A Writer's Week #119: Drawing Up a Plan

 Since I've resumed posting this year, I've been talking about refreshing the Deliverers Series brand in order to breathe new life into the books ahead of the intended release of Book 4 by the end of 2023. The refresh will include a redesign of the blog, including a new propriety domain name, new book trailers, and new marketing.

The biggest and most important change is going to be a complete redesign of the books themselves. That includes new cover illustrations, titles, maps, chapter heading illustrations, and chapter title fonts. I searched for an illustrator for a while, and I found a cracking good one. Her name is Emily Hurst Pritchett, and she is based in Boston. She is a seasoned illustrator with a number of book covers to her credit, along with numerous other projects each year.

I really love her illustrations, and I think her style is perfect for the series. She's already started on Sharky and the Jewel. Artwork for all three books should be completed by early summer. Here are several examples of her work:

Here's the bio from her website:

Emily was raised on a steady diet of animation and comic books that built her love of storytelling through art. She studied illustration at Brigham Young University. She has illustrated picture books, middle-grade books, and role-playing game materials, including three Christmas books and two Christmas projects based on Dungeons and Dragons. She especially enjoys working on any fantasy story.

Emily currently lives in Boston with her husband and two children, where she enjoys sketching the interesting characters she meets on the street and admiring old churches. She fills her time with reading, video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and acting in community theater. Her dream is to travel through Italy, where she will also sketch interesting characters and admire old churches.

Check out her collaboration with her husband Luke, a physicist and aspiring poet, at haiku.emilypritchettart.com. 

In my next post I'll share some proposal sketches that Emily prepared from which I chose a couple to work up into more polished samples.
 

The Deliverers 4: Chapter 2 -- Back, Back, Back

The Hallway of Worlds had not changed. The red-carpeted corridor stretched on seemingly forever to his left and right. Identical rectangular doors with panes of frosted glass in their upper halves lined the Hallway. Behind him, he knew, his own door had changed back to resemble the others—it always did. Golden chandeliers hung at intervals from the ceiling, their many candles burning without a flicker in the still air.

Without warning, a desk materialized on his right. It was littered with papers and files. A quill was stuck in a jar of India ink. Behind the desk stood the smiling figure of an old man. He was dressed in blue shimmering robes and wore a conical blue hat with golden stars and moons on it. Blue eyes twinkled behind gold wire rimmed spectacles and his long white beard cascaded over the front of his robes.

Darting around the desk with no hint of age, the old man embraced Eric roughly. “Hello my boy, so good to see you. Happy birthday, by the way. The others should be here shortly. Things are moving so quickly that I sent Stig to Calendria to get the others while I called you. Oh yes, here they come now.”

Eric turned and saw his friends hurrying down the Hallway toward him.

A girl with long black hair rushed up and hugged him. “Hi Eric. Happy birthday,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. She looked up at him with sparkling violet eyes. “I really missed you.”

“Uh, hi Kate,” Eric stammered. Kate looked even older than when he had last seen her that past summer. “Yeah, I missed you, too.”

“Hey, what about me?” a dwarf with a long red beard asked as he grabbed Eric’s hand and pumped it up and down. “I missed ya too, don’t ya know. It sure is good t’ see ya, laddie. You’re a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. Ain’t that right, birdie?”

“Yes, quite,” agreed a large white owl who had just alighted on the Gatekeeper’s desk. “How are you, my boy? I hope you’ve had a splendid birthday.”

“It just got a whole lot better, Stig, thanks,” Eric said, smiling. “Hey Hallo, how’s everything?”

“Oh can’t complain, can’t complain,” the dwarf replied. “Then again, if I did, no one’d listen more ‘n likely. Hey, birdie said it was your birthday. Congrats lad. What’re ya up to now?”

“I’m 14.”

Hallo laughed. “Hey not bad, not bad. He’ll be catchin’ us soon, eh birdie?”

“He certainly is growing up before our eyes,” Stig said with the hint of a smile.

“I’ve got a long way to go to catch you two,” Eric said, laughing. Stig was over 400 years old and Hallo was approaching his 200th birthday. “But at least I’m older than one of us.”

“Hey, be nice. I’ll be as old as you in a month,” Kate said.

“Well, now that we’ve got that all sorted out, perhaps we should get to the task at hand,” the Gatekeeper cut in.

“Yes sir,” Eric said. He had been so happy to see his friends he had almost forgotten everything else.

