Charlie's Toads

In the darkness between universes, something ancient and hungry has awakened. It wants free of its prison. Everything two gifted teens and a wayward geneticist have may not be enough to save all of reality from being devoured.

Intrigued? Me too! Welcome to the blog tour for Obsidian Threads!!

Here's the blurb:

Rho has awakened. Its acolytes will tear worlds apart to release their deity from its prison. Any hope of Rho's defeat lies with two people lost in a strange universe. Kaden and Aren must learn to harness all their unique gifts if they are to rival the god of darkness reborn.

They will not fight alone. A brilliant geneticist, a furry dwaro, two less than friendly elves, dragons, and a spunky red-haired computer stand with them. But if Kaden and Aren fail to reach their full potential, all of reality will be devoured until nothing remains but Rho.

Intense, right? I can't wait to read this!

Time to introduce the author. :) Charlie Pulsipher is not only a great author, but also a great man and a great friend. Here's his bio:

Charlie Pulsipher is a were-hamster and lemur enthusiast living in Southern Utah with his lovely wife and neurotic dog. He writes sci-fi and fantasy, and sometimes both at the same time. He’s obsessed with surviving the inevitable zombie-pocalypse. It’s coming. Tell your friends.

He spends his time away from the keyboard hiking and camping in stunning Southern Utah. He also enjoys woodworking, painting, drawing, and pretending to have super powers.

He neglects his twitter account.

His velociraptor impression is worth seeing. Ask him to show you. It just may be the coolest thing about him.

It's all true! He's one of the coolest dudes I know. So I'll turn the time over to him for a fabulous guest post. :)

Incorporating Real Life Lessons Into Novels

By Charlie Pulsipher

When I was in middle school, I had an English class where I sat under a poster that simply said “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” That phrase stuck with me for years. I leaned on it while I wrote my short stories in high school. I used it to make my essays better. It popped in my head when I started my first novel. I have since learned that it came from the wonderful poet Marianne Moore. She was speaking to the poets in all of us, asking writers everywhere to populate their poems with bits of reality: real feelings, real ideas, and real pieces of our world.

I saw it as creating worlds and then putting real people in those worlds. That is the most important thing to crafting great stories. Those characters have to feel real. You have to identify with them, love them, care about them, fear for them, hate them, and cry when they fail. That makes all the fantastical things I throw into my books believable. The characters carry the story.

This means that real life experiences and real people are your proving grounds. I have a notebook in my back pocket every second of every day. I jot down notes, snatches of conversations, events I see happen. Real people may not believe it about themselves, but they are fascinating. I have conversations I would have never dreamed up. They feel so much more solid than the dialogue I would have slapped together.

Toads aren't perfect. They can be beautiful, but they are often bumpy, slimy, loud, and a little gross. I haven’t always remembered to do this. I applied the toad rule to all my characters except my villain in my first draft. He felt flat and his motivations for his ruthlessness were forced and empty. I had to rewrite him and I drew on some of the tragedies I've witnessed in my own life and my own desire to avoid them. I gave him bumps, slime, and a little hint of a beautiful pattern in his skin. One of my favorite characters emerged from this, Penny, a spunky red-headed artificial intelligence who stole her identity out from under my villain’s nose. She’s one real toad, despite being a computer program, a disembodied voice, and a hologram of a dead woman. I love her.

So go out and people watch. Pay attention to the conversations around you. See how someone really reacts when someone else spills soda on them. Mine your journals. Infuse character traits you notice in your friends and family. Highlight the things you don’t necessarily like about yourself. Give your characters histories that lead them to where they are. You may only use a fraction of what you create around your characters in the book, but that fraction will add depth, balance, and reality. Make those toads real and readers will flock to your stories over and over again so they can feel what others feel, see through another’s eyes, and escape from themselves for as long as it takes to read your words.

I believe my toads are looking pretty real in the imaginary garden I made for them. How are your toads?

Isn't Charlie awesome? :) Check out his new book, Obsidian Threads, here on Amazon! The first book in the series, The Crystal Bridge, is free for this week - find it here!

Bonnie Gwyn