Category: Writing

Monday Blog: Secrets of the WE Series (little known facts)

Welcome back to the Monday Blog! This is the final posting for the month of July. To finish off the “When A Series Comes to an End” theme, I wanted to share some little known facts about each series.

 

Fortune’s Wing:

Both Demetri of FW and Rafferty of Valentine share the same character design. Their characteristics were inspired by Joseph Mascolo, the actor who played Stefano DeMera on the daytime soap, “Days of Our Lives”.

Fortune’s Wing was the first W.E. book to use humans as characters.

Verdonna was inspired by Hinoto from the anime film, X.

On the cover of the first book, there is a light shining from within a cave in a mountain. The light was created with a White-Out pen.

On the cover of the second book, the clouds on the Earth were created by stretching out cotton balls, which were later glued to a hand-drawn image of the Earth.

Valentine:

Book one if the Valentine series, were originally written as 2 separate books.

Val’s pink hair was supposed to be blond, with pink highlights. While working on the illustration for the first edition of the book, I accidentally colored all of her hair pink. But it was a happy accident.

The image of Val that appears on the first edition of book one, was meant for another book I was working on.

Valentine was inspired by the anime series(s) Noir and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

At five feet eleven inches, Jo Fuentes is the tallest female character in the series.

Jo Fuentes is the first LGBTQ WE character to appear in a PUBLISHED book.

Our Lady of Righteous Rage:

One of Amy’s songs, “Come For the Wake, Stay For the Funeral”, was originally written in 2009.

Before appearing in the Our Lady series, Amy, Dee, Vanessa, Carmen, Yvonne, Nyda and Erin all appeared in my sci-fi super hero series, “Enos”.  Rob was the lead character in the super hero series, “Degenerate R”.

When Amy was first created, her name was Charlotte.

Vanessa is named after my aunt, Vanessa.

Speaking of the unpublished W.E. books, Amy has appeared in more books than any other W.E. character.

Part of Amy’s character design was inspired by Emeraldas from the anime, Queen Emeraldas, and Fam from Ruin Explorers.

Benjamin Cardozo, Rob, David, Amy and Dee’s high school, was my mother’s high school.

 

Until next week….

 

 

Monday Blog: The Our Lady of Righteous Rage Series

 

Happy Monday, everyone! At least, I hope you’re having a happy Monday. This week’s blog topic: Our Lady of Righteous Rage. I’m going to share some info about the seven books which currently make up the series. The books can be divided into two categories: the Primary Books, which follow a shared story line, and the Companion books, which have separate stories.

 

The Primary Books

This category includes Our Lady of Righteous Rage, Our Lady of Righteous Rage: Extended and Uncensored, Your Fame Will Destroy You, and Rowdy. The first two books are technically one in the same, with the major difference being the use of coarse language in Extended and Uncensored (don’t worry; I didn’t go overboard). The primary books follow Amy Edwards and friends as they grow up together, start a punk rock band, and a business. Along the way, they face the challenges of adulthood, including divorce, relationships issues, abandonment, etc.

The first book introduces each of the characters while they are still in high school. Amy is a bit of a tomboy, and all of her friends are male, until she meets Dee, and her cousin Nyda. She late becomes friends with Vanessa and Carmen. The group creates a plan to start a business together by creating and selling their art, music, and writing in Union Square Park. Their goal, is to turn this business into a retail store in the future. At the same time, Amy begins learning to play the guitar while exploring her inner punk. She and some of her male counterparts later form a punk band. The second book, Your Fame Will Destroy You, finds the band, named Our Lady of Righteous Rage, dealing with their newfound fame. They later discover a “friend” from their past is out to destroy them (I won’t spoil it by telling you who).  In Rowdy, Amy and her friends, armed with the knowledge of who has been working against them, try to continue to write new music and play a few gigs. Nick begins to suffer from writer’s block, and Aidan has trouble coping with a troubling discovery of his identity (no spoiler; you’ll have to read the book). The book ends with the band making a major decision to go on their first national tour.

Which brings us to Righteous, the book I’m currently writing.  Our Lady is on tour, Vanessa is holding down the fort at home, and things are about to get interesting. This isn’t going to be your average, run-of-the-mill road trip: the band is going to meet some interesting characters and have a lot of new experiences while playing their gigs. And that “friend” from the past who was trying to screw them over? Well, he ain’t finished yet….

