(Not so) Brief Update

Don't worry; the Violence in Fantasy Writing Part 2 blog will be here soon enough, as will my review of my friend's album. However, I straightened some things out with regards to my writing and I thought I'd share.

I have goals set for May and June, and they are as follows:

May
Finish A Straight Cut
Edit and send out queries for Half
Give Half to a limited Alpha run (while queries are out, probably)
Edit and prepare queries for Death's Aria
Plan Quarter (Half sequel; almost done with that already!)
Plan chapter outline for middle-grade novel


June
Write Dapper Lycanthropies Time Travel to Ancient Egypt and Save History (or whatever it ends up being called) in two weeks
Write Quarter in another two weeks


More Details
Editing Death's Aria is obviously the biggest thing in store for May, as A Straight Cut probably only has 20-30k left in it. I'm not stressing over wordcount for May I've decided; I already did for both March and April, and I have more important things to do (like fix my currently finished novels and submit them to meet my yearly goals slash actually move on this "career" thing).

After re-reading Half I've decided I actually think it turned out decent enough to submit to people. Is it perfect? No. But to be honest my strength as an editor is (in my opinion) overshadowed by my strength to write decent first drafts, so after a clean-up I'm sending it to every paranormal/urban fantasy person I know. Also: if Half does not get picked up, I will Kindle publish it. Despite it being silly I like it too much to just let it die (like what is currently happening to the Steelgods series).

I will need Alphas for the book. However, this is a very "pulpy" novel. Think the Monster Hunter International books or the first Dresden Files novels. It is intended as a fun ride and, while I'd love for it to be a refined fun ride, it's clearly seated in the less... prestigious realms of literature.

I'm also preparing for the GRE which I take the last weekend of May, which is right over CONduit. So I won't be at CONduit. Sad day. And I'll have to do that in May too.

June should be easier in theory. Quarter is practically sorted out already. I don't have an outline but I have the main plot points and twists, which is more than I had for Half and it ended up ok. We'll also be doing my middle-grade novel about time-travelling werewolves who are super British and go to Egypt, which will be short so two weeks should be feasible. I am going to a Jenkins family reunion so this isn't an easy goal at all, but as a plus I'll be surrounded by kids of the intended demographic for the werewolf book, so maybe I'll get some early Alphas. :P

Also both Quarter and Dapper Werewolves are books I just really want to write. To be honest, while I've been excited about ideas before (like A Straight Cut) I haven't really gotten sucked into a story on a personal level on a while. Death's Aria did a decent enough job, but the difference in my writing (both personally and the actual words on the page) between A Straight Cut and Half point clearly to the fact that I should be loving what I write more. So I'm going to write awesome stuff that appeals to me, even if it isn't high brow or whatever.

Not that I hate A Straight Cut (I FINALLY figured a bunch of stuff about it out, so the underarching story is really awesome now) but it isn't sticking. Also I know I have to almost completely rewrite the first 2/3rds (or do very heavy edits) before I can even show it to anybody, which is discouraging.

So that's my personal update that you probably don't care about. It works for me because it clears my head and now I have goals. So expect novel #10 (A Straight Cut) by end of May, and than a blitz for #11 and #12 in whatever order come June.

Revising, finishing, all that jazz

A Straight Cut's third act draws from this awesome book

So I finished plotting A Straight Cut, which actually involved completely reworking the third act. My main issue with the novel currently (and will need to be fixed in an edit before going out to Alphas) is the lack of direction for the first 2/3rds of the novel. While it's been fun to have characters interact and putter around in the world I've made, the underlying plot has been shrouded in secrecy, making it boring. Luckily Act 3 will ramp things up a bit, but it really needs a stronger first two acts in order for the third act to both make sense and actually be meaningful. 

Which means heavy editing, but we aren't worrying about that now. Now I just need to finish this dumb thing.

In other news, I restructured how Death's Aria will play out, which mostly involved moving key scenes to make the final confrontation stronger and more significant. The biggest complaint from Alphas was that the ending confrontation felt weak. Generally the results of it were fine, but the actual scene itself and the events leading up to it were stagnating after such a strong second act. I've relocated one of the strong second act scenes (clever readers might guess what I'm referring to) towards the end of the book, making the final conflict much more character driven. This also allows me to further develop the characters up to that point and fix lots of the third act's pacing issues, which will be good.

The other major change is Aria's character. While many readers felt they warmed up to her by the end, others were so disgusted with her at first they couldn't get over that initial first impression and despised her throughout. I'm reworking her so that she is more likeable at the beginning but still seriously flawed, which makes her less of a jerk who has a social problem and more of someone trying to do better...who has social problems. This shouldn't change the character enough to break my initial idea, but I think it will make her much more sympathetic. 

All this is going to require a hefty amount of editing, so I'm hoping to burn through A Straight Cut quickly so that I can move on to Death's Aria and start submitting. We'll see!

I'm also mad that I scheduled the GRE over CONduit without knowing it, and they think it's acceptable to charge freaking $50 to reschedule. Seriously? For a test I'm taking on a computer that probably is proctored by one person you aren't paying enough for? Besides, we all know you just have a pool of these SAT questions you draw from to make tests. How much could it possibly cost? Monopoly at its finest. 

