Round One of Edits Complete

Saturday, February 20 2010 - - 0 comments

After a marathon round of about three straight hours of editing I’m finally done with the first edit of The Desert War. There were a few really rough patches that I’m still not completely happy with, but I needed to go through the complete thing to get all the events and characters straight in my head before embarking on a more detailed edit. The Desert War will sit idle now for a few weeks while I began writing Oasis: The New Dawn.

Suspense, Surprise and Foreshadowing

Tuesday, February 16 2010 - - 1 comments

Jordan McCollum’s latest post on telegraphing struck a nerve with me, especially this statement: Make sure your readers have all the pieces your characters do—but beating your readers over the head with the coming surprise is a good way to ruin it I’ve been reading Brisingr to Devan, after having finished the previous two novels in the series, and one of my major issues with these books, aside from the fact that you can’t pronounce a single name, is the foreshadowing. Now, to be fair, the first book was much worse than Brisignr, but even this one lays on the foreshadowing to the point where predicting...

The Power of Dreams

Friday, February 12 2010 - - 0 comments

I am one of those (unusual) people who tend to remember a lot of their dreams. Actually, I think it is because I don’t sleep well and constantly wake up, hence remembering what I was dreaming. In addition to remembering my dreams, I also tend to have very vivid dreams. Sometimes they clearly correlate to something or another going on in my life, or something I was reading. Other times they are just plain bizzaro. So I woke and turned to Carol and said “I just had the weirdest dream.” at which point she rolled her eyes because I say that almost every day. This morning was different because after...

Oasis

Wednesday, February 10 2010 - - 0 comments

My next book is already underway (in my head). I’ve got the general storyline and I know at least a couple of the characters. As I work through the editing of The Desert War, I’ll slowly pickup steam on this one. I’m hoping that once I get started the entire first draft process runs a little faster than the last one, but we shall see. So what’s it about? Not telling just yet. I can’t say the working title is blowing me away. I’m thinking of something like Oasis: The Founding or possibly The First Sword-master… bah. Titles are hard. I usually don’t settle into one until I’ve written a significant...

Editing The Desert War

Tuesday, February 09 2010 - - 0 comments

I should probably write, “trying to edit”, because I keep running into a small but annoying problem. Reading a book to edit is very different than reading a book for pleasure. My problem, is that I will read a few paragraphs, intently editing and then suddenly realize that I’ve read four or five paragraphs purely for the pleasure. My own book is sucking me in. I can’t say that is such a bad thing, but it does make editing rather difficult. I would love to be able to say it’s because it is so well written, blah blah blah, but of course it isn’t. It’s the best I’ve done in fifteen years, but that...

Writers Group

Monday, February 08 2010 - - 0 comments

I’ve been thinking lately that I need to find a small writers group. I’ve been a part of Critters for a long time, but haven’t contributed in many years. My problem with Critters is that I spent more time critiquing than I did doing my own writing and the feedback cycle was always too long. I have one person who provides me with some great feedback, but she’s busy these days and hasn’t found the time. So now the question is how do I go about finding a writing group? My time is always screwy so in person meetings are almost certainly out of the question. I need something online, preferably, with...

Book Available Everywhere Except Amazon

Friday, February 05 2010 - - 0 comments

Now this is just plain funny .Macmillan took out an ad in the New York Times for a newly available book and noted that it is available everywhere except Amazon. http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/bookselling/macmillan_nyt_ad_available_at_booksellers_everywhere_except_amazon_151071.asp   Macmillan is getting far more aggressive in its response to Amazon. This whole thing is getting ridiculous. Amazon needs to relist the pulled books and finish their negotiation process without killing off all the authors who are bleeding out right now....

What’s On My Kindle

Wednesday, February 03 2010 - - 0 comments

This is going to be a regular posting where I put up some of the books that I’m reading or my wife is reading on our Kindle. Why you ask? Because I want to. Note that I’ve never read a novel with vampires, romance or romantic vampires… These are my, well mostly Carol’s, purchases for January....

Amazon Restores Macmillan Sales and Manages to Look Silly - [edit]

Monday, February 01 2010 - - 0 comments

So Amazon.com has finally come out with a statement that they will restore Macmillan books using the pricing model that Macmillan is insisting on. They did so in this terse letter . Go read the open letter by CEO John Sargent for comparison . Notice the difference? Check out Scalzi’s as always humorous take on the mess here . As of this morning, you still can’t purchase the Macmillan books I checked out. Amazon is really coming down hard on the authors here. They might be hurting the publisher, but it is the authors that take the brunt. Hey Amazon, you might recall you started as an online bookseller...

The Desert War the Epilog

Monday, January 25 2010 - 0 comments

Okay, not so much an epilog as some statistics on my writing progress. First some background. The Desert War is the 4th or 5th, depending on how you count, novel I’ve written. The very first was started shortly before I go out of the Marine Corps and finished about 2 years later. The next one took about 3 years to finish. The last book, the very first Fiction vs. Fantasy book that I’ve tried to write, took almost 15 years [ hey life got in the way ]. Late last year I decided I was done messing with that book. It was essentially done with about 90k words, but the story was all over the place. It...