November 14, 2023 will be the 10 year anniversary of the November 14, 2013 murder of my 8 month old infant son, at BugLight Lighthouse Art Studio of Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine. If you have any information about who his killer is, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322

NEVER FORGET:

My Son Was Murdered, The Killer Walks Free, Your Child Could Be Next!


FAQ: What are the most visited pages on this website and how many visits do they get?

Several years ago, I wrote an article on how to write different types of magic uses, or rather how I personally write various types of magic users within the context of my Quaraun books. Today that page is one of my top ten most visited articles. It gets 50 to 500 views/reads/hits/visits per day depending on the time of the years and has had over 200k visits total since it was published.

Amphibious Aliens: Debunking The Atwater Family's Alien Abduction Hoax with more then 30MILLION reads since 2007 and The GoldenEagle: Debunking Stephen King's World's Most Haunted Car Hoax with over tenMILLION reads since 2007 still rank as the two most visited articles on my website, but, neither of those are writing related.

Writing Medieval Servants is my most visited writing related article with over 7MILLION reads.

This website was started in 1996 and has 1 to 3 new articles (all written by me, I am the only writer on this site) published almost daily. In 2017 we crossed ten thousand articles published. As of 2023, EACH article gets MINIMUM 10 to 70 reads PER DAY, with the high traffic articles getting 500+ reads per day.

And since December 2019, my website now gets three hundred thousand to 7 million reads per month - well over ONE HUNDRED MILLION PAGE READS PER YEAR, making it not only the single most trafficked site in the State of Maine, but also one of the most visited websites in ALL OF NEW ENGLAND!

{{{HUGS}}} Thank you to all my readers for making this possible!



 TRIGGERED! I'm a Straight Cis Woman, but I am deemed Too Gay For Old Orchard Beach, Are you too gay for the bigoted, minority harassing, white power, gay hating psychos of The Old Orchard Beach Town Hall Too? 







EelKat's Guide to Character Creation:
Using a Character with a Mental Illness

/ /



By EelKat Wendy C Allen

Author of Cozy & Gothic Fantasy, Sweet/Fluffy M/M Furry Romance, Cosmic Horror, Space Opera, & Literary SoL genres. I write Elves, Fae, Unicorns, & Demons.



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"Will you be writing a mental-illness-themed novel for NaNoWriMo again this year? I know you usually  have a MC or another important character who suffers from a mental illness. How do you pick what mental illness to write about?

How do you choose what to write, is it either an aspect of the plot or an aspect of the character's inner conflict?

What inspired you to use a mentally ill person as your main character? What challenges do you expect you'll face? How do you make sure you get your character accurate or true to life when dealing with mental illnesses?

I am working on a novel that has a protagonist who suffers from a severe disorder (and a few comorbid secondary disorders), and a large part of the novel revolves around his struggles and attempts to recover. That project is my "baby" and I'm always interested in hearing from others who are undertaking similar stories!"

I write a long running series (30+ books since 1978) in which the main character has "an unidentified/undiagnosed" mental illness. This series is the only thing I write. I write it every NaNo since 2004 and I will write it this NaNo. At no point in the series does it ever say what is wrong with him, however, when readers ask me (and they often do)

"What's wrong with Roderic, anyways? Does he like have a real mental illness? Are there really people like him out there? You know with all the weird quirks and speech issues and stuff you always having him do?"

My answer to them is this:

Yes, Sir Roderic Lincandonia Swanzen, Lord of The Twighlight Manor, does in fact have a very real mental health issue, which real people suffer from. He has multiple issues actually:

He was born with Autism, that is why he is quiet and why he has trouble speaking and why he refuses to make eye contact and why he'll freak out over loud sounds, bright lights, or being touched. He grew up in a very traumatic, high stress, and abusive home life, which caused him to shut down and move inward into his own little world that existed only inside his head. When stressed out he "shuts down", sits on the floor, and starts drawing (on the floor, walls, his car, his clothes, his skin, whatever is there to draw on.)

