Hello dear audience and readers,

It is a pleasure to provide an article to ‘Authors’ Lounge’ on my new book just released, “A Glade of Elves”.

This is a short tale where someone from our world who transports, through a portal from Earth used for viewing and traveling, to a world that is strangely populated by Elves, Humans, Orcs, and a not so well know group of Panthians.

This person, Glen, appears like a magical Wizard to the Elves that find him due to the technology he has that seems like magic to the Elves. And they call him that, Wizard Glen.

The main character ‘Zoe’ is an Elve and ‘Lead’ of her guard in the ‘Glade’ where they find Glen, and she enlists her people to help this Wizard Glen to rescue his people kidnapped from his world, which is our world – Earth, and held captive in their world of ‘Pan’ by an evil renegade Mage Elve by the name of Geanna.

Glen sees they are indeed magical for having no technology of any kind. But they see his ability as magical too, and almost equal to theirs. Together they journey on a quest to save Glen’s people kidnapped from Earth.

A magical battle and rescue operation takes place.

The story is fast paced and short. It is a novelette. But the way I wrote it, it feels epic. I will make this into an audio book a bit later too. So do look for that.

Audio is an interesting market and not well understood. I do hope to do some more great work there.

I am retired, and Frank LaCroix is a handle (pen name). Writing is fun to do. I have studied it for a long time and the best advice I can give to a new aspiring author is to follow Ray Bradbury’s advice, “Learn to write short stories well first before you try to write a novel or something much longer than a short story.”

Ray wrote a lot of short stories and several novels. But he wrote lots of short work first and still did many years later.

I like the novelette. This is longer than a short story. And it is indeed a novel, though a short one. It can have all the elements a novel can have.

I write short for a reason. They are fast and engaging and translate into a great audio book that can range from thirty minutes to one and a half hours of listening.

Film (movie, TV episodes, etc) shoot for that viewing length (and is why books are abridged to only reveal the exciting parts in the film. Film is a passive experience for the audience. I think audio should do the same thing. So that is what I do and is the way I write too, this way.

Reading is an active experience. You have to scan the words, interpret them, and digest them in your mind. The narrator is you as you read the eBook and figure things out and wonder at the story. You can choose to read over the parts that seem slow or read them quickly. You are in control of the story a bit.

In audio (or film), you can’t do that. And this is why I find the standard eBook a bit slow and the effect is not the same as if it were read, when it is heard (or narrated if you will).

So I write to be read, as well as the experience of audio being a great audio movie in your mind as you listen.

I love to write for the middle grade level and on up. All can read my work. I love writing in Science Fiction and Fantasy. ‘A Glade of Elves’ is my first fantasy, though not my first work.

I hope you enjoy my book and my work to come.

Best regards,

Frank LaCroix