Tiki-Toki and Timelines

A while back I published an interactive timeline that I created using Tiki-Toki, an absolutely brilliant online timeline creator. My struggle in the beginning was to figure out what to post on the timeline without spoiling the books in my series for those who haven't read them yet. I wanted to give the fans something unique to dive into, but not make it so in depth with plot information that I ruin things for new readers. So, I slapped together a basic chronology of events I felt could fill a small timeline and left things alone.

Lately, with me taking a harder look at the facets of my writing business, I've realized I've been throwing away a really great resource that can be used to draw new readers into my series as well as satisfy the sense of discovery most of my fans have. The timeline that Tiki-Toki allows you to create enables you to import images, write small stories according to what you want in the timeline entries, and even link to outside content - such as purchase links for my books, or character profiles on my own website. You can even put in audio and video files, neither of which I've had the time to mess with though.

Seeing how this has been a neglected resource for me, I've spent the last couple of days updating the timeline with some new images and background, and tweaking some of the settings here and there. And over the next couple of weeks, I will be writing out new entries and polishing up the ones that are already in there. I'm even going to be connecting the timeline to VRKA - once VRKA is live and functional on my website.

I still have a ton of additions and updates to do to the timeline, but for now you can browse what I have and explore the world of my Black Earth and Expired Reality series.

What To Expect...

As many of you know, my Black Earth series has come to its conclusion (in regards to full-length novels) with the release of Exodus. However that doesn't end the story of humanity's struggle against the alien force known as Legion or the Dark Army under Satan's command. Planets are still being engulfed in Legion's darkness, and the Great Witch Evanescence and her cohorts are still pushing  creation toward the brink of extinction.

The storyline that the Black Earth series set up continues in my other series, Expired Reality. Expired Reality is the series that I first began writing in when I was eleven - back in 1990. The characters, the plots, and the main feel of the series has gone through many revisions, but now that the Black Earth series has been established as a foundation for the master storyline, I know (for the most part) what direction I want to go with the Expired Reality series.

In the upcoming weeks, I'll be writing posts that give you more information about my Expired Reality series, including -

- An introduction post to get you acquainted with the series as a whole, including a brief intro to certain events and characters that carry over from the Black Earth series.

- Character introductions which will include background on many of the main characters of the ER series, including David Corbin, Carrie Green, Turquoise-Wedge, and Mr. Big.

- Posts that go into depth regarding the world structure of Anaisha (An-ā-sha) - the planet that the ER series takes place on (initially).

- Posts that go into the religious (or lack thereof) aspects of Anaisha.

- Other fun/interesting posts that come to mind.

I will also be cross-referencing my posts with the official Compendium, so if you ever want to reference the topics discussed in the future, they will be easily accessible from the official website. Additionally, I will be continually adding to the official timeline - a handy reference for those of you who are fans of both series and are interested in having a visual guide to where each of my books fits (chronologically) into the Black Earth/ Expired Reality universe.

I'm looking forward to bringing everyone up to speed on a series that has been close to my heart since I was a mere child. Stay tuned for the posts to begin next week!

The New Website Is Live!

After months of tinkering and toiling, my new website - www.davidnalderman.com - is finally up and running! I would love for all of you to check it out when you get a chance. There's lots of new content that wasn't found in the old site, and personally I think this is the best design I have come up with to date.

Some things to mention -

The website now houses the official Expired Reality/Black Earth Timeline. This Timeline encompasses certain key events in both series, giving a streamlined view at the chronology of events throughout both novel series. As more books are released, more information will be added to the Timeline.

One great thing about the Timeline, is that some of the entries tie in with the next big thing on the website -

The Compendium.

The Compendium is an expansive database of information from both the Black Earth and Expired Reality series, all contained in eight categories - People, Worlds, Science and Technology, Artifacts, Businesses, Otherworldly Beings, Locales, and Terms. New entries under these categories will be added to the Compendium each week starting August 1st.

Within certain entries you will find the Classified stamp. These are information panels that will be added at a later time.Some of the entries in the Timeline, such as Nathan Pierce's birthday, tie in with the Compendium, such as Nathan Pierce's profile. Both the Timeline and the Compendium will continue to weave information together seamlessly to give you, the reader, a more immersive experience in the worlds of both my book series.

Right now with the debut of the new website, there are seven profiles which have been added to the Compendium ready for your reading pleasure. These are:
Muriel's Box under Artifacts
Lysallis under Locales
Nathan Pierce under People
Vine Magnate under Otherworldly Beings
Pulse Science under Science and Technology
Sunshine Cola under Businesses
Calamiro under Worlds
And a handful of Terms 

Every new information panel or entry that is added to the Compendium will be announced on the home page of the website, along with major Timeline additions.

Enjoy!

Another Year Older...

Even though I turn thirty-three tomorrow, I don't feel a day older than twenty-one. For those of you who know me well, you know that I am a kid at heart, and I honestly don't think I'll ever 'grow old'. That being said, when I look behind me, I see a life full of...well, life. I can't say I have too many - if any - regrets. I've learned much on this walk with God, this journey with my wife, and this last year with my son. It's been a wild ride, one that will someday fill volumes of memoir. I've lived a happy, blessed life. Yeah, it's been full of trials, heartache, and moments I didn't think I'd get through alive...

