Is it me or do these stories sometimes feel disjointed?
Quaraun FAQs

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Would you call your books good?

>>>Would you call your books good?

Good?

Good is subjective.

Also, it depends on what standard you use to classify good as.

And than it would further depend on which series, which book within which series, and  what you are comparing each to.

The Quaraun books? 

No.

The Quaraun books, deliberately go against everything normally seen as "good". The grammar and spelling in the Quaraun books is atrocious, and it's written that way on purpose. I write in very good, near perfect grammar, in most of my 1st drafts, and that's good for most series, but, for the Quaraun series, I have to go in and ADD THE SPELLING MINSTAKES AND GRAMMAR ERRORS.

Yeah.

I ADD THEM.

A common question readers have with the Quaraun books is: "Is this supposed to be like this?" And yeah, every time you encounter a thing that seems "off" or "wonky", it is style choice. For example, in Night of the Screaming Unicorn, you see very early in that BoomFuzzy addresses Quaraun, by name, and about 20 or so pages later, Quaraun is hiding the fact that he's a wizard because he doesn't want BoomFuzzy to find out who he is, and yet, it's clear BoomFuzzy already does know who he is, because he's already called him "Quaraun". 

A couple of readers pointed that out and, saying that it felt like a writing error, a consistency error, felt like the author (me) had forgotten BoomFuzzy already knew who Quaraun was, so why is Quaraun trying to hide it? Well, if you pay attention to the story, you ARE told that Quaraun is very old, he's elderly, he's having a hard time getting around. 

Try to remember: Quaraun is elderly, nearing the end of his life, and BoomFuzzy is already dead. BoomFuzzy is a ghost. BoomFuzzy had two lovers: Quaraun and Gibedon. And Quaraun murdered Gibedon and a few days later BoomFuzzy commit suicide. And it's now 300 years later, and Quaraun is planning to kill himself, and BoomFuzzy's ghost shows up to try to stop him.

The story tells you that most Elves live around 300 to 400 years and Quaraun is nearing 700, maybe 800, he doesn't know how old he is, he can't remember. He can't remember what year it is. He can't remember when he was born. That's the point. Quaraun has some server old age memory lose issues, maybe dementia, possibly Alzheimer's, what it is exactly isn't important. What's important is that Quaraun is struggling to remember: ANYTHING.

And BoomFuzzy sees this, and he knows, Quaraun can't remember something he said, barely 5 minutes ago. Which is WHY you see BoomFuzzy, constantly repeating himself, constantly talking about the same events over and over again.

Quaraun is seen by most people in his world as insane, a raving lunatic, just plain crazy. No one takes him seriously because of how he talks, how he acts, how he dresses. And than there's BoomFuzzy who has been avoiding Quaraun for centuries. He's mad at Quaraun. Quaraun murdered BoomFuzzy's lover Gibedon and BoomFuzzy can't forgive Quaraun for that, so he refuses to talk to Quaraun for 300 years.

Night of the Screaming Unicorn is the first time they meet up again after 300 years away from each other. And BoomFuzzy, recognizes that something's wrong with Quaraun, something's seriously wrong. Quaraun is confused, stumbling around, gibbering madness. Quaraun doesn't recognize BoomFuzzy, and than Quaraun does recognize BoomFuzzy, but then 5 minutes later, BoomFuzzy is a stranger to him again and Quaraun doesn't know who BoomFuzzy is all over again.

BoomFuzzy was in love with Quaraun, when Quaraun was young and healthy, but that was years ago, and Quaraun's changed. Now Quaraun's old, and alone, and in very poor health, he can barely function - physically or mentally, he's in desperate need of someone to take care of him, but he has no one. No friends, no family, and society is so scared of him, that he can get help no where.

This is an elderly man in need of constant medical attention, and he's wandering around homeless, and no one cares. BoomFuzzy sees this, he sees this person that he used to love, wandering around homeless and alone, in desperate need of medical attention, half starved to death, and not mentally capable of remembering one minute to the next, let alone having the mental compacity to take care of himself.

It breaks BoomFuzzy's heart to see Quaraun like this, because it is so far vastly different from how Quaraun had been in his youth. BoomFuzzy had thought Quaraun had moved on, and he's now seeing that Quaraun didn't. Guilt over what he did (murdering BoomFuzzy's lover, Gibedon) absolutely shattered Quaraun's mind, he's spent his life isolated and alone, reliving the day of BoomFuzzy's suicide in his mind. 

