Who would play Otto in the film?

With the release of 'Hunger Games', there have been a lot of tweets and comments regarding the reader's interpretation of the race, appearance, etc. of the characters in that book. A lot of very nasty comments have come out of that, and it made me think: how are my characters visualized in the book? I have tried to give a decent enough description of each character in the writing, but it is still fun to think who could play the role in a movie based on the novel. Of all the characters, Otto would be a tough one I think. He is dark skinned, bald, covered in tattoos and a towering eight feet tall! "He was close to eight feet tall with very deeply tanned skin, hairless, and the chiseled features of the Incredible Hulk. His deep set eyes had brilliant green irises to match, very menacing, and at that moment, extremely angry." -- Section 2, Chapter 'Endowed'
I have a distinct image in mind for him, but I understand that once a writer has sent his words out into the world, they are no longer his own; they belong to the reader. Still, what do you think about Ronnie Coleman, former Mr. Universe? Think he can act? Maybe I should send him a copy of my book and tell him that the role of Otto is his for the taking :D

Kindle users... Oops!

You have no idea the hoops you have to jump through to make an eBook format correctly for all of the various readers (or maybe you do!). Well, I spent three days on Smashwords.com getting the book ready for upload and I thought everything was working great... until it went to Amazon. For some strange reason, the Kindle just didn't want to indent my paragraphs. I did EVERYTHING they said to make it work, and there was still no indentation. I even took my indentation OUT, and Kindle is supposed to default to .25 indentation. Nope. Didn't happen. So I downloaded the actual html code and found the error in the style sheet. Worked! There was a indent:0 line that just wouldn't go away. Thank goodness I have web design experience to fix it. So in a nutshell, for those Kindle owners who purchased it on Day 1, my sincere apologies. Delete it from your Kindle and reload it from Amazon and it will be fixed so as to not make your eyes bleed with those huge blocks of text without indentation. As a consolation, I know who the early buyers are and you will get my signed bound edition for FREE when I get them printed. It's my way of saying thanks for taking a chance on a new, independent author.

Published!

Well it is finally here. I pushed the book live to Smashwords and it is available in all formats through that site (including Kindle). I have also submitted it to Amazon Kindle directly, but it will take as much as two days for it to make it to the shelf. It is both a relief, and more than just a little frightening to have made it to this place. On one hand, I have worked for two years to get to this day, and that is exciting and very gratifying. But on the other hand, my writing as a novelist is out there, for everyone to see. What will come of it? Anything? Will people even read it? What if they don't like it? That is where the fear enters. But I'm accustomed to fear as a bed-fellow (read the book to understand) so I'm fine with that. I have published my first book. And now, to edit the second book. I am really looking forward to it. Seth really gets himself into a mess in book two: The Book of Michael. I can't wait to read it myself!!

Book Cover

The final task before posting my book to the various eReaders is to create a cover. I must have created a dozen different concept images for this task, but finally came up with one that I feel captures three aspects of Book One: The Elemental Chaos, Fire, and Seth with a weapon. In this image, he wields a hand-ax, but in Book Two, Seth will get his first real weapon: a straight blade made of pure black ore. Here is a little preview of the book cover as I am designing it. I hope you like it.

Website et al.

Photo by Gary Orona

I never imagined that after completing the final edit of the first book in the series it would be so much work to get the word out. Twitter, Facebook, Smashwords, Kindle... it's a full-time job to promote a work that I have invested so much time into. Currently, I am finishing the final pages of the web site (www.blacknether.com) and designing the cover of the first novel. Never judge a book by its cover, correct? But people do, so I need to make it visually appealing and that takes time and effort. I am close though! Then it goes live... As for my blog, I like to use this space to show images that inspired me during the writing of the book. Here is a photo by my brother and master photographer Gary Orona. This is just about as perfect of a representation of the Elemental Chaos I could ever find. Imagine Seth traveling far above this amazing landscape aboard a flying dirigible and mining vessel, the Blood Rock.

Welcome to the Black Nether

My name is Michael and I have written a novel series entitled "The Black Nether". Please come back soon to read more about my first novel released as an ebook.