Blog
So Hey, Katherine, How Do You Lay Out Your Books?
For my eBooks (I have one for sale and a slew of mailing list extras), I use Draft2Digital’s converter… but might end up using Sigil. I used to do webdev, a million years ago, and am comfortable in HTML and CSS. But I have yet to play with that. I mean, D2D produces...
Thoughts on Writing Werewolves
Oh hey! It’s a magical creature post where I’m not going to ask you to think about religion! I mean, you can if you want to, as the medieval European werewolf typically put on a wolf-skin belt, or applied a special salve to their body, or went through a Satanic rite,...
Underworld
Tucking his computer science textbook and his Book of Shadows into his backpack, Dion dropped the bag onto the floor at the foot of his bed, and launched World of Warcraft. He selected his realm: Earthen Ring. He was number eighty in the queue. Expected wait time: twenty minutes. Stupid server. He glanced over at the wilted plant on the window sill and waved his wand. It perked up.
His mother wandered into the room, wearing a gold lamé evening dress and hose without shoes. He hid his wand behind his back, but made no attempt to hide the glass of wine on the desk, next to the computer. As long as he didn’t get shit-faced, she had no problem with it.
Thoughts on Writing Ghosts
I’m sorry, but you probably know the drill by now. Like the vampire post and the witch post, I’m going to ask you to consider religion… or at the very least, the afterlife. A ghost—at least, the kind I’m talking about—is the spirit of someone who’s died. This implies...
Thoughts on Writing Witches and Wizards
Like the vampire post, I’m going to open by asking you to consider the relationship between magic and religion. Are your witches and wizards members of a pagan (or neopagan) religion? Are they Satanists straight out of the Malleus Maleficarum? (Er, maybe they...
Thoughts On Writing Vampires
Probably the first thing that one should consider in writing vampires is what rule system you intend to follow. This is not a universal, as the Sims 4 Vampires pack knows. (Yes, I'm a Simmer!) Some considerations: What will be their relationship with religion? In...
Immortal Gifts invites readers to re-evaluate the meanings of things such as life, death, freedom, hate and love from the first page. Katherine Villyard manages to capture some of the most poignant questions we ask ourselves as we go through our individual lives. Is it worth being able to live forever if, in the end, we’ll lose the ones we love to mortality? Is Death really the ultimate enemy to life, or is death just life’s misunderstood old friend? To stop hate, do we need to restrict our freedoms? This book makes readers ask and answer tough questions not only about the characters and plotline, but about their own beliefs, understandings, and dreams.