Quaraun is nearing the end of his life, and his advanced old age had lead to serious memory issues, where he can remember things that happened in his childhood, but he can't remember what his did even an hour ago. If fact Quaraun acts like he just murdered Gibedon and BoomFuzzy just killed himself. Quaraun's mind is stuck in the day BoomFuzzy died. He can't moved passed it. He can't see that 300 years have gone by and he hasn't moved on. And THAT is why you see the story written the way it is.

And I remember when people first pointed that out and I explained this memory issue is what is going on (which, IS explained IN THE NOVEL, so I shouldn't have to explain it anyways) people pointed out: "OMG! Wait... is Quaraun an old man? I imagined him like being a teenager. I thought he was like a young adult. Ain't he like only 15 or 21 or..."

No.

Quaraun is an old man. So isn't BoomFuzzy. Uhm... yeah. Do you know what the following words mean?

   *   old - 123

   *   elderly - 6

   *   ancient - 27

Also here's some more words for you to look up the meanings of:

   *   forgetful - 2

   *   forgot - 18

   *   remember - 81

 As usual with these kinds of comments, I use Night of the Screaming Unicorn to judge by, as most of these comments come from people whom have read the ebook edition of that novel, AND because this is volume 1 of the series and is the novel MOST people have read if they've read the Quaraun books, and is the novel which introduces both Quaraun and BoomFuzzy.

   *   The Night of the Screaming Unicorn describes Quaraun as being "old" 123 times.

   *   The Night of the Screaming Unicorn describes Quaraun as being "elderly" 6 times.

   *   The Night of the Screaming Unicorn describes Quaraun as being "ancient" 27 times.

  *   The Night of the Screaming Unicorn describes Quaraun as being "forgetful" 2 times.

   *  The Night of the Screaming Unicorn says Quaraun "forgot" something 18 times.

   *  The Night of the Screaming Unicorn says Quaraun could not "remember" something 81 times.

Uhm... again... yeah. You ARE told what is going on. It's NOT hidden. I'm not one of those writers who likes to weave hidden meanings and messages. I tell you outright, Quaraun is old, elderly, ancient, nearing the end of his life, has outlived all other Elves, has lost his ability to remember things, is very forgetful, can't remember things that happened moments ago... you just ignored what I wrote, and imagined things as you wanted them to be instead reading them as they actually were.

With the lone except of the flashback novel 'BoomFuzzy', Quaraun is literally described -in every single novel- as: "the Elf was somewhere around 750 years old, the equivalate of a 90 year old Human"

Quaraun and BoomFuzzy are both elderly men who used to love each other when they were young but, a really horrible event broke them up and they haven't seen each other, in 300 years, BoomFuzzy has already died and is a ghost, while Quaraun is dying from old age, and he knows it. He's suffering. His health is falling apart. His memory is almost no-existent any more. He knows he won't live much longer and he just wants to see BoomFuzzy before he dies.

And yet, readers, are shocked when, they are talking to me on Twitch livestreams and hear me say Quaraun is elderly. They reply to say they thought he was a young kid, a 15 year old boy, a high schooler, a young adult around 21.

How?

How do you read the Quaraun novels and think Quaraun is young?

How is that even possible?

Others have pointed out BoomFuzzy speaks really bad, but all of a sudden, sometimes, he suddenly can speak fine. They ask, "Why did you edit some of his dialogue to be good and other lines to be practically illiterate." Again, pay attention to WHEN BoomFuzzy's ability to speak coherently changes. It changes when he's angry. No longer thinking clearly. Starts yelling. All of a sudden, yeah he can speak fine. He's no longer tripping over his words. Yeah, BoomFuzzy can speak fine when he WANTS too and when he forgets to to speak in broken grammar - like when he's angry. 

But why? Again - pay attention to the story. Quaraun doesn't recognize BoomFuzzy as BoomFuzzy if BoomFuzzy starts speaking clearly. When Quaraun was a teen, he meet BoomFuzzy, and BoomFuzzy didn't know Quaraun's language. They had a huge communication barrier. BoomFuzzy struggled badly to learn to speak with Quaraun. The language was hard to learn. And BoomFuzzy still struggled with it, at the time he and Quaraun broke up. But now it's 300 years later and BoomFuzzy knows Quaraun's language well and can speak it clearly, but Quaraun's dementia issues, cause him to only remember who BoomFuzzy is IS BoomFuzzy speaks broken grammar. 

