With the current Corona problem taking over the world, Smashwords has launched an awesome idea. They ask authors to add more free books for a while, for people to be able to read while being stuck inside.
Of course I want to do that.
If you are interested, visit Smashwords.com to see what’s been made available for free of for a major discount.
The titles I have made free are:
Wanted: Hero
The Story of the Mimosa
A Midsummer Night Adventure
Green Haven
The Devil’s Diary
These books will be free until April 20th of this year. Price changes will NOT trickle down to Barnes and Nobles, Apple, Kobo etc, so you will need to make a free Smashwords account.
Please share this news wherever you can, all the Smashwords authors thank you!
Kobie’s up for her second and hopefully last attempt to pass her exams. She’s not the most zealous student so this presents a serious challenge. What she loves is to read – especially about witches. She would go through lengths to be a witch herself, so she devours anything about the subject she can get her hands on.
Her life is an ordinary one, almost to the point of boring, until she comes across a book with the title “Witch’s Training”. She has to have this book, and that tome has more in store for her than she could have hoped for. In her heart Kobie knows witches and magic don’t exist but this book is set on proving the opposite!
Can Kobie become a witch with the help of “Witch’s Training”? If yes, how does that come about? Strange happenings and a kidnapping are suddenly part of Kobie’s life, making it far more exciting than she had ever wished for.
For Hilda, friendship ended where pink began… (Hilda 25)
This morning I wrote this. If you know anything about Hilda, you know her negative love for pink. This sentence just popped up and it made me laugh. I still laugh about it now, and it’s been hours since I wrote it down the first time.
Friendship is something amazing
Have you ever noticed how easy some friendships are? And how difficult others can be? I don’t have many close friends, but the ones I do have are the ones I can count on through thick, thin and anything in between.
It’s the same with Hilda. For her, friends are either there 100% or they are not friends. Then they are acquaintances or even ordinaries. If you’re in the last league, you’re nowhere.
It’s interesting to think about such things regarding the characters in a book. Hilda and William are not the easiest ones to be friends with, with them being magicals in Fairyland.
Baba Yaga? She is in the Hilda league of friendship as well.
Will Kobie be different?
Kobie’s first adventure
Next week Saturday a new witch-book will appear. It’s about Kobie, who is going to have an encounter with witchcraft as well.
We’ll see how her friendships develop. I can tell you that she is not limiting herself to purple, though. Pink is not a problem for her.
I hope you will have a great day with a lot of reading pleasure!
You may not know, but Sir Terry Pratchett is one of my heroes. He’s no longer among us, but his spirit will linger forever.
Just now, I found this piece of an interview with him, and it’s about writing fantasy. My genre of choice.
It’s (among other things) for this reason that I like fantasy. Reading it and writing it. You can find plenty of examples on my site, if you haven’t been here before. Hilda the Wicked Witch is one example, but there is lots more to find. Many of my author friends are also very well versed in Fantasy, like the wonderful Valerie Douglas.
All you faithful followers of this erratic and occasionally updated blog will be aware that I have this thing with witches. In fact my whole writing/publishing ‘career’ started with a witch we all know. Grimhilda the Wicked Witch. Hilda for friends.
Here you see the very first cover of the very first story. My, a lot has changed…
And now there’s a new witch on the block!
Ladies and gentlemen alike… may I present…
Kobie Ketelaars. A new witch?
Some of you may already know Kobie. She started life in Dutch but I thought it so much fun that I have rewritten her story into English.
What can I tell you about Kobie?
Kobie’s up for her second and hopefully last attempt to pass her exams. She’s not the most zealous student so this presents a serious challenge. What she loves is to read – especially about witches. She would go through lengths to be a witch herself, so she devours anything about the subject she can get her hands on.
Her life is an ordinary one, almost to the point of boring, until she comes across a book with the title “Witch’s Training”. She has to have this book, and that tome has more in store for her than she could have hoped for. In her heart Kobie knows witches and magic don’t exist but this book is set on proving the opposite!
Can Kobie become a witch with the help of “Witch’s Training”? If yes, how does that come about? Strange happenings and a kidnapping are suddenly part of Kobie’s life, making it far more exciting than she had ever wished for.
