When you are writing a novel, inspiration comes from unusual places and sometimes you have to make unusual decisions. That’s where all the trivia comes from.

Trivia #1: ‘Death Vegetable’ — In Raven: Mirabelle, Dahija mentions that her sister, Pamela, refers to celery as the ‘death vegetable’. My oldest daughter’s name is Pamela, and, yes, she used to refer to celery as the ‘death vegetable’.

Trivia #2: ‘All Wet’ — In Raven: The Call from Central, you meet Skylla, who has to be kept moist. Her hugs leave people wet except that I mention that, once on the field, since it is a simulation, she isn’t wet. However, later on, during one of the matches Nova participates in, the team is outside the ‘brane and Skylla hugs Nova and leaves her wet. I left that in for someone to find the inconsistency.

Trivia #3: “The left side of the formation” — In Raven: The Call from Central, Raven begins as left forward, however, as you read along, you’ll notice that she’s on the right side of Grabby, the center. I had always envisioned her on Grabby’s right side. So, rather than rewrite a mess of stuff, I redefined the frame of reference so that positions are defined from the front of the formation, so Raven, being the ‘left’ forward is actually on Grabby’s right side. Yeah I know that’s an obtuse way of going about it!

Trivia #4: “Is not beach!” — In Raven: The Call from Central, Skylla originally could only talk in brief baby-like statements and had a low-pitched gravelly voice. As I was writing the character, this got too restrictive, and, instead of trying to rewrite the original scenes, I had the inspiration to make her voice a sub-plot. Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until book 5 to find out how she sounds after the operation.

Trivia #5: “A warrior putting on his armor should never brag like one taking his off.” — This is a statement used by Grabby at least twice. I can’t claim credit for that one. It comes from the Father of History, the Greek historian, Herodotus.

Trivia #6: “And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England’s mountains green.” — During the playoffs, Raven begins singing this when they realize that the Devastators have tapped into their comm system. These words are actually from a poem by William Blake which was turned into a hymn by Sir Hubert Perry in 1916. Since the UK has no official anthem, this hymn, named ‘Jerusalem’, is used as the anthem before rugby matches.

After a couple of revisions, the paperback version of Raven: Necris is now live on Amazon.

Everytime I release on Kindle or paperback I’m always learning more about M$ Word than I ever wanted to. This time I encountered the ‘non-breaking space’ and ‘block protect’. While both of these can be added by the writer, the unfortnate fact is that Word will insert these where it thinks they should go without your knowledge.

The ‘non-breaking space’ is a character that prevents words being from being separated at the end of the line. The problem here is that Adobe Acrobat, which is the format used for paperbacks, doesn’t recognize that character and leaves a box in it’s place. The KDP manual review flags that. In my case, it appeared at the end of each chapter just before the page break.

‘Block protect’ is another hidden and annoying feature of Word. Word will randomly block protect paragraphs. Simply put, ‘Block protect’ will keep a block of text together and not split it up between pages. The result is that you’ll suddenly see pages in the middle of your chapter with large white space at the bottom. And, if you don’t know how to remove block protect, there is no way that you’ll be able to fill that white space without retyping the following paragraph.

In other news, writing has begun on Book 5. Originally I was going to call this one Vysse: Bestmartin, but that may change. There is also a least one chapter written in Book 6. Eh, I just make sure when I have an idea that I write it down. Some stuff has gotten written but never used as it didn’t fit.

God Bless and Good Reading!

The manuscript for the paperback version of Raven: Necris has been submitted and it might take up to 72 hours for it to appear on all Amazon sites. The only snag could be if Amazon doesn’t like something about the cover or the manuscript, but I’ve never had that happen before.

This time I have a new portrait picture on the cover, but that will hopefully not be a reason to avoid buying the book!

I’d like to take this time to thank the people for being part of this book:

Jonathan Sears for taking his first shot at writing a Foreward.

Jennifer Durato for agreeing to be a character in the story.

Yvonne Marrs, as always, for her editing expertise and encouragement.

Don’t forget that to celebrate the release of Raven of Iskandar book 4 that the previous books are on Kindle Giveway, April 10-11-12.

Here’s a reminder that my previous four books, including the three from the Raven of Iskandar series, are available for free on Amazon today, Saturday and Sunday (April 10-11-12). You’ll also be able to get the Christmas Story for free.

And when you’ve finished reading any of these please leave me a review on Amazon. The more reviews I have, the more exposure I get from Amazon. Thanks in advance!

Just a reminder that the fourth book of the Raven of Iskandar series has been released on Amazon today (for Kindle). You can see it here:

That’s the USA link, but the book is available at your local Amazon site for your country.

The paperback version is on the way. Not there yet, there is still some reformatting to do. Hopefully I’ll be able to release the paperback this weekend.