A lot has been happening in the BOTP creative centre lately. First up, I've gotten engaged :D Yup, put a ring on the ocean goddess and am settling into a new house for a life of cats, mad cook-ups and fun times. A pretty major milestone! 
   Tomb of the forgotten king is shaping up nicely. Its rhythm and flow differs greatly in comparison to its older siblings. I'm digging the style and perspective. Creating new characters is a hoot. Melindra will definitely feature in more upcoming projects. Speaking of upcoming projects, there are a few on their way. 2019 will be a big year for BOTP. Inspired by Red Sonja I'm planning to focus on a single character and write a running series of wicked sweet adventures, but which character will it be? Akella, Crystal, Matearla? Perhaps Melody... and yes, The Sapphire Crown is also on its way!! 

The wind that blows

   Motivation is a guest you must embrace when it stops by to visit. Snatch it before it passes. With motivation comes productivity and with their powers combined.... Captain Planet? No, success! It doesn't have to be major, even small steps accumulate. 

   Misanthropy is published! A month or two ago, I think? Kudos to me. Already, I've begun the next book. It will not follow misanthropy, instead, i'm taking Melindra, Kasbin's daughter (the the Larrosan clairvoyant) and sending her on an adventure with a bunch of new characters to find an ancient city which Rowan (an antiquarian) believes is the resting place of a forgotten king. 

   My goal with this book is to a) create a new series of standalone novels called 'Born of the Phoenix Legends' whose purpose is to explore the secrets and lore of Sapphiron and b) write faster. Misanthropy took longer than it should have to finish. So I'm gonna knock it up a notch with the ol' spice weasel. And c) really have fun exploring more regions in Sapphiron and to create a bunch of new monsters, towns and to generally expand the mythology within the world. Adam's drawn a cool concept sketch for the cover which I've approved and he's started colouring it, so that's in the works. Supanova 2018 is all booked and ready, that'll be a fun June weekend again.

   So, it's all systems go... 

Misanthropy's almost complete!

     Misanthropy's ending, I'll tell you what, it's going to be a cracker! The final chapters are really coming together nicely and rounding the book off. Gonna drop some BIG character bombshells too! The epilogue leads straight into the third book. I'm looking forward to the title reveal for book 3 and getting Adam to smash out some awesome new artwork too! The release date for Misanthropy is January 2018.

     Moving forwards, plans are in the works for a spin-off novel which will follow the exploits of a new character who you'll be introduced to in Misanthropy. I won't say who they are, but they have ties to Lorewell! Currently, I'm developing the plot. It's quite different from the current BOTP themes regarding good versus evil, focusing more on ancient ruins and Sapphiron's history and lore.

     We've also begun working on a character info section for the website. You'll be able to learn a little more about your favourite characters and there'll be some neat artwork too. That will start appearing on the website around the end of this month.

Happy December friends!

Gwent beta

Hi, my name's Dave and I'm a gwentaholic lol 

When I saw the beta for Gwent I got super excited (having loved it in the withcher 3) and downloaded the game asap! I've been playing an awful lot lately! I'm really enjoying the challenge of playing against other people, some of the decks they build are outstanding! 

Scoia'tael is my favourite deck to use. Still mastering the best card combo to suit my play style, I'm diggin the monster deck aswell.

What I think is truly great, is the artwork and animation for the cards! They look fantastic! Leveling up and rank matches are pretty well set, can't say I have any gripes with play, except people who forfeit on the last or second last card... just play to the end, gah! 

Destiny Reforged

       Destiny Reforged is the remastered version of the original, first edition Born of the Phoenix novel. The biggest change is the trim size of the paperback. Born of the Phoenix trim size is 6" x 9", it's createspace's recommended size, so being my first novel, I decided to run with it, though, when I received the books in the mail, i did consider them to be abit large for a paperback, and thus the seeds for the re-vamp were planted. Destiny Reforged trim size is 5" x 8" which feels much more agreeable in-hand!

      The cover is the next big change, as well as the new title. Being the first book in the series, I felt that having its own title would be a lot better. Destiny Reforged reflects the new path of fate Ravage and Patsy travel after their encounter with Akella, Melody and Crystal. The book has a new illustrator, Adam Isailovic. He does some awesome work! You'll find quite a few illustrations inside the book. Ever since reading the old 'choose your own adventure' books when i was young, I've always loved pictures in books! So I'm thrilled to be able to have illustrations in my novels!

      And that sums up the changes in Destiny Reforged. To get your hands on a copy of the paperback, follow the link below.

https://www.createspace.com/7103032

         

Misanthropy cover!

      Misanthropy is really coming along nicely! I'm thrilled with how the book cover turned out! Adam did an awesome job! Can't give the guy enough praise! We'll be working on the next project soon as well! I have the next three books in the works, Born of the Phoenix is going to be a very long series! Writing has been great lately, words are flowing so easily! Now that most of the main characters have been introduced i going to narrow the book vision, in that they'll be more focused on specific people, like Ravage & Patsy and Akella. I'm itching to get started on Akella's origin story!!!! Crystal will have her own book in the future as well. Zoe, I really wanna do her origins, but I think I'll write it as a novelette. I want Tairrie to be a more prominent character as well, I really like her origin so i'll also write that as a novelette. Nancy Nadonya, the legendary Josai fairy, you can expect to see more of her in the future!
      Sydney Supanova will be upon me before I know it, a lot to plan for that! I learnt so much from my first year, this year it's going to be exciting!  

Custom Magic the Gathering decks (^_^!)

      I've only just started playing magic the gathering. The only thing I don't like about it is that I don't have many people to play it with, or time to play. There's a shop in Penrith where they play every saturday but I haven't gone there yet. Mostly because I'm busy on saturday's with getting Misanthropy finished and spending time with my girlfriend and or sleeping in and playing the playstation. 

      A few times I've tried to get my gf to play magic with me but she hasn't been too interested. So, to make the game more fun for her, I jumped on http://mtgcardsmith.com/ and made her a custom magic deck, mostly with cats, because she loves kitties!

      Cardsmith is a good site. I made a lot of my 'token' cards for my other decks on there, much easier then trying to track the cards down or buying them on ebay.

 

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!