Gary Richardson Author Blog

When I tell people that I had a book published last year they instinctively ask me the title. When I tell them its called The Ascension Legacy I don't stop...

When I tell people that I like to write the first thing I get asked is what about. to be honest, that is something of a tricky question to answer. For some authors, they tend to stick to one genre. Dan Brown is known for his thrillers like The Da Vinci Code. Stephen King is known for his suspense/horror books like Pet Sematary, Christine, and the like. Granted, these authors may put out works of other genres under different names, ahem Richard Bachman is really Stephen King, but when you think of a given author you can normally know what genre their books are going to fall into. This means that when I tell people about The Ascension Legacy series and how it is a high fantasy series involving elves, dwarves, and whatnot, people tend to think that everything I write must fall into that category but that's not really the case for me.

Grahame-Smith's written work expertly blended history and fiction. The book starts with Lincoln's own childhood and follows him through life, even up to his historic and unfortunate assassination. Readers really feel the level of research that was put into Lincoln's personal history to find elements of the real man's life that were best able to be intermixed with the fantasy of vampire slaying without losing the humanity, the true complexity, of the situation.

Writing is always a journey for me. I start off with a concept in mind but as I write that concept is always in a state of flux. That isn’t to say that my ideas are scattered and my writing is all over the place but rather I am always evaluating my work as I go. I can have a very firm idea for what I want to have happen but as I start putting that into writing the idea may feel cliche or boring so I change  elements of that passage. Of course, as I change elements of that passage then there are possible ramifications to what comes next or maybe to what came earlier that needs to be addressed.

The Ascension Legacy - Book 1: The Shamed Ranger was my first published work of fiction. When I finished writing the full series I decided to get serious about trying...

I don't know about anyone else but since the release of my first book The Ascension Legacy: The Shamed Ranger in the summer of 2020 (right in the middle of COVID shutdowns) I have fielded a bevy of calls and emails from different people/groups wanting to sell me services to increase my sales, reduce my costs, attract more followers, and even potential movies or tv shows based on my work. Being a self-published author, I try to accept these mostly unsolicited offers with a grain of salt and approach them with the caution and skepticism they deserve while trying to remain open to the potential hope that an offer is legit.

Sadly, it seems that most of them are little more than scams from what I can tell. I have had some give me an email address of XXX@gmail.com but claim that they are an established company with years of expertise in the industry. Really? You claim to be a legit company with dozens and dozens of clients but you use basic gmail as company email? If you can't spring for at least a legit looking email address then how do you expect to sell yourself as a season professional?