David Farland (aka Wolverton) is a bestselling author and a teacher of other authors both famous (Stephanie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells) and not yet famous (me).

His son, Ben, was severely injured in a longboarding accident. The family has no insurance, and the bills for the hospital and treatment in this instance often exceed a million dollars.

Today I’m supporting a book bomb, in which we encourage people to purchase one of Dave’s books. In particular, I encourage you to pick up Nightingale. Not only is it an awesome (multi-award-winning) book, but David get’s 70% of the purchase price on Amazon. (for Nook links, hit up the link at the bottom of this post.) The higher up the rankings Nightingale gets, the more exposure it will get and more people will buy it.

That is how a book bomb works!

Click This Pic and Get the Book!!!!

Click through to the official site and check it out. Let’s get his multi-award-winning YA novel Nightingale waaay up on Amazon’s bestseller list.

For more information and updates about Ben’s condition. There is also a link to a fund for direct contributions if you’re so moved.

Help Ben Wolverton: Books for the Book Bomb

This is me circa 1980. I’m playing a game on my brothers’ TRS-80.

I have spent a huge portion of my life in front of computer screens.

Success!

Here’s the run down. (Note: All these are affiliate links, but you can easily get around that by searching for these items on Amazon.)

Books

Don Quixoteby Cervantes: this is a looong novel. Fortunately, each chapter is relatively short and the story is very episodic. That means you can read it in bits. The book is hilarious!

Sandman Slipcase SetI had never read Gaiman’s masterpiece. Probably because I never had a history of reading comics at all. I’ve heard it referenced so many times, I decided to educate myself. It’s great!

The Sketchnote Handbook Video Edition: the illustrated guide to visual note taking (includes The Sketchnote Handbook book and access to The Sketchnote Handbook Video)
I wish I’d had this taught to me in school. I was terrible note taker all the way through college. Sketchnotes offers a different—and far more engaging—way to take notes, using pictures, typography, and page structure. The best thing is, you don’t have to be a good artist. A finished page of sketchnotes looks cool, too.

Gadgets and Things

I’m loving my SONOS PLAY:3 wireless speakers. I put one in the living room and now I have the playbar for the bedroom tv. I can send music from Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, etc to it using my iPhone, computer, iPad, kindle fire, wirelessly. Easy to set up and sounds great.

I’ve been walking around in my Merrel Barefoot shoes. They take a bit of getting used to because they don’t have the high, cushy heel most sneaks have. They’re extremely lightweight and comfy.

Dropcam is the best wi-fi security cam I’ve found. High quality video, easy to set up.

But it is!!!!

Bookbub is offering my second novel for only $.99 from 3/18 – 3/22 through all the major ebook retailers. If you don’t have it, go get it!

On this tractor.

Okay, so I  exaggerated. It was probably more like 5% of my time. But that 5% dragged out due to insane hay fever and boredom.

I put a lot of miles on that ol’ 110.

I love the bare feet.

I’m thrilled that today Bookbub is promoting a very special deal on the Undermountain.

99 pennies gets you the entire first ebook from Amazon, B&N, and Kobo today.

So I wrote the first draft of The Scions in six days whilst on a writing retreat.

Upon completing that epic feat, I was elated, proud, and I have to admit, a bit smug.

So now I’m plowing through revisions, which usually is the most fun part of the project. Except this time I ran into a new problem, one I’ve heard of, but had never experienced. And it is this: I have the wrong main character.

Yeah.

I actually have two viewpoint characters in the first draft, henceforth called “the boy” and “the girl.”

The boy does all kinds of interesting thing. He fights, he breaks rules, he sneaks around, he suffers. You know, the usual.

Then I came to the first chapters featuring the girl. Now she also does some interesting things as well, but what I discovered is that she thinks more interesting thoughts! Her perspective on the world, her skill for noticing the subtleties of people’s moods, emotions and motives made her 100000000000000000000000000000% more interesting than the boy.

So there I was, lips pursed, scratching my head, wondering, how can I make the boy more interesting?

“the girl” doesn’t look (or behave) anything like Kick Ass girl, but from a character perspective, this is what she did to “the boy”.

The answer slowly dawned on me, because unlike the girl, I’m not actually that perceptive.

The answer is obviously that the girl needs to be the main character. The problem is that, of course, she’s on

ly in 1/3 of the chapters. That they happen to me the most interesting chapters is good, but I must now rework a big ole junk of the book.

The good news is that the overarching, objective storyline, can stay. Most of the exciting things the boy did he’ll still get to do. We just won’t be in his head while he’s doing them. Instead, we’ll be in the girl’s head while she’s doing something else even more amazing. So, yay!