Anyway, that's it from me. I have a review of a friend's album coming up within the next little bit, so keep an eye out for that!

Week in Review for 2/5/2012 - 2/11/2012

This picture is awesome. 

I forgot to do Week in Review last week! Whoops! I always remember on my stupid video game blog, but for some reason I space it for this one. Maybe it's because that means I have to blog 3+ times (one review for VG blog, one week in review for VG blog, one week in review for this blog) and after about the second one I'm pretty much burned. Not to mention I write at least 2k a day on top of this, have writing group Sundays (though it was off this sunday) and all other life junk. So, you know. I suck. Sorry.

Last Sunday we critiqued Death's Aria, and I got a ton of helpful information out of it. The book certainly has its share of issues I've gotta tackle, but as a whole I'm fairly confident. I'm not yet excited about fixing this thing, but that's why I'm writing something else first. The goal is to have Death's Aria ready to go out by May at the latest, and then start submitting like a crazy person to everybody on the planet. So all agents and editors who read this blog (all zero of you), beware: IT'S COMING.

I also did good with A Straight Cut this week, which I'm liking more and more. It's a first person book, and a big problem I have with first person books (writing them, anyway) is giving our viewpoint character a legit personality. I thought up a lot of things this week to help Timothy actually be interesting (things that'll have to be edited back into the first couple chapters), but I'm starting to think he's getting a bit better. It's hard, but if you don't stretch you never learn, right?

Anyway, here's what I did this week.

Words Written: 15,671
Daily Wordcount Average: 2,239
Current Project: A Straight Cut
Next Project: Death's Aria edits, probably another novella

I'm also still writing every single day. Which I realize isn't impressive now since it's only March, but when October rolls around and I've written every day of the year, we'll see who is laughin' then!

Also edits don't count as new words writing, unless I actually do straight rewrites, so I'll probably need to figure out something to write while I'm doing Death's Aria edits. Time to devise some awful fanfiction of my own books again...or steal Jason's mansion house and write my own awful book set in his world. It's not like he actually reads this blog and would know it was coming...

Anyway, see you next week!

First Sentence/First Chapter Exercises

So here's a fun writing exercise you can try if you are feeling like you don't know what project to do next or just feel like you have a bunch of ideas bottled up, waiting to get out, but don't know how to best address them.

For this, you have two options. You can do a first chapter exercise (this is for when you have too many ideas), or a first sentence exercise (when you don't have enough). For both of these, doing them with a writing group all together makes it more fun, though it isn't necessary.

First Chapter Exercise is simple. Simply sit down and write a prologue or first chapter. Often the first thing I think of when I'm writing a book, after a premise, is how awesome a first chapter will be. So sit down one afternoon and write a couple! You have no commitments to these works; you are just trying to see if anything good comes from it.

I did this a year ago. From it I wrote a teen vampire first chapter, a chapter about a modern-day punk Harry Potter ripoff, a chapter about dogs vs cats but written like an overdrawn epic fantasy, and a story about a man called the Ragged One who dragged a sword across a desert world until the line in the sands connected.

If that last one sounds a bit familiar, it's because it was the direct inspiration for my current WIP, A Straight Cut. It was just a hop and skip from this line that covered the entire wasted earth to a canyon somehow forming from it, and making a world where this Ragged One is a being of mythology who split the earth open, allowing them to all live inside. This prologue chapter will not be in the actual book, but I still read it from time to time to draw inspiration.

Once you have all your chapters done, you can either decide to elaborate on the one you like best, or put them all aside. I put all mine aside for about a year and a half before picking Canyon Story back up.

First Sentence Exercises are more common. They also work better if someone picks a sentence for you. The idea is simple: You have a first sentence, and your goal is to write a first chapter based on it. For me, no planing was allowed; I went with whatever first came to mind. For others, they might have to plan a little before jumping headlong into it.

This is especially fun if you have a writing group, and give everybody an hour to write, and after you are finished you all compare the differences between what you gleaned from that first sentence. It's pretty fun!

I have a particular fondness for these because the entire Steelgods story started with a first sentence: "I never minded the Peacemakers, until they tried to kill me." Death's Aria's first sentence (which has since been changed) was originally a first sentence exercise that never got workshopped ("Tiasa wove across the strings or her violin as Death looked on, enjoying the melody." from the file "Violin Death Girl.docx"). I got a lot of other garbage ideas from this, like a Dresden Files knockoff and some other awful attempts, but as a whole they are great for getting creative juices flowing.




So try 'em out! You never know what you'll find buried inside that head of yours! 
 