 

 

The Companion Books

The books in this category can be read separate and apart from the primary books, and not necessarily in the order they appear. There is one exception: Novocaine and its sequel, Another Shot of Novocaine, which will make more sense if you read them in order.  Novocaine  concerns Erin’s life before she met the band, and how she came to work for them. Another Shot, deals with one of Erin’s least favorite subjects: her father.

Punk and Whiskers, is a collection of short stories. They are unrelated to the rest of the series, even though the cast of Our Lady appear in them. You can easily read this book without reading the others (but I’m not encouraging this!).

 

I’ve been asked if any of these books are autobiographical. Our Lady is, to a degree. I hate classifying it as fiction; it’s more like creative non-fiction. Some of the events in the story are real (when Amy runs into Tre Cool from Green Day, I borrowed that from the day I met Tre Cool). The bands guitars are my guitars. Benjamin Cardozo was my mother’s high school, however, I also used details from my old high school, Bethel in Virginia. Yes, I’ve been to The Bitter End on West 4th. Yes, I own a ton of punk rock CD’s.

 

Even though I’ve said Righteous is going to be the final book in this series, it doesn’t have to be. I have ideas for more books, and chances are, I will write them. So, after Righteous, you may not have heard the last of Our Lady.

Next week: Secrets of the WE books: little details you may not be aware of. See you then.

Monday Blog: The Fortune’s Wing Series

Hello, again, everyone. Welcome back to the Monday Blog. This month’s theme is When A Series Ends, so every Monday Blog post will be devoted to a W.E. series. This week, I want to discuss Fortune’s Wing.

I wrote the original Fortune’s Wing books between 2001 and 2002. The first book in the series wasn’t published until 2009, through Xlibris. The second book, Fortune’s Wing: Second Flight, was published in 2011, and the third, Fortune’s Wing: Flies Again was published earlier this year. There are revised editions of the first two books available through Amazon’s Create Space.

The series follows Fortune Oyama and his friends, as he learns about and tries to fulfill his destiny: to save or destroy the world. On his eighteenth birthday, Fortune grows a Left Wing, and must set out on a journey to claim the Right Wing and complete the set. Whomever has possession of the Wings, shall control the fate of the world. However, Fortune’s journey is not without opposition: The Winged Seven, other people who were born with a Left Wing, are also in search of the Right Wing. Their leader, Demetri, will stop at nothing to control the world’s fate. He sends the other members of the Winged Seven after Fortune and his friends, one by one. Spoiler alert: Fortune manages to retrieve the Right Wing. With the set complete, he must go on one more journey, the one that will decide the world’s fate.

The decision to save the world should be simple, right? In Fortune’s case, it isn’t. As Fortune continues his journey, his view of the world begins to change. He finds himself wondering what kind of world he’s really fighting for. In the end, he has to do a lot of soul-searching in order to make his final decision.

When I originally wrote this series, I a) never intended for anyone to actually READ it and b) didn’t write it with a particular audience in mind. When I made the decision to publish the book, I made a few changes, in order to make the story appropriate for middle school-age readers. I figured, since it was a fantasy story involving teen characters, and the story didn’t contain any graphic violence, nudity, sex or coarse language, middle school was a safe age to market to. Narumi’s name was changed from Nirogetai or Niro for short, and a character was eliminated from the story. In book three, when Kazumi comes to visit Haverdy, the old friends catch up on one another’s lives. Haverdy asks Kazumi if she’s dating anyone, and Kazumi’s girlfriend Russia is later introduced. In the original story, Russia accompanies Fortune and has friends on his final journey. Since the series was being marketed to middle school readers, I made the decision to eliminate Russia as a character, and Kazumi’s sexuality is never explored.

I came up with the concept for Fortune’s Wing: Revamp, several years ago, and I’m considering publishing it. This would be a new, grown-up version of the story, with Russia included and Kazumi’s sexuality becoming part of the story once again. The idea is still on the table.

