Flames of the Devil Dog and I'm Moving Announcement

    For those who have followed this blog over the past decade, I apologize for my lack of updates. I have spent the last few years, since the COVID-19 quarantine, focusing all my energy on completing my epic fantasy series. I am currently working on setting up a new website, where I'll repost much of the material from here. All blog stories and posts relevant to the new site will be transferred, and all artwork I created but never updated on this blog will be included.

    For those who haven't followed me on social media or lost track of me on Twitter or X, I am pleased to announce that I have finally published a novel.

    Flames of the Devil Dog is available in eBook and Hardcover on Amazon, and the paperback is available on numerous online bookstores, including Barnes & Noble and Waterstones. The adventure stories that I once posted here, which have since been removed, are being reintroduced on my website in different forms. As I create a space where I can share snippets of scenes from my books or post scenes that were edited out of the final version, I will reintroduce these stories at some point.

    Another thing I'll be doing is showcasing the artwork that is contained in my hardcover books. With the help of an artist close to me, we have been working on artwork for the entire series with character sketches, monsters, and maps. I'll be including all the maps from my books on the website, as well as introducing my own Tabletop Role-Playing Game that is being developed around my series.

    It's a great time to be writing. Please follow me over there when the website goes live. I plan to establish a vibrant community there one day, where we can discuss all things fantasy and history. We'll even include some content about movies and books, where I'll review things I've read or watched that inspired me to write about them.

    I'll report back here on this blog with the link to the website once it's available.

In the meantime, please consider buying my book and helping me keep the lights on!

Flames of the Devil Dog, Book 1 of Heaven's Edge

eBook on Amazon

Hardcover on Amazon with bonus illustrations throughout the book

Paperback on Amazon

Paperback on Barnes & Noble

Paperback on BAM! Books-A-Million

Paperback on Bookshop.org

paperback on Waterstones (UK)

My book was published through Shield Blade Publishing.

Devil Dogs, Hwachas, and Other Stuff

Great News for anyone who is waiting for my novel, I’ve jumped back into the final rewrite. I spent some time researching combat tactics and military lingo. Studying marine issue sniper systems and tactics was a ton of fun, but now it’s time to finish this book and get it published.

While I’m writing this book the right way this time, I’m still squeezing in some art time. The Hwacha is one of the most complex pictures I’ve done yet. I have attempted to give it a more three dimensional look than most of my other drawings, including the original drawing of the Hwacha I had done. It’s nearly complete. The only thing I have left is a little clean up around the lines after coloring it. I hope to have it up sometime later this week. I’ll post a quick update when I do.

On news for the other projects I’m doing, the whole D&D campaign and world building has completely merged into the design for a new role playing game based on the fantasy world I had designed. I have not decided what I’ll do with the game yet, but I’m really excited about the concepts that came to me the last couple of weeks. Even if I never release the game to the public, it’ll be a great structure for the continuous building of my fantasy world. I’ll focus on writing the Devil Dog series and getting those published, but there are only 5-7 books planned out for that series. In my spare time, I’ll be writing the fantasy novels as well, which has been mapped out to around 16 books, and more ideas continue to flow in as I continue to world build. 

That’s all I have this week, until the Hwacha is done. See you once that’s complete.

Art Update & Impossible Goals

I completed the Ballistic Knife, and I've posted it. Unfortunately, March has been a very difficult month for writing, but I've made some progress on the World Building (which has become a project for designing a new Role Playing Game that takes place in the fantasy world I've created). I'll continue working on that, but I'm going to schedule in more time for other projects, such as Devil Dog.

I haven't posted much lately because I've been spending all my computer time compiling information and researching. I'm trying to get in as much research for Devil Dog as I can before completing the final rewrite. I have no intentions of writing this book again once it's done this time. One thing I've learned is that if you keep digging, you'll always find something to fix or change. I'm not changing anything else, just getting it written the way it should be and then fixing all those typos and all the grammar and content editing that comes after that. Cross your fingers or say a prayer for me, I'll need it. I set these goals and planned to complete them, but as a realist, I knew I'd never actually make these deadlines. I have done a lot more in the last couple months than I have ever have in that time span, so I will continue to make new Impossible Goals after I eventually complete the tasks I'm wading through now.

