Mortality of characters

      Should a protagonist die?
It's a question many authors struggle with. Personally, I think it's an important part of activating the reality wheel in a narrative. It can honestly be annoying when a hero overcomes every outrageous obstacle or battle unscathed, eliminating fear that the character might actually not survive a horrendous encounter. Killing heroes creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. Can they defeat that monster? Is this quest too much for them? Will the dragon eat their face off?!? It's one of the reasons I've stayed away from the traditional 'stop the apocalypse' or 'save the princess' story arc. I find the domino effect style a lot of fun when writing. Events triggered by the protagonists actions give the narrative a much better flow than a story trying to wrap everything up nicely with a bow to accomplish its preconceived end goal. Sometimes there's nothing worse than predicting a story's ending! 

      This is concept art for Crystal's appearance in Misanthropy. Adam's been doing some great work drawing the characters! He's working on colouring the cover at the moment, though I won't be revealing it until just before the book release.

Onechanbara Chaos PS4 review

(!^_^)/~Onechanbara! It was a whole lotta fun!

      Most of the games I've been playing lately have been rpg's. Games like the witcher, fallout and darkest dungeon. While these games are great and immersive, they require a lot of hours, especially the way I play. With all the writing I've been doing lately (and stupid day job) I just don't have the time for my favourite rpg's, enter Onechanbara! It was abit of a impulse buy. The cover reminded me of Lollipop chainsaw, which I really enjoyed playing. I realise there's a stereotype surrounding it which is unfortunate. It was a fun zombie slaying sparkle colour comedy dialogue adventure, and Onechanbara was much the same!

      The enemy designs were pretty cool and the boss battles enjoyable. It didn't take long to finish, only a few hours, which I liked because I didn't have to grind or search for hidden items or anything. I just turned it on and jumped straight into monster slashing action! The characters were easy to use and the moves rather satisfying, especially the finishing moves where you absolutely rip the monsters apart! The quick time events were very smooth and it was the first time i've used the touch pad  for a QTE. Combat was very fluid, graphics were solid, I didn't notice a single glitch which was fantastic! Ultra smooth gameplay. I thought the switching character mechanic to be very useful and fun, weapons were cool and so were the transformations and combos.

      Overall, it was a simple, fun game that was a pleasure to play! It get's a Dave score of 8/10 for its enjoyment factor. 

Jobee & the swirling waves

      Misanthropy has a new artist! http://skavenzverov.deviantart.com/ His artwork is fantastic! This is his drawing of 'Jobee the sea goddess' You might remember her from the first book, she'll be returning for Misanthropy! There are several other illustrations which will be inside the book and I'm pretty excited to see the cover, he's working on it at the moment!

Wading through the bog

      One hurdle every introvert faces is the difficulty of accomplishing feats alone. There are times solitude is a blessing, no-one around to complicate a situation. No other voices or opinions to lead you astray. Though, when you have no allies to turn to for aid, paths and threshold guardians can be difficult to defeat.

      I've come to realise the struggles of self published authors. Marketing, publicity, promotion - I know not of these things. I'm a world builder, a story teller, my strengths are in imagination, not business. These topics need some research!!! It would be nice to have someone to talk to about these things of which I know nothing, but, as an introvert who doesn't much converse with the other humans, I will press on alone. (Though, I do muchly feel like I'm trying to lead Artax safely through the swamp of sadness.)

      Well, I'm off now to send Akella into a haunted forest (^_^!) So far, Misanthropy is on schedule for its Jan/Feb release.

Misanthropy update

 

      Misanthropy continues!!!! Though, progress has slowed some lately. Work has been hectic, but, I have no wish to bore you with such humdrum details of the daily grind. I've been thinking about quitting work again so I can purely concentrate on writing buuuuut it's unlikely that'll happen anytime soon, (dang it!)

  

     The illustrations are continuing to roll in, which is great! Here we have some progress shots of Patsy & Hobson. Not 100% sure how many pics will be in the novel, maybe between 6-8.

      Well, back to writing now, Ravage & Patsy are currently travelling through a ravine in the southern outskirts of the Fornen swamp, what will they find?!?