Roderic, at the beginning of Friends Are Forever (Vol1 in The Twighlight Manor series), was more or less a normal person, shy, quiet, virginal youth, who wouldn’t hurt a fly and probably would have remained in this state his entire life had it not been for his father and two uncles, who should have been in prison, but they ran the empire so they weren't.

Roderic was born in the late 1500s, a majority of the series takes place between 1644 and 1673. Obviously he is never diagnosed in the series as Autistic or Special Needs or an other such modern term. The correct "Dark Age/Medieval/Renaissance" term for an Autistic person was "A Simpleton" or "the Village Idiot". Autistic children were thought of as "changelings", parents believed these children to be the offspring of Faeries and that the real baby had been stolen from the crib and this imposter left in it's place. As such Autistic child of this time period were often put in a flour sack that was tied shut and dropped in the river/lake/ocean to drown them and be rid of the "demonic beast". Catholic nuns, believing Autistic children to real humans, but demon possessed, opened institutions for simpletons and idiots as a way to take them off the parents hands and give them a chance at life. (These places were the forerunners of mental health asylums, which were the forerunners of hospitals). In many regions, government officials passed laws requiring all "idiots" to be rounded up and sent to these nun run places. The result was from the 1400s through the 1700s it was very rare to encounter an Autistic, Downs Syndrome, Schizophrenic, or any other Special Needs child or adult living at home, and most families were glad to be rid of them and pretend they were never born.

This is the time period Roderic was born into. The only reason he was not sent away to live in an institution for "simpletons and idiots", as would have been historically accurate for the time period, was because his mother died when he was born and his father could not bear to be parted from the only child of his beloved wife. Fortunately for Roderic, his father was the younger brother of the King, who in order to give Roderic something to do and keep him out from under foot, built a 500 room fortress like manor house (The Twighlight Manor) and gave it to "the idiot child". The manor was basically built as a child's play house, built on the theory that Roderic was a curious child always wandering off and getting lost, so let's give him a 500 room mansion with steel doors and iron bars on the windows, than he can explore to his heart's content and never get lost.

Unfortunately it must be remembered that Roderic's father is also the cannibalistic serial killer, Melaca, and while he does love his son, Melaca has little use for outward affection. Or that Vielder built a vast torture chamber in the lower levels of the Manor, which he and Melaca used to slaughter their human victims. Or worse that their other brother Dr Vangoneese, who was also Roderic's caretaker, took Roderic with him on his house calls where he often raped female patients and used those too sick to protest as guinea pigs for his medical experiments.

In short, young, shy, quiet Roderic grew up watching many bloodily horrific acts being carried out by his father and two uncles, and this did not go with out side effects.

In his teens Roderic began retreating more and more into the far reaches of the Manor as a way to avoid his father and uncles. Roderic's only companion was a cousin who was fast becoming obsessed with dissecting everything (and over time, everyone, living or dead). Terrified of everyone, Roderic began talking to the only things around him to talk to: the vast stone walls of the house, and it's carved wooden furniture. Over time Roderic began to claim they talked back to him.

By the time he was a young adult Roderic had developed Schizophrenia and lost the ability to know what was real and what was fantasy. He hears things that other people don’t hear. Sees things that other people don’t see. Because no one else sees or hears them, Roderic believes he is haunted by ghosts.

This belief that the things he sees and hears are real, is "proved" to him when one day he finds a wounded mermaid hiding in his bedroom. This event he passes off as any other that no one else can see, until he realizes unlike other things, everyone else does see her.

 His father or uncle (they are twins and no one is quite sure which one did it) kidnaped and raped the mermaid, she escapes and thus how she inadvertently ends up hiding out in Roderic’s bedroom. At first he’s this nice sweet guy who takes care of her, originally he fully intends to take her back to the ocean and release once her wounds are healed. But as time goes by he becomes obsessed with her and keeps her longer than he should.

