Dustin Ballard

Allow me to introduce you to my debut novel. It has swords! Wizards! Fighting! Terse dialog! If you enjoy fantasy adventures, you might like this. #writing #WritingCommmunity #publishing amazon.com/dp/B0CL7SNJJG

The eldest is using the 3d printer to make himself ODST armor for Halloween. I think maybe I'm doing some parenting stuff correctly.

I though the Hallmark movies were the ones where the woman is in love with two murderers loose in her town, and like one is the rich big city serial killer and the other is like the small town boy who just kills locally and she’s having a hard time choosing between them, but there’s something about the way one of them arranges corpses that lets her know he’s the one.

Well, here we are again.

I gotta ink another map! I love maps in books, I don't know why I forget to put the map in *every* book until @fliffani reminds me.

Well, after several scenes of fun and games we broke out the emotional sledgehammer in the WIP this week. That got dark quickly.

I mean, flying sports cars are cool, but we're going to need mars rovers that jump. I think all Elon's tech is pointed at Mars.

I know X hates links, but my friend @Fliffani got this really sweet review of her first novel: medium.com/@secretcoran/the-… And I'm proud of her and want to share it ... and I want her to finish her *second* novel, which I know far too much about.

Sometimes I write a scene and I'm thinking 'I don't know about this ... maybe I should cut this.' Inevitably, I show it to the other writers in the Galhadria group and they're like 'Woah, this is so moving! So glad you these characters finally had this discussion!' So ... yeah ... I'm better off just letting them talk and not trying to judge the content myself.

Nearly 2,500 words this weekend. Happy with that.

Look, sometimes 200 words is a good day.

Weekend. Time to spin the wrenches.

I'm so glad I have @fliffani to help me with layout. Drawing the maps is enough work.

Gotta ink the book 3 maps!

Gotta draw the book 3 maps!

I'm cutting loose all of my painted Catalyst Battletech stuff. Check out this one and the rest if you like the painted plastic stompy robots. ebay.io/m/1Pq2pZ #eBay

My fantasy characters wear boots a lot. I like boots. Boots are cool.

Reading Lovecraft again, specifically his older and earlier work. There is something to be said about short stories letting you build up references and context through mentions that wind up making this cloud of reference points suggesting the full cosmic terror.

I'm deliberately trying to keep the age of my protagonist slightly vague, because I think it helps the reader identify better with the character.

When worldbuilding I'm actually trying to make my locations their own thing, instead of just 'fantasy Texas' or whatever. That can mean some pretty fun mishmashes of references when I'm busy bewildering a patient artist.