Venom and Song Three Book Giveaway

This Giveaway Has Ended...


I'm giving away three brand new, hardcover copies of Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper's newest book, Venom and Song. Wayne Thomas Batson with The Door Within Trilogy and the two-book pirate series has become one of my favorite fantasy authors and Christopher Hopper's White Lion Chronicles is a great series as well-it's been proposed to ransack his house and get the manuscript for Athera's Dawn, it hasn't been attempted yet though.

What's Venom and Song about though?  It's a Young Adult Christian Fantasy novel.  Yeah, I know, there's a lot of those books lol.
Below is my 'smaller' review:

(To view my longer and more in depth review of the book you can go here.)

I would suggest to anyone planning to read Venom and Song to first read Curse of the Spider King.

Venom and Song expands on the glimpses we saw of Allyra in the first book in the series. 

Now in the strange realm of Allyra, the Seven young lords confront a traitor in their midst, a creature-infested forest, teenage fears and doub ts, inexplicable mysteries and the Spider King himself.

I noticed the writing flawed at the beginning.  There were a few viewpoint shifts within scenes and the dialogue tags were off from the beginning to the end of the book.  That doesn’t matter much to me, even though I do notice it.  The book’s plot was amazing.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the world of Allyra and its history.  There were a few typos that I found amusing, but didn’t bother me at all.  Such as a time when one of the characters ‘ased’ a question.  Of course, it was mean to be ‘asked’.

The plot kept me on my toes and kept me turning the page and the ending was very satisfying, though it made me quite sad.

All-in-all I rate the book a eight out of ten.

How do you enter?  There are three ways to get entered:

• Comment on this post, that automatically gives you one entry
• Follow this blog (if you're already following, just tell me and that will still count as an entry)
• Post about this giveaway on your blog.  In the comment tell me the link to where you posted.

That's all there is to it!
 If you've already ordered or own the book, enter anyway!  Give one to a friend or there's no harm in having an extra copy lying around the house.
On a side note, I cannot ship over seas.  Only in the contiguous United States.  Sorry, if I could send over seas, I would.

In Victory,
Seth,

Venom and Song-Christopher Hopper & Wayne Thomas Batson

VENOM AND SONG

Wayne Thomas Batson-Christopher Hopper  

  

(For my full review of Venom and Song you can go here.)

I would suggest to anyone planning to read Venom and Song to first read Curse of the Spider King.

Venom and Song expands on the glimpses we saw of Allyra in the first book in the series. 

Now in the strange realm of Allyra, the Seven young lords confront a traitor in their midst, a creature-infested forest, teenage fears and doubts, inexplicable mysteries and the Spider King himself.

I noticed the writing flawed at the beginning.  There were a few viewpoint shifts within scenes and the dialogue tags were off from the beginning to the end of the book.  That doesn’t matter much to me, even though I do notice it.  The book’s plot was amazing.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the world of Allyra and its history.  There were a few typos that I found amusing, but didn’t bother me at all.  Such as a time when one of the characters ‘ased’ a question.  Of course, it was mean to be ‘asked’.

The plot kept me on my toes and kept me turning the page and the ending was very satisfying, though it made me quite sad.

All-in-all I rate the book a eight out of ten.

 Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Stay tuned for a THREE book giveaway of Venom and Song.  

Word War 6.8.10

 WORD WAR

Tonight we're doing a Word War!  We'll be starting at eight o' clock eastern time and going until nine.  I know of at least one other person besides myself who will be going for another hour after nine until ten, so if you want to stick around for another one, go ahead.
Basically how Word War's work is we wait until the start time (eight), then we sit down at your computer and type like a maniac on whatever you may be working on.  I'll be writing in my book, Tales of a Rider, but you can also be writing essay's, articles, poems, anything.  After one hour is up we post our total word count in the comments section and see who got the most.
I bid you good luck... Er, Endurance and Victory.

Fantasy Maps

Many fantasy stories are accompanied by a map.  Think about Tolkien-his stories ranged in many different places, and he always had a map to accompany them.  Think about the Inheritance Series (Eragon, Eldest, Brisngr), it has a map of the places where the story takes place.  The Door Within, The White Lion Chronicles.  There are many more as well.
I'm not going to try to convince you of the importance of a map, they are very handy for the reader and the writer though.  I'm going to attempt to explain how to draw a convincing map.  I'll do my best, even though I'm not the best artist or geographist lol.
Below are pictures of a map that I had worked on for the book I was writing before the one I'm working on now.

There were actually nine of these, but I don't see the need to show them all.  As you can see, I'm not the greatest artist, but it's still a map.  Below is a picture of a map of Middle Earth drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I've also worked on many maps for what I'm writing now, but I'm unable to upload those for technical reasons.  The newer ones are much better, however.
To make a fantasy map realistic though it needs to feel realistic.  I had a good laugh this morning about how unrealistic my first attempts at maps were.
In a real world, or more importantly in a real map, there are many rivers.  That's something I've noticed.  Plus, the world is mostly water.  To make it feel realistic you need to have many rivers.  But not too much, you've got to find a balance.
Also, a river isn't completely straight.  It will curve and swerve through the map until it reaches the sea or it's stopping point.  It will also branch out numerous times.  I have a map that has about seven or eight rivers that came from two rivers.
Another thing is mountains.  In a fantasy world there are-or should be-many mountains and so in your map there should be many mountains.  Because it's a fantasy world though it's the writers decision on how long the mountain range is, how many there are, etc.  It's good to have a variety.  Going back to the example with Tolkien, he had a mountain singled off.  It was even the major place in his first published work, The Hobbit.  So it's good to have a variety of mountain ranges.  Mountains can also be used as border points, to separate lands.  Just off the top of my head I can think of a possible story making a huge mountain range that is so tall and fierce-some that no one dared cross them.
Then comes forests-it is relatively the same as mountains.  You want to have a good variety of sizes of forests and there should be many of them.  They can also be used to hide ancient secrets such as the Seven Sleepers in Wayne Thomas Batson's Rise of the Wyrm Lord.
When making borders to the oceans and sea keep in mind things such as gulfs, cliffs and havens.
Since it is fantasy you have an advantage-you can throw in things such as gigantic cracks and chasms in the ground, trees that reach past eyesight into the sky, rivers that flow so fast that if you were to go in you'd be swept away and be unable to get out.  Don't be afraid to really go into things that are impossible-it's fantasy.  But still be realistic enough that you don't lose the reader.
Also don't feel limited when you draw maps. It's usually a good idea to not put bounds on your world so that you can always explore new lands.  That's part for the fun of the writer though.
And last but not least, do not feel like you have to be an artist to draw a map, I can barely draw but it doesn't stop me from at least trying to draw a map, however horrible I may be.