Here's the picture I did up for the Ballistic Knife post. It's not an ancient weapon, but it is a blade and it's really cool. Check it out if you haven't already. Next, I'm drawing the Kanabō and a redo of the Hwacha. That was one of my worst early drawings, and now that I've gotten halfway decent with my art program, it's time to update some old ones as well. I'll be writing up and posting the Horseman's Pick for the monthly weapon post on Monday. See everyone then!

The Ballistic Knife by TL Jeffcoat

Update! The Aspis, the Tomahawk and Writing

Click here to check out the post for the Aspis

I have completed the art for the Aspis, it looks pretty simple, but even with an art program drawing circles are a pain. I spent more time the last couple weeks on world building than I did with anything else so I haven’t finished the Tomahawk art, or the Weapons & Warrior post that was supposed to go up this week on the Tonfa. I’ll be focusing on that this week and have it ready by Friday. I’m also going to try getting that Tomahawk drawn up and ready before then too.

Now for an update on those impossible goals I made:

Task 1: I have 108,000 words in the World building book, which is still short of the 120,000 word goal, but that’s huge progress compared to all the words I wrote last year not including the blog. I may have written 50,000 words in all of 2013. I spent the year reading and editing.

Task 2: I did not get any chapters of Devil Dog written, but I edited the first chapter a little. I’ll need to get that back on track after this coming week. I want to send it back to the editor by June. Clock is ticking!

Task 3: The D&D campaigns are waiting on my world building to reach a certain point so that I can use my own settings. I’ve also been toying with the idea of creating my own Role Playing Game game like Pathfinder did when D&D veered off into the 4th edition abyss.

Task 4: I almost succeeded with 5 drawings a month. I got in about 3, 4 if you count the Aspis.

So that’s where I’m at, and see you next week. June is coming fast so I am going to dive right back into these tasks. Have a great week!

Writer Ramblings: Impossible Goals

After a recent conversation on Facebook with the witty Anne-Mhairi Simpson about setting goals that can’t be achieved, I am going to jump on that challenge. She already began her impossible goals, so I am going to do something similar.

Photo from Kristin Nador on WANACommons

My first impossible goal is to finish the book of notes I’m currently writing. My first intention was to just gather all my two decades worth of notes into one location so that I can pick up my old fantasy series project again. I wanted to write both the Devil Dog series, which is not a fantasy series, alongside an epic high fantasy series. Since late November, I’ve been compiling notes, trying to uniform ideas, and basically make some sense of the chaos twenty plus years of daydreaming has created. I’ve been world building. This task in itself would normally be what I call my life’s work, but I have a lot of other series, like Devil Dog, that also needs to be written. So, I’ve decided to create a “guide” to the fantasy world which describes everything from religions, cultures, races, magic, creatures, maps, history, etc. I’m currently at 30,000 words, and I’m anticipating it to reach close to 150,000 words (approximately 500 pages). The easy part of this book is it is for my own personal use as a guide to this huge fantasy world. I won’t have to edit it for grammar or anything else. It’s just massive and full of pictures. I want to finish the entire thing by March. That’s my impossible goal. That’s a month and a half away.

Holiday Cheers and Writing Chores

I don’t know about you guys, but I had a wonderful Thanksgiving week. I went to Frisco (that’s just north of Dallas) to visit the wife’s family, which is huge and very close. It’s always a joyous occasion to get so many very different people together and actually get along for an entire week. There was a ton of food, and football games. Obviously I was surrounded by Cowboys fans, so they didn’t enjoy the football as much, but my team won with a dominating performance right after their kickoff that night, so I was ecstatic. Then several of us went to the Gaylord Texan and visited the Merry Madagascar Ice thing. Everything inside the place was made of ice. Everything. The walls, slides, animals, Santa, and did I mention the animals? It was a freezing 9 degrees cold and they made us all wear huge parkas, but it was a lot of fun.

