[Link] It’s All About Writing: Point of View

Authors Kristi Bradley, Pat Sawtelle, and Allan Gilbreath provide insight into the point of view and how it affects your writing with this seminar.

Want to learn more about writing? Check out the other videos on the YouTube Dark Oak Press and Media / It’s All About Writing Channel.

[Link] Why Writers Face Their Deepest Fears

by M. B. Weston

I’m sitting in front of my computer with shivers literally traveling down my arms. I can’t imagine how my poor character is feeling… Except my character is a Navy Seal. Named Tom… [Cue the excitement from the Elysian Chronicles fans…] He might not get as scared as me, but I guarantee you he’s not happy I’ve written him into this situation…

Writers know that creating tension in a story is vital. It means we put our characters in tough situations that we might not necessarily want to write about. It means manipulating our reader’s emotions. Your characters might need to experience sadness or terror in order to make the story better, even if you as the author don’t want to go there.

Unfortunately, we authors often have to experience the same emotions our characters experience. This especially includes me. I’m a “method writer.” Like a method actor, I have to put myself into the character’s head. I have to “be there.” That’s why I can’t just write an outline and have it work. I have to create more of a pre-draft because I literally have to go into the story and hear, see, and feel what my character feels.

So when Tom is scuba diving off the coast of Norway and has to go into an uncharted cave, I’m there with him. When he has to make a decision when the cave forks, knowing that his air is dwindling, I’m living it. And when a sea monster comes at him…

Yeah. I’m the one who has to endure the surprising sight of teeth and scales while squirming backward in a tiny sea cave trying to remember which way to go to escape and hoping the cave doesn’t become my tomb…

Read the full article: https://darkoakpress.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/why-writers-face-their-deepest-fears-by-m-b-weston/?fbclid=IwAR2z72uzammPREnBaWkaWuFYVLAt_5lXwD3SKXSWg81kVAJ4dHXlE_AOwxg

More Summer Shorts -- Tales from a Goth Librarian

Tales From A Goth Librarian
By Kimberly Richardson

Take a fascinating and disturbing walk through this collection of stories the darker side of the Gothic/Steampunk point of view as written by a Goth librarian.

Kimberly Richardson guides you through modern situations and intrigues from a darkly poignant point of view. Her characters will take you back to the Victorian mindset as they deal with desperation, obsession, and despair. In this anthology, Kimberly embraces the Gothic/Steampunk style and adds her unique voice to the genre.

• Madison de Macabre - Dance if you must.
• Non Compos Mentis - Can the long needles make you better?
• Silk - Skin so silky smooth.
• Dream Guardian - Dreaming in vivid colours and sounds.
• Multicoloured Souls - You never know who you might meet.
• Peau - Just what is a book?
• Sulfur - A tale of elves, demons, centuars, and magic.
• Purple and Black - Beware the price of a muse.
• Cover Her with Violets - Every family has dark secrets.
• Goth Poetry - A unique view into dark thoughts.

https://www.darkoakpress.com/goth.html

https://www.darkoakpress.com/

More Summer Shorts: Realms of Imagination

Realms Of Imagination
Edited By Kimberly Richardson

http://darkoakpress.com/realms.html

Lose yourself in fourteen stories of urban fantasy where make-believe and myth collide with the modern world. The magical creatures of old didn't disappear. They now live hidden among us. All we have to do is pay attention to the signs and beware their mirth and mischief!

The Stories:

Clean Up In Aisle Seven by Lori Ratti
Black Mary by Allan Gilbreath
The White Rider by M. B. Weston
Favoritism of the Damned by Collie James
The Restless Dead by Gail Z. Martin
Voodoo Children by John G. Hartness
The Spelled Blade by D. B. Jackson
Cornelius Dex by Kimberly B. Richardson
Hall and Goats by John G. Hartness
A Twist of Fate by Missa Dixon
Stolen Thunder by H. David Blalock
Minnow Slough by Kay Woo
Footloose by John G. Hartness
My Ainsel by James Ferris

http://www.darkoakpress.com

More Shorts for Summer: Tales From The Mare Inebrium by Dan L. Hollifield

Welcome Intergalactic Travelers!

