AFB: Legends of Windemere

Welcome to April’s Featured Blog, something I’ll be posting here on Lit and Scribbles most of the month to introduce all of you to perhaps some new future friends and get to know a little more about your blogging community.

Today we talk with Charles Yallowitz, writer of the blog Legends of Windemere with a book available on Amazon of the same name (Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero). Charles and I have recently become blogger buddies. Tell the people who you are, Charles:

CY: I was born in Long Island, NY and stayed there until I went to college in Oswego, NY.  After getting married, I moved to Florida and came crawling back to Long Island with my tail between my legs after 4.5 years of trying to survive.  I’ve wanted to be an author since high school and played the game of submitting manuscripts and waiting for the rejection letter.  I thought this was the way to go until my son was born and I realized that I wanted to be able to tell him to go for his dreams after having done the same for myself.  That brought me to self-publishing and blogging where I’m now working hard to forge a career as an epic fantasy author.

J: When did you first start blogging and what is your blog about?

CY: I started blogging in December 2012 after finishing the revision of my third book.  I started the blog to use as a platform for my writing and help gain an audience.  It started to grow from there as I began posting poetry, progress posts, and my thoughts on various writing-related questions.  I’ve started using my blog to help other self-published authors with the challenge of advertising by listing sites and my experiences with the sites that I use.

J: Which of your posts was the most fun to write and why?

CY: This is a tough one because I day a whimsical opinion post every Wednesday and those have always been fun to write.  I think it’s a tie between the one on writing great villains “Crushers of Souls and Puppies” and the one on killing characters in a story “Boromir, We Hardly Knew Ye.”  The villain one was just all around fun because I went off the wall with some of what I said.  The killing characters one let me take a few playful swipes at Joss Whedon who I haven’t forgiven for killing one of my favorite characters of his.

J: What type of stories do you write?

CY: I typically write high-action epic fantasy, which some people say is YA, but others say there’s too much sexual innuendo and violence for it.  I’ve been experimenting with other genres, such as horror and drama, by writing novellas.

J: Protagonist excluded, which of your characters is your favorite?

CY: Geez.  That’s a tough one because I like all of my characters.  Going only my first book, I would go with Kira Grasdon.  She started as a third-string throwaway character and became more and more development with every editing session.  I had very little control over what she wanted to be and I eventually gave up to see where she was going with it.  She became an incredibly strong and cunning character that really did steal the show and redirect a few plotlines.  I’m very happy with how she came out and she helped teach me that I should listen to the characters instead of forcing them to do things.