In eventually taking her back he is careless and, the father or uncle follows them bashed Roderic’s head in, rapes the girl again. The mermaid escapes the father or uncle again, and now tables turned she takes care of Roderic, but Roderic recovers a changed man violently wielding a shovel of death. Roderic who is crippled for months simply stops talking and starts brooding over the mermaid.

Remember where I just said Roderic hit his head (or rather was beaten up and hit in the head with a large rock, repeatedly, several times, and almost died), he suffered brain damage from this event and that's when the "more terrifying" hallucinations started haunting him, resulting in his retreating more and more often to his room, leaving the house less and less.

Roderic becomes stranger and stranger, doing and saying progressively more bizarre things after hitting his head. It is after this that we see several changes in Roderic including that he suddenly begins to believe himself a vampire and takes up the habit of drinking human blood, and than smashes every mirror and glass window pane in the Manor, except for the stained glass peacock window. In a strange twist of fate, one of his most trusted and beloved companions was a shovel - a shovel Roderic claimed had a demon living in it, a demon with a taste for human blood.

Through out much of the series Roderic is seen carrying this blood thirsty shovel no matter where he goes. Roderic is often found aimlessly wandering the halls of the Manor dragging the shovel, leaving a trail of blood behind him.  When questions of the bloody shovel, he will tell a nightmarish story of it's lust for brains and his needs to keep the shovel with him to prevent it from killing again. In spite of the bloody shovel no evidence exists of Roderic having any connection to the many murders which also begin to take place through the Manor.

Obsessive, possessive, jealous, vengeful, and now dangerously violent Roderic becomes the most feared man in the known universe, takes over the planet, takes over all 3 of the solar system in the Triple Empire and keeps the mermaid locked away in his vast fortress-like mansion (The Twighlight Manor).

They are happy more or less for a few years, she bears him 4 sons, than all hell breaks loose on the night of the 4th son’s birth, when the mermaid is raped by 3 different men, Roderic flips out, there’s a bloodbath in just about every room of the 500 room Manor, the mermaid ends up dead and no one knows who the heck killed who.

In the early stories, Roderic is tempered and kept sane by his bewitchingly beautiful mermaid wife.

When his wife was murdered (an event he witnessed, yet is unable to identify the murder, leading to the suspicion that he himself killed her) Roderic developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which triggered the anxiety attacks of his Autism and the paranoia/hallucinations of his Schizophrenia to grow worse.

When Roderic is unable to remember who killed his wife, and everyone starts pointing the finger at him, his paranoia spirals out of control with him believing everyone worked together to kill his wife and the house helped them.

Roderic has his wife stuffed, put on display and pretends she still alive, suddenly every room in the house becomes a taxidermist's worst nightmare as every servant is preserved forever at their stations, every human to enter the house from that day onward is skinned and stuffed their flesh served for dinner, and Roderic sits on a gold plated throne, in an oblivious stupor, clutching a bloody shovel for a septor, whenever anyone tells him “Sir, there's another body...”

His only response being “Yes, I know, she eats everyone who comes here. She’ll kill us all.”

Roderic believes the spirit of his dead wife to have possessed the house, and that the house has come to life to eat everyone and punish him for not letting her go back to the ocean.

From September 23, 1664 the day of his wife's death, until the current era (2013) and beyond (till it's 2525 END date at the death of Roderic), Roderic sits, terrified to move, terrified the house possessed by his dead wife will slaughter him the way it slaughters everyone else, if dares take his eyes off the preserved body of the dead mermaid.

That is the first volume in the series. Each of the 200 stories after it follows in the same vein: someone living in the Manor kidnaps and rapes girl, other men at the Manor join in gang rape. Roderic stands by oblivious to what is going on, speaking utter nonsense about his dead wife and his sentient house. Girl dies. No one cares. Girl gets raped again. Lots of people show up dead. Roderic accuses house of murder. More rape. More death. at one point Roderic adds a second wife, later a third. Remix and repeat.

