Author - Dana Lockhart

-Get An ARC Copy Now!- I'm excited to announce that you can get a free review copy of The Un-Life of William Moore while supplies last. I only have 15 more copies to give away, so first come first serve. A review copy is just that, for review. It's a bit of an "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" sort of thing. You'll get a free copy of the ebook in exchange for your promise to review the book on Amazon and Smashwords. This copy is e-book only and can be redeemed on Booksprout.  You'll have until June 13, 2019 to review the book, so about a month from this post date. If you happened to not be able to put it down and finish it by the release date, May 16, I would be eternally grateful for a review by that date. But that's entirely optional, as are reviewing it anywhere else (Barnes and Noble, BookBub, Kobo, etc, etc). If you finish your review early, just let me know and I'll make sure it gets up up. To ask me for a review co...

When I'm put in an unfavorable situation, I try to look on the bright side of things. More often than not, the bright side is always the same: a learning experience. Whether it's a bad breakup, a civil suit, or a risk like investing in my novel, there's always a learning experience. And I love learning. I identify as a scholar, as a student, no matter if I'm enrolled in study or not. And this entire book adventure has been one heck of a learning experience. I always thought I was good at manipulating Microsoft Word, but I discovered new options and standards than what I knew before. Not to mention all the learning of how to write better to even get the book finished. I received my first proof on April 16th for my novel The Un-Life of William Moore. Getting it proof-ready was a challenge in itself. I didn't embed fonts right the first time, had a bunch of hidden blank pages I had to deal with. But the first proof wasn't that bad. Needed some margin work,...

After over a year since I started this journey, The Un-Life of William Moore will soon be available to put on your bookshelf. I already had an e-book cover, but to be able to hold this book in your hands I went back and got a spine and back added to it. A week of waiting was well worth it! Here is the official book cover for The Un-Life of William Moore : I am so ecstatic about this cover. Thank you, again, Zakaria Nada , for working with me on making this book come to life. I didn't have a single complaint on the background of the back cover and am still in awe of how amazing it looks. If you need a book cover done, I highly recommend Zak and her watercolor style book covers. She has great turn around time and great taste. She also designed the bookmark (coming soon) that will come with this book when you buy it at one of my book signings. -Book Signing Times and Locations- Speaking of signings, I already have three book signings on the schedule and a potential fourth in ...

Life is crazy, but I've finally hit a little lull with The Un-Life of William Moore . She's in limbo as I wait for the cover to be done (it should be within a week!). So, now that I have some more free time, I've taken up a new writing challenge: PAD. PAD is Poetry-A-Day, or NaPoWriMo . It's the poetry equivalent of NaNoWriMo, only instead of a strict word count spread over a month, you write one poem every day for the month of April. So far I've been able to keep up, albeit posting my poems rather late in the day on Twitter. I will start posting them to Instagram, too, but haven't yet because my background images for IG disappeared and it took me a while to find them. I will post all of my poetry in a blog post at the end of the month to see if I managed to successfully write a poem every day. I prefer to write structured poetry, with beat, rhythm, and rhyme, but when put on the spot like I am with PAD it tends to be a little more free form. And more t...

I know, I know, I've dropped off the face of the earth. My articles on DVS dropped from four a week to maybe one if I'm lucky, and my blogging here has suffered, too. But I promise it's for a good reason. - The Un-Life Coming June 2019- The big reason that I've stopped my side-writing gigs is because I've gotten back my mini-edit of The Un-Life of William Moore . Applying the critiques is my number one priority right now. I'm in a rush to get everything done in time for Gateway Con to have my grand first book release there. And I'm a little behind schedule. I'm still on target for the June release, but I'm feeling the pressure. Big thank you to Ryan P. Freeman for providing way more feedback than I anticipated. I ordered story editing and he still pointed out several copy-editing suggestions he didn't need to do. On one hand I'm glad he did more than I was looking for, and on the other I'm exhausted at the thought of all these thi...

I know it seems like I haven't been blogging much (because I haven't), but I am trying.  I have five post drafts in the works right now and I'm not happy with any of them.  And I don't want to just post re-hashed stuff I already posted on DVS Gaming like I did with my Lucifer article .  So, if I can't come up with something entertaining, at least maybe I can come up with a post that's informative. -It's Time to Bring The Un-Life to Life- I am currently in the beginning stages to self-publish The Un-Life of William Moore .  I discussed it with the agent I had been taking to, who gave me her blessing.  As I told her, The Un-Life just feels like an old chapter in my life.  I don't believe that I have the spark to force myself to edit it anymore.  One, because I feel like the story is done and complete as is, two, there's just so much more I want to be doing.  So instead of trying to change the story to what it isn't for the sake of being more ...

Image courtesy of Netflix -The First Fallen Angel- I binged the entire three seasons of Lucifer in two weeks. It completely flabbergasted me that a show about the Devil solving crimes actually worked. I am fascinated by the depiction of Satan in this show. He’s probably the most sympathetic version of the Devil I’ve ever seen. Thank God Netflix picked it up for season 4. In the meantime, it has me thinking about Mark Pellegrino’s version of Lucifer in Supernatural . Even Sadao Maou in the anime The Devil is a Part-Timer . Why are all these characters so alive, sympathetic, and delightful to watch? I previously explored why television has gotten so dark these last few years. When thinking about the sympathetic modern devil, I believe there is a connection between these two thoughts. Tom Ellis as Lucifer is the show “Lucifer.” Image courtesy of Fox. -Humans Are Fatally Flawed- A very common notion is that Satan has a hand in tempting people to sin...

Welcome to another Dana Harts. This time I'm going to tell you how much I ♥  Age Matters ! Yes, it's another Line Webtoon. They make good stuff, kay? It is by Enjelicious. And my poor heart can barely take it. Age Matters is centered around a 30-year old woman, Rose Choi, who recently went through a traumatic breakup with a man that told her she wasn't good enough. Now feeling like she's getting too old to start her life over again, she searches for what to do next. Through twists of fate she ends up getting hired by the young, rich, and handsome CEO of a facebook-like app to be his secretary. For a 23-year-old misunderstood billionaire, Daniel Yoon is quite a handful, acting much more the adult than she. Together, they might beat out rival companies or succumb to their budding feelings and ruin everything. This webcomic is giving me very unrealistic expectations for men. The best part of the story is that the characters are incredibly lively. Rose is a c...

You may have already read my blog post about getting a gig at DVS Gaming as a game reviewer/writer.  I first looked at the opportunity as a way to practice writing and bring attention to my author career.  Now that I have entered the world of gaming deeper than I ever have before, I thought, why not take it even further? -Welcome to the Stream Dream- My friend Josh , who also writes for DVS, and I decided to take a swing at streaming.  I've got a pretty decent rig and lots of games.  I have got a tentative offer from the bossman to be a DVS streamer when I'm ready.  All things considering, I've got a better foundation to work with than some people do in order to begin streaming. Now I have absolutely no expectation for it to go anywhere significant.  Any person that loves games and can talk to themselves for hours would like to make a living being a Youtuber, or whatever they call Twitch people.  But I know very well that it's an unrealistic goa...

I'm going to go ahead and call it because there's no way I'm hitting 50k by Saturday.  I'm currently sitting on 17,500.  I gave up on November 12th. And I'll tell you why. -I'm Not a Word Vomiter- Never have been, never will. I hate vomiting out words without going through and editing as I go along.  It slows things down by the time you start reaching 10k words. But I did manage to push through that because I was excited to write.  I wanted to just crank out the story and go back and edit later.  I wanted to.  But when I tripped and failed to make the daily word count my dislike for word vomiting returned.  I realized I was about 5k words away from reaching the end of what I had planned for my novel and suddenly wouldn't know where to go from there. -I Didn't Quit, I Just Shifted My Focus- At that point, I decided to change my goals for NaNoWriMo.  What I had wanted from NaNo all along was just to finish book one of my novel, Blood Knigh...