This was the first W.E. series I had ever written which featured human characters. It was also my shortest series (the Enos series has over 15 books).  It opened the door for Valentine and Valentine Apart, and the upcoming books I’m working on for W.E.. It was also the first W.E. series I had written which entertained the idea of the world coming to an end. Even though it’s meant for younger readers, I’ve had readers of various ages tell me they enjoyed the story. I also wrote Haverdy 0, which was a spin-off from the Fortune’s Wing series. I may publish it, somewhere down the road. We’ll see.

 

Next week: The Valentine Series

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Melinda’s Summer Plans (a snippet from Valentine 5)

Melinda St.James, one of the younger (and more innocent) characters from the Valentine series, has decided on what she wants to do, when summer arrives. Here’s a snippet from the upcoming Valentine 5, which features a conversation between Melinda and Jo Fuentes. Enjoy!

 

 

“Hey, I know what I want to do this summer,” Melinda said. “I heard someone at school talking about the Pride Parade in June. I wanna go!”

Veronica, Val and Jo all turned to her in surprise. “The Pride Parade?” Val asked.

Melinda set her bowl on the coffee table and nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!” she said. “Can we go this year?”

“Uh, sweetie, do you know what the Pride Parade is for?” Jo asked.

“Sure,” Melinda said. “It’s about celebrating who you are, and being proud of yourself and your friends.”

Jo turned to Val and Victoria and smiled. “She’s so innocent, it’s too adorable,” she said. She turned back to Melinda, and said, “Well, you’re not wrong. Pride celebrates the LGBTQ community. It reminds people to be tolerant and open-minded, and embrace everyone’s differences. It helps the community be more aware of people like me.”

Melinda blinked at her in surprise. “What, do you mean, like, other Marines?”

Jo raised her eyebrows. “You’re really adorable, do you know that?”

Melinda beamed, and picked up her bowl of cereal. “Thank you.” Victoria leaned over and whispered something into Melinda’s ear.

Jo smiled at Val and Veronica. “This year, she should lead the Pride Parade.”

 

Monday Blog: When A Series Ends

Greetings, everyone. June has ended; July is here, and this is the first blog entry for the month of July. I struggled to come up with a theme for this month, mainly because I was struggling with something else. I have begun the drafts for Valentine 5 and Righteous, and I paused one day to realize, I was writing the final books in two of my series. Valentine 5 will definitely be the last book in the Valentine series, while Righteous may or may not be the last book in the Our Lady series (I may publish another companion book somewhere down the road). I had this same problem when I published Fortune’s Wing: Flies Again. Something that has been part of me for so long, is finally coming to a close.

 

Valentine 5

I have a subtitle in mind for this last book, but I may not use it. I’m still exploring other options. In the meantime, this is it! Everything in Val’s life, has been leading up to this point. Its time for the final showdown between Val Entienne and John Rafferty. The only way for this to end, is for one of them to die…

 

Righteous

Amy and company have grown together, as friends, business partners and as a band. Now, they’re going on tour for the first time, and preparing to show the rest of the country what they’re really made of. With David’s band touring at the same time, you can imagine, things are going to get ugly…

 

SO, this month, I’ll discuss the end of Valentine, Our Lady, and I’ll go back and revisit Fortune’s Wing. Until next week…

 

Monday Blog: Wrapping Up June

Hello, everyone. Here we are: another Monday, another Monday Blog. This week’s entry will be a short one. We’ve come to the last Monday in June, so I’m just going to wrap things up.

 

The sequel to Novocaine, titled Another Shot of Novocaine, is now available for sale thru Amazon.com and woolastonentertainment.com. I’m thinking about hosting a giveaway, in which the winner would receive both books (it just makes sense to give away both the first book AND the sequel). We’ll see.

I’m currently working on Valentine 5, and Righteous. I expect to have Righteous ready for the editing phase within the next two months. Valentine 5 may take a little longer, since it will be the final book in that series.

Our Lady of Righteous Rage: Extended and Uncensored has earned 3 reviews on Amazon! Yeah! You can read them here: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Lady-Righteous-Rage-Uncensored-ebook/dp/B01E1PZNUQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498496313&sr=8-1&keywords=our+lady+of+righteous+rage+extended#customerReviews

Next week kicks off a new month for W.E, which means a new theme, which I still haven’t decided upon! (blargh!!!). But I’m working on it. Until then, please feel free to forward all of your questions and comments, via the Contact Page on woolastonentertainment.com. Tootles!