Roderic’s favorite son (the baby born on it’s mother’s death) grows up a transvestite, opens a nightclub that is a front for a whore house. In comes a series of side stories that are sex, sex, sex, sex, and nothing else, no horror, no plot, not even Roderic or The Manor, just every day in the life of a male prostitute, who turned to prostitution as a way to block out the fact that his father was a psychic human eating murderer.

Jump ahead to the 20th century, Roderic is now pushing 500 years old, same old same old is going down inside The Twighlight Manor, in steps a team of human psychiatrists and White Rock Mental Health Institute for the Criminally Insane and a series of side stories, each one a different rapist/murder retelling and glorifying their conquests in graphic detail in interviews with the doctors - two of these patients are Roderic’s sons, another is his father. Through the stories told by them, we see the original Friends Are Forever story retold, from a vastly different perspective.

As his fears escalate Roderic collapses into an Agoraphobic state locking himself in his bedroom and not leaving (at times so scared that he even feared to let his feet touch the floor and refused to get off the bed) for several years.

In later years as an elderly man (1983 - 2525END), he required a servant to feed him, but then was terrorized that his servants were trying to poison him and refused to eat nearly starving himself to death at one point.

The series follows Roderic's life, as told through more than 200 short stories. Because we see the world of the series, through Roderic's eyes, the reader doesn't know if the house really is alive and eating people or if this horrendous nightmare Roderic lives through every day is all in his head. Does the furniture come alive and attack people? Are the people who live in the mansion with him really vampires, mermaids, phookas, and aliens? The reader has no way of knowing if the events of the story are hallucinations in a very real world or if this is a sci-fi series that takes place in an alternate earth where houses and furniture do come alive and eat people and vampires and mermaid walk among us. The stories never dispute the events and treat the flesh eating house as though it is a flesh eating house.

In short, Roderic, the main character of the Twighlight Manor series, has Autism, Schizophrenia, PTSD, and Agoraphobia

I have had many readers contact me asking:

"So is this really happening or is Roderic just crazy and none of it's real?"

I tell the readers:

"I leave that to the readers to decide. The readers do not know if it's real or not because Roderic does not himself know what is real and what is not real, and the not knowing is the thing that terrifies him most of all. If you think Roderic is insane and none of this is really happening to him, than you are correct. If you think this is some alternate world and these things are actually happening to him, than you are correct.

But from the perspective of the author: yes this is an alternate world, yes the races are what they say they are, no the house is not alive it never was. Yes Roderic's wife really was a mermaid, he did not imagine that, no his house and furniture are not hell bent on trying to kill him, that is a hallucination.

And the shovel? Well, let's just say that Roderic has never killed anyone, he wouldn't, he couldn't, he doesn't have it in him...The shovel really does have a curse on it."

And then there are readers who ask me:

"So, how do you research for Roderic? You must be a psychology major or something right? I know somebody with these mental illnesses and you are right on with a lot of the stuff Roderic does. People with Autism really do ____. People with Schizophrenia really do ______.  I'm amazed you get this stuff so accurate. So are you like a psychologist or something? What do you write about your patients? ha ha!"

 No.

I'm not a psychologist. In fact I never went to school.

My inspiration and research for Roderic? I was removed from school at age 8, I was told I would never be able to live on my own, get a job, drive a car, attend college, or function as a meaningful member of society.

"What inspired you to use a mentally ill person as your main character?"

I write what I know.

I have both Autism and Schizophrenia; later hit my head and developed new issues from that; and then later was the witness to an event that left my 5 best friends in a pile of body parts, which resulted in my having PTSD. And I had Agoraphobia for nearly 10 years.

Speech is very difficult for me. My verbal words are desperately slurred and stuttered and go from either way too fast or way too slow. Most times I know what I want to say, but the words that come out of my mouth are mixed up and in the wrong order so sound like nonsense. Folks often consider me "dumb" due to my being near-mute and desperate lack of getting words out in the correct order. I write 7k words a day just as part of my daily non-verbal speech. That is how I am able to pound out 15k a day during NaNoWriMo every year.

It is very frustrating when I want to talk to someone and they pat me on the head and say something like: "It's okay, here have a candy. Poor thing she can't understand us at all."