100,000 words is a lot of words

What a hi-larious pun

Despite being really, really sick all day (I slept most of the day, and the times when I was awake were spent blowing my nose, hacking, wishing I was dead, or all of the above) I actually managed to do a lot of planning for the next part of The Ashen Destroyer (which happens when you spend most of the day rotating between lying on the couch, lying on the loveseat, lying on the recliner, and then repeating the cycle). So when I sat down to write tonight, I was going to just burn out my minimum of 500 and call it good, but instead I really got into the story (I think that hitting around 2,000 is my breaking point; after that it's really easy to just keep going) and churned out only a couple words shy of 5,000. Which is impressive in its own right (though it doesn't beat Death's Aria's 7200 words on January 28, or Where Gods and Mortal's Dance killer book-finishing blitz of doom that was around 15,000 words in a day), but what I feel is more important is the landmark goal it surpassed.

I made a goal at the beginning of the year to write every day, no matter what, in 2012. Even in this month and a half since then, it hasn't been easy. I've often been really busy, gone to cons, gotten sick, had other plans (I also will write one game review a day minimum, which takes time as well), and more, but I kept at it. I haven't missed a day yet, and my current daily average is ~2,100 words for the year.

The point of this is that, as of tonight, I have written a total of 100,000 new words in 2012. This is not counting any words on my game reviews blog, which I'd bet would add at least 10-20k to that number (I should total those up sometime, just for fun). This also doesn't count any editing that wasn't complete rewriting (aka, I counted rewriting/merging three chapters in Death's Aria, but didn't count the paragraph by paragraph changes I made when editing the rest of it). So yeah, in 47 days I wrote 100,000 words. Not too shabby.

Of course this is only the start. According to my brilliant math skills, if I keep up at this pace I'll churn out ~ 780,000 words in 2012. This beats my 2011 estimate of between 500,000 and 600,000 words (depending on how much of the Steelgods edit I count) which means I'm improving so we'll take it (assuming I can keep this up). My writing word count hasn't been as consistant this year as it was last year, with last year me running about 2000 words a day every day, while now it usually goes from between 1000-1500 every day followed by a massive spike of 5000-6000. So we'll see if I can smooth that out a little (aka write 5000 words every day! Yeah, that isn't going to happen unless I quit my job).

Since this is already a self indulgent post, I'm going to toot my own horn just a little more: initial alpha readers of Death's Aria are starting to give back feedback, and the consensus has been very positive. Granted, none of them are in my current writing group, who I'm certain will tear the whole thing to shreds, but having people say it's their favorite out of all my books is encouraging. As I said before, I wrote it after listening to the pigeon-holed Writing Excuses podcast in an attempt to mix up genres a little, and I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. Current goal is to get feedback sometime early March, run some hard edits in March (while writing A Straight Cut) and then submit it in April. Hopefully that works as planned.

That's it from me, fellas. Thanks for tolerating me talking about myself for a whole blog post. :D

Edits, Side-Stories, Fun Times

I survived "Hell Week" (aka last week) fully intact, and with a lot of productivity to boot. I wrote 6k on my new short-story-now-novella The Ashen Destroyer, churned out 15 reviews on my video game blog, worked 6+ hours a day except the day I spent the whole time in Salt Lake at my internship, figured out what I was going to do for grad school, started up writing group meetings again, and edited 50% of Death's Aria, which included rewriting/condensing the entire first 1/4 of the novel. So hey, it was a reasonably productive week. Now I'm ready for the lazy one, where I only work two days this entire week and am going to LTUE. Yay!

The Ashen Destroyer was finally what made me buckle down and write an Effulgent Corruption timeline, since the novella takes place eight years before the start of the book and twenty years before the bulk of the novel. Though I'm intentionally placing it in a city that was not visited during the main book, there are still a few cameos planned, as well as a few interesting facts that will be fun to write. I'm writing this thing solely for my own personal pleasure: Rook was my favorite character to write in Effulgent Corruption, and I felt that Minerva never really got enough screen time for being another Corrupter. Following her when she was 14 and explaining how she both got her title (The Ashen Destroyer) as well as how she ended up working for Brutus is explained in this side story, so that'll be a fun warm-down. Even if it might end up being 50-60k.

Death's Aria has had some pretty hefty cuts. I lopped off 4-5 scenes at the start of the story, and have seriously decreased several others further on. I've been just basically tightening the story and fixing consistencies overall, rather than doing a severe word-cut (that can happen later) so I can get it out to writing group this week.

Speaking of writing group, we have a massive amount of dudes (and ladies) in our group now, which is pretty good. We've infused it with some much needed new blood, so hopefully everything will move smoothly from here on out.

That's all on my end. Expect some updates for both The Ashen Destroyer and Death's Aria shortly!

And now, fun times with Lantuna, the dead god in Minerva's head. There will be no spoilers for the main book in this novella.

“You are my daughter now.” Minerva could hear the smile in Lantuna’s voice. “Come now, Corrupt him. You know you like the feeling. It’s the same feeling you have when you see Rook only more…intense.”

“Shut up.” Minerva ordered, opening her eyes and looking down at the man. She bit her lip, then slowly eased off his back.

“What are you doing?” Whatever softness had permeated Lantuna’s voice was gone in an instant. “Corrupt him!”

“I’m going to get that information.” Minerva said slowly, wiping the dirk off on her bloodstained shirt and putting it back in its sheath as she ignored Lantuna. “Then I’m going to go to Reneta. You’d better not be here when I leave the camp.”