Resident evil Revelations 2 review

There were a lot of things i liked about RE-R2, the enemies, the graphics, the weapons, the gameplay mechanics - all very splendid! What I didn't enjoy, at all, was constantly switching between characters (stunning enemies with the flashlight then taking them down with Claire - for example)
After a few hours I felt like I was playing 'the babysitters club'. Innovation is good, right, moving forward and evolving, changing things up.... but my heart lies with the early res evil games, RE2 and RE4 the BIG favourites of the franchise. That, was survival horror. If you walk down a dark hall, all alone, it can be creepy, if you have someone with you - less creepy. If you're in the middle of a boss battle and your stupid AI partner keeps getting in the way - that's really fucking annoying! Ever since RE5, I've found having a 'sidekick', REALLY ANNOYING!!!
Why do I need a buddy? Can't they let me play the game alone?!? This is why I now prefer Dead space over res evil, because they give you the real deal. Sadly, I'm not sure if they're going to make any more DS games, sad times. I hope they do!
I didn't finish RE-R2, I got bored/annoyed with the AI sidekick.
Raid mode was the game's saviour! Wow, I really, really enjoyed raid mode! It was fun,
Excellent gameplay, annoying sidekicks, final verdict 6/10.

Audiobook release

      One of the many plans in the pipeline was an audiobook, and here it is! I'm really stoked with how it turned out! I used VoiceRealm to find a voice actor and after receiving several audition submissions I chose Victoria, though, after the first time I heard her voice I knew she was the one (^_^!) VoiceRealm was surprisingly easy to use. I researched quite a few different voice talent websites and after much internal deliberation, went for it!

Here's the audiobook - Born of the Phoenix

      If you're after a voice actor, I highly recommend Victoria! 
Here's the link to her site: Victoria Scott  Her twitter & instagram is @VixVoices

                                               

How to get rid of Black Beard Algae (BBA)

      When Black Beard Algae first appeared in my tank, I had no idea of the destruction it would cause. It's brutal algae!

      For many years my tank was under a window, so I never had need of a light as the plants got everything they needed from the sun. With lots of plants, the aquarium had a nice little eco system going, I never had any problems with algae as the bristle nose catfish constantly cleaned the tank for me.

Origins #1 - Delenair

      As the goddess of mankind, Delenair resides in Bascilla, the realm of heaven, keeping a vigilant eye on her children below.
      Even under the watchful eye of the goddess, the denizens of Sapphiron do not live a blessed life. Delenair, choosing not to interfere with the affairs of the humans, allows them to endure hard lives under the rule of kings in a land plagued with monsters and sorcery. She feels it is not a gods duty to control the people, but for them to develop a moral conscious and thrive, or, to fall into ruin by the means of their own hands. The goddess descends to intervene only when Manishka and the malevolent entities of his sadistic dominion arise to unleash chaos and death.
      Delenair is not the original god of mankind. It was Pessial, who eons ago, created the men of Sapphiron. Pessial brought Delenair and her two brothers into existence to be mankind's saviours and guardians. Naming his champions 'The Delphi', he blessed them with the gift of humanity, to better understand the struggles of the lesser mortals. Although he hoped empathy and benevolence would blossom within the hearts of The Delphi, Delenair's brothers became lost within the void of one's soul, taking heed of the nagging emptiness that can never be filled. They began following a path of greed, lust and pride, which consumed them as they reveled in their superiority over man. 
      Treachery and murder ensued, changing the destiny of the gods. 

      The fall of Pessial, the war of the Gorigarni and Delenair's full origin story can be found in 'Born of the Phoenix - The Book of Lore' which is currently under construction.
      
   

Horizon Zero Dawn and HellBlade

       These are two games I can't wait to get my hands on! Horizon looks stunning and the artwork for HellBlade is awesome! 

      Female protagonists- yup yup, just the type of games i like! The bow in Horizon looks cool, I find bows to be really fun weapons in games, like in resident evil 5 when you unlock the bow, it's a great zombie killer! Skyrim's bows were alright, the latest tombraider games make great use of the bow! The stealth/hunting element looks interesting too! Harvesting parts from the robot dinosaurs.
     

Writer's Challenge

      My first youtube videos were 'writer's journey', well now it's time for writer's challenge! With the final ultra mega-mega completion of Crimson Sapphires done & dusted, it's time for Misanthropy! But I don't want to dilly-dally with it. I want it finished, yesterday! Crystal's story must be told! Yes, Crystal will be the main protagonist in this one. I've completed the plot, written up the chapter play by play, constructed some new creatures, monsters, landscapes yadda yadda yadda, so it's all ready to rock & roll. 

