Tag: Writing Community

There are six powerful kinds of magic in the magic unleashed series. Each one taps into godlike powers. They grant abilities that transform ordinary humans into walking (or flying) weapons of mass destruction. Practitioners of these Schools or Spheres of magic can work together, but their spellwork is all but impossible to blend.

Arcanists work with the less powerful ambient magic that ebbs and flows during the bleak times of no magic. Magic users have gone by many names throughout human history, witches, warlocks, magi, and a host of other less-savory titles. These people are bound to the very magic of creation. More women than men are born with arcane affinity.

Through the bleak times, arcanists formed tight knit groups to pass down their heritage from the last magical age. Not all of these traditions survived, or passed down their knowledge intact. Their imperfect understanding of magic has led to many terrible deeds.

Creation is the only means to connect to arcane magic. During the bleak times, destruction is the only means to grasp the smallest sliver of magical power. Human sacrifice tainted some of these traditions. During times of no magic, this is the only reliable means of invoking magic. Which may account for some ritualized murders dating back thousands of years, often couched in religious or blasphemous ideology.

During the bleak times of no magic, many would be arcanists feel the stirring of their power. Without magic, they are unable to realize their full potential. Like all magic users, unfulfilled urges connected to magical power can lead to debilitating mental conditions.

When magic flows into the world, arcanists experience the stirring as a powerful spiritual awakening. By embracing the stirring in their soul, an arcanist can learn to manipulate the practical magic around us all. They are not magical powerhouses like wizards, but they are still potent magic users.

This common or practical magic is less potent than the magic of the Spheres. It is still a potent tool, and the only way to bring other kinds of magic together. They can bind together other kinds of magic in artifacts of great power. Arcane master craftsmen created the most powerful relics of the last magical age.

With the return of magic, many arcanists feel the stirring. Some will still follow the old ways of the bleak times. Others, unconnected to the traditions of those groups will chart a new path. Conflict is inevitable.

Granted, the pandemic makes going to your neighborhood coffee shop problematic, but you don’t have to create in a vacuum either. The internet has been a haven for writers for years. There are sites and groups all over that allow us to share our experiences. If there is a group for baby wearing dads who love yoga in public parks, there are surely groups for your particular writing niche.

Depending on your comfort level, you can either lurk in those groups, or really get out there. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to see that others struggle with the same issues. Personally, I like to commiserate when I see someone else dealing with the same thing I am. Or maybe I’ve moved on from that issue but remember well how it felt. Either way, it helps me relate.

For me, the best groups go beyond sharing common problems, or even the solutions we find for those dilemmas. Authors can share their work with each other. I lucked into a great critique group that has helped my craft more than any other single course or group. If you can find a safe place to have your work torn apart and rebuilt, I can’t encourage you to dive in enough.

Another bit of sage advice along the same line, Don’t pigeonhole yourself to your genre. Having people who write the same kind of stories is wonderful, but you’ll learn more reading and critiquing stories different from yours. I find it much easier to see things outside of Fantasy or Science Fiction than I ever expected.

My last point about the goodness of critique groups is not taking the criticism as a personal attack. I’ve been in groups that focus on grammar and mechanics, which you certainly need to master. More important though, are methods of craft and storytelling you won’t get from any other source. None of that should be aimed in such a way that you want to delete your words and stop writing. I came close to that more than once.

Writers can be cantankerous lot when it comes to others work. You either need tough skin to withstand peer reviews, or learn to let that criticism run off your back like the proverbial duck and water. No matter what, don’t let critiques beat you down. It takes time and practice to write well, no matter what your ninth grade English teacher told you. Keep at it. Your story is important, and no one else can tell it (or show it) with your unique voice.

You won’t meet Ginny right away. She’s already passed away by the time we catch up to her husband, Herbert Allan. Even after her death, Ginny has a powerful impact on the world of Fantastic America. She was a force of nature in life, it only seems appropriate that she’d still influence those who knew her.

Our first impression of Ginny comes from Herb and his devotion to Ginny after the fact. That barely scratches the surface of this woman who lied life on her terms, and not those dictated by society. Ginny is a founding member and fierce advocate for Henry Raft’s posthumous League of Raftean Explorers organization.

Her leadership over all things Raftean comes from years of field work between 1957 and 1962. She and her newlywed husband championed Raft’s work in the field of unexplained phenomena. Ginny accompanied Raft on expeditions to Mexico, Central America, and South America before his untimely death. She spearheaded the creation of L.o.R.E.’s national conventions in order to expand the organization and give it academic credibility.

Ginny was president of the League from it’s inception in 1972 until her retirement in 1998. She remained active on convention panels until 2008, due to failing health. Considered one of the foremost authorities on out of place artifacts in Meso-America. Many American universities require reading her papers on Olmec, Toltec, and early Mayan archeological sites.

Ginny’s legacy lives on through her husband, Herbert, their sons, Troy and William “Illium” Allan. Herb has retired from his teaching position at Valparaiso university, but Troy and William are still active archeologists working in different fields of study. Expect to hear more about Ginny in Midwestern Magicians and throughout the rest of The Magic Unleashed series.

Early in writing Fantastic America and the Magic Unleashed series, I struggled with word count. I had no idea what was acceptable or not. What I did know was that the book I’d started had grown exponentially. The word count for the book was already well over 100,000, and I wasn’t anywhere near the halfway mark.

While I tried to figure out what to do about it, I came across a blog post about word count. Imagine my surprise to learn that no publisher in their right mind would take on a 400,000+ word debut monstrosity. Several heart-wrenching edits later, I had a kernel for each of the four books that currently make up the series. Fantastic America hadn’t existed in any form up until then. The ideas I have for the books after the first four were a distant dream at best.

All of that started with word count. There are plenty of articles out there that explain why word count matters so much. Here are a few simple ideas related to word count. Books with longer word counts cost more to print. They take up more room on a shelf in a store. Both of these are reasons for a publisher to pass on your book. For traditional publishing, these reasons alone can stop a book deal.

Here is an even simpler idea. My magnum opus (if I ever write one) will come after years of experience, honing my craft along the way. It will not be my first novel (I hope). So that 400K monster I’d started would have been a mess, unsellable, and likely unreadable. Publishers take a calculated risk with debut authors. Following the genre-specific conventions for debut books is part of that calculation. Exceeding those conventions isn’t just a larger risk it means your book probably isn’t ready for publishing anyway. Some authors can break publishing guidelines, but not with their first book. We have to prove that we can write books that sell before we break the rules.