“You will kill him!” Lantuna was starting to get hysterical; Minerva hated it when she acted like this. “I command you!”

“I…you are sparing me?” The man sputtered. Minerva frowned.

“If you are out here when I’m done digging, then it’ll probably change my mind.”

“But I…I can’t even walk!”

“Then you’d better start crawling.” Minerva stepped over him, heading into the center of camp.

Death's Aria is finished

I am pleased to report that book #8, Death's Aria is FINISHED!


Yay! Party time!

Final word count: 95,756 words

As usual, here's the magic Wordle, which crashes most of my web browsers but I have outsmarted it (this time)!

Once again, I use the words "back," "just," and "like" more than I probably should

For a book about Death, his name is pretty small in there. I guess it's easy to see who the main characters are, I guess.

So...fun stats time I guess? Unfortunately, I only started tracking stats starting in January, so here are those (based on January):

Words written in January: 63,815
Average words a day: 2,200
Average words an hour: 2,148
Total Time in January: 29.7 hours
Daily time average: 1.024 hours (I should really bump this up)
Days passed total since start: 60 days
Days spent actually writing: 37 days (took most of December off)


And here is some random book stats nobody cares about

Amount of Terry Pratchett I ripped off: Hopefully not too much
Crappy, rushed romances: NONE! (I've been trying to work on this...)
Number of big nasty beasties: Four
Number of big infodumps I'll need to trim: Two
Chapters at the beginning I'll be editing right now: Four - Five
Characters in this book I sort of don't like in their current state: One
Paradise Seekers references: One (there's one in Steelgods as well, if you've read both you might have caught it, but this one is more blatant)
Amount of screentime Death actually gets: Not a lot (some at the beginning and some at the end)
Number of violin songs I had to look up on youtube as research: Ten
Number of times I had to ask my violinist brother for advice: Once


And lastly, this book (which I've been really quiet regarding the details about both on here and in my writing group, which is weird) is an urban/epic fantasy hybrid, with emphasis on the "urban" though one would argue it gets more epic at about the half-way point. This is my first attempt at YA urban fantasy, inspired by the Writing Excuses episode about not selling yourself short by sticking to just one genre.

Speaking of which, this was more of a pet project than something I planned a lot for, since I (I've told this story on my blog before) found a .docx file on my computer titled "Violin girl," that only had one sentence in it about Death's daughter playing the violin for him. From it spawned this whole story, so that's pretty cool I guess.

So now...current plans!


This week is going to be super busy. I work Monday-Saturday for six hours each day, with Thursday off but on Thursday I'm going to to Salt Lake for an internship all day. So basically this week is going to be the week from hell (good thing I finished the book today).

Since I still intend on writing at least 250 words a day, even between projects, I'm going to be editing the first bit of Death's Aria this week, then setting it aside (or giving it to insistant alpha readers). Following which I will begin working on Death And Doom Project 2012 (tm): Editing Effulgent Corruption. However, to be certain my word count still exists, I will be writing several short side stories starring specific characters from the novel, so that I both get words out and am still writing in the world I'll be editing in. The first is about Minerva, the only female Corrupter in Effulgent Corruption, and these will be totally discovery writing so it should be interesting/awful once it's finished.

That's it from me. Eight books down, who knows how many to go before I finally sell one. I have high hopes with this one (it's more "marketable" than my others), so we'll see how it all turns out. Thanks for reading!

Breaking viewpoint to make artificial suspense

Pic Unrelated

My wife is an avid reader of just about everything (she reads lots more than I do), and lots of time I get to hear comments on the books she is reading. Last night after finishing a particular young adult fantasy novel (which I will not name here), she turned to me and said, "Don't ever, in your books, make it so a viewpoint character has an amazing plan to save the day and then somehow doesn't tell the reader."

The general idea is that at some point in the book, our viewpoint character concocts a brilliant scheme to solve the problem. However, since the author doesn't want to spoil the surprise of that scheme ahead of time, the viewpoint character somehow doesn't think about the details of the plan at all until it is taking place. Even when it is being executed, he or she doesn't bother thinking a single step ahead (at least, not where the reader can see) in order to keep the suspense up.

This is far more common than you'd think, which is stupid because I think it's crap.

I can understand sometimes breaking viewpoint for the sake of the story. It's jarring, and technically "bad" writing, but sometimes a scene demands it. But basically blocking the reader out of a certain area of a character's mind simply to build fake suspense? That's just absurd.

There are ways to pull it off. If a character says something like "I have a great plan!" and then you cut scene to when they are actually pulling off the plan, a reader might be willing to suspend their disbelief and admit the viewpoint character might have discussed it extensively off camera. However, the longer time has passed between the concocting of the plan and the actual execution, the thinner my disbelief is spread. It's cheap, and it happens quite a bit in YA books. So stop it.

#

On a completely unrelated note, Death's Aria is almost finished! Yay! I figured I have about six chapters left (we are going to say 6-8, giving my need to be wordy) before we can close the book on this one (hur hur hur). I'm excited to see it resolve, and have added a few twists that even my wife doesn't know about (mwahaha), so here's hoping it all fits together wonderfully.

