So You Want To Write A Novel

Strange Sights of the Week

Scary Cookies

Just try and eat these.

The Serpent's Root

My second Saphir tale, "The Serpent's Root" made the grade for Rogue Blades Entertainment's Challenge anthology. The theme was Discovery and of course being an RBE title it had to be of a Heroic nature.



Here is the released Table of Contents



•“A Fire in Shandria” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
•“In the Ruins of the Panther People” ~ Daniel R. Robichaud
•“The Serpent’s Root” ~ David J. West
•“Fire Eye Gem” ~ Richard Berrigan Jr.
•2nd PLACE: “Cat’s in the Cradle” ~ Nicholas Ozment
•“Some Place Cool and Dark” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
•“The Ash-Wood of Celestial Flame” ~ Gabe Dybing
•“Witch with Bronze Teeth” ~ Keith J. Taylor
•“Inner Nature” ~ John Kilian
•1st PLACE: “Attabeira” ~ Henrik Ramsager
•Honorable Mention: “Songs of the Dead” ~ Eric Magliozzi
•Honorable Mention: “The Golden Maiden” ~ Michael Navarro

I originally wrote the tale for Sword & Sorceress 25, but it was turned down as being too different from the rest, though they did encourage me to keep shopping it around.
Part of the Challenge for the judged anthology was to adhere to the cover art by V Shane, so I looked at it again, pondered how to put a panther and ruins into the yarn and modified and twisted it up again. Also thanks to Bruce Durham for his input in making the tale stronger=great advice.

In any case, I wanted to write about a daring female thief and thus Saphir was born on the mean streets of Zarahemla. I blended a number of odd influences for the story. Here for example is a pic that was a huge inspiration for the story. Known as Squaw Rock, it has unfortunately been defaced and vandalized- the face and breasts chipped away - but ever since I saw pic's of the riverside relief carving I wanted to write a story about it.




The anthology should be available for Christmas.
So let me know if y'all want more Saphir stories. Here is the first one, "Song of Saphir". Oh yeah and for what it's worth I pronounce it Sa-Fear. I found the name in my Strongs Dictionary of Bible Words-it means 'beautiful'.

...And Then Winter Came

Had a blast last night at the multi-author signing. I even received a sketch from Howard Tayler author/illustrator of Shlock Mercenary.
Thanks Howard it was a great surprise. (I even heard it captured my shifty eyes incredibly well.)
I enjoyed discussing writing business with Daron Fraley, Berin Stephens and Jaleta Clegg. I am especially taking some of the things John Brown said to heart. I will make it to some Con's and get more novels out this coming year!

After the signing at Dragon's and Fairytales bookstore, we went around the corner to Village Pizza-thanks to Eric James Stone = he bought!

We discussed most of the ways we have all the broken the law one way or another-usually with explosives. Larry Correia also had some great tales of pranks and road kill. We had a lot of laughs and then noticed the snow was falling, thick as a shut-ins dandruff.

Winter came with a vengeance.

We bid our goodbyes and I drove home slowly through the blinding snow grateful for good friends.

BIG BOOK Signing Saturday

There will be a big book signing Saturday,

November 20th

at Dragons & Fairytales

located at

3535 E Ranches Parkway Suite A

Eagle Mountain, UT 84005

Phone number is: 801-789-5014

from 5 pm to 7 pm.

Those present will include-




Serial killer-in denial Dan Wells,







NY Times bestselling Monster Hunter Larry Correia,







cultist John "Servant of a Dark God" Brown,






collector of Dragon War Relic's Berin Stephens,






Shlock Mercenary Howard Taylor,










Jake Black-Ender's Biographer,








the always biting Eric James Stone,






The "Thorn" in my side Daron Fraley,





Chef Jaleta "Nexus Point" Clegg









and finally me, self-crowned king of LDS-S&S David J. West
yeah, I just came up with that.

E-Book Success (for me anyway)

Tis the season to be thankful, so...

The Kindle E-Book Heroes of the Fallen has been randomly leaping into the 30,000th spot ranking on Amazon. 30K may not seem that great until you take into account that there are 700,000 e-books on Amazon.

Yeah, so now I don't feel quite so shabby.

Funny thing is, I sincerely doubt that most of my target demographic use a Kindle, IPad, etc. I estimate 10% at best-but that's admittedly a baseless guess. I honestly have no idea.

When it comes to marketing on behalf of an E-Book I am still lost, personally I am more likely to be stoked about a rare find in a used book store than I am about the latest technology-must be the literary barbarian in me.

But as a friend of mine likes to say, 'its all about delivering a story, its not the medium that counts'.

As for E-Book success, seems I am running on good old word of mouth and/or the friends that never bought the hardback.
Either way, lets keep it up shall we?
I have kids to feed.