Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Author's Notes

After taking a short break, I am now back at work on Tales from Castle Destro.  I hope to have a new chapter up very soon.  The first chapter of each new volume seems to be the one I struggle with most. 

At the same time, I have a few other things brewing...  

One of the most common critiques I've received from readers is that I don't spend enough time explaining what a particular character or trooper type looks like.  Readers who didn't grow up playing with G.I. Joe toys had a difficult time picturing what some of the characters were supposed to look like.  I am told that this is a fairly common problem because the characters are crystal clear in the writer's mind, so it becomes easy to forget that others might not be as clear.  I have two solutions to this dilemma.  First, I am working on a Visual Reference Guide.  Most of you are probably aware that long before I started writing, I was making custom Iron Grenadier action figures.  In fact, I have created figures for almost every single character that appears in Tales from Castle Destro.  The Visual Reference Guide will feature photos of these figures as a means of illustrating each character, along with a brief biography of the character.  A rough version of this guide is already available on the right-hand side of the blog page.  I'd love to hear what you think of it.  Second, I am planning to review the first 63 chapters of Tales from Castle Destro and make some minor edits where I think it will help correct this issue.  Nothing that will change the course of the story, mind you - but if I can insert a sentence or two that clarifies what a character looks like, then it's worth the time.

You may notice that I have gone back and renumbered the chapters.  This was also a common source of confusion for many people.  So rather than having each volume start over at Chapter 1, each volume now continues where the previous one left off.  Volume I contains Chapters 1 through 22, Volume II contains Chapters 23 through 42 and Volume III contains Chapters 43 through 62.  The next chapter I publish will be 63.  Once I am done with the edits I mentioned above, I will be uploading revised versions of all three e-books.

As always, I want to thank those who have supported this blog and the three e-books it has spawned.  The first Tales from Castle Destro story was published exactly one year ago today.  Without your support and feedback, I doubt I would have continued with it this long.  I appreciate it and I hope that I can continue to entertain you for a while longer.  :)

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