Home of author Marc Johnson

What Once Was One (The Passage of Hellsfire, Book 2)

Posted by Marc Johnson on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

What Once Was One (The Passage of Hellsfire, Book 2) In the land of Northern Shala, the dark wizard Premier raised an army of foul creatures from the Wastelands and led them against the ancient guardian city of Alexandria. Hellsfire, a young farmhand turned apprentice wizard, defeated Premier and saved Alexandria, but not before the [...]

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Catalyst (The Passage of Hellsfire, Book 1)

Posted by Marc Johnson on Sunday, July 10th, 2011

Catalyst (The Passage of Hellsfire, Book 1) For centuries, the kingdom of Alexandria has protected Northern Shala from the monstrous creatures lurking in the Wastelands. Now, a dark force threatens that fragile peace. Far from home, Alexandria’s princess is abducted. When a young villager named Hellsfire stumbles upon her and her captors, he rushes in [...]

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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Static Main Characters

Friday, May 11th, 2012

When it comes to a story, most of the time, the main character is the one who goes through the MOST changes. Whether it’s Neo in The Matrix, Frodo in Lord of the Rings, or Katniss in The Hunger Games, they all go through the Hero’s Journey and end up far differently than when they [...]

Weaknesses in Writing: Main Character

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

All writers seem to blog about pricing, cover, sales, KDP Select, Amazon, etc., etc., etc. But rarely do they talk about the writing process. I can understand why. Writing is rather boring. You just hammer at words on a keyboard, phone, or tablet and occasionally talk to yourself. Instead of talking about how great a [...]

The Butterfly Effect of Editing

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

I’ve always found writing a book to be easy peasy. Granted, that first draft won’t be very good, but I can generally bang out a very rough manuscript within two to three months. What I’m learning is that I’m starting to hate editing. My second book titled, What Once Was One, is taking far too [...]

The Future of Fantasy

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

As I mentioned way back before, I don’t read that much fantasy. I do read some and I have a tendacy to think about the future. What I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a divide between the two main types of fantasy. You have your dark and gritty vs. the lightheartedness and fun. [...]

Keeping Things in Perspective

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

One of the major problems with being a writer is that you don’t have a pulse on what’s happening in the real world. This is true whether you’re traditionally or indie published. When you write, you spend all of your time by yourself. It’s a little maddening really. If you’re traditionally published, you won’t have [...]

Burned Out

Friday, November 4th, 2011

NOTE: What was written below was before I got laid off. [Sometimes you just feel burned out writing and in life, in general. I'm feeling that way right now. What sucks about writing is that you can't complain about it to anyone else except other writers. Only other writers will understand how you feel and [...]

Why 1st Person?

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Writing in first person is very tricky. You have to do everything you normally have to do in other books like paint a picture of the world, flesh out characters, make a tension filled book, but you have to do all of that from a very limited perspective. You can’t bounce around from character or [...]

Headaches and Eyestrains

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

In today’s world, we all stare at screens. We stare at them while we’re watching movies or TV, playing video games, surfing the web, using our cell phones, reading books, etc. If you’re trapped in a cubicle, you also spend hours at your job gazing into one. Whether you’re a writer, reader, or average Joe, [...]

Reviewers’ Expectations

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Now that reviews are starting to trickle in, I’m starting to learn about expectations. We all have them. We all bring our prejudices, background, experiences into it. Expectations grow because of them. Expectations also come from what the creators have shown us or what other people tell us. We expect things based on covers, movie [...]

RSS is Your Friend

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Going indie has some drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is staying on top of the news. While I did that anyway especially in the Fantasy genre, with today’s publishing climate, I’ve had to do it a lot more. I’ve had to not only keep track of my preferred genre, but publishing as a whole. There [...]