Bron & Calea Volume 1 – Coming Soon!

We’re putting the finishing touches on our first print book, Bron & Calea Volume 1. This nearly 300-page book collects The Select’s Bodyguard, The Doctor’s Assistant, and The Well’s Orphan in one volume.

If you enjoyed the ebooks but wanted something to put on your shelf, now’s your chance! Or if you’ve been meaning to read one of the stories but just don’t want to be bothered by all that electronic download nonsense, here you go!

Nathan Marchand will be selling copies at GenCon, and the volume will be available for purchase from Amazon by mid-August.

Children of the Wells Round Table!

By Nick Hayden
July 17, 2014

At our last Children of the Wells meeting, we decided to record a special round-table discussion. It’s not very often we have so many of the writers, editors, and idea people behind Children of the Wells in one place, and we had a lot of fun discussing storytelling pet peeves, what kind of stories we gravitate toward, and our own views of the CotW characters.

Also, if you like what you hear, Timothy and Nick produce a monthly podcast on storytelling that you can find at derailedtrainsofthought.blogspot.com or on iTunes,

Listen in to Nick, Tim, Aaron, Nathan, Laura, and Greg below:

Children of the Wells Round Table Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What’s the Big Deal About Summer?

By Natasha Hayden
July 10, 2014

photo credit: wwnorm via photopin cc

Here’s what my summer looks like. My preschooler’s first year of school ended on an early day in June. That same day, we left on a five-day camping trip. The week we were back, we celebrated three extended family birthdays and Father’s Day as well as the beginning of the soccer World Cup (When you grow up in Brazil, soccer gets in your blood.). The next weekend, we celebrated another family birthday, and the weekend after that, I had a Taekwondo event I couldn’t miss and several other events I did miss due to the impossibility of being two places at once. This past weekend, we celebrated the Fourth of July, on which we had an extended family garage sale, and a wedding. The summer is already halfway over.

Next week is the fair. The week after that, my husband will be at Momentum, a youth conference, so I will have the kids all to myself. Incidentally, Vacation Bible School is that week. The next week, we will be going on yet another camping trip, this time with my husband’s family. The week after that, I will be taking the kids by myself (because my husband can’t take three weeks in a row off work…obviously) out of state to visit my parents who are themselves going to be briefly visiting the United States from Brazil, where they live as missionaries. When we finally make it home for good, school starts again.

In all this craziness, we have tried to find time to go swimming, take care of our garden which will soon be exploding with more produce than I could reasonably prepare in a normal (read: non-summer) week, search out garage sales, pick strawberries, and do other outdoor activities we can’t do during the 10 months school is in session, noting also that the majority of those months (particularly this last winter), any outdoor activities that don’t involve snow are closed for the “season.”

Let’s rethink this whole summer thing. (more…)

The Noble, Burdensome Trek

By Timothy Deal
July 3, 2014

photo credit: c@rljones via photopin cc

It’s been several months since we last heard about Jaysynn Kyzer, the outcast emperor of Thyrion. Unfortunately, the blame for the delay rests mostly on myself. I’ve actually been working on the next book in the Jaysynn series since last fall, temporarily trading my behind-the-scenes role to write one of our premier novellas for reasons I’ll go into in a future blog. Even though my book is about the average size of a CotW novella, it’s still easily the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever written. That is part of the reason for the delay. (more…)

Drinking the Dandelion Wine

By Nick Hayden
June 13, 2014

As you may have noticed, the site has been a little, shall we say, “dead,” because on the Internet, if you aren’t posting articles and tweets and tumblr thingies faster than the government spends money, you’re not truly alive.

Of course, on the back end, there’s quite a bit happening. The first draft sequel to The Rules Change is nearly complete, and the sequel to The Well’s Orphan is on its way. (Have you read Destinies Entwined yet?)

And, plus, it’s summer! It’s warm! Who wants to be on the Internet all day?

I just recently convinced my sister to read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, which is the most wonderfully nostalgic book I’ve ever read. It chronicles the summer of 12-year-old Doug Spaulding–it captures all those moments of being alive and young and full of endless days of sunlight. Days of running for no reason, nights of porches and ice cream. If you haven’t read it, you really should. (more…)

Destinies Entwined Now Available!

By Nathan Marchand
May 30, 2014

I read a book in college that advised authors to write minor/secondary characters in such a way that the characters acted as if the story was written about them. This, the book claimed, made them dynamic and interesting, thereby enhancing the story. (I’d say it might make them steal the scene, but I digress.)

Lomara is a bigworld full of stories. We knew from the get-go that the main Children of the Wells novellas wouldn’t be able to tell all of them. There were little nooks and crannies that could be filled but didn’t need to be. Recently on the CotW blog I compared this saga to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes blockbuster movies and short films. The main stories are in the blockbusters, but the short films complement the movies by filling in little gaps. This collection you’re about to read does exactly that—fill in the gaps. Consider it a gift to you, faithful readers, as part of our first anniversary celebration. Thanks for your support over the past year! (more…)

Why Break the Wheel?

Nick Hayden
May 9, 2014

Who doesn’t wish he could play as Leo just a little longer? There’s a NPC worth exploring.
From here

Now that all 10 stories of The Wheel is Broken are available for your enjoyment, you may (not) be asking: “Why bother writing a collection of flash fiction about random characters we’ll never meet again? Give us more Bron! Give us more Jaysynn! Even more Calea, if it comes to that!”

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Answer: I felt like it.

Expanded Answer: It seems that most of what I write (or want to write) are reiterations of ideas I’ve had for a long time. You might even call them themes. (more…)

Straight from Natasha’s Shelf

by Natasha Hayden
May 2, 2014

You know me as the story editor for Children of the Wells and as an occasional blogger on this site. Soon, you might know me as the author of a short story related to one of our larger storylines. But above all of those, I am a reader, specifically a YA fiction lover.

Not (quite) Natasha’s Shelf
Mr.TinDC via Compfight

Why Young Adult? I like the stories. I don’t care much about being wrapped in the details of a world (high fantasy) or about putting clever words together (modern adult fiction). I realize I’m generalizing, and there are some really good examples of those genres that are completely enjoyable, too. But primarily, I’m looking for a good, fast-paced story. I don’t want to be able to put it down. The idea has to be fascinating: relevant but also different, familiar but new. It shouldn’t be dumbed-down, but it doesn’t need to be complicated either. Young adult trends capture all of that so well. The relevance is in the ideas and themes. The familiar is in the emotions of youth (we’ve all been there). (more…)

What Jaysynn Kyzer and Captain America Have in Common

By Nathan Marchand
April 25, 2014

Not Jaysnn Kyzer.
From imdb.com

In the writing world, people like it when you compare your work to something else. It helps publishers figure out how to market a book. We here at Children of the Wells would’ve driven them crazy. We honestly weren’t sure how to describe this saga, let alone compare it to anything. We were different from the start. Serialized webfiction written by multiple authors instead of by one. Stories written as complete novellas instead of one chapter at a time.

At first, the only comparison we could make was to comic books, which are serialized stories in a shared universe, but that certainly won’t apply once we implement our new publishing plan.

Then while working on a special project celebrating our first anniversary, I finally figured it out.

Children of the Wells is like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). (more…)

After the Cataclysm took our magic,
how do we rebuild?