And after re-reading the first chapters they aren't as bad as I remembered, but I might just have rose-tinted glasses. They still need some work, which will happen after I finish the book, but I'm going to try and get it out to alphas sometime next month.

And that was all he wrote.

The end comes

The book is coming to a close. Which means I start killing. 

So I just finished writing what is essentially the biggest climax in the novel (and it isn't the last one...fancy that) and arguably the most major hurdle before the end. And you know what? It feels good.

I haven't finished a book since August, which is actually pretty much par for the coarse with my writing. For some reason, from January - September I can usually write every single day, but when we hit the first half of the winter months my brain totally shuts off.

I'm pretty sure it's because the weather is crappy and makes it so I can't write outside. Thanks a lot, Utah.

Anyway, the point is that we are on the downward slope to finishing book numero ocho (that's "number eight" for the English folk). This one had a bit of a rough start, with me writing basically just a few chapters in December before dropping it due to the holidays, but I've been writing frequently and my daily word count has been steadily increasing, so I think we are on a good role here.

Which also means this is about the time I start figuring out what my next book is. Uh oh.

I secretly want to write a sequel to Death's Aria, but I know that's the lazy way out. Sequels are (for me anyway) much easier to write than first novels. Your characters are already established, you usually have some pre-defined conflicts so you can be light on the infodumping, and it's like going back to an old friend. It's fun, but not what I'm going to do. Death's Aria is very much a standalone novel with a hefty amount of sequel potential, but I will be holding off until it (or if it) sells.

I also have to decide if my next book will be YA or Adult. I have (as previously counted over Gchat by a friend) 21 options available, either follow-ups to previous books, rewrites, new ideas, or edits. Now I just get to pick one and hope it's the one I want. Naught But Glass is a good idea, but then wasn't the time for it (and I'm not sure if now is the time for it, either). Death's Aria ended up going much better, but we'll see if it's been long enough since Effulgent Corruption for another massive epic fantasy novel.

Expect a full report when I finish Death's Aria. I'm continuing to do daily reviews on my video game blog, as well as starting a Sunday "weekly roundup." Also, if you like video games and have a game you want me to review, feel free to post a request. I'd be more than happy to blather my opinions all over my blog for ya.

On resolution

I'm technically nearing the end of Death's Aria. We've had our major battle, our character-defining conflict, and are in the process of resolving the aftermath of said conflict. That basically means we are at the middle of the Third Act, and should be tying everything off shortly.

I don't wanna.

I have a strange desire to make this book longer, to add one more conflict between the one that just ended and the final one. It's some weird idea I'm having that the book isn't "exciting" enough, when really the balance (if you just look at words dedicated to action vs not) is just fine. I don't really know why; the book is nearing 70k, and my estimate for the resolution will probably throw another 20k on there, which puts us at 90k (which is long for a YA novel). But something seems...missing, if I don't lengthen it. Maybe it's because I'm used to writing epic fantasy. Maybe it's because Gears of Anbar was stupid long for its genre. Who knows.

At any rate, we are reaching the end. My goal is to finish Death's Aria by the end of January. I have 11 days left, and if I push it I should be just fine. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Not much of an update; I've been continuing my two reviews a day on Nathan vs Video Games, as well as writing every day and doing life, so I've actually been quite busy. It's a good thing.

Here's an attempt at a not-spoiler segment.

“Simon,” Aria repeated, “remember what you said about the St. Matthew’s Passion? How you wanted to sing it? How did it go again? Maybe I can hum it for you.”

Simon gave a whimper; whether it was in response to Aria or his situation she didn’t know. Aria drew in a breath, her shoulders aching and chest burning, and started to hum the tune.

Blog Resurrection

So you may have remembered the ill-fated Backlog Blog that I started up a while back in some attempt to blog more about video games and beat all the tons I have.

Needless to say, since then I've gotten a billion more retro games and not made any progress on my backlog. Brilliant, I know.

But you'll be pleased to know I've revived the blog as Nathan vs Video Games, with a new link and a new layout that doesn't look like some ghetto thing from the early 2000s. For now I will be focusing almost entirely on video game reviews, with a goal of writing one review every day this year (in addition to actually writing fiction every day this year) until I run out of games. I will be primarily doing modern games (PS2 onward), but every Wednesday I will be doing a Retro game review.

If you have any requests for reviews, let me know. I'm going to try and burn through my entire Xbox 360 library of games I've beaten, which should give me a hefty amount of content, but I'm also willing to try new games. I also will review games as I beat them (like today's review of Rayman: Origins) so that the reviews will be fresh.

I will also admit the reviews might not be the most exciting things to start with, but I'm certain my annoying and snarky attitude will pull through on my reviews eventually. Just wait until I review games I hate; that should prove interesting.

On the writing front, I'm still churning out words every day. I found you can stream Series 9 of Q.I. over the internet (hooray!) so my wife and I have something to watch again. After that we are considering taking the plunge into Dr. Who, though I'm not so certain I'm ready for it.