Roderic speaks in the same quasi-non-verbal muddled up speech I do. Roderic's dialouge is a blundered mes because my verbally spoken dialouge is an embarrassingly blundered mess.

Roderic is very shy and self conscious and terrified of how others will respond to his lack of ability to speak verbally in any real coherent manner, because I am very shy and self conscious and terrified of how others will respond to my lack of ability to speak verbally in any real coherent manner.

Roderic AND his flamboyant drag queen son, Etiole, wear long flowing, bright colored, gaudy, heavily beaded and embroidered silk robes, because wear long flowing, bright colored, gaudy, heavily beaded and embroidered silk robes.

Etiole drive a great big orange 1964 Dodge 330, because I drive a great big orange 1964 Dodge 330. Etiole was born September 23, 1664, because I bought my 1964 Dodge on September 23, 1975.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

I write what I know.

"How do you pick what mental illness to write about?"

I write what I know. And I know Autism, Schizophrenia, PTSD, and Agoraphobia very well.

The world as the reader sees it through Roderic's eyes...that is the world as seen through my eyes. Roderic is an accurate portrayal of someone with Autism, Schizophrenia, PTSD, and Agoraphobia, because he is written by someone with Autism, Schizophrenia, PTSD, and Agoraphobia. I know how Roderic would react to things, because it is how I react to things.

The Dazzling Razzberry? Roderic's son's car in the book, the one covered in quotes and beads and rhinestones? guess what, it's a real car and I own it. It's my daily driver, and here's a picture of what a car with 2.5million beads, buttons, marbles, and rhinestones glued to it looks like.

The nightmare world that Roderic lives in every story, is the nightmare world I live in, every day. I don't do any research into anything to write Roderic, I just write the world the way I see it.


I Love Roderic!
A List of Every Page on this Site
Where I Talk More About Roderic

It is no secret that Sir Roderic Lincandonia Swanzen, owner of The Twighlight Manor, is my favorite character, and you don't have to read very many blog posts, articles, site pages, etc to realize, I talk about him A LOT. While you see him mentioned in passing on just about every page on this site, there are some pages where I go into vast detail about his life. I am going to make a list of them all and tack it to the end of each of those pages, to make it easier for readers to find them all. And here they are:

Roderic Swanzen

Developing Character Backgrounds

Using a Character with a Mental Illness

But Is It Erotica?

Toilets in Fiction

Twighlight NOT Twilight!

Mental Illness in Fiction

Incest In Fiction

Mute Characters

Characters With Disabilities

NaNoWriMo: How Do You Pick Which Story to Write?

Enhance Your Creativity To Become a Better Writer

Fantasy World Building






The Space Dock 13 WebRing










What do you want to become? 
What did you do today to step closer to that goal?
Whatever you do, be your best at it!
And remember to have yourself a great and wonderfully glorious day!

~EK
EelKat.com
pinterest.com/eelkat/






By EelKat Wendy C Allen




Eye of the GrigoriIf you ever made fun of or had any part in the destruction of my farm, and the illegal selling of half of my land to Colliard, you shall lose your land.
tent2.JPGIf you ever made fun of or had any part in my being homeless since 2006 - YES, I AM still homeless in 2023, you shall become homeless.
eelkats_house_before_after.jpgIf you ever made fun of or had any part in the backhoe driving over my house, you shall lose your house.
home again the return of the goldeneagle dodge 330If you ever made fun of or had any part in my car being cut in half, you shall lose your car.
volvo-art-car-eelkat-Dazzling-Razzbury-3-artist-wendy-c-allen-painting3.pngIf you ever made fun of or had any part in my becoming crippled, you shall lose your health.
If you ever made fun of or had any part in the murder of my son, your child shall die an equally horrible death.

Evil men go out of their way to try to drive a person to suicide.

Are you an evil man?

Are you sure you're not?

How many people have YOUR hate filled words killed?

Next time you go to do a mean thing to a fellow human, stop and really think about the consequences of your actions.

