Believe in Magic with Undawnted's Imaginative Poetry and Prose

Autumn is a magical time of the year. 

Our temperatures moderate from the summer heat waves. The evenings turn crisp as we reach for our sweaters and hot cocoa. Ghosts and goblins haunt our steps... for candy! 

And, our ancestors await our recognition. 

Nights grow longer. Do you add more to your DVR? Or, would you like to curl up with something new? A book, perhaps? 

Poetry and prose are great ways to spend time with yourself. Inside your imagination, let the characters and stories swirl around and create images in your mind. What do you see there in your mind's eye? 

Reading is another great mechanism to expand your creativity by living in someone else's world. That energy can be used to fuel your own innovations.

What are your fiction favorites? Genre topics like vampires and werewolves?

Or, how about rhymes that are sublime to elevate the uneasy factor?

How about some satire? 

 

Take the time to Believe in Magic along with Undawnted. Autumn Cider begins this magical time of year of holidays, celebrations, and parties. We have those get togethers scheduled throughout the rest of the year.

Join our community by bookmarking this site, commenting on our social media and video posts, follow us on Twitter and Youtube, liking our posts, as well as subscribe to Undawnted's A Novelist Idea newsletter. 

You, too, can experience the wonder of the changing seasons.

Have a wonderful and magical day, 

Team Undawnted

 

Have You Gotten Your Autumn Cider? Undawnted's Seasonal Reads Program Guide

As the evenings turn cool, fire pits are decorated with people cooking marshmallows and wearing sweaters.

The holidays are close at hand. First, we get to enjoy the descending darkness into longer nights. We get costumes and candy... and fireside stories from beyond.

How do you get your fall fill? Well, read, of course!
Here are some of my reads for your reading list:

Fiction
Novels  
In the Name of Blood: Vampires are Relative
Novel about the supernatural ties that link people between the ages.

Poetry
Chapbooks 
The Descent: a darker breed of poetry  
Haunting... paranormal... cryptic... literary and contemporary fantasy. 

 

Autumn Reads and Workshops runs September 1st to November 30th.

 

 

 

Autumn Cider Seasonal Reads: In the Name of Blood

 Ready for a haunting read? Try In the Name of Blood:

Riley Austin believes life is predictable. That is until she helps her friend, Tony, catch the kidnapper of three little boys. While using her sixth sense to find the missing kids, she and Tony are attacked and Riley is taken by Julian, a vampire, who wishes to use her gift for his own purposes.

When he asks for her assistance, Riley discovers a kindred spirit in Julian. Moreover, she discovers that an insane, power-hungry vampire called Wilhelm is at the center of many disappearances. A bond grows between Julian and Riley and is strengthened when she saves his life. For her own protection Julian returns her to the safety of the mortal realm.

What Julian does not realize is that Riley was never going to remain safe...

Buy In the Name of Blood on Lulu. 

Bring this vampire crime drama to life in your imagination.

 

 

In the Name of Blood Cover Art Update

Since I am updating my book covers with my new moniker, I am playing around with some of the graphics as well. 

In the Name of Blood is a vampire, crime drama series: 

“I can make the pain stop, Riley. This can all be a distant memory, if you let it. Drink my blood. Save yourself. Julian would not do it for you.”

“Enter not into temptation.”

“Luke twenty-two, forty. But the quote is actually ‘pray that ye enter not into temptation.’ I’ll cut you some slack since your fractured rib punctured your lung when I broke your knee, dislocated your hip.”

Visit In the Name of Blood and download your copy today! 

In the Name of Blood Book Cover Art

The vampire, crime-drama, In the Name of Blood is out in PDF, ebook form. The next books in the series are due out every year in October 2017, 2018 respectively. 

With a book series, cover art is essential for readers to recognize the set.

So the author came up with these covers:

Simple, but concise.

If you would like to start at the beginning, In the Name of Blood is available on the Sonoran Dawn Studios' Lulu Spotlight. 

Have a great and wonderful day!