So there you have it. A new book is set to appear. The date of dates for Kobie is March 7th, so it will be a while, but no worries: time passes quickly these days!
You may wonder who Cordelia is. She’s the main character in the new science-fiction / time-travel book that release today.
By the time you see this, the e-book is available on all the major e-book shelves. Coincidentally I got the paperback print proof in today!
I apologise for the horrible lighting but trust me, it looks really good. My thanks to Destiny Hawkins of Vibrant Designs for creating this amazing cover. The paperback should be available within 2 or 3 days. I’ll update the “From Time To Time” book page for it then.
Meet Cordelia. She’s a technie at a lab where time machines are made. Something bad happens so she runs off. To the past. That’s where she tries to make a living, together with her STAR (one of the time machines).
The e-books are scheduled to come out on January 11th and in most important e-book stores it’s already available for pre-order!
Today I saw something interesting in a book description.
In the year 2047, an asteroid threatens extinction on Earth.
First of all I think this is not a nice prospect. But you may have gotten the meaning. So there is Earth and extinction is going along, minding its own business, and suddenly there’s an asteroid that threatens it.
This is, of course, a very undesirable state of affairs. First of all, most extinctions have no idea what asteroids are, nor how lethal such extraterrestrial entities can be to your average extinction. Imagine: suddenly all the hard work you’re putting into eliminating everything in your path is being destroyed.
That is not proper job satisfaction, is it? It’s like you’ve been working all day and someone comes along and dumps everything you did in the trash.
I really wish asteroids would stop interfering with extinction.
Sometimes a night like the previous one happens. A very wakeful night.
I was in bed and my brain did not want to shut down. Sometimes that happens. All I need to do then is to just lie there and wait. Usually in a few hours things in my head will calm down and sleep will come.
Usually.
It didn’t last night. After two hours I was still wide awake while things about stories kept running around my brain. The more I tried to chase that stuff away, the less success I had. It was way past 11 at night (some people call that early evening, I don’t) when I got up and brought out the Chromebook.
I started writing down all the things that were keeping me awake and added a bunch of other ideas and plot-lines and events and problems and deaths. That took a while. Eventually my mind calmed down and so I put the Chromebook away, switched off the lights, talked to Obsi for a while (he was surprised about all that night-time activity) and finally sleep arrived.
Until 4 in the morning. You guessed it: ideas had come up.
That’s the writer’s brain in a nutshell and a short night.
“Isn’t that Hitler?” Yes, it was. “Why is he only in shit down to his knees?” Dammit. He always does that. “Hitler, you crap-head! Get off Mussolini’s shoulders NOW!”
Book 1
Yes, November’s getting closer.
And the quote up there, as well as the book’s image beneath it, should be some foreshadowing as to what will happen in that same November.
Indeed. A follow-up to the Devil’s Diary. Getting to this point has been a strange journey – and it’s not even November!
What was so strange about this trip?
Ideas flowing in and out. And in. And out. And…
You get the picture.
The devil’s diary was quite a weird piece of work. I’m not sure if I ever got close to reproducing something like that. Not even the Story of the Mimosa was so insane. I knew for a while already I wanted to follow up on the Diary.
Happy devil
The thing is that I’ve become more and more an atheist and writing about heaven and hell is kind of a strange concept from that point of view. But… a good writer always finds a way. So I had an idea. And threw that away. And another one. You get it: it took quite a while before finally, about 3 days ago, an idea hit me that would actually work.
And now I am looking at a spreadsheet that has 30 rows, one for each day and chapter, and only 6 of those rows still need some text: a subject for the chapter and the day. Which means that, for the first 3 weeks at least, I have enough ammunition to unleash on hell, heaven and everyone and around that area.
Let it begin already!
I feel I am ready for it. Let it start. Let me go crazy with Bill and Maurice and Nafaru and a bunch of Archangels who will go mad with everything I have in store for them.
I don’t know how much I can share with you while the mad train is on the loose, but I’ll do my best to let you know. Either here on the blog, and/or over on Facebook and MeWe.
