Charles Yallowitz has been one of my blogging buddies for several years. He’s quite an interesting fellow, and you can learn a lot about him from his blog. He has the writing energy of ten people, and this has resulted in fifteen (yes, fifteen) books in the Legends of Windemere series. His prodigious determination in writing has been in inspiration when I’m flagging.
His biography tells us this about him:
Charles was born, raised and educated in New York. He then spent a few years in Florida, but his fear of alligators moved him back to the Empire State.
He has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you, and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.
When he isn’t writing, he loves to cook or go on on whatever adventure his son has planned for the day. Legends of Windemere is his first series, but it certainly won’t be his last.
Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age is the final book of in this fantasy adventure series, which comes after 15 volumes and 19 years. Needless to day, they’ve been a big part of his life!
I had some questions for him.
What else have you devoted time to over the years?
This is actually a tougher question than it seems because when I’m an author and a stay-at-home parent. If I’m not working on my stories, I’m either with my son or doing stuff around the house. The latter is rather tedious, but I do enjoy cooking. Not enough that I would take classes and make a backup career of it. It’s very much like writing where you take all of these parts to make a whole. Being the house cook also means I don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner and keep asking until it ends up being whatever can be defrosted quickly. My best dishes are Penn with homemade vodka sauce, bourbon chicken, and kielbasa marinated in beer and horseradish for two days. I should probably put grilled cheese and Mac & Cheese on there because my son won’t stray very far from those dishes. At least I can get him to eat vegetables with his dinner and we’re having trouble keeping enough bananas in the house to keep the monkey happy.
Honestly, this might be a cop out for the subject, but my favorite thing of all is to spend time with my son. Most of the other things I enjoy end up getting tied into what I do with him. He’s into superheroes now, so we’ve watched the Justice League animated series from the 2000’s and we play with superhero Legos. My son has taken to the more obscure characters too like Black Canary, Firestorm, and Martian Manhunter. Only one of those comes in Lego form, so the others have to be acted out. As long as I’m not told to rest on the couch until I’m needed to be a sidekick or villain. The bulk of my Lego fun comes from putting the sets together in the first place since I’m not really allowed to touch them afterwards. His rules and I’d rather not get blamed for breaking one and unleashing a dramatic ‘everything is ruined’ speech while I hunt for the instruction manual.
Aside from superheroes, my son and I both love animals. He watches a lot of Wild Kratts and Planet Earth II when he eats his meals. I’m a member at the Bronx Zoo, so I get him a free shirt every year when I renew and this is always a moment of excited because he wants to know what animal he will get. We’ve had red panda, komodo dragon, and the recent one is a snow leopard silhouette. Unfortunately, we can’t always get out to the zoo because it’s a trip and the bridge is expensive. The smaller one is tough too because parking runs out really fast, so we have to leave early. Thankfully, we live on Long Island and there are plenty of preserves that we can go to. Some have animals in the central building, but most are just walking around a forest or the shoreline. My son won’t get upset if we see nothing special since he could be excited to see a squirrel or a gull. Really hope he maintains that mentality for as long as possible because cynicism can be quite crushing.
What else fills your time?
Everything else I’m into is rather tame like action movies, manga, and anime. I’ve gravitated a lot more to the Japanese comics and cartoons as I got older because I find them to be better stories. Compared to most American stuff, they usually aim for an ending, so it won’t be the same hero and villain fighting for the hundredth time over another bank robbery. Don’t get me wrong because I do enjoy the American stuff. I’ve just hit a point in my life where I like working on things that have endings. To not see a light at the end of the tunnel makes me think that I’ll be reading it forever and eventually get bored. This is another reason why I make sure have an ending in mind for all of my stories. Legends of Windemere took a lot of influence from manga and anime in regard to having a finale in sight and focusing on one group of characters that will be there to the end. Although, the other reason is because my free time is limited and a short series of books or episodes is easier to fit in than something that requires years of dedication. Yeah, my favorite stuff tends to be simplistic and relaxing because I work so hard on my writing.
Please feel free to check out Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age or help spread the word to those who love fantasy adventures. Enjoy the adventure.
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Charles can be found
On his website: http://www.charleseyallowitz.com/
On his blog: https://legendsofwindemere.com
On twitter: @cyallowitz
And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CharlesYallowitz/
You can find Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age and the rest of the Legends on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-E-Yallowitz/e/B00AX1MSQA
I also love the cover artwork by Jason Pederson – amazing!
Thanks for sharing such a nice interview. Charles, it was nice to learn more about you. It sounds like you and your son have great times together. And wow, you can whip up some great meals!
Congrats on the conclusion to your series. It’s great to see Warlord of the Forgotten Age getting such great exposure.
Thanks for stopping by, MC!
Wonderful interview, Charles and Noelle! 🙂 Sharing…
Thanks, Bette!
I think it is lovely that Charles is stay at home and has such a happy relationship with his son.
I, too, think that is special, Robbie. Mu husband and I both worked while our kids were growing up. I’m sure we missed a lot.