So, BoomFuzzy deliberately goes out of his way to speak messed up broken sentences, because that's easier than trying to find a cure for Quaraun's failing memory.

So the bad grammar, the spelling errors, that's all deliberate, and adding into the story during editing, AFTER the novel was written.

The novels are written from Quaraun perspective, so even the narration is broken, and shifts back and forth in a muddled mess.

It's written that way, so that the reader IS just as confused as Quaraun is. Keeping the reader confused as to what is going on, IS the intention.

You got to remember that I write what I personally enjoy reading, and as a reader, I enjoy books that draw you into the mental and emotional psychology of the main character. I WANT to see the world the main character sees it. I WANT to experience what the main character is experiencing.

And if the main character is confused and struggling to gain their bearings in their world, I as a reader WANT to be confused and struggling in that world as well. I enjoy reading books that make me experience the emotion the character feels. And in the Quaraun series, Quaraun is mentally lost, confused, uncertain of what's going on around him. 

Does it make the series difficult to read? Yes. Yes it does. If you try to speed read through the Quaraun books, you ARE going to struggle with understanding what's going on. But that's the goal. Quaraun has Alzheimer's and he's struggling to get a grasp on anything. He's confused. He sees things and completely misses them. If the Quaraun books leave you confused, than they've done exactly what they were supposed to do.

I have other series' that I write, under different pennames (no, I'll not tell you what the series are or what my other pennames are - I keep them separate.) and those I take way more serious. I mean, I also write Disney and Harlequin, so, yeah, clearly I take some of my work VERY seriously and strive for extreme perfection.

But stuff like the Quaraun series, no. I know the style of how the Quaraun books are written is very niche and not typical of mainstream writing. It doesn't even fall neatly into any single genre. It's not going to appeal to many readers. I don't try to make it "good" in any sense of publishing industry standards of "good". I make it be what it needs to be. I suppose the Quaraun books would fall into what others might call "an art piece"? I don't know. I don't try to make it be "art" either. For my other works, my other pennames, you see me strive for what the industry calls "good", but for the Quaraun series, it's just me writing passionately about the thing I have a passion to write.

FAQs: How do you come up with your Character names? They all sound so strange.

Because it fits the genre and world I write, I use the same method like was used in in classic literature Utopia, Hinds Feet on High Places, Paradise Lost, and Pilgrim's Progress, where the character's have "descriptive" names that alert the reader to "who" they are.

For example in Hinds Feet on High Places (by Hannah Hurnard), the story is about a girl named Much Afraid traveling with her best friends Sorrow and Suffering to escape her father Fearing who is trying to force her to marry her cousin Craven Fear, to search the world for a guy named Joy that she thinks can help her find someone else named Humility. The author based the whole story around emotions, so all the characters had names that reflected their dominate emotion.

My own novels are similar to that when it comes to naming characters. The series is heavily influenced by 2edAD&D especially it's SpellJammer (aka Elves In Spaaaace!) and RavenLoft expansion packs. 

Well if you ever played DnD's old 2ed versions, you know that everyone was named after their attributes or skills.

For example a half-Elf who is half-Demon ends up named something like GhoulSpawn, a tower dwelling dark mage could end up being named something like HellBorne, and a guy who wears a bat suit is called BatDude while his sidekick is named Pigeon Poop Boy, if you need a taxi service to travel between planets you want a pirate Gnome named Captain Quirk and his flying pirate ship The Rent-a-Prize, the Mind flayer thief turned priest is named ZooLock because he's good at picking locks, while the two most evil villains of all are a g-string wearing strip dancing Elf named The Jiggler, and a candy making Unicorn Lich named BoomFuzzy, and they all worship a microscopic goddess named The Scared Pink JellyFish, who is the most powerful being in the universe but can only be seen under a microscope, she also crawled up the nostril of an Elf, burrowed into his brain and now controls his body, and he's the only character with a remotely normal sounding name: Quaraun, which came from the 2edAD&D Elves splat book red cover edition, he was previously called SunTa' or Tajid in early stories before being given an official name (Tajid was the name of a real person I knew in real life who was murdered August 21, 1991 and I changed the character's name in the novel to Quaraun a year later, because I had trouble writing a character who was the same name as a person whom I knew in real life, after the real person was murdered. It's WHY all the old editions published before 1991 were puled out of print.).

