About

Hi. My name is Adolfo Garza Jr, and this is my blog. My writing blog. That’s right, I’m an author. What subtle characteristic about someone makes them susceptible to the idea that they should become an author? I do not know, but I do know that I suffer from that somewhat masochistic attribute.

Why am I classifying that personality facet as masochistic? After several days and even months of nervous tics, bouts of self-doubt, and absolute fear that what I was creating was not even worthy of my old elementary school’s “What happened to you this summer?” writing assignments, I came to the conclusion that, at least for me, this pursuit, this undertaking, this adventure (where have I seen that term recently…) is potentially harmful to my emotions, my psyche, and the continued well-being of the nails of my fingers and thumbs. But in accordance with my proposed classification, it is extremely gratifying at the same time. There is nothing more joyful (I said more joyful. I will admit the existence of a few other things that are just as fun) than when a scene or a conversation between characters is flowing along like a well-greased piston in a prose machine. A swelling heart, a goofy grin, and maybe even a bout or two of girlish giggling have all been known to occur. And so I continue with the art, the crafting of words into clauses, sentences, paragraphs and beyond.

I am thus an admitted prose masochist. However. If my words, slaved over so lovingly, do not convey my actual intent, online assassins will smother that glow, that silly grin of a boy who finally gets to hold the hand of the one he has pined for, like a swallowtail in a jar of ether. People will let you know. I’ve seen scathing reviews online and would prefer not to suffer through those myself. And so I have spent some time scouring the web for hints on grammar and mechanics in order to polish the words. Even so, I am not a perfect writer. I can only try my best. And searching online can only take you so far. One can readily find the rules of grammar on the web, but the art of writing, not so much. Which is why I have started participating in a writing group. I’ll soon be joining a local writer’s guild as well. Constructive criticism is worth its weight—ah, but that’s a cliché.

Prior to joining the writing group but after months of attempting to obtain representation for my debut novel, Dragonlinked, I decided to publish it as an eBook for Kindle on Amazon.com. It went much smoother than I had anticipated. I had purchased Adobe’s Creative Suite for other purposes a few years back, and Photoshop made designing the book cover a snap. Also, it turns out that OpenOffice is an excellent shaper of words. Merely set up and use some paragraph styles, then save as Microsoft Word format and upload directly to Amazon in the KDP section. Simple. For the most part.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to talk about my experiences as I learn more about this writing craft and to provide additional information, little tidbits, about the world of Lethera, the setting for some of my short stories and the books that will be the Dragonlinked Chronicles. Things I’m thinking of including are the social and political structures of Lethera, information about its magic such as symbols and spell listings, the people of the stories and where they live, etc, etc. Maybe even a map of Lethera at some point. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into excruciating detail on any of the extras, but I think it will be nice to provide some behind the scenes information.