictional heroes who reminded you of yourself. Do it for the love of good books.

I write books with the intention to make a difference in the lives of readers. Audiobooks allow me to expand my novels' sphere of influence and spread the good. I know that working together, we can make this happen. 🙌

As the Kickstarter campaign has just over two weeks to the deadline, I thought I'd put together some book trivia to share! These tidbits give some insight into how the characters were designed and what a complicated road to publication the book had. I've found it works best for me if I write a book all in one go, and don't set it aside to start other projects. It then becomes very difficult for me to re-gain momentum for it.

22 days to go in my Kickstarter audiobook campaign, and here's the add-on reveal! I'm offering the ability to purchase any of my Kindle ebooks for just $1--that's $2 off regular retail price! I'm also offering signed paperback copies! The ebooks are available at all prize tiers, while the paperbacks are only available at the tiers that include physical prizes--although this is subject to change if enough people ask me nicely. 🙂

If you're at all interested in what this project is trying to do - whether or not you've pledged - it would be awesome if you could please help me spread the word through your own social media channels and telling interested friends and associates! My own social circles are small, so I could really use the help of my enthusiastic readers to help widen the reach of this project. I think we can do this if we all work together!

 

Okay, here's the lowdown: I ran into some budgetary difficulties in my initial attempt to finance this audiobook. But I really want to see the audiobook happen because I know it means a lot to some people. So I figured, if fans want it so badly, maybe they could pitch in and help out!

So I'm very excited to announce a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the audiobook production! I only need a minimum of $1000 to fully finance everything (the actual production, Kickstarter's fees, and prize fulfillment), and I've put together some fun prizes to reward backers.

If you're interested in audiobooks, inclusive science fiction, giant robots, and/or uplifting stories of hope, redemption, and empowerment, I hope you'll consider donating and spreading the word!

The On Borrowed Wings audiobook has been greenlit! 

Some fans have been requesting this one, so I'm very happy to say that everything is official, and audiobook narrator extraordinaire Benjamin Fife should be starting production sometime next month!

I'm sure he'll do an awesome job, I'm excited to listen to it, and I'm excited to share it with the rest of you! Stay tuned for further updates!

Hi all, thanks for your patience and understanding. I've been doing a lot of retooling, and I've gotten back to a place where my work brings me joy again, which is wonderful.

It also makes me very excited for some fun new developments happening. First of, On Borrowed Wings is getting an audiobook! I'm once again working with Benjamin Fife and his awesome narrating talents to bring to life this sci-fi thriller about ancient giant robots, psionic powers, and overcoming the things that you think are holding you back from achieving your potential. That should be happening sometime this year, so keep an eye out for updates!

Also, I'm very excited for my guest appearance on W. Bradford Swift's Guest Author Readup series! It should be a lot of fun. You can register here (note that the information for March's Readup is still there as of when this post was written, but registering should get you on the list for the Zoom meeting for my appearance).

Finally, I just got done really fleshing out the plot outline for Blue Diver, and I'm so excited for it! I got to detail some fun secondary characters, as well as sketch out the basics for all the mechs. Maybe I'll doodle some concept art at some point. Also, I'm super excited because the story will at one point feature a Thorne–Żytkow object!!! Yay!! That's going to be fun. I love when I can fit nerdy stuff into my writing.

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Revising On Borrowed Wings

One pretty major alteration I've been making is to give Greg more of a character arc. There were hints of it previously, but I feel like his character development and his relationship with Nimbus were never firmly established enough for my liking, so I'm trying to give him more attention this time around. I want to make it clear that he's just a big engineering nerd who got so caught up in how awesome his job was that he found it too easy to kind of forget about the whole "helping someone take over the world" thing.

Meeting Nimbus and seeing personally how his actions were affecting others, however, helped Greg feel guilty about what he was doing, and when he realized Nimbus needed his help escaping, Greg immediately set about trying to make up for all the damage he had already caused. Although it doesn't make him any less socially awkward, he's brought to realize that people are an important part of life as well, not just work. That ends up helping him not only be a better friend to Nimbus, but then to Jacob when the boy desperately needs friends and good adult figures in his life.