I also said all of that in one sentence.

1994 cover art for a special SpellJammer issue of Dungeon magazine. The painting was titled: "A SpellJammer Dentist At Work."

The 2edAD&D SpellJammer naming system, got to love it.

Now, if it was just one or two characters named this way and everyone else had "normal" sounding names, than it would just be making one or two characters seem "special". But the thing is, in Quaraun's universe EVERYONE is named this way. Main characters, secondary characters, minor characters, background characters, crowd characters, good, evil, bad, grey, beautiful, ugly, heroes, villains, merchants. Everyone. So it fits within the context on the world, because these types of names ARE the "normal" for this society.

I would not advice using this mish-mash of common words to create descriptive names, as a way of naming characters unless you do it for your entire cast. I've seen authors do it JUST for the main characters and than everyone else in the novels will have "normal" sounding real names (Peter, Paul, Mary, etc.) and it really makes the main characters stick out like a sore thumb and just feel very out of place, like they don't belong in the novel's setting.

When you name your characters, make sure the names match the setting they live in. For example, the Quaraun's world, it's not just the characters named this way: buildings, rivers, towns, business's, etc. are named this same way as well. Thus you see places like: Black Tower, The Screaming Unicorn Inn, White Rock Asylum For The Criminally Insane, The Mind Controlling Pissed Off Pumpkin Patch, The Forest of No Return, Fire Mountain, Pink Porpoise Pond, etc. Some of them are overly simple such as The Guild being as the name implies a guild and The Fuzzy Wuzzy Fluffy Bunnies being well angora rabbits.

I should probably point out I'm a SpellJammer Dungeon Master and have been for 40+ years, so, (it was released in 1973, 5 years BEFORE Dungeons and Dragons was, under the name Metamorphosis Alpha, and was brought into the DnD franchise in 1991 now renamed SpellJammer). I use the SpellJammer d20 dice roll chart naming system for all my novel characters same way I do in the game. All the names of my characters are literally whatever a dice roll on the SpellJammer character naming chart rolled out.

Obviously this method won't work for every genre, but for Psychedelic Bizarro High Fantasy about the Highest LSD addicted cannibal High Elves flying across the Universe massacring humans from their rainbow powered pirate ships, it works great.

The series contains a novel that also was the first novel to be awarded the World's Best Gay Romance of the Year award and broke down barriers preventing authors from publishing Gay Romance, and was the novel that caused Amazon to create a Gay Romance category, just for that one novel, and was Amazon's #1 top selling Gay Romance novel for years in a row, selling 10,000 copies within it's first hour of publication.

So people (other authors, not readers) who laugh at my characters' names (and there have been many) and say I should give them more serious real sounding names, and tell me to take my writing and my career more seriously (like they do), while telling me to be politically correct, stop using tropes, and saying I should hire a sensitivity editor (again like they do), should pay attention to the fact that readers are fed up with seriousness, historical accuracy, political correctness, sensitive snowflake syndrome, and really do just want authors to write things that are fun to read for sake of being fun to read, without worrying about stepping on toes. 

And the Quaraun series has stepped on a lot of toes, including making the gay couple be one white transvestite who HATES being called a SHE when he's a HE in a dress and one black serial killing gangster with the N-word everywhere (oh yes - it's there A LOT), and includes scenes of them killing sensitivity beta readers at publishing houses and literally driving WW2 German army tanks over SJW protestors.

Critics slaughtered it for being ANTI-SJW, mocking PC sensitive snowflakeism, and readers loved it and it wins awards for it's in your face give no shits style.

As an LGBTQAI+ Person of Colour myself, I HATE it when STRAIGHT WHITE people think they knows what's best for us and the recent BLM riots, I mean protests have been nothing but an utter mockery of even more white people thinking they can control us coloured folk. It's why I DO NOT support the BLM movement. It's nothing but white people telling us non-whites what to do as usual.

And, no, I'm not joking one bit, those really ARE the names of my characters, how I named them, the things they do in the novels, and I still won those snooty patooty awards and pissed off all the authors of more serious work who didn't come close to either my sales or the awards my books won.