Monday Blog: From Novocaine to Another Shot of Novocaine: How Has Erin Changed?

 

 

Greetings, everyone! Welcome back to the Monday Blog. This week I wanted to talk a little about how Erin, the main character in Another Shot of Novocaine, has changed since her last stand-alone book.

In Novocaine, you met Erin when she was a fresh-faced (and fresh-mouthed) teenager. The story begins when Erin is seventeen, and graduating from high school. She and her mother decide to listen to Erin’s Uncle Nikos and move from Virginia to Georgia, with the promise of a new life. Things quickly turn sour, and Erin finds herself facing some new and unexpected challenges. Over the course of a few years, she makes new friends, gets a boyfriend, and lands a fantastic job working for Our Lady of Righteous Rage.  She transforms from quiet, worried teenager, into a young adult who is finding herself and is less afraid to speak her mind.

Erin’s personality in Another Shot hasn’t changed very much since the end of Novocaine.  She’s still bold, and still a punk/Emo. She has learned to navigate her new job, and she’s become even better at it. All of the events she dealt with in Novocaine are going to help her face her greatest challenge: reconnecting with her estranged father.

I debated on how to have Erin react to the news her father gives her in Another Shot. Should she be alarmed, or excited, or happy? Then, I asked myself, how would I react? After reading Another Shot, I think you’ll find Erin’s way of dealing with the situation suits her personality.


Another Shot of Novocaine is coming soon! Until next Monday…

Monday Blog: Another Shot of Novocaine

ASONImage

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to the first Monday Blog for the month of June. I’m releasing the sequel to Novocaine this month, so the blog posts will mainly revolve around this new book.

 

Another Shot of Novocaine

This story takes place between Rowdy and the upcoming Righteous. Erin is preparing to go on tour with Our Lady of Righteous Rage in March of 2013. However, someone from her past decides to resurface: her father, Aaron Michaels. He’s the lead singer for the band, Metal Hills. Erin finds herself looking forward to reconnecting with him, until he tells her something very disturbing.

Much like the other “side stories” from the Our Lady series, you can read this book independently of Our Lady, Your Fame Will Destroy You and Rowdy. However, if you have read the other books, that helps. While there aren’t any song lyrics in this book, I believe readers will enjoy Erin’s humorous outlook on life.

Another Shot of Novocaine will be available within the next two weeks. Until next Monday…

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Monday Blog: Novocaine

NovocaineCover
Novocaine

 

Happy Monday, everyone! From now on, I will repost the Monday Blog from woolastonentertainment.com, on this WordPress site. This week, I wanted to talk about Novocaine.  This book is part of the Our Lady of Righteous Rage franchise, but it’s not a numbered book in the series. It’s more of a companion book. Even if you haven’t read the rest of the series, you can read Novocaine without getting totally lost.

Novocaine follows Erin, one of the characters in the Our Lady series, as she and her mother make a decision to move to Georgia to be closer to their extended family. This is shortly after Erin graduates from High School. She’s excited by the idea, at first, until everything goes to hell. Her uncle (her mother’s brother) made a faulty investment, and it may cost him his house. Erin and her mother find themselves without a place to live, and manage to make it from Georgia to New York. There, Erin eventually gets a job working at the Urban Collective, where she meets the members of the band Our Lady of Righteous Rage.

One of the most interesting aspects of Novocaine, is Erin’s transformation over the course of the story. She goes from bookish-nerd, to scared teenager, to bad-ass Goth/Emo chick. Many of the events that transform her, transformed me as well. That is to say, while this is a work of fiction, there’s a lot of truth weaved into this story. A great example, is how Erin is introduced to the music of Green Day. Her experience mirrors my own: using the power of music to get through a difficult time.

I don’t want to give the impression that Erin is just some brooding teenager. She’s dealt a pretty rough hand in this story, but she handles it the best way she knows how. In the upcoming sequel, Another Shot of Novocaine, Erin is a little older, a little wiser, and not afraid to speak her mind.

Next week: Your Fame Will Destroy You

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