Also, hopefully I didn't make Jacob too depressing! I feel bad for him every time I read this story. He's just a kid who needs good friends.

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Revising On Borrowed Wings

Major prose fixes I've been working on:

- Getting rid of the dreaded "was" as much as possible. It's a repetitive and dulling verb, especially in descriptive prose, and the less you use it, the better. (Not to say that you should bend over backwards constructing unnatural-sounding sentences, but if you exercise your creativity, you'll find that you need "was" a lot less than you might think.)

- Changing passive verbs ("-ing") to active verbs ("-ed"). It makes prose stronger, plus it automatically eliminates a lot of instances of the deplorable "was".

- Cutting out a lot of extraneous information. For example, in chapter 6, Nimbus is mentally torn between the excitement of getting to pilot Eloreth, the strangeness of the whole situation, unease about Parshakian that she's trying to squelch, and homesickness and missing her dad, but I've found that multiple paragraphs rehashing these emotions and thoughts interspersed with the action makes the pacing feel odd, and tends to bore me as a reader with character information I already know.

So I'm trying to trim these things down, while leaving sparse reminders where I feel it is appropriate, such as Nimbus wishing her dad was there to see her when she leaves the hangar with Eloreth. Maybe this is just a personal writing preference, but I usually like to let characters' actions and dialogue speak for their mental state, unless they are undergoing a purposely placed bout of introspection. I want the reader to be actively engaged in putting together the pieces of the story and not have to be blatantly told everything, because as a reader I find that boring and effortless.

It's been said that the difference between art and entertainment is that art challenges people and invites them to think, and while I'm not pretentious enough to call my writing art, I do want readers to have a dialogue with the book and as a result come away with new insights about themselves and about life. I don't think that's too much to ask.

(Although, I have gone too far at times and made my prose too abstract and vague, so I kinda have to remember that just because something makes sense in my head doesn't mean other people will connect the dots in the same way. That's what editors are for.)

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Revising On Borrowed Wings

One thing that I hope makes sense is some of Parshakian's actions in chapter 4, when he introduces Jacob to Eloreth. Specifically, it might seem a little confusing that he acts like he would need Jacob to open the silo and gain access to Eloreth, when we find out later on that Parshakian is a Dolen too and thus should have had easy access. But then Parshakian goes ahead and turns on the silo lighting, something that apparently only Nimbus could do earlier.

This isn't a plot hole--actually, Parshakian was intentionally acting powerless because he didn't want to reveal his powers to Jacob yet, and because he wanted to make Jacob believe that Jacob was the only person who could enter Eloreth. It was only when Jacob crossed him later that Parshakian used his abilities to intimidate Jacob into complying, something he only does as a last-ditch resort. Parshakian is the kind of person who prefers manipulation over brute force, but if manipulation fails then he really gets ugly. So it was actually Parshakian's mistake that he turned on Eloreth's silo lighting--a rare oversight from someone who's usually mentally on top of things. (He was probably also getting impatient with Jacob.)

Anyway, I hope it's something that readers will notice and get tipped off that Parshakian may be more than he seems.

I've ended up dropping several hundred words from the manuscript already, and I'm only a fourth of the way in. I realize now that I used to have a very wordy and superfluous writing style, and it's been a challenge to try to make my prose and my narrative more concise and to-the-point while still retaining a desirable level of poetry and creative enjoyment. Of course I don't want my stories to read like technical manuals, but I also don't want them to be emotionally overwrought and verbally excessive. It's a balancing act.

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Revising On Borrowed Wings

Whoo, it's been a while, hasn't it! Still super busy. But my latest project has been to get all of my novels on Amazon so people can find my ebook and print editions in one place. Skydwellers I consider already pretty well-revised (or at least recently-revised), but On Borrowed Wings has been bothering me for various reasons, so I'm taking this opportunity to bring it up to speed and add dialogue tags because augh. My prose has gotten so much better.

(Dialogue tags are the "he said"-"she said" bit that you're supposed to put with dialogue to clarify who's speaking. I used to think you could get away with omitting them, like so:

I pulled the garlic bread from the oven. "So what are you guys up to today?"

but not only does that read rather disjointedly, but it becomes problematic when there's more than one individual in the surrounding sentences:

She gave her sister a big hug and they laughed. "Let's go out for ice cream!" The two hurried out the door.

