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Farewell to Legion

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So not exactly my normal blog post, but I am a huge fan of World of Warcraft. It’s lore and dialogue have inspired me on many levels, especially when it comes to my writing.

So this is a blog to say farewell to Legion and hello to Battle for Azeroth. Legion was a really fun expansion. Still not my favorite, like Mists of Pandaria was, but still really fun.

I decided to take some screenshots and in game selfies to capture the place I enjoyed the most. Please enjoy.

 

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Here’s some early Legion screenshots that I took. Some were when my Monk Mistweaver was a Blood Elf.

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There were a lot of good times in Legion. From class-based questlines and class halls to beautiful regions of the Broken Isles, Legion provided a fun and exciting way to play World of Warcraft once again. Don’t even get me started on the awesomeness that was the artifact weapons. Each weapon with its own lore and reason to be part of the class-based stories and gameplay, they were a brilliant tool to use in Legion. Though I’m still holding out for fist weapons with Intellect on them so my “fistweaving” style will be at it’s most epic.

Blizzard did a fantastic job with this one. But now it’s time to say goodbye.

Goodbye Legion. You were great. Now it’s time to fight for the Horde in Battle for Azeroth.

Still Seeking Agent, but Wattpad is a Thing

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Anyone following me for any bit of time probably knows that I’m an aspiring writer hoping to go traditional someday. I used to have self-published work, but stopped them from being available as much as I could to hopefully move on from my mediocre work and look towards the future with my Middle Grade Fantasy stuff.

I’ve been querying agents almost every day for the last couple of weeks, minus the anime con I recently went to. Hoping some will eventually like my work and hopefully represent me (doesn’t every aspiring writer want that?).

In the mean time, feel free to check out my work on my Wattpad. It’s free to read and is the work I hope to build an audience for while I’m seeking traditional publishing.

The Planes Walkers is a coming-of-age middle grade fantasy story about a boy named Jet Cafl.

Description:

Jet Cafl is falling. He knows he will soon hit the icy waters that surround the castle of Calbar. Above him, the Emperor’s tower. It was once a place he dreamed of living, instead of his and his older brother’s run-down shack. But Elements have taken everything from him. They took his hopes, his dreams, and now his brother. The Elementalist behind it: the Emperor Wrathel himself. As the Spirit Element grants Jet its abilities, he can only think about stopping the Emperor.

Wattpad cover done by @LaurenDMSmith

 

The 14th Zodiac is a middle grade fantasy that takes place in the real world but with a school for those gifted powers from the western astrology Zodiacs. Still a work in progress.

Description:

Vincent thought he was a normal middle school student until a massive goat creature, called an Aspected, crashes through the window of his classroom. His mysterious teacher named Evans saves him and his class from the Aspected, and nobody is any the wiser. Evans tells Vincent that he is being hunted by Aspected because he is a Signed, a person granted powers based on the Zodiac they were born under in Western Astrology. Vincent decides to go with Evans to the school for Signed, Apsis Academy, and discovers that he is a unique Signed, born under a sign that is unknown to everyone: the 14th Zodiac.
Wattpad cover by @Howling_Silver

 

As always, thank you everyone who has followed me so far, and I appreciate any who decide to read my work and share it.

Trying out Wattpad

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So I’ve decided to take the advice from a fellow writer and try my hand at Wattpad. Already, I like the community and the layout of how the website works. I went ahead and posted the first chapter of The Planes Walkers on my account, and will be serializing the story over the following weeks.

If anyone is interested in the middle grade fantasy, you can read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/user/Ragnosk

If anyone else is on Wattpad, let me know! I’d love to see your work.

Writing Panel at Sabaku Con!

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My writing panel got approved for Sabaku Con 2017! My panel “Think It, Write It, Panic, Publish” is to help anyone who wants insight on the writing world!

Description: Ever think about pursuing writing as a career or a hobby? Don’t know where to start? This panel can give you the insight from the experiences of a self-published author on the world of writing novels, fan-fiction, poems, short stories. and publishing.

Anyone who is in the Albuquerque area, and attending Sabaku Con, is welcomed to come. I’ll be joined by my writing friend Asiera (you can check more about her here)! She has some unique insight into writing that I don’t so it’ll help.

The panel will be informative by the information Asiera and I provide, probably with a PowerPoint slideshow showing our experience as writers. I want it to be open to questions anyone has, because I’m sure everything can’t be answered in slides.

To attend the panel, you have to be attending the convention, so here’s a link to the membership passes: http://www.sabakucon.com/memberships/index.html. The convention is being held at the Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North.

Hope to see some people there!

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AuthorBrandan
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BrandanChapman1/
And check the main site for other blogs: https://brandanchapman.com/

A Trip Through Virtual Reality

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So for anyone who knows me as the being I am, they should know that I am a writer and a gamer. I started gaming way before I started writing, but that isn’t by a huge gap. I started writing short stories about LEGO’s Bionicles in kindergarten, and had been playing video games since I was old enough to understand what was going on.

So as my 5th novel is being edited, I’ve been tossing around the ideas of the next story I will write. I was going to possibly write a story based in the TRON universe by Disney, but with recent rumors of Disney rebooting the series, I didn’t want to risk the investment. Writing a story like that could only be published by Disney Hyperion, so making it a possibly outdated story canon-wise just makes it harder.