Me, Kids, Wife and a small number of the Wife's Cousins at the Gaylord Texan Ice Event

Netflix, Azeroth and Other Distractions

Well it has happened and just in time for Nanowrimo. The dreaded Writer’s Block has come to visit me. It seems that lately, if I’m actually trying to write anything new, my mind goes completely blank. I ask myself what’s wrong, but deep down I know the answer. I just have trouble accepting it.

Pic by Blizzard Entertainment

“Writer's Block: Situation when writer cannot write: an inability on the part of a writer to start a new piece of writing or continue an existing one” – Bing Dictionary

I don’t really have writer’s block in the sense that I can’t write because I’ve lost my creativity. I do have writer’s block because I’m blocking my own creativity. I’ve filled my head with distractions. Fantasy Football, Mists of Pandaria (the awesome new World of Warcraft expansion), and the worst of all… Netflix.

The title of this post was going to be Sex, Love and Other Drugs because I finally got around to seeing that movie. I absolutely loved it, but those things fuel my writing, unlike the stuff in the title I went with.

Hey You! I'm Still Here, Don't Give Up On Me Yet

Pic by Cellar Door Films via Flickr: WANA Commons

It’s been too long since I’ve posted a blog. I just wanted to let everyone know, I’m still alive. I’ve been writing/editing, and I didn’t want to bore everyone with the little details of my editing adventures every week. You can’t really call them adventures, more like exercises and self-discovery. I’ve been learning a lot more about writing than I ever knew. I’ve learned more the last 6 months editing than I ever did the 20+ years I wrote and rewrote stories without ever really taking it serious. I have a point, but if you have read this blog, you know I like to ramble randomly sometimes. It’s how my mind works, just random thoughts firing every direction. See, I keep getting off the subject.

*Spanks brain for misbehaving.

Now, back to what I was trying to talk about. I’m still alive. I’ve been a little out of touch lately, and I apologize for that. I’m thinking of starting up the Weapons Weekly in January 2013. By then I should have some more artwork to work with, too. I am hoping to be done with Devil Dog as well by then.

For those of you waiting on Devil Dog, it’s still in the editing phase. I’ve been reorganizing the finale to be more adrenaline pumping than before and I’ve started reworking the beginning under the advice of Kristen Lamb’s blogs on structure. Here they are if you don’t know what I mean by structure.

Anatomy of a Best-Selling Novel—Structure Part One

StructurePart 2–Plot Problems–Falcor the Luck Dragon & the Purple Tornado

StructurePart 3—Introducing the Opposition

StructurePart 4–Testing Your Idea–Is it Strong Enough to Make an Interesting Novel?

Writing Time

Art by Steven DeVon Jones

I have decided to take some time off from blogging. Not for an immense amount of time, but long enough to focus more on the editing for “Welcome To My Imagination” and “Devil Dog” sooner rather than next year. “Devil Dog” will need to go through another round of content editing before it goes to a copy-editor for proofreading. Since I’m scrapping the current ending and rewriting it, I want to make sure it gets as much attention as the rest of the novel.

I will be writing up another Weapons series, but for now, it has overwhelmed my writing time with research, writing and editing blogs. Once the books are done with their editing I will resume writing more weapons and warrior posts. I’ll organize it into sets so that I can continue writing more novels in between weapons series. I have about five different novel series I want to pursue, and I spend 75% of my writing time on this blog. Without sacrificing my time with children and work, there just isn’t much left to get those books done.

I hope everyone understands. It’s been 12 months since I began Weapons Weekly and I think it’s time to give it a short break. Hopefully the editing goes well and I’ll be back to weapons chat soon. This doesn’t mean this blog is dead until then. Since I’ll be editing, I’ll probably have a few random Writers Rambling posts popping up as I either learn new things or just feel inspired to speak up about something.

