She's prowling through the ruins of an alien criminal's lair, dodging caveins and shrapnel while missiles tear her city apart. In desperation, she calls for her friend, praying that he's still alive to hear her.

The stairwell has been destroyed; she needs to find a way through a hole in the ceiling in order to progress.

And all the while, the stakes are rising, and layers of the story are being peeled back to reveal how her world came to fall apart like this.

As I took a break from editing this scene to sneak, fight and problem-solve my way through someone else's story, I couldn't help but get a sudden sense of deja vu.

So, here I am, playing a game with a brave and stubborn non-combatant protagonist, and the storyline alternates between said protagonist's attempts to progress, and the ways in which that progress reveals the story that created this mess...

Huh.

I'm writing an adventure game.

There are no monsters in the lair - not yet. But like the protagonist of Penumbra, she must make her way through perilous terrain to find the answers she needs, and to discover a way to stop the disaster that has engulfed her world.

If she's lucky, by the time she finds her friend, neither of them will be dead.

If fate frowns, they all perish.
​

Great news! I'm over a quarter of the way through the second round of editing of Heroic Lies, and I expect to be done by the end of December.

In the meantime, if you're curious about the novel and you want to read an excerpt while you wait for it to come out, you can now download a free sample by clicking the button below:

In the next few months, I'll be adding a lot of new Heroic Lies-themed stuff to the site, including concept art, the book cover, and of course, the novel itself, as soon as it's ready.

I also plan to make character profiles for all three of my novels, complete with images and a chance for you to ask questions and get to know them better.

I'm excited about all the great stuff I'll be sharing with you. In fact, I'm ready to start sharing right now! You see, when I first sat down to write the first draft of Heroic Lies, I actually got stuck for a while because I had no idea what Zorei looked like. I knew all about his backstory and personality, but I wasn't sure how to describe his physical appearance.

So before I even started to write, I took some time to let my pencil and my imagination work their magic, and after some confusion and a few discarded drafts, Zorei was born. I haven't fully colored him in yet, but if you're as curious as I was to see what the antagonist of Heroic Lies looks like, here he is, in all his not-yet-colored-in glory:

Have you ever run into a trope, cliché or character type that annoyed you every time you saw it?

I've got a few, and just last night one of them reared its head in a movie I was watching. I'll be vague in order to avoid spoilers, but in this movie, the female protagonist was struggling to recover from events that had left her deeply traumatized.

She was emotionally wounded, scared, fighting to cope, and clearly not ready for romance... so what does the guy she's talking with do?

Kisses her, even though she's clearly not receptive to it, because "I had to do that, just once."

And then, the trauma continues, because the movie's just starting, and sci-fi action movies don't tend to focus on protagonists with safe, happy lives. The heroine continues fighting to cope, bearing scars that her male counterpart doesn't seem to share, and on top of that, soon she has to deal with the fact that he has a crush on her, and isn't content to leave it at a level she's OK with.

Granted, these two male characters genuinely cared about her. They wanted to help, and the second one did eventually back it off to a more respectful level. And this was one of the tamer examples. But I'm tired of this kind of behavior being seen as healthy or romantic, because it really isn't.

Woohoo! The first round of editing on Heroic Lies is done, and the Advance Review Copy is ready.

If you're a book review blogger who would like to see a dark, unusual spin on the classic superhero story, I'd love to hear from you the via the contact form below.

Also, if you're a book cover designer, I could definitely use one for this novel. I've tried designing my own covers in the past, and while I enjoy the process and think the results look fairly good, I've finally admitted to myself that a pro could get me better results.

Besides, I've got an idea of what I want the cover to look like, and frankly, I think it's beyond my current abilities. Either that, or it would take me FOREVER to draw.

So if you're a review blogger, please send me your name, website, and submission guidelines such as what file format you need and what all needs to be included with the manuscript.

And if you're a cover designer, please send me your name, a link to your image gallery, and links to the sales pages of any books for which you've designed covers so I can see how well they're selling.

And finally, if you aren't a reviewer or artist, but you know one, please feel free to send them a link to this post. Many thanks. :)

Aaand, here's the contact form: