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Reaching Far and Deep – Open Book Blog Hop #534

June 22, 2026 By Captain Maiel 8 Comments

Topic #534

Do you wish you could travel the stars or the deep (oceans)?

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The short answer: YES. I’m an avid fan of Star Wars and Star Trek (all iterations). In addition, I adore documentaries about the oceans. There is something so magical about these very different arenas of existence, reaching beyond the limits of human existence. Space and the oceans are final frontiers. The oceans being our final terrestrial frontier, while space will open up a vast, unending expanse to explore. These ideas are so exciting!

still ocean with a boat sailing toward a starry sky that seems to bleed into the water

While I may wish to explore space or the deep, I am realistic about my limitations as a human in reaching beyond my home environment. Both of these are still some of the most dangerous endeavors one could ever undertake. Dipping yourself into realms without human life sustaining properties is a recipe for disaster. Sure, I love to swim, but I am no fool. I can’t breathe water or stay in interminably. Between fatigue, hypothermia, and drowning there is also the pressure and the crazy wildlife. On the other side, there is the unforgiving vacuum of space. Would you rather die out there in space (you lose consciousness somewhat quickly) than get got in the ocean? Did you know it can take many minutes to drown? What if a shark takes a liking to you? The two deaths are very similar.

Fears innumerable, so are the opportunities for joy and fulfillment. The tools used to explore the oceans and space are some of the coolest technology humanity has ever developed. Watching the astronauts float inside the space station or shuttles, looking at all the gadgets, it makes the mind boggle. The ocean is similar. The submarines with all the glass and that diving scooter make it just seem like good fun. There’s not a lot of space in these things, though. So you have to be okay with tight spaces. I suppose it is no different than sitting in your car, except that you can just stop and get out if you need a stretch or get panicked for any reason.

Neither of these environments is kind to the human body without a great deal of protection. In the future, I imagine that space suits and space vehicles will evolve into some pretty epic and less cumbersome gear. That breathing apparatus in Star Wars had me jealous. When can we have that and the astromechs? Imagine how far humanity might be reaching in the future with all the technology we can imagine and aim for. Just remember, Jules Verne wrote about things our ancestors thought impossible. How many of his inventions came into being?

Dream it and make it real. That’s what humanity is greatest at. Click on the links below in the scroll box to continue the hop. Before you go, be sure to subscribe. The hop will arrive in your inbox each Friday without having to search for us. Don’t forget to comment and share on the hop posts you love. This helps our authors do better in search engines and its free to do! See you next time.

Always Learning – Open Book Blog Hop #533

June 15, 2026 By Captain Maiel 6 Comments

Topic #533

Have you learned anything new this week (or recently?) Any topic.

Lifelong learning is an imperative for writers. This is what keeps us vital. New knowledge, neatly tucked away, can provide us a nice detail for something we work on later. Maybe it will just serve to impress someone later, which might lead to a great new friendship or other connection. Not to mention, that learning for the sake of itself is just damn fun!

Personally, I don’t understand the closed minded way of life. It’s a weird and sometimes dangerous way to be. On top of that, how boring it must be to never learn another thing. Yeah, no thanks. I have plans! I want to learn more languages. Reading my pile of books, that sit there gnawing at my soul with their untouched presence. There’s so much history and culture to wade into. I’m also enjoying a political legal podcast. Did you know that in high school I was deeply considering law school? Of course I was, a voracious reader and history lover fits nicely into law learning.

Getting back to the question at hand, what have I learned this week? Nothing too special. Just a couple of things I can pass on that may be of some use to you. First, I learned that the New York Knicks haven’t won a championship since just before I was born in the 1970s. Incredible! Did you know they wear my favorite colors? Is this why I like those colors? There certainly is a knowledge of their existence since I can remember, but I have never been a big basketball fan. My leanings used to be for American Football, and the NY Giants. It’s been a long time since I actively followed them, however. Life has just gotten in the way, and I began to feel that if I watched, they lost.

What else have I learned this week? I found out that Bob Dylan did a cover of Froggy Went A Courtin’ and that just tickled me to no end. That man is an incredible musician. My workmate adores him and regales me with music facts during the workday. What good times! My friend also met Graham Chapman, my favorite Python, and I am exceedingly jealous of this. He showed me the autographed book he had gotten. He also has a Yellowbeard (1983) poster. ((Gnashes teeth.))

Anyway, there you go. Two interesting factoids to now regale your friends and family with. Work is much more enjoyable, day to day, when you have a workmate that can teach you fun things and keep up a good conversation. Now, go forth and be that workmate. Be sure to subscribe through the box on the top right. The hop will arrive in your inbox each Friday without having to search for us. To keep going with the hop, click on the author links below.

Picture This – Open Book Blog Hop #532

June 8, 2026 By Captain Maiel 4 Comments

Topic #532

Do you have a favorite site for free photos to use with your writing?
Or do you use paid photos?

^{Captain Maiel with Argus – AI Created Image – Dreams App}

Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say. You can’t do any of this writing thing, though, without it. From book covers to marketing, even our blogs, imagery is a key part of the work. The quality of those images matter as much as the quality of your writing. Unless you’re posting about something that specifically references family snapshots, it’s not advisable to use okay or low quality images. So where do you go to get these? I mean, you can’t just take a photo of the Eiffel Tower or other random things you might be talking about that day. Not all of us can afford to or do travel. Likewise, we don’t all live in exciting places.

There is also the matter of copywritten material, not just the lack of education to a good place. Certainly, being able to go get the shot yourself is a huge deal that can help immensely. When not feasible, you can’t just go onto any website and steal images. That’s IP theft. It isn’t always clear what you can and cannot use, like with music. Sometimes, not even a 30-second video is okay, as you likely have found on social media posts. Queue the community guidelines violations.

To avoid copywrite issues with a picture you’d like to use for your blog, book cover, or promotion, the best course is to find a free use site. There are a few out there. Artists from all over the world join to donate some of their work, and get paid by donations. Many amateur and scholarly photographers do this work while they are honing their craft. It’s a great way to have your images used across the internet and maybe get a little cash from it. Most remain free for use. It’s nice, however, to buy the artist a coffee, especially if you use their work several times.

Resources:

That’s just to name a few. A quick google search will help you find other sites that offer this service.

Ciajah, The Trailokya Trilogy — ^{Photomanipulation of stock images to create Ciajah from the Trailokya Trilogy}

Always be respectful of these artists. They are giving you a gift. Make sure you reciprocate. When possible, leave a link and credit caption on the photo. Buy them a coffee. Sometimes they offer subscriptions to the sites, so they can pay their artists. It is always understood if you can’t afford it, and are just starting out yourself. You do what you can. Above all, credit is the most important part. Whether you use the photo on an ad, blog, or book cover, you can almost always refer to them somewhere. That helps their business in kind. Word of mouth is a strong force for building their brand as well as yours.

Some authors have taken to using AI. This is a problematic thing. I still see AI as using so many images and rendering something like collage, and the input (prompt) can come from copywritten material, too. It’s very complicated. I err on the side of not using it so much. However, do the systems make use of images that are free use? And, is your prompt from your own intellectual property? And, do you pay for the system? Is that money used to pay artists? Do the images you create revert to informing the system likewise? Are you using them for personal use or gaining a fat chunk of change from it and avoiding paying an artist?

Canva created cover for the Trailokya Trilogy Illustrated Companion - features an all seeing eye with a moon order penannular over an interplanetary grid — ^{The Trailokya Trilogy: Illustrated Companion book cover by Broken Wizard Publishing – Canva layouts.}

If you can afford a human artist, pay one. If not, try to use free use images from artists you can compensate in some way. Then, if all else fails…I don’t know how I feel about using AI here even. It was fun to mess around with and see my work in pictures, but there are so many far reaching costs, I can’t say it is good. So, for now, it should be on pause.

Hopefully the links above and a little creativity with photo applications and know how can be of greater help to those seeking resources for image making. And, it really is fun to make art. Don’t forget that aspect! If you can take the picture yourself or operate with photo applications, enjoy that and make good use of the skills. I know I love it. Pretty epic collages and other results can come of this. So don’t fret if you’re torn on AI or don’t know where to go. You’ll figure it out.

Can I interest you in a photoshop alternative? GIMP – Make sure you tip them!

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Bear Behaving

June 5, 2026 By Captain Maiel Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year again! The warm June days are so nice after a brutally cold winter and strangely chilly spring. This month means berries, too! Strawberries, specifically. I can’t wait to make all kinds of strawberry things, like shakes and pies. A fresh strawberry shake can’t be beat. I may even do a smoothie. We have so many, so long as crew doesn’t eat them all up before I can make them into something.

Sigh. Speaking of… I can’t look away for a minute. Bear is behaving as a bear will when berries are available. I better go check on him, before he gets hurt. As genius as this little guy is, he can still be run by his belly and get in a situation. He’s suffered enough, with the dog gnawing on him all the time!