The lesson here? Stop worrying about what other people might think, and write whatever the fuck you want. There's a market for everything, and it just might surprise you to learn the market is getting pretty fed up with political correctness getting in the way of just writing a fun novel.

UPDATED TO ANSWER READER QUESTION:
How come you don't like the BLM movement?
Isn't it for people like you? Doesn't it help you?

UPDATED TO ANSWER READER QUESTION: How come you don't like the BLM movement? Isn't it for people like you? Doesn't it help you?

No.

It doesn't help us.

The BLM movement doesn't help us Gypsies.

The BLM movement doesn't help Jews.

The BLM movement doesn't help Native Americans.

And guess what? For all the Black people running around sayin they are the lowest rung, the smallest minority... FUCK THAT! They are lying to you!

There are more Black people in New York City, than there are Gypsies, Jews, and Native Americans combined on the entire planet.

There are more Black people in ONE FUCKING TOWN, than there are Gypsies, Jews, and Native Americans combined ON THE ENTIRE PLANET!

They ain't the lowest rung in discrimination and you're an idiot if you believe they are.

They ain't the smallest minority and you're a fucking jackass too damned retarded to look up facts for yourself if you believe they are.

And guess what else, BLACK PEOPLE beat up, harass, and murder more of us Gypsies than White people do!

Muslims who are also not White, have killed more people in my family than anyone else, because we have Jewish blood, even though there hasn't been a Jew in our family for 5,000 years.

But then there's the White people, who think we Gypsies are Muslim because of how we look and dress and kill us because killing Muslims is what White people do and kill first ask questions later... my family has lived in Maine since 1530, yet since 2001 White people call us foreigners and tell us to go back home. We are home. We are Kickapoo Native Americans, it's you White jackasses who invaded America not us. We've ALWAYS been here.

Black. Muslim. They ain't no different than White people. They are brutal racists just like them. 

Black. White. You're both fucking racists. Get over it and learn to get along.

Black people are no different than White people and we who are neither, watch the both of you fighting and live in mortal terror of BOTH the BLACK PEOPLE & THE WHITE BECAUSE, because we know from experience, that no matter how much you Blacks and you Whites hate EACH OTHER, BOTH BLACKS & WHITES hate us Gypsies more than you hate each other.

And you want to know what's even worse? My grandmother Eva Viola Atwater, was half Kickapoo Native American and half BLACK. I'm 1/4 Black in case you didn't know, and in my lifetime I've been beaten up by just as many racist ass Black people as I have racist ass White people.

Why?

Black people beat me up for the SAME REASON White people beat me up, just reversed.

In the minds of White people, my Black blood makes me TOO BLACK to be accepted as a part of White society.

In the minds of Black people, my pale, could pass for white, skin makes me TOO WHITE to be accepted as a part of Black society.

And while all you people parade around hypocritically chanting Black Lives Matter when you don't actually mean it, my family was murdered by fucking 14 White police officers of Old Orchard Beach, Scarborough, and Saco, Maine on April 10, 2015.

And not a one of you chanting Black Lives Matter cared, because we LOOK too White to for OUR lives to matter. 

Well guess what, White cops kill us too, no matter how pale our skin is, and the fact that you don't care that White police officers murdered 10 of my 12 children in a single day, the fact that you do not care, because we don't look DARK ENOUGH for our mixed blood faces to matter to you, just PROVES how big of hypocrites you BLM movement people REALLY are!

Every one of those 14 murderous bastards is STILL an active duty cop, right now in 2021, and not one of them got so much as a scolding for COMMITTING MURDER, cutting my kids' heads off and nailing them to the door!

That is the kind of police officers we have in Old Orchard Beach, Saco, and Scarborough, Maine. There has NEVER been justice for my family, those murdering police officers walk free and are STILL officers in Old Orchard Beach, Saco, and Scarborough, Maine RIGHT NOW - in June 2021... 6 years after murdering my family and NO ONE GIVES A FUCK!

Black. White. You're BOTH hypocrites.

What happened to my family, and how you people fucking responded to it, that tells me that the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing but a sham. Black people don't want to REALLY help minorities who are being killed by White cops... they'd care about what happened to my family April 10, 2015, if they did.

But Black people don't care when NON-BLACK MINORITIES are murdered by White cops.

There's the reality of your fucking BLM movement!