      However, a man must go to work, isn't it. Spend time with his girlfriend, play the video games, do the things at home, free hours are few and fleeting, not to mention that time passes VERY quickly! I have devised for myself, one of those things, of productivity, with the words and the numbers, a schedule of sorts, to keep me on track. So let's hope it helps! I'm giving myself six months to complete the book and as long as I don't procrastinate, I should reach my goal and you should get the next book to read! It's going to be longer than the first book, probably more violent too, though I did read somewhere, a man complaining about violence in books, and that it shouldn't be necessary to create conflict. HA! Try telling Akella not to kill someone she abhors, that girl does what she wants and with a blade the size of Sunderfall, well, ain't no-one gonna survive that! In Misanthropy, Crystal's mad, really-really pissed the fuck off and she's going to be dealing with that anger by spilling a lot of blood. Well, time to get started! But before I go, here's a bunch of cats on computers & stuff^^

Release of Crimson Sapphires

      So, today I published The Crimson Sapphires through Createspace. I released the novelette a few days ago on Kindle but had to wait a bit longer for the paperback, you see I was waiting for MatoelGrande to finish up the illustrations. There's no illustrations in the kindle version, it's a bonus for anyone who wants to buy the paperback, a reward for those who still roll the old way. Same will go for every book henceforth, and I plan on all the books to have illustrations from now on. I always loved pictures in books and now that I know how to get it all done and sorted and have found a great artist, the future will be pics pics pics! The book is in review atm, they usually take about 24hrs to approve it them boom! It'll be available to the world! Really happy with how Crimson turned out, I mean, it was only suppose to be a short story for wattpad, then it grew into a novelette. Oh yeah, that girl smoking, it's Patsy (^_^!) I hope you enjoy reading the story!

Akella & a new direction for Crimson Sapphires

      The Etsy store is up and running now, t-shirts should be available mid-June. I've received the shirts but am yet to have them printed. I was pleased by the quality of the shirts, they're cotton and feel pretty good! Looking forward to peoples reactions to them at supanova (^_^!)

      Crimson Sapphires.... I took it off Wattpad because I'm going to release it as an illustrated novelette. Pretty happy about that! Only the paperbacks will have the illustrations, mostly because I want to reward the people who stick to the good ol' physical copy. The pictures look really awesome too, very happy with them! The story's a good eye opener into Ravage & Patsy's past, plus it reveals more of Sapphiron and it's unique denizens and history.

      On another note, I've decided to end the writer's journey youtube series and replace it with a new series! Episode one was pretty fun to film! Was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be!

Here's the link if you wana check it out: BotP episode one 

Book 2: Misanthropy.

      Below is the synopsis for book 2: Misanthropy. If you haven't read Born of the Phoenix yet, then I probably wouldn't read the synopsis for book 2 because of SPOILERS!!! Huge spoilers!!! seriously, you have been warned!!!!

Born of the Phoenix keeps on rollin!

And the journey continues!

      This picture of Akella sitting down, chillin in thought with Sunderfall resting on her shoulder, is my favourite representation of the cursed blade. Akella is on the book cover but you don't really grasp the size of Sunderfall as you can't see the entirety of the blade. You can see why it cuts through armour and tears peoples bodies apart so easily!

Three of a kind (^_^!)

      So, a few things have been happening lately. I received my first customer review from amazon - 4/5 stars ☆☆☆☆ Pretty good! Definitely something to be happy about! I did pay close attention to the comments, which stated a few editing issues. In response I decided to travel down the avenue of formal editing (which I should have done in the first place) I'm very lucky to have Roderick Byatt going over my work. I must say, I'm quite humbled by his intelligence. To put this as a 30 Rock reference: I'm Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) an up & comer but green as hell and naive to the game. Roderick is Jack (Alec Baldwin) Highly educated, sophisticated and motivated professional. (A strange analogy seeing as how I'm not a girl right, I'm just all on team Fey after watching some 30 Rock lately, and Sisters hehe) So far the book is looking marvelous. An emerald is stunning, polish it and you have yourself an even more brilliant gemstone - that's how I'm feeling about Born of the Phoenix.

Paperback release and self editing

      \(!!^o^)~Paperback release wooooooo!!!!!

      Since this is my first novel I did quite a bit of research when I was first thinking about getting the story published. Originally I did go the 'literary agent & publisher' route but alas no one wanted a bar of me, what made it even harder was that the agents and publishers wouldn't give me any feedback, I just got the "sorry your manuscript is unsuccessful, because of the large number of submissions we receive we do not give feedback on the manuscripts we reject." Which is fair enough, but some sort of feedback would've been nice.

Valentine's Day Book Give away!