 “What’s our Assignment this time?”

The Gatekeeper frowned. “It’s really something a bit out of the ordinary this time my boy.”

“A bit out of the ordinary, sir?” he asked. What could be more out of the ordinary than any of the other Assignments he had been on so far?

“Yes. Do you remember your last Assignment?”

“Why sure we do,” Hallo said. “We had t’ find that there Dragon’s Voice on the Dragon Islands.”

“Yes and you did a marvelous job. Do you remember the last time you were in the Hallway of Worlds?”

“Yes, you took us to that door that was chained and locked. The sparkling mist had stopped leaking out from under it,” Kate said, frowning.

Eric remembered, too. That door was the one door in the entire Hallway that did not have a world behind it. Supposedly it was a door to nowhere and had been used to store matter from worlds that had failed. The matter, or sparkling mist because that is what it looked like, had begun to seep out from under the door and was finding its way into troubled worlds, contributing to their instability. The mist had shown up on two worlds that they had visited.

When they had returned from the successful completion of their last Assignment, the Gatekeeper had informed them that the real reason the door had been padlocked was not to keep people from wandering in, but to keep someone or something from getting out.

The Gatekeeper nodded. “And I told you that whatever was in there had torn a hole out of that non-world and was loose.”

“Yeah, I remember. They could be anywhere now.”

“Yes they could,” the Gatekeeper agreed. “However, I now have a bit more information.”

“What have you discovered?” Stig asked.

“Well, this creature is made from the combined matter of many failed worlds. That means its makeup is quite complex. I believe it is capable of assuming whatever guise it desires.”

“That’s gonna make him tough t’ nail down, don’t ya know,” Hallo said, removing his red cloth cap and scratching his head.

“I’ve been doing a bit of checking,” the Gatekeeper said. “As you are aware, I have a number of different teams that go out on Assignments clearing up problems on troubled worlds. I have asked them to keep their eyes open for signs of this creature. They all reported encounters with sparkling mist on their Assignments, which confirms my suspicions that the mist is at the root of the recent unrest on all worlds over the last few years.”

“So you mean it’s been going on longer than you thought?” Kate asked.

“Exactly,” the Gatekeeper replied. “This creature has been working quietly behind the scenes and I knew nothing about it—something that has not happened in a very, very long time.”

“Besides the sparkling mist, has anyone discovered anything else about the creature?” Eric asked.

“It was very elusive, although it has been sighted periodically,” the Gatekeeper said. “Finally, one team got a definite fix and I was able to put a Tracker on it.”

“What’s a Tracker?” Eric asked.

“An agent trained in surveillance and disguise. They can move easily from world to world. Once they are on the trail, they are very difficult to shake.”

“Well, that’s news to me,” Stig said, ruffling his feathers. “All this time, and you never told me about them.”

The Gatekeeper chuckled. “Don’t get your feathers ruffled my dear friend. I’m entitled to keep one or two secrets. Trackers would not be nearly as effective if everyone knew about them. Anyway, the Tracker has followed the elusive creature to an unexpected location.”

“Where is that?” Stig asked.

“Eric’s world,” the Gatekeeper said simply.

“My world,” Eric cried. The thought of a strange creature that could change itself into anything wreaking havoc in his world was scary. “Where is it, exactly?”

“The question is not where my boy, but when,” the Gatekeeper replied. “The creature has discovered a way to use the sparkling mist to punch a hole in the very fabric of time itself.”

“So he could be anywhere at any time in the history of Eric’s world,” Stig mused.

“Wow. Have ya got any idea where…er…um, when he is?” Hallo asked.

“He is on Eric’s world during a conflict known as the American Revolution, and,” here the Gatekeeper looked intently at Eric, “He’s in Eric’s home town.”

“Candlewood Corners? But why?” Eric cried.

The Gatekeeper frowned. “I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess. The creature is trying to change history, most likely with the intent to tear the fabric of Eric’s world apart.”

“Why?” Eric asked.

“My information indicates that it is trying to undermine the stability of the universe. For that it needs to gain power, more specifically, matter. Destroying a few worlds would give it plenty of matter to work with.”

“Wow,” Kate said. “That’s bad.”

“Bad. Bad?” Eric shrieked. “It’s terrible. Some whacked out creature is trying to destroy my world. We can’t let that happen. We have to do something!”