So I can keep pretending this is a writing blog, here's a bit from Death's Aria.

“Eat.” He [Greder] told Aria. “Though you won’t feel hunger in our world, that doesn’t mean your body no longer requires sustenance to survive.”

“So I did get the better end of the deal,” Simon chuckled, “seeing as there’s no way I can die again.”

“No,” Greder leaned back in his chair, “for you, spirit, it will just help stave it off.”

“Stave what off? Hunger?”

“No.”

Simon blinked, opening his mouth to ask the obvious question and then stopped. He finished his bread in silence.

Happy Birthday to my wife!

My lovely wife's birthday is today! Yay! We are celebrating by eating greek food at our favorite greek place (which is also super cheap) and then visiting all the stores/restaurants that give you free stuff on your birthday and cleaning them out.

You can celebrate her birthday by visiting and following her blog! She updates every day and posts fun things to cook, play (either on your tv or on a table :P), and read. So go check it out.

I'll celebrate by posting a picture of ALL OUR PLUSHIES. THERE ARE LOTS.

If you can name what all of these are from, you are smart. Or you just read my wife's blog. 

In writing news, I am steadily writing every single day, though only about 1,500 every day. I'm trying to push myself back up to the usual 2,000 but it has proven oddly difficult; we'll see if I can manage it tonight. It's just this dumb book keeps hitting good stopping points every 1,500 words...thanks a lot, book.

And look, here's a bit from it because I haven't done that in a while and I need to pad this blog post. So here goes.

“Hey,” Aria said, knowing she couldn’t let the conversation die, for Simon’s sake. “You said you sang, right? And you wanted us to play a duet?”

“Yeah.”

“What song was it?”

Simon looked away from her, but it wasn’t because he was searching for unseen foes. Aria saw his ears turning red, the massive loss of his composure abnormal for him.

“Just a duet for violin and bass. Bach.”

“Which one?”

Simon shrugged. “You probably don’t know it.”

“Oh really? Try me.”

Simon gave her a sideways smile. “Seriously, it isn’t that well known.”

“Seriously yourself; don’t forget who you are talking too. I’m the creepy violin girl, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Simon rolled his shoulders, breathing in a sigh. “It was part of the St. Matthew Passion.”

“Which part?”

“You can’t possibly know all the parts; there’s like seventy or something.”

“Come on, just tell me.”

Simon sighed, defeated. “Fine. It was the Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder.”

Aria paused, processing the information. “The Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder.”

“Your accent is pretty awful, but yes.”

Aria blinked. “The aria.”

Simon flushed even redder. “Ah…yes.”

“So you were going to have Aria play an aria while you sung.”

“That was the plan.”

Aira couldn’t help herself; she started laughing.


- Death's Aria, Chapter some number in the teens

Steelgods, eBooks, more

As much as I think J. A. Konrath is kind of a massive jerk, there is no denying the man has made a crapton of money off his eBooks. As one of the early adapter of the Kindle market, he worked hard, got his name out there, wrote quality thrillers (and wrote consistently) and is now reaping massive amounts of rewards from it. Like I've said, I certainly respect him and it's totally awesome that he's pioneering this new way to write books, and the numbers can't be ignored (I'm just saying he has a tendency to be...blunt about his opinions).

My only beef with the whole "eBook Revolution" is the successful people still have a tendency to ignore the thousands of eBook writers (good writers, mind) that still sell next to no copies. It's easy to say "I'm successful, and look, here are two more people that are successful! So clearly this is the best option for everybody!" but what about all the other people who were taking it totally seriously, working on getting their name out there, and still didn't see more than a hint of success? It's easy to dismiss them as "oh, they didn't try hard enough" but the fact of the matter is that luck is still part of the equation. Just as it is with traditional publishing, luck on being accepted and selling a novel (and it doing well) is still prevalent in the eBook world. The only difference (and one of the appeals of eBooks, if you are the kind of person who likes this) is that your failures are completely your own in the eBook sense. With traditional publishing, you first have to gain approval of an agent, then approval of an editor, then (often times) that editor's boss, and then once it's out there you have to gain approval of the readers. The eBook scheme skips directly to the readers, but also puts all the work squarely on the author's shoulders. Also, not having a physical product can decrease the amount of exposure (a book will be on a bookstore shelf, even if it is hidden away in the back). You can't really schedule signings for an eBook (unless everybody brings their Kindles).

Granted, I know lots of the responsibility of representation still falls on the author when he/she is published by a publishing house, but at least you have a hint of a leg up.

Anyway, the point of this is how I personally will apply this to my business model. I've already put Paradise Seekers out and squarely fallen in the 98% of Kindle publishers: I didn't even make enough to pay off my cover artist. Steelgods is currently seeing the most success with agents and editors of all my work so far (I'd like to think it's a better book, but honestly I'm thinking its the query that's improved), but the looming stormcloud of impending rejection still hovers overhead. Also, unlike Paradise Seekers, Steelgods actually has a second book finished (and a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth plotted), so if Steelgods falls off the bus, it's taking the rest of the series with it (unless it gets a total re-structure and re-submission in the future).