      To celebrate Valentine's day Born of the Phoenix will be available free on amazon kindle for the Valentine's weekend! 12th to the 15th of February (^_^!) 

Fantasy Wallpaper Gallery

      As a big fantasy fan I like having my desktop set up with a gallery of ever changing wallpapers. I often enjoy searching for different galleries and finding cool new pictures that I like and stuff to add to my ever increasing collection of said wallpapers. So i thought to myself I should share a few of my favourites, hope you see something you can add to your own collection (^_^!)

The Twelve Kingdoms

      Hands down my N#1 favourite anime is The Twelve Kingdoms. It may not have the violence of Black Lagoon or the epicness of Bleach or the comedy of Soul Eater BUT it does have some really amazing character development in a fantasy world that is just wicked awesome. (and feels; it's packed full of the feels!) The anime is based on a series of Japanese novels by Fuyumi Ono, though I haven't read the novels. I came across the anime dvd's at Supanova acoupla years ago and bought a few- watched them and was instantly hooked!

Tairrie.B

      This is just a pure shout out to my favourite female singer; the most awesome Tairrie.B (^_^!!)
      If you're not familiar with her music then you're in for a treat! I started listening to her back in the late 90's when one of my friends let me borrow 'Speak and Destroy' It was awesome! I went straight out and bought it and ever since then, have bought as much of her stuff as I can get my hands on!

A matter of linguistics

      Another big day today!!! Signed up at Createspace to have a printed version of the book available so hopefully I'll hear about that soon! I think it was easier uploading it to kindle then it was for createspace, it was mostly photoshop that gave me the trouble when I had to design the cover to all the spec's they wanted (I'm not very good with photo editing, not very good at all!) I also had ALOT of problems formatting the word document, I couldn't figure out why until I realised the template they give you is a 1997 version of word.... really? So I opened my word (I use 2007) and just set the right page size to fit the paper the book is going to be printed on and boosh! It all magically worked how I wanted it too! If you're going to use createspace I suggest you do the same because the options in word'97 are very limited!

Writer's Journey (^_^!)

      Writer's Journey is a series of funny skit videos I made while writing Born of the Phoenix. It has been a while since I made N#3 and I'm hoping to film number 4 real soon! So for a good laugh at my tom foolery check em out! The first video is a bit on the boring side and it did take me awhile to figure out how to use windows movie maker but I think I'm getting the hang of it now. The 3rd video is defs my favourite hahaha and of course the cat boss is a parody of Cat from Red Dwarf (^_^!)


Episode one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDJ_1iEQOU

Episode two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS4GivAooi0

Episode three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRCX9XdXhI4

Born of the Phoenix book release!

      It's a big day in the Born of the Phoenix universe today because the book is now live on amazon kindle!!!!! (!!^o^)woooooo!!! There's a  link over there to purchase the book ---> You can also read the review chapters or if you're a kindle subscriber you can read it for free! Hope you enjoy reading it!!! 

      The first couple of chapters are also available to read for free on wattpad (^_^!)

The girls (^_^!)

      To help promote the book at supanova I'll be selling t-shirts and this will be one of the styles available (^_^!) It's a nendoroid style parody, I think it's cute! Kinda puts a sunshine touch to all the brutal killing they do haha! So from left to right we have Akella, Delenair atop Forceren, Ravage and Patsy.

Artwork by Matoelgrande from DeviantArt.

Tankland - Home of the many fishaloo's.

      So other than just learning about the Born of the Phoenix universe let me welcome you into my world so you can get to know me a little bit better (^_^!)

      This is Tankland, a tropical paradise for a few select spoiled fish brats. I've always liked small streams, waterfalls, ponds and stony creeks. They're so very interesting! Not just because of the cool plants and little denizens that live in them but because as a little kid I always imagined treasure being hidden there! Though sadly I've never found any, one day I do plan on going exploring for gold and thunder eggs but that's another story.

The Crimson Sapphires.

 

      The Crimson Sapphires is a short story you can read for free on wattpad. If you haven't heard about wattpad before (I'm only new to it as well) it's a free app you can download for your phone which lets you read lots of free stories from many different genres. If you're not really down with phone apps and what-not there is also a website for it which is wattpad.com

Born of the Phoenix

Hi (^_^!)

      Thanks for taking an interest in Born of the Phoenix \(^_^!!)/ It's really great to finally get the story out into the world after all the long years of hard work! I hope you enjoy reading it and have fun on this journey with me, there's a lot of exciting stuff on its way in 2016!