Desperately Seeking Critique Partner

The post title is mis-leading. I'm not desperate, but I am trying to find a critique partner. A partner, not a group, not a cabal, not a website where I critique the work of people I don't know, and when I get enough points, people I don't know critique my work.

Okay, was that clear enough? Good. My current WIP is a YA novel (about 70k words, currently working on draft 1.5) about a fifteen year old boy who's been sheltered his whole life. He gets caught up in hunting demons, and falls for a girl, and...so on. Please note, the previous statement is not a query pitch (grin).

What I bring to this relationship: I'm a gemini--wait, wrong post. I've been writing for the last four years and I believe my abilities have progressed significantly. As for critiquing: I have an eye for dialog, stage direction, etc... I like sci-fi, urban fantasy, fantasy.


One final note. Much as it pains me to say it, I'm looking for an experienced writer to partner with. This partner doesn't have to be published, but we should exchange some samples of work before deciding to partner up. Sigh... I don't hate being rejected, but I hate rejecting people. :(

Oh well, that's it.

Been a long time coming...

So...been a long time since my last blog post. I'm going to post more, I promise. I have not been idle though. I've written two books that I've tossed into the dust bin...so that's something. My wife hates it when I make her read a book, and she falls in love with the characters, and then I tell her to kiss them goodbye because I hate the finished product. (grin)

So my latest book, which is actually the third draft of the second book I tossed, is about a kid who is a Spark (that's a wizard with very little talent), only things aren't what they seem (are they ever?) and there's demons, and Wizards, and girls (he's 15, there has to be girls), and he's a freshman in high school (thanks god, I'll never be one again).

I'm going to be posting small excerpts as blog posts--because I want to. Please note, this is in only its second revision, which means I'm writing from scratch for the second time, so anybody who points out spelling or punctuation mistakes will be baked over hot coals.

This is the book I will be sending out for query. It's fully plotted and I'm already 66% through with second revision, and I still like it, so w00t on that. And I know you're supposed to write one book at a time (blah blah blah), but I've already got this thing planned out (roughly) for six books, and it includes Faerie and Demon-kind, and a type of group Godhood (7 beings) that I read about while researching (old religion), and armageddon and all kinds of interesting stuff.

I have found as I'm writing this story that I'm spending as much time creating the setting, specifically events that occurred 2k, 3k and 5k years ago involving wars between Faerie, Demons and us. The hard part is not just blurting out the whole history in a single long exposition. Telling it in dribs and drabs during the story is the right way to do it, but argh!!!!

Okay, enough. Glad to be back. I promise to ramble on (sigh, been listening to Led Zeppelin too much lately)

Oh yeah, Go Pats!!!

Second Version of Cover Art

OK, I hate to brag, but since I paid $64K (My daughter is in design school at NCState) for this picture, I just can't help myself. This is her latest version of the cover for my book PRECIPICE OF TERROR.

She's moving my name to the top (and dropping the word 'by'), and removing 'The' from the title and increasing the size of the title font, and making it a little easier to read (hard to place text over red/white background).

So I'm biased, but I love this cover. Note christian and islamic symbols, blood, and hot chick. What more could you want?! :)

Cover For My First E-book

This is the cover my daughter created for my first ebook, titled PRECIPICE OF TERROR. I like the artwork but she's redoing the text to be a white serif font that will overlay the flag and shadows (no white background) and will be larger, but take up only a third of the cover.

Sorry for the large size, 373k.