Just Leaving It Hanging

A fellow writer had brought up the subject of using cliffhangers for novel endings. 

My response was to use cliffhangers if you are going to answer the question in the next book of a series, but if you only write one book, then make sure to resolve everything by the end. 

My stories are not long as a full length novel. I write shorter novels, but not less complex ones. 

I make sure there are subplots and character developments. In the end the stories are completed and the reader feels they have taken a journey with my protagonists. Yet, to spur on interest for the next book, I give a little taste of what is to come... with a cliffhanger in some, but not all cases. 

Someone reacted indignant to this use of cliffhangers as disrespect to readers and to yourself as a writer. I do not agree. If you have everything pretty much sewn up and there is a last minute act or realization, then the reader can decide if the next book will be for them or not. 

I am upfront that I am writing a book series, not a stand along book. So the reader has to expect something to cross over into the next story line. Or why would it be a book series? 

So In the Name of Blood had the main character, Riley Austen, have an epiphany at the end of the book... to be carried on in Book II. Will this series go to Book III? I am letting the characters decide. Many times the characters also decide the end of the novel. Riley sure did. That ending even surprised me!

With Nocturnal Redemption, I can go either way: a clear cut ending or a cliffhanger... 

As writers, should we not tease our readers a bit? 

Have a great and wonderful day! 

In the Name of Blood Trial by Fire Ending

Want something to get you into the mood... for Halloween? 

In the Name of Blood is still available for free until 11:59pm on Halloween! Action, suspense... of a crime drama. So it's not your typical vampire novel.

Riley needs a life makeover but when she crosses into the supernatural, she realizes her boring life may not have been so terrible after all.

Have a fright filled night!

Dreams as Inspiration

As a writer, when I have a strange dream, I like to mull it over for awhile to see what inspiration I can glean from it. 

Have you ever been chased in your dreams? Have you walked through a park? Benn to a haunted house? Or, befriended a vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural creature? 

Dreams are so fun to work with. They give us a window in which to peer into our subconscious hopes and fears. So dreams, even nightmares, have the ability to inspire us to create art, or write poetry. 

I like to keep notebooks by my bed in order for me to take notes when needs be.

Has one of your dreams ever inspired you? 

Have a great and wonderful day.

Humans, We're Not so Human After All

So, you think you are human: Homo sapien sapien. 

You may not be so human after all. In the article: New Ancient “Mystery Human” Species Identified Shakes Up The Theory Of Evolution, humans discover that our DNA is not so human, but a collection of interbreeding species from long ago. 

Just face it: your ancestors were sluts. 

“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a Lord of the Rings type world – that there were many hominid populations.” - (1) Mark Thomas, evolutionary geneticist at University College London.

According to DNA samples and cave excavations, more than one type of hominids exists along with our ancestral links. 

What information can be gleaned for today's writers?  Even humans are crossbreeds from different times and peoples. With science fiction, alien races would have the same impurities. In horror, zombies, vampires, and werewolves could harbor from a different sect of the human, or inhuman ancestry. What combinations could be exploited to develop new horrors and aliens for readers.

The Lord of the Rings could be reality. 

What can a writer, artist do to show how these influences have changed the way we look at ourselves in genres that reflect our own natures back onto us?

Source: Collective Evolution

Steampunk, Paranormal Romance, and the Age of Alternative History

Awesome.

That is a load of words to say isn't it? I had been reading up on how to write the genre because I have a half done historical novel waiting for a great plot twist. 

My novel is more like a Paranormal Romance slash Historical novel, but I wanted to update it. 

Low and behold, Steampunk incorporates the supernatural. I can do that.

It is an exciting way to revive an old story and it has opened my mind to possibilities. So much so that the new concept has broadened my understanding of  Blood Oath, Blood War. 

And, that's how creativity works. 

One creative epiphany leads to another. So Steampunk can revitalize a historical romance and set in motion more crime-drama in my vampire novel. 

That is why I love writing. You wake up with doubt and leave with hope. 

Have a great and wonderfully spooky day!