Thank you for following the blog, and I’ll see you soon!

100th Blog Post! & Lucky 7 Challenge

I’ve been challenged by Lani Wendt Young to reveal a little about myself and a little about Devil Dog. Something called the Lucky 7 MEME, and since I’m not one to pass a chance to write about myself I accepted.

The rules as I understand it are:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS.

2. Go to line 7.

3. Copy down the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them as they're written.

4. Tag 7 writers and let them know.

Now for the excerpt of Devil Dog on page 77. Unfortunately it's not one of my favorite scenes or one of the most exciting, but it is a turning point in the novel where the reader realizes how the main character is about to have his whole world crash around him.

            Colonel Ramos stops walking and turns towards the pesky woman and her cameraman. He says nothing so the reporter continues on, “The Iranians are claiming he crossed their border with a squad of marines and attacked a military outpost. Destroying two attack choppers and killing close to three dozen men, some were reported as civilians. What do you say in response to that?”

            He starts to turn away again, then pauses and replies, “I believe the President is the man you want to talk to about international relations, even greatly exaggerated stories like that one. Like I said before, his mission was classified, and I will handle it as the investigation unfolds. Good day, Miss?” He waits for her to introduce herself, but she hands the microphone to the cameraman and marches back to her van without so much as a smile.

Now for the questions about me…

Wrtier Ramblings: Nanawrimo!

Believe it or not, that title is not a typo.

I’ve gone and done it! I signed up for the Nanawrimo for 2011. I have no idea really what that all is other than a writing marathon, but I figure it’s a great excuse to knock out the first half of another book. Since I can’t start the writing for it till November, that rules out the horror I was going to work on, I’m still in research phase for the Back to the Future Terminator crossover fan fiction I’m planning and I’m already 12,000 words into the fantasy. So I don’t feel comfortable writing any of those for my Nanowrimo.

Lucky for me, I already have an outline set up for another project. I’ll be done with my polishing on Devil Dog pretty soon and it will be sent out to editors and beta readers this month. I’m very excited and nervous at the same time. My baby is growing up already.

So the big question is what am I going to write if I’m already going to be pretty deep into the co-written horror, the fantasy is already started and Devil Dog will be in the hands of strangers? The only real solution is Devil Dog 2! Why not, the outline is written and I have concepts and plots designed for a full seven book series. I might as well start getting the sequel drafted.

50,000 words in a month! I am very excited to attempt this and somehow my wife is ok with it. So here I come. Bring it on November because I will write you down.

WIP Update 8-10-11: Devil Dog and The Warlord

Just a short post this Wednesday on updates is all I have time for and there I’m pretty sure I can stuff it all in pretty quick and painless.

First update: Devil Dog is still in edit mode, but I’ve been trying out some new tricks to make it less painless. One of my editors recommended it after I complained about how much I don’t want to do it after reading the book and rewriting so many times already, but it needs to be done. I’m preparing a blog to discuss his tips as well, for those who might be interested in those. Not only are some of the tips making it easier to go through the manuscript, but they are going to verify the story flows as it should. I’ll be posting some excerpts pre-editor pretty soon on my Facebook fan page.

Second Update: I’m well into the first chapter of The Warlord. It’s been slow going, but I’m very excited about what I’ve got so far. I can already tell this book will be much larger than the Devil Dog. I’ve been building this world for twenty years. Cultures, peoples, religions, languages, history, geography, etc. have all been detailed. I’ve even toyed with an RPG rules game someday. Wrote the first 50 pages of that a few years back and saved it.

Third Update: The sequel to Devil Dog hasn’t been touched too much since I plotted out the scenes and designed the outline and characters. I’m still working on the opening line, but patience is the key and I’m sure it will come to me eventually. I have plenty else to do in the meantime.

