Musings of Two Creative Minds

 Recently I went through another bout of Writer's Block. Actually, I hit this particular wall some months ago.  It was while I was still working on the original 1st draft of "The Door" when I encountered the block and it was a doozy.  No matter what direction I tried to take the novel in, things just seemed to get more complicated and confusing.  Too many characters, too many plot points and subplots going.   In the end I wound up working on "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" story.  I had a pretty clear vision of where I wanted to go with that one so I worked on it instead.  I did this partly in the hopes of having a breakthrough with where I'd left off with "The Door", but in the end I never got past it.   Even when I completed the first draft for "The Vampyre Blogs" I wasn't any closer to getting past my block with "The Door".  Now anyone who's dealt with a severe case of Writer's Block will tell y...

This week I started a new semester of classes over at the California State University at Monterey Bay (CSUMB).  I'll be going here for at least another four semesters after this one.  I try to keep to just 12 units at a time which allows my wife and I to qualify for campus housing.  CSUMB has what they call East Campus Housing which is more like a duplex than an apartment.  Being a family we have the place to ourselves rather than having to share our space with others. The rent is reasonable and our gas, electric and cable are all included.  So you can understand my wanting to stick around here for a few more years while my wife Helen (who just earned her Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics) finds work and we can start building up our savings again.  BTW, if anyone knows any good job openings for a Mathematics wiz in California please let me know.  She's sending out resumes and applications like crazy and is eager to find more opportunities. ...

Hello everyone, today I want to give you all a little insight into how things are going with my latest novel. Some of you may know that I had started working on "The Door" some time back, but then set it aside to work on "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home".  I did this originally, because I'd hoped to get the vampyre book out last October, but of course that didn't happen.  My classes at CSU Monterey Bay got crazy with the workload so I couldn't finish in time.   Now, the vampyre book is set around October so I wanted to keep with the whole Halloween timing, so after finishing the 1st draft I've set it aside and gone back to "The Door".  This is actually beneficial since "The Door" will temporarily wrap things up for the heroes of my first two novels "The Bridge" and "The Ship".  So by going back to "The Door" I can have a sort of trilogy to put out as a box set come Christmastime. With thi...

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! If you're reading this I'll take it that you survived 2014 and are a glutton for punishment because you're still reading what I have to say here.  Bless your hearts. With that said, I'm going to try and start the year off on a good note here by posting the opening section of "The Door", which will be the third book in my Para-Earth Series.  This time Alex, Veronica, Cassie and Julie are back together to face threats old and new.   The white-haired man known only as Z has returned, along with the fragment of the creature our heroes helped destroy in "The Bridge".  For those who read book 2 "The Ship" we saw Z and his companion help protect Cassandra from the threat that arose from the deeps, but it wasn't out of kindness.  He has plans of his own for her and now they're about to bear fruit. But the girl is guarded by her friends Alex and Veronica, as well as her lover Julie.  Plus of cou...

First off, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year's Eve.  We've gotten through another year, and I hope that whatever you do to celebrate tonight, please be safe. This past year has been another interesting one, especially with the release of the second novel in my Para-Earth Series.  "The Ship" has gotten a number of 5 star reviews and has been hailed as better its predecessor "The Bridge".  Although both are connected, each novel stands on its own and can be sampled for free at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.  For those wondering, I've made the first 30 pages of each novel available for sampling (that's right, I don't skimp). I also created a new blog titled "The Vampyre Blogs - Private Edition" (link:  http://thevampyreblogs.blogspot.com/ ), which serves as a preview of my next venture into the Para-Earth Series.  On this blog you can meet my first vampyre character, who shares many strengths and weakness of th...

What's in a name?  A novella or novelette is just a short story that is rather long and falls short of a full-length novel right?  Well according to my research, this is only partly correct.   Length or word count, is the key to what defines a short story, a novelette, a novella and of course a novel.  I admit I was rather surprised to see that there was a difference between a novella and a novelette.  I always presumed they were just interchangeable terms for the same kind of extremely long short story.  Why was I even interested in finding out about all this in the first place you may be asking yourself.  Well I'll tell you.  If you hadn't heard already, I decided to do a short story that involved my vampyre character Nathaniel Steward (who will be getting his first full-length novel around October 2015) and several of my characters from my first novel "The Bridge".  I did this because I was hearing from more and more readers...

****MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE**** Both my books "The Bridge" and "The Ship" are 1/2 off from now until January 2nd, 2015.  So take advantage and grab some 5-star tales for you new Kindle, Nook, I-Pad, I-Book etc.  Each novel is only a $1.49 instead of the usual $2.99.  So you can get both books for the price of one.  Enjoy and spread the word to everyone you know.  Book 3 will be coming out in mid-2015, followed by my first vampyre novel in late October. Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Allan-Krummenacker/e/B00B1W8TEU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/allan-krummenacker Apple and other readers (including PDF for just a regular laptop/desktop computer): https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/1383