Did you ever notice how every one has a story to tell about me, yet not one of them ever speaks the truth?

What lies has YOUR gossiping tongue spread about me?

Did you know...

October 16, 2006, bomb blew up my house because of YOUR lies.

August 8, 2013, the house which replaced the one the bomb blew up, was driven over by a backhoe.

November 14, 2013, my 8 month old infant son was murdered because of your lies.

November 14, 2013, I was beaten up, paralized for 5 months, spent 18 weeks relearning to walk, I'm now crippled for the rest of my life, because of YOUR lies.

Are you proud of what you have done?

Enjoy your eternity in Hell. You earned it. You've certainly worked hard for it.

~EelKat


If you have any information about any of these events, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322






Your Character Creation
Questions Answered:

  1. When naming your characters, do you give any thought to the actual meaning?
  2. I need help Writing Mixed Race Asian Characters
  3. What would happen if an Elf adopted a Human baby?
  4. I need to write a rape scene, but I don't think I've made the character evil enough. How do you write a sleazy man?
  5. Is the main character a reflection of you, if yes, how?
  6. How to deal with writing racist characters?
  7. How can a non-Human villain who hates Humans learn to love a Human character?
  8. I'm creating my own character and does it matter what I call her, even if it sounds slightly odd?
  9. How do you write a demisexual?
  10. My main character is going to murder his children. How do I handle writing him?
  11. What inspired you to use a mentally ill person as your main character? 
  12. Creating mute characters.
  13. Is a 20 year age difference between my main couple weird?
  14. How to write a bi-sexual character?
  15. Any help with writing a cannibal chef?
  16. What is the difference between transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and intersex?
  17. My character is too much like myself, how do I change her?
  18. How do you pick what mental illness to write about? 
  19. What jobs did Medieval servants have?
  20. What can you tell me about writing a polygamous character?
  21. Should I write incest in my stories?
  22. How do you make sure you get your character accurate or true to life when dealing with mental illnesses?
  23. Any advice for writing a romantic relationship between an adult and a child?
  24. How to Develop Your Characters When Writing a Fiction Novel
  25. Why Character Development is Different for Short Stories
  26. Are In-Laws Family? (Writing Gypsy Culture Accurately)
  27. I'm writing an Autistic character. Can you tell me what it is like to live with Autism?
  28. I heard you write transvestites but it's not Erotica? How can you write a gay transvestite character and the book not be Erotica? It's not possible for transvestites to be in anything but Erotica.
  29. My characters keep being cookie cutter Mary Sues and Stevie Steus. How do you creature such highly detailed complex characters?

Even More Pages Which Talk About Character Creation:



Since people often ask which books I recommend to writers, here is a section of books I use when writing my novels.

Books I use when writing novels:

Note, some of these are writing books, but most of them are NOT. These are the references books that I use when writing almost every novel I write. These books are always on my desk and I reference them constantly, daily, over and over again.

And when you see what books I use to write The Quaraun novels with, than you can understand why they are like they are.

As you can see I rarely consult writing books when I want to figure out how to write something. Which is why I'm continually baffled by so many newbie writers who rush to ask other writers how to write.

You think of a thing, then write what you see in your head. It really is that simple. You just write down everything you see.

You do not need writing how to books or advice from authors to figure out how to write the story you want to tell.

Note too that I bought these books new and for cover price and many of them are self published short run books with only 100 to 1,000 copies printed (if you didn't know DnD books were self published and often had only 100 to 1,000 copies published than, you don't your DnD very well) and as such have been out of print for 20+ years and often sell for $500 to $3k+ now today, so, I don't expect you to be able to amass this same collection of 10,000+ DnD books I have, but, you wanted to know which books I use when I write my novels and here they are:

Wondering how authors find publishers?

Writer's Market -  it's a giant 1,000+ page book, costs around $40, is like a yellow pages style phone book directory of every publishing house, magazine, anthology, newspaper, and literary agent currently seeking submissions. There are around 20,000 publishers listed in it.