So I’ve been tossing around the idea of writing the concept/genre of people getting stuck in video games. Several authors have done it already. Some off the top of my head are Andrew Klavan’s MindWar trilogy and John David Anderson’s Insert Coin to Continue. Though writing for different age groups, I believe this is a popular subject matter. Things like Sword Art Online wouldn’t be as popular if it wasn’t. One of my favorite series growing up was .Hack GU, where a virus in the game was causing people in real life to enter into comas. The main character, Haseo, was super cool! af212a1140143d5eafb35ebaf3200f2c0668cc7c_hq

As a gamer, I thought, what better thing to write about? Mixing fantasy and gaming, and the countless hours I’ve spent watching YouTubers game, I think I could create a pretty cool story.

Virtual Reality (or VR for short) is the hot thing right now in video games, and it might seem cliche, but it might be a great use of the bridge between the concepts of reality and gaming.  I can’t afford to buy a VR headset to test it out in person, but I have watched many let’s players on YouTube test it out. (That’s research right?).

A side note, as a gamer and fan of Disney, they are surely missing out not making the Grid Games a VR game. Just saying. discanim1

Might be writing a couple more blogs on the idea of gaming meeting writing. Figured it could be a good way to get ideas flowing for stories. It might even help some other writers out there!

Any gamers out there like to read about this concept? Or any writers currently writing this? I’d like to know how it’s going! Let me know in the comments! I’d love to know what kind of games inspire anyone out there, or even games you just like to play.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AuthorBrandan
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BrandanChapman1/
And check the main site for other blogs: https://brandanchapman.com/

 

Author Update

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“And when he swore to bring back his love by the stories he’d create, nightmares shifted endlessly in the darkness of the lake.” – The Poet and the Muse by Poets of the Fall

So I haven’t written a piece in a while, so I figured I’d take the time to update everyone on how my writing is going.

Last I wrote a blog, I was doing NaNoWriMo 2016. Well, I won for the second year in a row, which just means I met the 50,000 word count within a month. It pumped out a lot of my current story. Congrats to anyone else who won National Novel Writing Month too!

nanowrimo_2016_webbanner_winner_congrats

Since, I haven’t written too much. Shortly after NaNo, the holidays came in a storm. It kept me pretty busy. Traveled to see some family in another state. I did take my laptop but never really got a lot of free time to sit down and write what I wanted. It was nice to spend time with family I don’t really get to see much.

Once I got back, I was planning on writing while I still had a few days before I had to go back to work. But alas, the Steam Winter Sale was going on. If anyone knows me well enough, they know I’m also a gamer. I picked up several new games and played Stardew Valley for several hours on those last few vacation days. Praise to Gaben.

steam-summer-sale

So here I am almost half way through January, and the ending still needs to be written to my current manuscript. On the plus side, I’ve been taking creative writing classes and several critiques have said that the beginning of the story is brilliant. That’s always a nice feeling.

Hopefully I’ll finish the ending soon and get into the grind that is called editing. I have an outline of several scenes that need to be revised and edited already. Don’t know how long the editing and revision stage will take, because I hope not too long before I can start looking for an agent.

I’ll probably give another update when I reach the editing stage, but until then, thanks for reading. I should get back to writing now.

Writing in Steam!

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I have discovered apparently that Microsoft Word is the “worst” word processor to use for writing. Many articles state that fact. For the longest time I’ve been using word, for my first two novels, on my 4 year old laptop. My gaming computer didn’t have a decent Word so I figured my laptop could be my writing computer.

One day, on my gaming computer, I was looking through the Steam sales. I immediately saw the word “writer” and my eyes fixated on it. Nimble Writer. A Steam based word processor. I thought to myself, “Well, I’m in Steam most of the time anyways.”

Nimble comes with Steam Acheivements(always a plus in my book) and is distraction free. You can open all your documents from within the program, no extra windows needed. You can even export your files/stories to wordpress and others. I know other word processors have that cabability but Nimble is cheap, and in Steam. I think it’s a perfect processor for Steam users who are also writers.

I’ve messed about in the program a few times and love it. It’s simple to use.

I’m actually using my second Tumblr! (AKA links, links everywhere)

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I have two tumblr blogs set up. One is my popular DisneyTronBlog with almost 700 followers! (I don’t know if that really is a lot or not)

The other is a blog I made when I converted the first one to a Tron-based blog. It’s where I’ll post more personal stuff, like my poems, Alan Wake stuff, writing related pictures/posts. and non-tron things. Doctor Who pictures/gifs and other BBC shows will be shared on to there as well. It’s easy to find too. It’s just BrandanChapman. I’ll post my blog and journal updates on there as well.

If you’re a fan of Tumblr, this would be an easier means as to follow me, if you lack a Facebook, DeviantArt, Twitter, or even Google+. You can follow me just about anywhere online! If you like games, I like to stream on Twitch. I’ll post any of my decent streams on Youtube. I want to also start making vlogs. More to come on that. I may even read my book prologues for videos.

You can also get my books here, for the readers out there.

(Poem) Pits of Ice

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Venturing into the pits of ice,
shivering in the lonely black.
It happened at a throw of dice,
losing the warmth somewhere back.

Whispers in her voice flow with the wind,
it’s all around to escape such a heavenly noise.
My chilled voice follows all of those sinned,
with the absence of all of our joys.

What comes next, after the forges and now the pits.
A fortress of despair? Castle of sorrow?
I push on, continuing takings the icy hits,
wishing to make it, hoping time will let me borrow.

(Poem) Into the Depths

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The darkness at the bottom engulfs me.
I search for safety.
I’m pulled into the light by a helping hand.
She pulled me into a tunnel, drained of water.

Light lit the small rooms.
The girl led the way, like a older sibling.
Other people were here too,
But I couldn’t bare to look at them.

I can’t stay this way here forever.
She led me to the core of this city.
She says there is only one escape.
To the surface, from this city of Rapture.