“Yeah, Eric’s right, we gotta do somethin’,” Hallo agreed. “But, er, what?”

“Of course we have to do something. We can’t let worlds be destroyed if we can help it,” the Gatekeeper said calmly. “I’m going to send you all back in time to Eric’s world, as long as that’s all right with all of you.”

“I’m in,” Eric said firmly.

“We wouldn’t dream of not helping Eric save his world,” Kate said. “We’re all in.”

“Absolutely,” Stig said.

“Ya can count on me, don’t ya know,” Hallo agreed.

“Thanks guys,” Eric said, tearing up. “But it’s not just my world. We gotta stop this thing. If it gets enough power, who knows what it’ll do.”

“Splendid. Now, let’s see. My, my, this is going to take some doing,” the Gatekeeper said, stroking his beard.

“Don’t we just go through my door?” Eric asked.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Oh Eric, please. If we did that we’d just wind up on your world in the present.”

Eric blushed. “Oh yeah, true.”

“As I was saying, this will take some doing,” the Gatekeeper repeated. “Now let me see, it’s been a long time…”

The Gatekeeper approached the door and placed his right hand on its frosted glass window. He turned his hand counter-clockwise and the door turned with it, blurring and spiraling like it had been liquefied. When he removed his hand, the door was upside down. The Gatekeeper smiled.

“There, that should do it,” he said with satisfaction. “When you enter, you will find things are a little bit different Eric. Good luck to all of you. This Assignment may be your most critical.”

With that, Eric pushed to door open and they all passed through.

A Writer's Week #118: Progress

 This week has been busy, but good. I was able to make my weekly writing goal. I wrote almost 2,200 words, and the book is moving along. I'm at over 18,000 words and things are beginning to get interesting. I know that the plot will take an interesting twist shortly, but I'm not exactly sure how everything will progress from that point. I have a general idea of the direction I will be taking, but nothing concretely mapped out. Hopefully, I will be able to sort things out smoothly as I go. We shall see.

On the series rebrand front, my illustrator has done a bunch of thumbnail sketches for the first book cover. I find the creative process fascinating. Each person seems to have their own fairly unique approach. She'll use those thumbnails to narrow down her ideas to two or three cover sketches. She should have those ready sometime this week, then I'll get a chance to give my feedback. I'm really excited to see what she comes up with. Some of the thumbnails were quite intriguing.

As I contemplate what the cover might look like, it reminds me that I'm going to have to do quite a bit of work re-doing my marketing materials. I'm going to do new book trailers for all three books. At this point I'm not sure if I'll keep what I have and just replace the visuals, or if I'll rework them all from scratch. I'm thinking it will have to be the latter, but I won't know until the artwork and cover designs are complete.

I'll also have to redesign the blog, rework the interiors of the books, and numerous other small things. I plan to do book launches for each of the three as if they were being published for the first time. Really, they are going to be brand new. Again, I'm really excited.

Once I have some working sketches to share, I will also reveal the talented artist's name and show you some of her previous work. Hopefully, that will be next time. See you then!

A Writer's Week #117: A Fresh Start

 Hi everyone. I hope you have all had a great week. My week has been pretty eventful. It's been a while since my last Writer's Week post, but I feel like I've finally done something that's worthy of a post. I have resumed work on The Deliverers 4: Sparkling Mist of Time. The first 12 chapters were completed in 2016. Since then, I have not done much with it aside from some editing and chapter rewrites. Over the last couple months, I've written four more chapters. 

This week, I made the decision to complete the book by the end of this summer and get it ready for publication in time for Christmas. It will take a lot of work, but I'm extremely excited. So, once again I will set a goal to write 2,000-3,000 words per week in order to make those deadlines. I'll write a post each week to keep you updated on my progress.

Coming to this decision was a long process. Writing is a solitary activity. You have to be focused on the task, and it's easy to doubt yourself. I was burned out after three years of intense activity--writing books, writing blog posts, coordinating book layout and design, marketing, selling books at various shows. All of this was happening while my children were growing bigger every time I turned around. So, I stepped back for what I thought would be a year or two. That turned into six or seven. After some talks with my wife and other family members and friends, I decided to buckle down and get back in the game.

Now, I'm starting from scratch. With that in mind, I've come to the difficult decision to redesign and rebrand the series. I agonized over this for the better part of the last year. Daniel Vogel, the artist for the first three books, was just 14 when he did the cover and map for Sharky and the Jewel. He did a fantastic job on all the books and I will always be very grateful for his contributions. However, that was 11 years ago, and I felt that it was time to update the look of the series.

