This section is dedicated to some of my peer writers with links to their latest works and my reviews.

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The Get to Know Me Tag

Originally posted on: September 11, 2022 (yeah, I know…another “day which will live in infamy”)

Rules:

Link back to the person who created the tag: Savannah

Thank the person who tagged you: Emily Waldorf

Tag eleven bloggers (See below… Yeah, I know I tagged 15. So what?! I can count beyond ten. I have enough toes for that. 😂)

Share the tag graphic (above)

Questions:

VITALS AND APPEARANCE

Name: Brian Stansell

Nickname: Don’t really have one but I’ll go with “Mister. O’Brian” because of my current WIP.

Birthday: Ask the ones surveilling me. 😎😳😁 (Uh, maybe you might not want to do that, on second thought. Don’t approach the white van or make eye contact with its driver. If you see him talking into his collar, run!)

Hair color and length: Dark Brown. Back of my neck, I guess.

Eye Color: The official color is hazel.  (Kind of green with iris flecks of golden brown.)

Braces, piercings, tattoos: I had braces growing up. No piercings or tattoos.  (If this old barn looks good, why paint it? 😆😃😂)  I did get shot with a BB gun by a friend once, but I don’t think that qualifies as a “piercing.”  He’s still a friend.  Don’t judge me. I can forgive. 😉

Righty or Lefty: Right, of course.  I get suspicious of “lefties”… [pause] are we still talking about dominant hands?

Ethnicity: American…😂🤣😅.  So what do you mean “American” is not an ethnicity?

FIRSTS

First novel written: The Alpha Omega Dilemma. (I was 15, okay.) It was over >100 notebook pages long.  I write in small print text.  I think I changed the name later.  It was a science fiction novel, about a boy and his robot.  I wrote about 15-20 short story booklets, about 10-15 pages long starting when I was seven.  I only count the “Novel” as the story that broke the 100-page barrier.  I also wrote a self-drawn comic book serial series in High School about a gang of boys who called themselves “The Stallions”.  They end up going into the military and rescuing POWs still held prisoner in Vietnam.  (Okay, I was a Rambo fan.  I’ll admit it.)

First novel completed: “Excavatia: From Dust Arise” {Chapters 1-31} [Actually, I am finalizing it, because it is in draft #? But, yeah, it has been drafted all the way through to the second novel in the series “Excavatia: A Swirl of Embers”{Chapters 32-70}. The 3^rd & 4^th novels are still in concept.  The novel is a fantasy novel with biblical cross-overs and a kind of mix of a little sci-fi (perhaps) because it does involve touches of time bending/travel, supernatural creatures, mysterious “virtue stones”, a prophesied quest, shape-shifters, mythological creatures, medieval warfare, espionage, etc. …and yes, there are a few dragons thrown in. (No, they aren’t just for fluff, even though “thrown in” may sound flippant.)

Award for writing: I did receive the Baylorian Creative Writing award in college.
I don’t enter many contests. I think I may have submitted for 2 tops, but they were cast in more as an afterthought. I may have been…[ahem]…”spanked” for a few of my ‘creative writing‘ ventures, but let’s not go there. 😏😜

Publication: I had a few poems and a short story published in a College Creative Writing Magazine.

Conference: My only writers’ conferences have been with Story Embers:
2021 Engaging Plots & 2022 Resonant Themes

Query/pitch:

Long ago, an ancient dragon slithered out of our Surface World into another world (Mid-World) carrying a stolen, crown cast of the purest gold. It had been forged in the ancient world in the land of circles known then as Havilah.  (The word Havilah [חֲוִילָה] means “circle” in Hebrew? See Genesis 2:11-12)

The Dominion Crown was a supernatural signet of world dominion, stolen from its rightful owner by craft, deceit, and treachery.  The crown bore three magnificent gemstones–each one representing an eternal virtue confirmed and imbued with properties by the World Creator. 

In the creature’s flight, the three virtue stones fell from the crown the beast had greedily clutched in its massive claws and were lost somewhere along the beast’s twisting and erratic flight path.

The dark creature was pursued over mountains and through valleys, but it eventually succumbed to the mysterious soporific influence of a massive mountain range called “The Wall of Stone,” where it fell into a millennia-long sleep in the stony heights.