They come out with a new edition every year, so get the 2018 edition which comes out in a few weeks.

It's not easy to get listed in the Writer's Market. They do a major amount of rigorous filtering, to make sure no scams get in.

The Writer's Market has been the #1 way authors find publishers since the 1940s.

Here's their website: http://www.writersmarket.com/

They have an online directory that is the same as the print book, but it costs around $70 a year to access it.


More Pages Helpful To New Writers:

FAQs: What books do you use to look up English Grammar rules?

You probably won't like this, but I am constantly practicing English Grammar, by daily doing High School Grammar lessons. I diagram 100 sentence a day and have done so since 1996. 

Yes. While you all want the instant quick answer to writing rules, so you skip school and take the easy way out, I go through an entire High School manual in a couple of weeks, and when I get to the end I start over again.

I didn't have the luxury of going to school like you did, so I had no choice but to teach myself. I did the entire ABeka Grammar series starting from Grade 4 to Grade 12, then repeated it starting at Grade 7 to 12, and repeat it from Grade 7 to Grade 12, continually ever since. It takes me about 8 months to complete all 5 years' worth of textbooks. And when I reach the end, I start over again, and when I reach the end again, I start over again.

When I say I constantly practice English Grammar, I mean what I say and I actually practice English Grammar and I find it quiet annoying when school-skipping idiots respond to that by saying: "But I write every day and I never improve."

Did I tell you to write every day? No. I most certainly did not. I told you to practice English Grammar. There's a hell of a big difference.

Practice makes perfect. If you want to perfect your writing skills, you must first perfect your Grammar skills. If you continually write without knowing your errors, you only practice the art of writing errors and perfect the art of writing errors perfectly incorrect.

You will never be a skilled writer if you are not first skilled at Grammar.

Before you can practice writing, you must first practice Grammar.

I've not listed all the books below as there are so many. Each grade consists of a set of books:

   *   The Student Textbook

   *   The Teacher's Manual

   *   A Student WorkBook

   *    A Teacher's WorkBook Answer Key 

   *   A Student Tests and Quizzes Book

   *   A Spelling, Vocabulary, and Poetry Manual

   *   A Teacher's Answer Key For The Spelling Book

   *   A Reading/Literature Student TextBook

   *   The Reading/Literature Teacher's Manual

   *   A Student WorkBook For Reading/Literature

   *    A Teacher's WorkBook Answer Key  For Reading/Literature

   *   A Student Tests and Quizzes Book For Reading/Literature

Each book costs between $40 to $70, average that to $50 x 12 books per grade = around $600 per grade, times 5 grades (Grade 7 to Grade 12) = around $7,200 to buy the entire set of books and complete all 5 years from Grade 7 to Grade 12... so, you'll need to dish out quite a bit of money if you seek to gain the same writing skill I have using the same method I use to practice Grammar.

Do note that ABeka books are considered to be 4 grades ahead of the grade listed. For example, what ABeka book teaches in 4th Grade is what is taught in 8th Grade in Public Schools, while the12th Grade books is a college level. ABeka books are not used in standard public schools, they are used by private schools that specialize in teaching gifted/child prodigies that are too far ahead of their age group to be taught at a normal grade range.




Answering readers' FAQ:
Why is so much of the Quaraun series set in the 1970s & 1980s? Why not set it in current times?

>>>Why is so much of the Quaraun series set in the 1970s & 1980s? Why not set it in current times?

When Quaraun times travels to the future, the story IS SET IN CURRENT TIMES.

The date Quaraun arrives in is ALWAYS the same day that I wrote the scene.

Meaning, if Quaraun ends up in 1978, it's because I wrote that scene in 1978.

Meaning, if Quaraun ends up in 1982, it's because I wrote that scene in 1982.

Meaning, if Quaraun ends up in 1994, it's because I wrote that scene in 1994.

Meaning, if Quaraun ends up in 2013, it's because I wrote that scene in 2013.