The fact of the matter is that I write really fast (don't use this last month as an example; it has been on/off with regard to word count). Both Steelgods were single-month projects, and I intend to keep it that way with the rest of the series. Death's Aria, which was unfortunately positioned on the same month as Christmas and New Years, will be finished in two months at the very most. Paradise Seekers was also a one-month project, though I will admit it was more of an experiment than a "greatest hit" of what I've written.

If all the Kindle market needed to be successful was a blitz of book-flooding, I could probably pull that off. I've decided to design my own covers from here on out (I know Photoshop and Illustrator as well as the next person, and there are plenty of free public images just waiting to have a boatload of effects filters thrown over them) should I take the Kindle route, to cut back on costs. I'm still not sold on that being my main source of publishing (or if I'm even going to go back to Kindle publishing), but it's interesting considering it.

That's it for now. Merry Christmas and all that, and have a good 2012. Maybe I'll make a New Years Resolution post. Maybe not.

When Infodumps Go Right

This was the second image I found when I Googled "infodump." In retrospect, I'm very grateful SafeSearch was on. 

Infodumps. We all know what they are (but here's an infodump about infodumps anyway). Basically, it's when somebody in the story (either the narrator, another character, or the main character him/herself) buckles down and blabs about everything the reader needs to know. I put emphasis on reader here because a common stigma (and problem) with infodumps is they dump stuff the characters already know. Essentially, it's a paragraph, chapter, or section that focuses on explaining things that will need to be known in order for the rest of the book to progress. Usually this entails a bit of foreshadowing, a lot of expository dialogue, and loads of text while people don't do things.

A classic example is the chapter The Council of Elrond from The Lord of the Rings. Basically, Tolkien needed his readers to be up to speed on the world's events, the significance of the ring, and the exact details regarding the quest. Unlike the movies, The Fellowship of the Ring didn't start with the backstory regarding Sauron getting his finger cut off and the importance of the ring of power. While Gandalf does provide a bit of information to Frodo back in Hobbiton, it's more of a mini-infodump to tide him over until he's in Rivendell and can get the whole thing.

Growing up I hated this chapter, especially on re-reads. I already knew everything Elrond was saying, and the chapter is really really long. There is very little in terms of actual story progression: basically we are getting a history lesson that is capped off by finally saying what everybody should do. You'll note that in the movie (as mentioned above) they essentially broke this scene into two pieces: gave the history as a prologue, explained what needed to be done during the actual scene. This helped the movie flow faster.

So how do we "fix" infodumps? Well, there's several ways. The first is to just forego them completely. A clever enough writer can explain everything the reader needs to know about their world, characters, and magic through scenes and dialogue. This way the action keeps flowing without heavy explanation. The Way of Kings, despite being an incredibly wordy book, does this fantastically. The Name of the Wind, despite having several scenes set in schools and with instructors, never falls into the trap of straight infodumping: something is always happening that caused the infodump. It's that other trope scene we all love: where Luke is being trained by Obi-Wan or Yoda, and they are actually teaching the audience lots about the Force rather than just Luke.

It's worth noting, however, that doing this wrong can make your book extremely difficult to read. Many readers like having it told to them straight; it gives them the big picture and makes everything fall into place. Having to extrapolate everything from scenes and dialogue can be difficult, especially if you are trying to cater to a younger audience, so you might have to throw in some little, more concrete infodumps as a foundation for your explanations set through dialogue and scene.

The obvious trap to avoid (as I've said already) is to just spout information about your world for a chapter without anything interesting happening. Sometimes it's necessary, and if your world is interesting enough it's easier to forgive. If you are doing it as a long dialogue, having characters interject or ask questions can also keep the pacing and make it less of "storytime for the sake of the reader." This seems to be a common problem with new authors. You have this awesome world, awesome magic, and you are just dying to let that cat out of the bag. You've waited five chapters, dropping hints and subtle references, but now you can't hold out any longer. You explain everything in great detail, your awesome ideas and fantastic world down to the minute detail, and your audience all puts your book down and goes back to playing Skyrim.


Last point: determining what goes into an infodump. Eventually, no matter how good you are, you'll probably have to give in and explain some stuff eventually. Tolkien did it, so that means it's totally legit. What isn't legit is over-explaining, or giving too much information. As stated above: fantasy writers often are planners, with grandiose visions of worlds and magics and races and all sorts of things. It's hard to restrain yourself from just explaining everything at once (after all, you are doing an infodump anyway, what could it hurt? Right?). Don't. It's a universal rule to only tell characters (and the reader) exactly what they need to know right then, and then trickle down the rest of the details throughout. Provide the foundation for the house, and maybe a few walls, but don't furnish the whole thing in one go. Give only what is needed, and the rest will come throughout the rest of the story.

