I'm still here!

I haven't had a chance to update this blog in a while, my work and family schedules have not seen fit to allow me any free time to pursue my writing. I am hoping once we get past the holidays, I will be able to hunker down and tackle the list of things I want to get finished with my books. Book three is finished and printed in its rough draft form, and I am hoping to revist book one now that I have finished book three so that I can check for continuity and make sure that all my plot hooks line up.

I will try and post some more info as soon as I can.

New Cover for paperback

I've been working on a new cover for the paperback version of Emily & The Silent King. I have a couple of covers mocked up and I will be posting them shortly. For now I will give you a peek at the image I created to use for the background. It's a shot of Ixdee the unicorn and I think it's a pretty nice shot!

I created it using Vue 6 Infinite and Daz. I still need to tweak the shot in Photoshop but I really like how the initial render turned out. I just hope it prints as nice as it looks.


Well that's all for now. I will post the two covers soon. Maybe I'll turn it into a vote to see which cover is the most popular! Wait until you see what I have planned for the covers of books two and three!

Book Three Finished!

I finished the rough draft of book three! Strangely enough, it ended up being 284 pages. Very close to the first two books. I guess I have formed some sort of subliminal habits when writing that are causing me to make the books all so similar in length... who knows?

I will be going over the rough draft this weekend and hope to be finished up with the final draft by next weekend! I can't wait to see the reaction this book gets, it's very different from the first two story-wise. I'm a bit nervous about how it will be received!

If you haven't seen this cartoon yet take a look! Apparently Wizards of the Coast made several animated shorts to promote the new fourth edition game rules. It's worth a look!

Chapter by Chapter the end nears...

Despite a weekend chock full of outdoor projects, I managed to squeeze in some writing time for book three. I am in the middle of chapter thirty two and there are only two chapters left after that! The last two chapters should be fairly short ones, so the end is in sight! I am anticipating finishing the rough draft of book three by next weekend!

I always get excited when I near the end of a book as the story reaches its end and some loose ends are tied up while new ones are created. I'm hoping that this book will be a logical stepping stone into book four and that it answers some of the questions posed in book two. I'll know more when I go back and start revising it. I do my best to not make any continuity mistakes, juggling characters and events can be tricky some times. Still I really love it and I hope that comes across in my novels.

Well that's all for now, I'm exhausted and I just wanted to give a quick update on my progress! Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. I try and keep it as interesting as possible and I hope to get some time to incorporate some of the ideas I've mentioned in past blogs! Until next time.....

Two and a half chapters...

I finally managed to get in some quality writing time and churned out two and a half chapters this morning. That puts me at around 22 or 23 chapters for book three! My best guestimate is that it will be around 35 chapters long so I'm definitely on the final third of the book!

I am getting to some of the big action parts and I'm trying to decide if I want to shift the focus of a few characters. I've been trying to prune some parts that I think might fit better in book four.

The press release for book one has gone out, I hope it generates some traffic for the book. Here is a peek at it:

New Epic Fantasy Novel Released Just In Time For Summer Reading

[Toms River, New Jersey] July 11, 2008 – New Jersey author Irven Keppen has released the first book in his epic Legends of Midralon fantasy series titled Emily & The Silent King.

Following in the footsteps of noted fantasy authors from the past, Mr. Keppen’s book began as a labor of love only intended to entertain his children. Once he had created the book he realized that it was a wonderful story that could entertain others as well and at the urging of friends and family he decided to publish his book for the public.

Written over the course of a year, using his daily commute as brainstorming time to develop the characters and ideas in his novel, along with countless late night hours spent at his laptop keyboard, he was able to bring his story to life in the 288 pages of this book.

Emily & The Silent King takes the reader along on the adventures of a young girl and her three siblings who are mysteriously transported to the magical realm of Midralon. Perils and pitfalls await them in the war torn lands, as well as magical creatures straight from the pages of old fairy tales. They must deal with the strangeness of this new world and find their way back home, all while trying to avoid the sinister servants and marauding armies of the terrible Silent King.

Mr. Keppen’s book can be found under the title Emily & The Silent King at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615172393/ as well as other major online book sellers. Please visit the author’s website at http://legendsofmidralon.blogspot.com/ for more details on this book and upcoming titles in the series.

###

Irven Keppen is 41 years old and works in the IT field in Cranbury, New Jersey. He lives near Toms River, New Jersey with his wife, two daughters and two sons.

The best laid plans...

So my vacation didn't quite go as I planned, I guess that was to be expected. I had a list of several things I wanted to get done before it ended but only managed to scratch a couple of items off the list. Still I enjoyed myself and got to spend some time with my family which is my favorite pastime in the world. So I'll stretch my remaining list items out over the upcoming weekends.

I'm still waiting for my book to show up on the Library of Congress online catalog so I can start asking the local libraries to carry it. The process is a strange one, there really is no feedback. You apply for an LCN(library control number) and then you send a hard copy of your book to the library and they file it. They don't let you know if they've received it and there is no place to check the status of it or even if it's been rejected for some reason. It has been several weeks now and I still don't see it showing up, so I'm getting a little nervous.

I plan to at least finish a chapter or two of book three this weekend. But you see how plans and I get along from the first paragraph. We'll see, so much to do, so little time....

Current distraction

As I mentioned in the previous post, there have been a few distractions for me. One of them is the new 4th Edition of D&D. Being somewhat of a programmer, I decided to write my own character generator. This is what it looks like so far.

I made it for my own personal use, since its hard to find time to sit around and roll up characters much less game. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles but it gets the job done!