MOST of the short stories in the Quaraun series were written between 1982 and 1987, and as Quaraun is ALWAYS in the current time of the date I'm writing, and because I wrote most of those scenes in 1982 to 1987, that means most of the scenes end up set between 1982 to 1987.














FAQs: When you say to read in order to learn what good writing looks like, but than you say don't read anything self published or written in the past 50 years, what than do you suggest I read to learn what good writing looks like?

I recommend 3 things.

   *   1: I recommend the Reading/Literature TextBooks of the ABeka Grammar series that I previously mentioned above. I also recommend reading EVERY PAGE IN ORDER of EVERY volume of the series starting with Grade 4 and ending with Grade 12. (Those books are listed below).

   *   2: WELL WRITTEN classic literature. (Listed in the second column below)

   *   3: American and World History TextBooks. (Listed in the third column below)

   *   4: Science TextBooks. (Listed in the 4th column below)

These are the books I personally read to see/examine how good quality writing looks on the published page and teach myself to improve my own writing by mimicking the writing style seen in the books listed below.

These books are how I taught myself to read and write. I was not allowed to go to school and spent 27 years of my life, since I was 8 years old, locked in a cage, tortured, beaten, and starved.

As an adult I used these books to teach myself as I had no other way to gain an education.

Again, not every book is listed, as there are too many to list them all, but enough are listed to get you started.


   *   1: I recommend the Reading/Literature TextBooks of the ABeka Grammar series




   *   2: WELL WRITTEN classic literature.

A note here... I make it a point to read no fewer than 100 books a year - 2 books a week. Some years I have as many as 300 books by reading a book almost every day. I own more than 300,000 books and have read more then 10,000 of them with a goal to attempt to read them all. As such, I can't even begin to list anything close to all of the books I read. Though I will point out 90% of them were written before 1950 and all of them are hardcover or paperback, not one of my 300k books is an ebook or an audio book. I don't read ebooks nor do I listen to audio books.




   *   3: American and World History TextBooks.

Yes, I DO classify reading History and Geography books as good, quality recommended daily light  reading that should be done in between regular novel and short story reading.

It is my belief that when one ONLY reads fiction, ones view of what is goof writing becomes warped. Thus I recommend reading historical documents, including to go to your local museums to read important documents about your town/state/region. This is especially important if you, like me, write local tales, stories set in your home town/state/region.

This is also why I have such a strong grasp on describing the places Quaraun travels to in the novels I write, without my ever having set foot outside of Maine.




    *   4: Science TextBooks.

Yes. Once again, like with History and Geography, I DO classify reading Science books as good, quality recommended daily light  reading that should be done in between regular novel and short story reading.

I firmly believe that if one does not have a working knowledge of the world around you, not just it's history and geography, but also it's plants, animals, rocks, functions, ad place in the universe, that one will not be able to successfully write descriptions of the world character in your novels live in, because without knowing how your own world exists, how can you even begin to know how to create a fictional world?

As such, I put reading science books as highly important for anyone seeking to write novels.

And again, as I was not allowed to go to school and was locked in a cage from the time I was 8 until I was 31, I did not start studying science until I was an adult, and as such, I started with Grade K5 and went all the way through to Grade 12, doing so in 3 years, so that I could apply for a GED which I got when I was 37. The Science books listed below are the ones I used to do that with, and again mostly by ABeka as I absolutely refuse to use books with frutie tuttie Evolution or Big Bang hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. 

Also, I quickly discovered that as young as 4th grade, vile degradations of sex perversion and utterly disgusting lessons about sex are in Science books published by perverse public school textbook publishers, so I burned them all in the wood stove I will NOT recommend any of the horrifically horrendous, disgustedly perverted sex fill Science books published by non-Christian companies.

It's no wonder the American population has children so perverse and degraded, when they stoop so low as to spend more than 75% of their science textbooks being devoted to the vile disgusting top of sex education. It's utterly deplorable. Sex has no business being in schools. With that kind of filth being taught to children it's no wonder American's gone to shit.




Writing Disabled Characters

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