But here I am. Thirty-three years later. I don't really have anything extravagant planned for my birthday. My birthday tradition usually consists of me wandering around town with my wife to gather up all the free goodies places give out for birthdays. I plan to spend a day off with my wife and son, maybe do a bit of gaming, relax a bit. When Wednesday comes around though, I'll be kicking things into high gear.

For those who haven't heard yet, I received the edits back to Black Earth: Dark Masquerade last week. I've been plugging away at them - there are a TON of them - and my goal is to have the book released to everyone at some point in late July. *ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) will be sent out earlier though. And the new website and timeline should be up and running at some point late next week. I'll make an official announcement the moment they go live.

Well, I'm off to squeeze in another day of editing and web design before my day off. Have a great Monday everyone!

Black Earth/Expired Reality Timeline In The Works

For over a year now, I've been wanting to create a timeline for my website that incorporates events from both my edgy Christian speculative fiction series, Black Earth, and my young adult scifi/fantasy series, Expired Reality. About a hundred years spans the gap between both series, but they are connected in more ways than can be counted. Time travel and alternate realities run rampant through both series, so I figured it would benefit my fans if a comprehensive timeline was created to keep things straight and somewhat easy to understand - at least when it comes to the chronology of events.

The only thing preventing me this whole time from creating said timeline has been a good timeline program. I suppose I could have broken down and just created a timeline from scratch and slapped it together with crappy fonts and even crappier looking pieces of clipart, but luckily I stumbled upon a great website a couple weeks ago called - Tiki-Toki.

Tiki-Toki is going to help me take my timeline idea to a whole...notha'....leva'!

The easiest way to explain how Tiki-Toki works is to check out the very first timeline you see when you go to their homepage - www.tiki-toki.com.That specific timeline template is the one I am currently using to create the Black Earth/Expired Reality timeline. The boxes contain dates and a title of the event, and then when you click on the MORE button in the bottom right corner of the event box, a summary box comes up where I can include an image, video, and audio along with links to whatever I think is relevant to the story event.

My biggest challenge right now is trying to figure out what content should be in the timeline. When I asked this question on Facebook, a friend of mine asked me what I want to achieve with it - a reward for fans of the series or marketing tool to lure new readers? And my answer was that this timeline is being created with the fans in mind, although a side effect of the timeline would be for new readers to be drawn toward some of the events and maybe be interested enough to actually check out my books.

This being said, another challenge is being careful for spoilers. The great thing about this software is that I can create categories (the little tabs you see at the top of the event boxes). So I can create a spoiler tab to warn new readers that the summary box that comes up when the MORE button is pressed will contain story spoilers. Not enough spoilers to compensate for reading my novels, of course, but even that is a fine line. How much is too much? Should I just concentrate on major events, or add in the little details that can add to a fan's vision of my series?

The answer to these questions goes back to the question my friend asked: What am I trying to achieve with this timeline? I want to give fans a reason to visit my website and peruse the extra - and hopefully unique - content I'm planning on building into it. So yes, I'll appeal mostly to the fans, but the timeline will also be set up so that new readers can come by, peruse the space/time continuum, and maybe walk away with some curiosity - enough to pick up one of my novels to see what all the buzz is about.

For those of you who are eager to check out the timeline, I plan to release it - along with some other refreshing website additions - when Black Earth: Dark Masquerade is released this summer, so stay tuned!

Timelines, Time Travel, and Headaches...

I have a headache.

Last night I decided to sit down and play around with some web-based software designed to create timelines. For the last couple years now I've been meaning to create a timeline for my website that visually chronicles the events that take place in my Black Earth series, my Expired Reality series, and everything in between. Including the alternate reality that was created. Taking into account the different streams of time travel mentioned in the stories. And -

Yeah.

Well, while I was messing around with this timeline - which I am creating on Tiki-Toki - I ran into a snag. I completely neglected to take into account that in the Black Earth series, Mr. Silver, when colonizing Anaisha, changed the date system set forth for the Expired Reality series.

Ugh.

Now I'm sifting through calendars trying to find when the hundred years (plus or minus a few) between the two series falls on the timeline - both in altered date and real date - and I'm trying to also figure out how to portray it on the timeline itself without confusing the world. Or myself, it seems. I'm thinking I'll keep everything to its 'real' date and then just have the altered date in parenthesis.

Looks like I'm going to have my hands full with this. O_o

My 2012 Reading List

Last year, my reading goal was somewhere in the range of seventy books. I read four of those.

This year I decided to be a bit more realistic and only have twenty books on my to-read/review list for this year. And I'm starting the reading frenzy out by re-reading three of my all time favorite books - the Han Solo trilogy by A.C. Crispin. The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn were books I picked up in my senior year of high school, at the height of my adolescent Star Wars 'obsession' - it was around the same time the original trilogy came back into the theaters in a special edition format - and also at the height of my love for reading.