While the beast slept, it dreamt dreams of its own grandeur and fiery violence, continuously breathing out a dense fog that masked the peaks of the mountain chain so that nothing could be seen beyond it.  The fogs descended into the lowlands and eventually were carried out to sea, where they coalesced and formed dangerous, living mists that stole away or repressed the memories of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped within them.

The land is now under the oppression of warring kingdoms and shadowy creatures known as ‘The Half-Men’ under the tenuous rule of a creature that was once human.

There is an ancient prophecy on a mysterious columnar stone, called The Marker Stone, indicating that the land will not be set to cease from its strife and warmongering until the stolen Dominion crown is restored to its rightful owner. But the restoration of the incomplete crown is not enough. Its rightful owner will not reclaim the crown until the three lost jewels are found in a series of three successive stone quests, involving people not of this present Surface World, but from the land in which the crown was originally stolen. For it was a man and a woman from our world that despised the crown and permitted it to be stolen.

The stones must be recovered, secured, and restored back into the stolen crown before the Conqueror King will return to claim it as a successor and a precursor to the man who betrayed his birthright.

The stone quests have commenced. A mysterious, ancient man, who participated in the first successful stone quest, still roams the Mid-World, quietly attending to the needs of a people enslaved by their current captors. There had been a second stone quest, that followed years after the first, but it has failed due to internal divisions and betrayals. The land grows increasingly under threat, and the enemies of The Marker Stone and its attenuated legends, grow bolder, and more vicious. Determined to drive the fading memory of The Marker Stone and its quests, they have almost succeeded in driving hope out of those they oppress, for it has been twenty-one years since the last quest failed, and the remaining Surface Worlders still lingering in the Mid-World after the failure of the second quest have disbanded and gone separately into hiding. They are hunted by both man and sentient beasts. Their virtue stone is lost to them and betrayed into the hands of a dark enemy, whose hatred for humans of any sort knows no bounds.

But that is not the end. It is only the beginning of this tale. For now, the one from the Surface World who was a party to the former betrayal has returned to this land, to make amends and pick up the quest where it last fell off. He must make alliances with those he once betrayed and make amends for his actions if he ever hopes to renew the quest and join in carrying out the requirements for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Factions within the land of The Mid-World once willing to put their hopes in the promise of the prophecy, no longer believe in it. In fact, they have suffered much for their former beliefs, and are no longer interested in seeing these “other world” interlopers return. They still fear the oppressive rulers of these lands who have been gaining power over them since the failure of the prior quest, and they fear what might happen if the virtue stones are found, or ever placed back within the legendary crown itself–A crown still held by a dangerous sleeping dragon, who might very well reawaken and seek vengeance on the land once all the stones are restored to each of its magnificent golden tension rings.

This is the betrayer’s story–a tale of a quest renewed and a faith reclaimed. A story that may have more relevance to our own personal and real-life faith journeys than we ever imagined was possible.

FAVOURITES

Novel that you wrote: I hope to improve with each successive novel but at this point, my first novel sets the stage for the tetralogy, so I think my second novel “A Swirl of Embers” will be my favorite so far.  Many twists and turns ahead.  I have drafted it so once I get the first novel edited and sent off to press, the second will be coming soon after.

Genre: Suspense and thriller novels are my favorites, but if they are also fantasy and science fiction, so much better. If the story premise is intriguing and intellectually stimulating though, I do try to give other genres a try.

Author(s): Dean R. Koontz (Thriller writer with evocative prose), Louis L’Amour (Western writer), Steven James (Thriller writer), J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis (Pioneers & Legends of the Fantasy genre), Steve Berry (Historical Mysteries), Frank E. Peretti (Supernatural thrillers), Ted Dekker (Thrillers), James L. Rubart (Thrillers/Suspense), L. Frank Baum (Oz series), Jeremy Robinson (Sci-Fi Thrillers), Terry Brooks (Fantasy), George Macdonald (Fantasy), Lindsey Backen (Historical Mysteries, Fantasy & YA Novels), [Classic Novels by Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Bronte, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Walter Farley, Jules Verne, Jack London, L.M. Montgomery, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, H.G.Wells, etc.], Jonathan Cahn (Prophecy Books), Michael Crichton (Science Fiction/Thrillers)

Music to write by: I usually listen to long-form instrumentals, orchestral hymns with drone landscape footage, or classical music when writing. If there are vocals, I get distracted and am tempted to sing along and may lose my train of thought. Depending on where I am at in writing the story, I may choose certain movie soundtracks or some epic music to match the tone and mood of the particular scene I am writing.  Sometimes I just write to nature sounds of wind blowing, a rain storm, forest sounds, or ocean waves.