Once I came to that decision, I had to find an illustrator. Daniel has moved on to other things, so I spent a month searching for an illustrator whose style matches my vision for The Deliverers and would be appealing to middle grade readers. Last week, I found her. I'll announce who it is in a future post, but this week, we agreed to partner with each other, and I couldn't be more excited. Right now, she's reading the first book and will be working on some rough sketches next week. Really looking forward to seeing what she comes up with and sharing the journey with all of you. 

Have a great week!

The Deliverers 4: Chapter 1—Battle Fatigue

Boom! The sound of the cannon reverberated up and down the main street of Candlewood Corners. The onlookers removed their hands from their ears and applauded as the red coated soldiers knelt and fired their muskets at the opposing army who were clad in homespun linen and brown cloth breeches.

Eric Scott sighed as the American Revolution re-enactors played their parts. The Battle of Candlewood Corners, Connecticut was fought on October 22, 1777. It just so happened that October 22 was his birthday and every year his family went to the re-enactment as a sort of birthday/patriotic celebration.

For 14 years this was how he had spent his birthday. At first it had been fun, but ever since his father had died three years ago, it seemed boring and pointless to him. He watched as the British troops routed the colonial militia, pushing them back past Keller Tavern.

The tavern sat at the intersection of two state highways in the center of town. During the battle, the tavern had been hit by a cannonball from one of the small cannon the British had brought with them. The ball had lodged in the wall and remained there to the present day. Eric had to admit that was pretty cool—a tangible piece of history, proof that the battle had actually happened.

“Eric, let’s go up to Musket Ridge and watch the militia drill,” his mother said. Dressed in faded jeans, a brown and green sweater and Nike cross trainers, she held up a digital camera. “I want to get some pictures of the demonstration.”

A camera? How embarrassing, he thought. Why doesn’t she get a smart phone like everybody else? 

His mother claimed she could not get the hang of ‘gadgets’ like that. Frankly, he was surprised that she had made the leap from her old film camera to the digital model his Uncle Rocco had given her last Christmas. To say she was technologically challenged was a huge understatement.

“Ma, do we have to?” Eric moaned. “It’s so boring.”

“It’s history, dear,” she replied. “You’ll thank me for this one day. Besides, you know how much your father loved the battle. Remember what he used to say?”

Eric nodded. He could remember as if his father were right there with them. “This isn’t something that should be taken for granted,” he used to say. “Just think buddy, this is something that happened in our own back yard, this is your hometown’s heritage!”

Sighing once more, he jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and followed his mother and a stream of fellow townspeople down King’s Highway and over toward Musket Ridge. The ridge sloped up from the main road. Beyond an ancient stone wall there was an open space that was used as the parade ground. On it about 40 re-enactors in colonial garb were milling about.

They wore a mish-mash of different outfits. Some were clad in blue military uniforms with scarlet facings and turnbacks, others in rough wool coats of brown or tan. Most sported tri-corner hats and had cartridge belts slung over their shoulders. All were equipped with muskets and bayonets.

One man in blue carried a sword. Eric perked up a little when he saw him. Of all the figures of the battle, the captain of the militia had always been his favorite. For one thing, he carried a sword, which Eric had thought was cool. For another, he was the hero of the battle of Candlewood Corners. No one really knew who he was. A fire had burned town hall to the ground in 1815 and the records in which the names of the combatants were recorded were lost along with many other documents. Without any written account, his name had been lost in the mists of history, but his deeds during the battle of Candlewood Corners had been passed down from father to son ever since. He was known simply as the Captain.

In the annual re-enactment, the role of the Captain had been played every year for decades by old Richard Atwater, an attorney in town. The Atwaters had always claimed that the Captain was their direct descendant—Silas Atwater. This had come to be generally accepted by all because, even though there was no proof to the claim, there was nothing to say definitively that he was not the Captain.

Mr. Atwater had been playing the part for so long that Eric had come to visualize the Captain as an older man dressed in a blue military jacket with golden epaulettes on his shoulders a sword at his side and white breeches with black boots.