The reason I'm rereading these books is because they were my entry into my love of reading. Most of the books/stories I read during junior high and high school were involuntarily chosen for me. That's not to say I didn't fall in love with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game. It was the Star Wars series that I began to pick up at the tail end of my high school term and of all the Star Wars books I picked up and read - which truthfully weren't all that many - I fell in love with the Han Solo trilogy more than any of them. It helped that Han Solo had always been my favorite film character, so when I picked up this series - which highlighted A.C. Crispin's wonderful writing craft and the magic of the Star Wars universe - I gobbled these stories up. They are the only books I have ever cared enough about to read through a second time.


Beyond the Han Solo trilogy, I'll also be reading more of my good author friend Thomas Barczak's Awakening Evarun series. Awakening Evarun is a short story ebook series - each story is sort of like an episode that adds to a bigger adventure - and each is only $2.99 on Amazon. I highly suggest if you love fantasy or adventure you pick up some of Thomas's stories. I've only read the first one in this series and then got distracted by the birth of my son, but now that things seem to be settling down around here as of late, I'll be hopping back into it.

The rest of my reading itinerary can be found at Goodreads, but I'll highlight a few of the books including the reasons why I've made them part of my reading adventure this year.

Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
I've been a huge fan of the James Bond movies since I saw GoldenEye back in high school. Over the last couple years I've had the chance to read a few of Fleming's novels including Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, and Moonraker, but I've been wanting to read Casino Royale to see how it all started. It's Bond's first adventure, I loved the movie, and it looks to be a good read, coming in at almost novella length.


Wolves of the Calla (Book 5 of the Dark Tower series) - Stephen King
I started Stephen King's Dark Tower series a few years ago and I'm still only a little over half way through it. I'll unashamedly admit that The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, was the very first work I ever read of Stephen King's. I marveled at how well King was able to weave science fiction, horror and a bit of fantasy into a compelling story, especially one of the grand scape the Dark Tower series tries to encompass. The last book I read in the series was Wizard and Glass, which got some negative reviews from critics for slowing the action of the series down (the majority of the novel is a flashback of sorts), but it is by far my favorite book in the series so far. But I've always been a sucker for back story. This year I'll be diving into the fifth book in the series, Wolves of the Calla, and if I have time and finish this list, I may even get a chance to finish the series with the last two books, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower.

Timeline - Michael Crichton
Remember the movie that came out back in 2003 starring Paul Walker from The Fast and the Furious? I don't know about you, but I remember liking that movie quiet a bit. When I found out the film was based on a novel written by Michael Crichton, I knew I had to read it. So here I am, years later, and I'll finally have the chance. Coincidentally I picked up a hardcover copy of this book when I traveled to California a few years ago to see my grandfather and found it sitting in a library book sale for $1.

House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski
I still don't remember how I came to even hear about this book - oh wait, I was researching Poe, the singer, and found links leading to The House of Leaves, written by Poe's brother. Anyway, the breakdown of this book's story - a young family moves into a house which they come to discover is actually bigger on the inside than it is on the outside - isn't the real treat of this novel. The real treat is the unconventional style the book is created with - some pages coming to only a sentence or a word, different styles of typesetting, pages containing highlighted text, footnotes within footnotes, some referencing books that don't even exist. Even poetry can be found in this book of horror, and I can't wait to read it with the covers over my head and a flashlight in one hand.

Dust - Elizabeth Bear
I picked up this book at a local Barnes and Noble a couple years ago simply because I wanted a change of pace in my reading habits. I've never read anything from Elizabeth Bear, and the premise of the book (taken from the back cover):

On a broken ship orbiting a doomed sun, dwellers have grown complacent with their aging metal world. But when a serving girl frees a captive noblewoman, the old order is about to change....

Ariane, Princess of the House of Rule, was known to be fiercely cold-blooded. But severing an angel’s wings on the battlefield—even after she had surrendered—proved her completely without honor. Captive, the angel Perceval waits for Ariane not only to finish her off—but to devour her very memories and mind. Surely her gruesome death will cause war between the houses—exactly as Ariane desires. But Ariane’s plan may yet be opposed, for Perceval at once recognizes the young servant charged with her care.

Rien is the lost child: her sister. Soon they will escape, hoping to stop the impending war and save both their houses. But it is a perilous journey through the crumbling hulk of a dying ship, and they do not pass unnoticed. Because at the hub of their turning world waits Jacob Dust, all that remains of God, following the vapor wisp of the angel. And he knows they will meet very soon.

Sounds pretty interesting. I didn't realize this until recently, but apparently this book is the first in the Jacob's Ladder series. Two other books, Chill and Grail, complete the series, both of which I'll have to get my hands on at some point...assuming I end up enjoying Dust.

This Present Darkness - Frank Peretti
This one is a known classic in the world of Christian fiction. And since I write Christian speculative fiction and my stories include much spiritual warfare, I knew I had to at some point get around to reading this. I've had both This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness in a box in my closet for years now and I figured now was a good a time as any to pull them out and get to reading them.

What books are you all reading this year?