wolfen

Character Development: Aiden and The Break of Chapter 26

Have you ever been asked to do a character analysis in English class as a student? I don’t remember much from the ones I did, but I do enjoy the concept. Obviously, not every character ever written is worthy of the bother, but every once in a while you get one you could spend hours on the couch with (in psychoanalysis…). You think you know them, but the more you look, the deeper you see. Part of why I love reading, re-reading, and writing is that all three allow you to revisit a certain situation, a certain place and time, a certain sentence spoken, and look beneath the surface in a way you can’t do in real life. Nuance and subtlety are the most irresistible lure for any hardcore bookworm. Yes, we enjoy action and passion, and witty dialogue, but what really keeps us coming back isn’t the obvious, it’s the things you have to dig for, think about, and chew on.

Why would you do that to a person??

WolfenNot too long ago, I was confronted with a reader’s question that gave me pause. The question was about Aiden from Wolfen and a certain thing that happens to him about halfway through the book. My answer was going to be simple and to the point: it was a test for him and another character, and their arcs hinged upon how they responded to it. But I paused because as I was typing this answer out, my mind veered off to a place I hadn’t gone before, even while writing this book, and it completely changed what I wanted to say. That place was Aiden’s past.

“Why would you do that to a person?” they asked.

Here’s my answer:

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DIYDay Lesson 23: Facebook Advertising – A Case Study

Marketing, marketing, marketing: the life of an author when not writing, writing, writing. Like it or not, if you want your books to sell, you have to tell people it’s out there. Sometimes, Lady Luck smiles down on you and you strike gold. Most of the time, however, you just keep trying different things, repeating what works, dropping what doesn’t. This cycle has recently led me to try out the Facebook advertising option, and I decided I might as well share the results with all my lovely author friends. This will be a brief walk-through of how to create a Website click Facebook ad campaign, and an overview of the results I got from mine. Be warned: lots of text and numbers follow. Hopefully, it helps someone, since it didn’t do all that much for me… (spoiler alert)

 

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What Makes A Hero(ine)? A wee rant in defense of one

If actions speak louder than words, why do we fall in love with book characters who do horrible things, simply because we know their intentions are good? Especially in Romance, the hero is usually a man with a past (or even present) filled with many violent deeds that would make us run for safety if we couldn’t see into his thoughts (translate: in real life). But everyone instinctively trusts in him, because we expect the story to have a happy ending–through his actions. Why is that?

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Wolfen Stuffs…

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Hello everyone! This is an official Wolfen update. With the book out on virtual shelves for a week and a day now, I thought it was time to catch you up on a couple things. First, a little hiccup. Which is not actually that little. Funny thing happened when I made Wolfen available in print… CreateSpace decided to send it out to expanded distribution with a price tag of $200… needless to say, I was not amused. I was even less so when I contacted them and was told there would be no way to expedite the correction of this, and that the proper price of $25 would not show up until January 1, 2015. So, at the moment, the listing on Barnes & Noble looks like this:

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