I guess a detox update is in order. I discovered I suck at dieting/detoxing. I can’t go more than three days before giving into the call of something sweet. So I’ll just go back to working out and eating in moderation. Hope everyone is having a great week, I’ll get something more interesting up by Friday and I’ll link up another book review tomorrow.

I’m also trying to come up with a weekly special post. Something like Medieval Weaponry Mondays. That’s the front runner on my short list of ideas. Actually, I think I'm going to run with that. It's one of my favorite hobbies along with castle construction and defenses.

Writer Ramblings: Writing More Than 1 Novel at a Time?

What to do when you're muse is out of control. I'm suffering from the opposite of writer's block these days. I just started my detox today and apparently the detoxing hasn't slowed down my muse as I thought it would. So what to do? This isn't as much of a good thing as some people might think. I fleshed out notes on a 16 book superhero style series. I don't even have time to work on that, but it's shooting to the front of all my thoughts. This is probably because of all the superhero movies coming out lately.

I'm going to be focusing on two other series already. The shorter one I've already started with the Unforgiven series, book 1 called Devil Dog (Modern Day Action Thriller). It's written and is now going through edits and reader testing before its publication. Book 2's outline is complete and the temporary working title is going to be Rampage and Revenge. I'm pretty sure that title will change later.

The second series is a fantasy series that I've also conjured up enough material over the last 15 years for 16 thick novels. My brain feels like it's going to explode. No wonder I had a migraine a week ago. Tonight, I'm putting the finishing touches on the outline for the fantasy book that I'm calling The Warlord and then I will begin writing it tomorrow when I'm unable to edit Devil Dog.

I've heard some mention that you shouldn't work on more than one book at a time, but the question is, why not? I guess I'll find out the hard way. As long as I stick to my outlines, I have a feeling I'll be writing 3 or 4 books a year. I won't just rush them out, I would hate to sacrifice quality, so if editing a book takes another 6 months then, so be it, but if I can crank out the manuscripts and not require them to be rewritten, well, I ask again, why not? With the amount of detail that goes into my multiple page outlines that defines everything from constant themes, subplots, character descriptions and arcs and every single scene mapped out, it would be a task to actually get lost and mixed up. I guess we'll see.

Writer's Ramblings: Legend of the Devil Dog

A Devil Dog is nothing satanic, it's a name that marines have used since WWI when Germans at the Battle of Belleau Wood, in 1918, saw the marines climb out of the trenches filled with mustard gas and charge up a hill at them. The marines climbed on their hands and feet to reach the top of the hill. They had those gas masks that made them look like they had snouts and they’re eyes were bloodshot from the gas. Their mouths foamed, from over exertion, which was coming out of the masks, making them look like rabid dogs. I don’t know how much of that was real but the “Hounds from Hell” nickname became Devil Dogs after translating it from German and it’s said the Germans started the nickname when they were running for their lives.

Some recent news article has mentioned that newest generation marines have thought of it as an insult for troublemaker. That’s a shame, because I think it is an awesome nickname and marines should be proud to be called a Devil Dog. Last thing anyone wants to go head to head with is a Hound from Hell.

I've been spending the evening cleaning up the manuscript for The Devil Dog, I eliminated approximately 12,000 words of dull, and boring scenes that included excessive back-story and pointless dialogue. I’m not sweating though, because all the new scenes I’ve planned with the new outline that there should be far more than 12,000 words put back into it. Tonight, I’ll begin filling in those scenes and hopefully this week I’ll have a complete manuscript again, this time with a much faster story pace than before. Hopefully I removed all the lulls in the tension that I had previously with poor pacing.

I just wanted to cleanse my pallet with a book update since the day is nearly over and I am a little tired of the end of the world stuff. Especially since everyone is still here. The jokes over, its old news, and we’re moving on with our lives. I just feel sorry for the people who believed it.

I hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend and I’ll get a blog up by Monday night that doesn’t involve my own book or zombies.