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The only reason I brought this up is I'm in the middle of an infodump chapter in Death's Aria. I usually hate writing these. I'm bored by infodumps, and so writing them is doubly painful. However, I'm really enjoying it this time around. Questions I've had about the world are being answered (this might be the fault of discovery writing, to be honest), a stage is being set for the rest of the novel, and after the infodump is dropped the second act kicks in full swing. It's an exciting time (especially since the characters dumping all this info are interesting), and it's (finally) getting me pumped to write this novel.

The first chapters are still awful, in case you were wondering, but we'll get back to those later.

Write on, write on.

I apologize for my blogging absence this past little while. Life, it seems, is insistent on keeping me busy. There are a few interesting things that have happened recently, however.

First off, I had a birthday! So I'm old now (or older). It was a pretty low key affair, with both my wife and I taking work off to basically hang out. I got the oil changed on the car (woo), had a good time just maxing and relaxing, and had a great homemade sweet n' sour chicken dinner.

As for presents, I got a copy of Gears of War 3, a buttload of Nutella, but the best present was this:

Aw yeah

My wife was researching older TVs because a while back I mentioned our retro games would probably play/look better on an older television than on our LCD. She looked it up and found Sony Trinitrons are unanimously the most popular older televisions for retro gamers. She was going to buy one online but their prices were a bit high ($50+), so we ended up going out and looking at thrift stores on my birthday just for fun. Lo and behold, in the first store we looked in we found the exact one my wife wanted, and for extremely cheap too. We snatched it upand brought it hope and you can see it there, attached to the NES, SNES, and N64. We borrowed some furniture that wasn't being used by our upstairs neighbors and set the whole thing up. And there it is! Now the writing room has an added bonus of being packed full of retro video games to further distract me from writing.

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Speaking of writing, Death's Aria is going decently. I've taken a few days off writing due to general stress and it being my birthday, but I'm getting back into the groove now. Not much to report other than that; it's going pretty quick and I'm shooting for a usual 2.5k/day goal.

That's  it from me for now. Expect a review of the Kindle Fire shortly. I jailbroke/rooted mine and put a bunch of emulators on it (as you can see, I already own the retro games, so I don't feel guilt about this :P) so I'm liking it a bit better now.

Killing Darlings: First Chapters

You gonna die. 

As any follower of my blog is probably aware, my biggest difficulty with editing is my attachment to the original manuscript. Often times I'm fully aware a manuscript has problems, but my sort of fervent devotion to what is obviously crap makes editing more obnoxious than it should be.

This blog post doesn't really have much to do with that. It has to do with awful first chapters.

Brandon Sanderson on Writing Excuses has frequently pointed out that the first chapters are what tend to go through the most rewrites. As a discovery writer, I can echo this sentiment whole-heartedly. First chapters are often considered the most important part of book with regard to hooking readers. After all, if you can't get 'em in the first 10 odd pages, a reader will probably set a book down for something more interesting. So as authors we sort of get attached to our first chapters, wanting to be certain they are the best ever, and so when we produce something that seems to fit the bill we latch on.

When, in truth, we should kill it.

I can honestly say that every book I've ever written has an awful first chapter, and some of those extend to first scenes or entire first parts. For me, I swear this issue seems compounded with the discovery writer issue: when I'm starting a new novel, I usually don't have either the flow of the book or the flow of the main character down when I start. That's something I have to figure out by writing it. How will this character's voice play out? How will he/she react? While I have the general sense of a character's motives, personality, etc. it hasn't really been tested.

Which means my first chapters usually end up like this:

1. The main character (and whatever side characters are around him/her) is completely two-dimensional, acting off my basic idea of how he/she should act. This makes everything they say completely predictable and utterly boring.

2. People act completely off the wall randomly because I've realized #1 and am trying my damndest to not let it happen again HOW IS THIS HAPPENING IN ANOTHER BOOK I'M GOING TO HAVE TO SCRAP ALL THESE CHAPTERS ARGH.


3. Usually the actual plot is fine and interesting, because I need my "hook," but the writing style, pacing, and characters are completely wrong.

4. They all slowly get refined down until a chapter or so (or more, if the book is particularly bad) in, until we finally hit the final product and everything is great for the rest of the book.

So...what does this mean for me? Well, it means I have some editing to do.

I have Gears with an alpha reader currently, and she is very good at pointing out the inconsistencies with Cevan (and everybody else's) character during the first portion of the book. This is also the only part of the book Writing Group 2.3 got through (pity, since I swear it gets better) and the reaction was similar: I had no idea what I was doing. There's plot there, it's interesting, but what the heck is going on with the characters? Who knows.

I'm also suffering this problem with Death's Aria, so much so that, even only five chapters in, I know that I'm going to have to change a good portion of the beginning. While I still refuse to go back and edit until a book is finished, it's like a looming dread over the rest of the book. The first part of a novel is so important and also really exciting. You meet these characters, who will be taken on crazy journeys only a few chapters later. You are introduced to clever subtleties of the world and get really excited to see where things are going. These really have to be good, or else your novel will suffer.

Like mine do. So watch out Gears, Death's Aria, and the rest of you. You may be safe for now, but we are going to "cut a bit off the top" at my next available opportunity. It might take one rewrite or it might take ten, but you are going to behave and you will like it!