Notice how you can't actually tell who's speaking that dialogue. Yeah. Big problem.

So, unless it really interferes with the flow of the prose (and 90% of the time it won't), add a dialogue tag. You'll be glad you did.

This message was paid for by the National Agency for Dialogue Tags.)

Anyway, I'm only 9 pages in and already I've ended up changing quite a bit--not just in the prose, but I also wanted to fix up the character development a bit. I'm trying to do a better job of establishing Nimbus's and her dad's characters firmly in the beginning of the book--especially since I of course had a much better grasp on their characters by the end. I wanted to make apparent the hints of tension that neither of them realize have been building between them until they're faced with a very unusual situation and that tension reaches a breaking point as both of them respond in different ways.

I wanted to make sure to paint a clear picture of Jim Tennoji as a very logical, straitlaced, by-the-book person who hates making waves, while his daughter inherited much more of his late wife's freespirited creativity and open-minded, intuitive approach to life. But Nimbus is a sweet girl who loves her dad dearly and would never dream of saying no to him, even though she finds she can't quite agree with his heavyhanded ideas about what she should be doing with her life. Naturally, finding a high-tech giant robot in an archaeological dig site challenges both of them, as Jim can't bring himself to accept such a paradigm-breaking find while Nimbus wants to welcome it with open arms.

Of course, the situation worsens when Nimbus accidentally becomes the robot's pilot and suddenly they have a shady corporation breathing down their necks. But through everything that happens, Nimbus learns that while chasing down the things she wants, she has to keep an eye on the big picture and how her actions affect others, while Jim learns to let back in ways to approach life that he tried to suppress after his wife died, and that relationships and love between people continue regardless of whether they're physically present.

Part of the reason why I think I struggled to solidify all of this was because I wrote so much of the story in bits and pieces, having really no idea what I was doing in the beginning, so even after multiple rounds of editing it's still a bit shaky. Again, this is a great testament to how important it is to write something in one go. Don't do what I did and write until you run out of steam and then put it aside until you feel like working on it again (which could be years). You'll lose all of that momentum you'd been building as you immersed yourself in the characters, world, and plot, and when you come back to it you'll kind of have to start all over again remembering what you wanted to say with the story.

I also found these cutesy cartoons of Eloreth and Azimuth from On Borrowed Wings, that I'd done ages ago. Augh I used to be so great with Prismacolor marker and now it's like I don't even bother anymore. Well, to be fair, those markers are expensive (deservedly so, but still, expensive), and smelly (which is less justifiable in my book), and take up more desk space than my computer which is always on my desk anyway.

At any rate, if you look closely at Eloreth you can see some aspects of her design that didn't make it into the design on the book cover. This was back when I thought I had to cram ridiculous amounts of bells and whistles into my robot designs, so when I re-designed her for the book cover, I cut out some extraneous elements.

Also, to be clear, the Armamants' faces don't move in the book--they look like stone statues, not Transformers (old-school). Also Az's eyes aren't red, but I messed up in coloring. Oh well, it makes him look more menacing.

I felt guilty, so here are some sketches! :) Yay for guilt trips!

That piece in the upper right is me poking fun at my own writing process for On Borrowed Wings. When I started writing the first draft years ago, I set out to make it a very serious, deep drama that tackled profound ideas about personal growth and human potential. When I decided to finish it, I realized that that approach was boring, so instead now it's about obsessions with spicy chicken ramen and discussions of the characters' favorite MLB teams.

(Pro writing tip: Have fun with your writing! It makes the whole process more enjoyable.)

Poor Hyren. My first attempts at making up a cool backstory for him when I was 14 didn't go so great. I like the backstory I've settled on now, though. Grumpy ex-space-marines are the best.

Slight redesign of a Digimon I made up some years ago. Maybe someday I'll make her into an original character. Mostly I just love those dino feet. More things need dino feet.

I got some new Micron pens! Obviously I had to play around with them in my sketchbook.

Jacob from On Borrowed Wings is always fun to draw. He's a scrappy little guy.