“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
Ray Bradbury
I’m launching The Palantir soon in eBook format on all your favorite websites for buying books. It’s the 1st in an 8-book series about magic, ghosts, adventure, and historical places. A few weeks from now, I’ll launch the paperback and hardback versions. The audiobook will come out at a later time.
Not only has The Palantir been a journey of learning how to write, but it’s also been my opportunity to create the type of adventure story I love to read. I wanted to write a story that had a little bit of everything – like how the grandpa described The Princess Bride to his grandson in the movie of the same name. I’ve tried keeping that spirit throughout the series.
To that end, below are the books and a movie that most inspired me to write these stories. In no particular order they are:
- The Lord of The Rings – I mean, who doesn’t think those are some of the best books out there. I’ve read the series several times, and as I said in my first post, just talking about one scene in those books was instrumental in me becoming a writer.
- The Count of Monte Cristo – Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve only read the abridged version so far, but I’ve bought the unabridged version and plan on reading it soon. What a story!
- Dune – I loved this story. I just wish they’d finally do a great movie version of the book. Maybe the upcoming movies will be it.
- The Foundation Trilogy – What can I say? I might have to join Apple TV next year just to watch this series.
- Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark – If you want to get a sense of what the opening scenes are like, go to Tikal in Guatemala. There were some places there that I could have sworn that’s where they filmed the movie.
- And, of course, the set of stories that hooked me on reading – Sherlock Holmes.
There were many more books and movies that influenced me, but these were the ones that were ever-present on my mind when writing my series.
In later blog posts, I’ll share more of the fascinating backstory, both fictional and real, about what went into making the books.
The attached picture is of the eBook version of my book, which will come out in September 2021.
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