Come on in and enjoy the Mare Inebrium. We have a large facility and are sure we have something that will meet your needs and exceed your expectations. In the top floor of our building we have a very fancy restaurant with lovely views of the city spreading out into the far distance. The floors above the main bar contain various restaurants, shops, meeting rooms, and we even offer hotel rooms for the discriminating traveler.

Our main bar is quite large, with room for several hundred patrons at once. The walls are decorated with paintings and mirrors that can shift to show either reflections or discrete views inside one of our many themed bars. Our displays of alien artifacts are scattered about tastefully throughout while the full bar itself is up against the back wall of the main room. Our main bar features literally hundreds of varieties of beverages to meet any tastes no matter how exotic.

If open spaces and large crowds are not to your liking, then please patronize any of our wonderful themed areas. If you prefer with a bit more of an adventurous edge, please join the many Space Rangers and other militaries from around the galaxy in our Red Dog Saloon. If you desire a more private and civilized setting, please join our "gentleman's club" at Piper's and our small ballroom is the perfect place to take in a musical or theatrical performance. For you truly celestial types, deities, writers, artists, and other beings of enormous power, you will enjoy the Pantheon Room.

http://darkoakpress.com/mare.html

http://www.darkoakpress.com/

Enjoy More Shorts for Summer: The Stone Maiden and Other Tales by Robert Krog

From sorcerers to space captains, from common criminals to common housewives, this collection contains the stories of a variety of characters from a diversity of genres. Fans of adventure, suspense, humor, horror, fantasy, and science fiction will find tales to treasure. Every story invites the reader into a world where things are not always what they seem, where events do not always turn out as one expects.

http://darkoakpress.com/stonemaiden.html

The Stone Maiden
 "a creature protected beyond use."
"I remember the days when I did things."

*Gilbames the Unwise
"Came the Dark One, the Great Troll from the Northern Waste,"

*Acantha
"Why did you not take his foot like you took her arm?"

*The Hand of Darden
"Apprentice, heed my direction, walk carefully away from the light."

*I Would Have My Bones in the Earth Facing North
"slain him, butchered him, and preserved him for later meals."

*Nothing to Lose is Nearly Enough
"It takes ten days in the chamber to turn a physically fit man who is willing to give up the possibility of procreation into a steel-skinned warrior."

*The Three Epiphanies of Seqeranc
"That is what the stones tell me. Be on your way."

*A Fifty-Five Gallon Drum
"By the brilliant point of light coming from the tip of the welder, she saw a tiny, rotund form working away at some concave contraption."

*Tell Me Your Dreams
"You murder me so gently."

*The Fortunate Few
"You can't escape the Dead King," She clucked comfortingly to him as she dragged him into a dank, dark, stinking room

http://www.darkoakpress.com/

Summer is for Short Stories! Highlighting Moonlight Sonata!

Let's get your Summer reading season started right!

Moonlight Sonata
by Elizabeth Donald

These are the dark, ethereal stories of Moonlight Sonata. Tales bound to disturb your sleep and chill your heart; a new collection from the award-winning author of Setting Suns and Nocturne Infernum, Elizabeth Donald.

All that can kill you is what you carry with you:

• Imagine a haunted church, where the ground has turned sour and something walks in the shadows at night to the mournful hymns.
• A silent covered bridge that no one dares to cross.
• Angry spirits that cry out from beneath the ground of a cemetery that will not lie still.
• An ageless man bound in love to a mortal woman, forever moving, forever haunted.
• A police officer chasing a suspect into the woods - and suspects they are no longer alone.
• A woman preparing to leave her husband, watched by unseen eyes in the corner of the room.
• A voice that can speak only through a radio, a voice from beyond death itself.
• A man haunted by an ageless face that brings tragedy to his life whenever it appears.
• A girl whose imagination carries her beyond the point of no return in a future where dreams become reality - and so do nightmares.

http://www.darkoakpress.com/sonata.html