The sword was what really fired Eric’s imagination. As a child, he had been fascinated by the way Mr. Atwater had wielded it during the drilling demonstrations, pointing it to emphasize his commands. It was a genuine relic of the Revolution and had been in the Atwood family for generations. It was the basis of the family’s claim that the Captain was in fact Silas Atwater. So far, no evidence had come to light that suggested otherwise, so everyone went with it.

Eric knew from his history class that the real redcoats had been sent to confiscate stores of ammunition and supplies that were located in town. By the time they arrived, however, the majority of these had been removed. When the British had discovered this, they had set fire to some of the buildings in town.

Some of the locals had tried to stop them, and had been fired upon by the troops. Some of the colonials fired back, but most fled, raising the alarm. This was what was being re-enacted now.

The bells in the old Congregational church began to ring. This was the signal for the start of the second phase of the re-enactment. A drummer in the camp began to beat the call to arms. Lining up in ragged columns, the Captain led the militia from the parade ground, down the road and into the woods where they crouched in wait behind stone walls, trees and brush, guns at the ready. Soon a troop of redcoats marched into sight.

Ringing church bells alerted the countryside, mobilizing militia from the surrounding towns who came flooding in to defend their town. The British had taken what they could and were now heading back down King’s Highway the way they had come. Eric watched as the militia and other colonists waited for the British to march past them and then fired.

When they did, he let out a breath and realized somewhat sheepishly that he had been holding it. He had to admit that the re-enactments were kind of cool. The truth was, this reminded him of his father. While that was troubling, in a way it made it seem as if his dad was close by.

“Mom, can I see the camera? I want to take a couple of pictures.”

His mom smiled and handed him the camera. “Sure dear. When this is done, let’s go get some pizza and celebrate birthday number 14.”

“Sounds cool,” Eric said as he clicked away.

                                                                                            #  #  #

When he got home, he said goodnight to his mom and went to his room. Flopping down on the bed he stared up at the ceiling and groaned. He was full. He had definitely eaten too much pizza. The ice cream after that had not helped, but it had been good. All in all it had been a decent birthday. He just wished he had some friends to share it with.

The truth was he had friends, but they were too far away to share his celebration with him. In fact, they were a whole world away—almost as far away as his dead father, or so it seemed to him. He had met them by traveling to other worlds and together they had shared three adventures to solve problems that threatened to destroy those worlds.

After each journey, Assignments they were called, he found it more difficult to leave them. Stig was probably his best friend. He was a talking owl who had recruited him for his first Assignment where he had met a girl named Kate Endria and Hallo Tosis, a dwarf.

He sat up and reached for two items that sat on his nightstand. One was a smooth orange stone the other, a small bottle. He placed them on the bed in front of him and stared at them in silence.

Seeming to come to a decision, he picked up the bottle and removed the stopper. A bluish mist seeped out and oozed down the bottle’s side. It sparkled. Eric took a small paintbrush and dipped it in. Removing it, he held it over the orange stone. A trail of sparkling mist swirled up from the blue substance on the tip of the brush.

Just as he started to lower the brush, the stone began to glow and sparkle. Eric’s hand froze and his heart leapt. The Gatekeeper was calling him! Carefully, he wiped the paint off the brush on the rim of the bottle and re-stoppered it. Slipping off his bed, he grabbed the stone and slid the bottle into his pocket.

He crept out of his room, down the hall and out the back door. Running around to the side of his house, he picked his way down the steep, wooded slope that lined the front yard. He was forced to slow down because the footing here was treacherous—roots and loose dirt threatened to trip him as he headed down toward the stream that gurgled at the bottom.

When he reached it, he headed upstream toward his driveway and the drainpipe underneath. The Gatekeeper was the person who gave Assignments to those he felt were up to the job. When they were needed for an Assignment, the Gatekeeper called Eric and the others to the Hallway of Worlds—a long corridor filled with doors to other worlds. In order to get to the Hallway, the Gatekeeper opened up a door in the drainpipe under Eric’s driveway.

That was where Eric was headed now. As he approached the drainpipe in the fading light of the autumn evening, Eric felt a surge of emotion. He never knew what awaited him beyond the door and the uncertainty was both exciting and worrisome.

Stepping out onto a rock in the stream, he hopped from rock to rock until he stood on the lip of the pipe, the shallow water flowing over his sneakers. He squished his way inside the ribbed interior of the drainpipe until he came to the door. It was round, fitting the contour of the cylinder snugly. There was a pane of frosted glass in the upper half. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door and walked in.