I bet he’s already pushed a stool up to the counter and is ready to devour that whole pint I was going to make smoothies with…

Love my duck? Support this blog by buying a book. Subscribe to the blog and receive a weekly email on Fridays. Zo art publishes monthly.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-1.png — _{Shop Zo Duck on Cafe Press}

Sight Unseen – Open Book Blog Hop #531

June 1, 2026 By Captain Maiel 2 Comments

Topic #531

Which of the senses is the hardest for you to include in your writing?

I don’t struggle so much with this, except remembering to always maintain that active voice. Even at my old writing age, slipping into passive voice is so easy. I mean, characters remember things, too. That past tense is probably on purpose. Do we really want to keep doing the flashback thing to avoid saying was?

So, upon reflection, I thought I’d ask my daughter, studying writing in the third grade. After a pensive moment or two, she said, “I think it is sight.” I can see that, not to be punny. Sight can lead to much exposition and writing looked to to one’s detriment. Guilty as charged. However, I’d like to point out–expressions are important to inner dialogue without exposition. What a trap!

girl on a mountain road with a map — _{^{Photo by Daniel Gonzalez on Unsplash}}

The Sight Trap.

There is a balance to maintain. When they tell you to keep an active voice, that doesn’t mean past doesn’t come into it through memory and thought. Afterall, getting into the head of a character is all a part of the writing experience. So when you get behind their eyes, there’s a bit of a tango dance. Absolutely, they have a thought about the things they’re seeing. Yet, you’ll want to keep active whenever it is possible and makes sense to the meaning of what is being stated. Plus, not every thought is important outside of stream of consciousness.

Sight is a powerful sense and key to making those grand vistas so grand. However, when you switch from images to words, the transition can create so many problems for a writer. Overwriting, passive writing, and the lot. I get caught up with this because my preference is for the classics and their amazing use of description. Paint me a picture. However, times have changed and people want to convince us that bare bones is better. I don’t buy it. Therefore, I try to land in a comfortable space between the two.

If I want to write a script, then I will. Otherwise, I write novels, and they have description to spare. I don’t write easy reads consumable in an hour. I write more like my heroes of yesteryear. They’re the ones I aspired to as I grew into this, as they were the ones that got me and kept me reading. I feel like, if you don’t like reading, you gravitate to boney books to seem that you do, and that is so damaging to the artform. Why are we accommodating posers?

I’m not trying to be rude, but really–

If you’re bothered by what folks have to say about those who don’t like to read, but still want to be viewed as a clever person, resolve the dissonance in you, instead of trying to make books simple. I for one like the details and long stories. To me, that is the point of reading. That said, I don’t want an author to go on and on. There have been a few Victorian Novels that had such long sentences, I had to reread them to the point I was annoyed by drudge and the lack of sense. How the editor let that slip, I will never know. Then again, I may have been sleepy! (Put to sleep by run-on sentences and ego writing!)

How would we write sight without exposition-ing our readers to sleep? Simplify your sentences for clarity and active voice. There are a couple links above that can help writers situate their thoughts for their best outcomes. Just remember, drafting is all part of the process. If you don’t catch it the first time, you have several more opportunities and an editor to get through. Don’t sweat it. No one pens perfection from go. If they tell you they do, they’re lying.

When redrafting, always ask yourself: is this necessary to state? Just because we think that was a clever aside, doesn’t mean we need to keep it in the text. Is it implied? Does it need to be explicit? Will the reader come to the same conclusion without handholding most of the time? Stop holding their hands. Readers can put things together. Save yourself a line or three. Additionally, don’t harp, don’t overstate revelations, and don’t describe an item down to its atoms. Name the thing and move on, if the thing really matters at all to the narrative. Don’t over prop your setting and costuming, in other words. I know you want to go on about his boots and her dress, but you can let that go for the reader.

Costuming can be role setting or plot device as much as any object, but we cannot get nuts about this visual. Such sight will lag the story and annoy the reader that just wants to get on with it. Her golden gown isn’t that big of a deal that it takes paragraphs to describe. State it and get on with the day. You can always cut this stuff out and put it in a file for yourself, for later when you get that script deal for a series. The director probably won’t ask for it, though, and I wouldn’t wait on the costume designer, either. But, you can keep that close to you for self satisfaction. In fact, it might be good to cut it out, and try to fit it in a tweet (280 characters) as practice. Highly recommend this as a practice for concise writing.

Just remember: do the best you can. Be creative. You are creative. You got this, writers.

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