Time to write: I try to fit it in around work and life so I don’t really have a set schedule.  Mostly I write in the evenings, but I do enjoy writing in the mornings before everyone gets up and the dog wants to be taken outside.

Writing snack/drink: Healthy Coffee with MCT Oil and herbals [mornings], Mint Dark Chocolate, and Herbal teas [evenings]. Alkaline pH-balanced Spring Water.

Movie(s): Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Conagher (with Sam Elliot); John Wayne movies: Rio Bravo, Big Jake, The Searchers, etc.; National Treasure 1 & 2, Lord of the Rings (full trilogy); The Chosen (series); Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1; Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth version); Anne of Green Gables movies (Megan Follows version); Batman: The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan Directed); Narnia Movies: LTWW, PC, VoTDT

Writing Memory: I record my written scenes dramatically with sound effects and background music, so my stories are like an Audio Theater, which I can listen to with headphones when I am not writing.  This way I stay connected to the story and can slip into the next scene by listening to key passages of the prior scenes.  I always get to experience my book and not just write it.  Listening also helps me catch phrases that may seem okay on paper, but do not flow easily when reading the passage aloud.  It also helps me notice mistakes that my mind might’ve overlooked while attempting to write down my intentions, get a sense of the cadence and rhythm of the word flow, and gain more thoughtful time away from the myopic close-focus of writing the text so that I gain a sense of some unpredictable ways the story might turn and surprise a reader. Seeing and hearing are different forms of perception, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. By perceiving this story using both methods, I feel that the story benefits from the advantages of both ways of engaging with it, during its formulation.

Childhood books: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis; The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner; Disney Movie books (back before this present “wokeness” spoiled them), Children’s Book of Fairy Tales Collections, Aesop’s Fables, The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley, The Mouse and The Motorcycle (Runaway Ralph) & Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary, The Fudge series by Judy Blume, Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm.

CURRENTLY

Reading: The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible–Michael Heiser, Ph.D.; The Return of the gods (prophecy book)–Jonathan Cahn; The Big Dark Sky–Dean R. Koontz; Sackett’s Land–Louis L’Amour; Mistborn: The Final Empire–Brandon Sanderson; Jesus Listens–Sara Young.

Writing: Working on the final drafts of Excavatia: From Dust Arise. (Editing Chapter 14)

Listening to: Tim Janis – Instrumental Music – Pumpkin Patch (Soft piano).

Watching: Quigley Down Under (Tom Selleck); Raiders of the Lost Ark (Harrison Ford)

Learning: Microsoft Power BI at work; Constant Biblical research and study; Learning more Greek and Hebrew/Chaldea words and the nuances & fullness of their meanings; Learning to stay open to what the Lord tells me and shows me and to yield to His way over mine.

FUTURE

Want to be published: Absolutely.  I have already paid for it, we are just finalizing the manuscripts.

Indie or traditional: Starting off with self-publishing but am open to traditional publishing as well.  I want to retain creative control of the projects starting out and re-invest the returns for more books to come.

Wildest Goal: To go hang-gliding, rappelling, para-sailing, rock climbing, sky-diving/parachuting, white water rafting, rent a mountain cabin high up in the woods with a tall deck and an awesome view and take in the wonder of God’s amazing creation.

TAGS

Lillian

Rose

Tasha

Amy

K. A. Ramstad

Neasa

Noah

Bronte Clarke

Cathy

Joy C. Woodbury

Trip

Merie

Karissa

Joelle

Linyang

A Nature Picture or Pictures from your most recent foray into a scenic location

(Adding this Question/Part to make these tags just a teeny bit more visual)