Ted Cross Blog

Describing Characters -- Close 3rd vs Omniscient

2012-02-10T21:19:00.002+01:00

Long ago I purposely chose to use close 3rd rather than omniscient POV in my writing, because it gives the reader a sense of intimacy with the character. The reader will feel almost as if he or she is the character. However, the one trouble I have had because of this decision lies with learning how and when to describe characters in the story.

I was reading today and came across this character description that struck me as being so much better than anything I do (bonus points to anyone who can tell us where this is from without having to Google it!):

"Her pretty little upper lip, shadowed with a barely perceptible down, was too short for her teeth and, charming as it was when lifted, it was even more charming when drawn down to meet her lower lip. As always with extremely attractive women, her defect--the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own distinctive kind of beauty. Everyone took delight in watching this pretty little woman, brimming with health and vitality, who, soon to become a mother, bore her burden so lightly. After being in her company and talking to her for a while, old men and somber, apathetic young men felt themselves becoming, like her, more animated. Talking to her, and seeing at every word her bright smile and flashing white teeth, made a man feel that he was in a particularly amiable humor that evening. And this was true of everyone."

Never mind that part of the reason I was struck by this description was that it reminded me in a fashion of how I feel about my wife, this passage showed the advantage that omniscient has over close 3rd. In close 3rd when you already know someone well, especially if it is a spouse or one of your children, you have no realistic reason to be thinking about them in such descriptive terms, and after all close 3rd is supposed to be strictly about what the POV character is thinking or seeing or sensing at any given moment. A husband is more likely to focus only on something that stands out, such as if his wife had a smear of blood on her cheek or something of the sort. He's unlikely to give a full-on description of someone he sees every day of his life.

My lovely wife--who lights up any room she enters--preparing for a dinner party in Beijing

So, I tend not to describe in much detail, but I am trying to learn how to do better. I am trying to keep this in mind while reading close 3rd stories, looking for brilliant passages that can give me clues as to how to do better. What are your thoughts?

More Great Modern Music

2012-02-05T04:25:00.000+01:00

Sorry I'm on a music kick, but I'm stuck in Washington far from home, so I can't do any writing. I have to have the comfort of my own desk in order to write. So, here's another modern rocker that very few people ever hear -- Buckethead. There's a good reason for this, as he plays some truly strange music. However, hidden deep within the haypile are a few needles. My favorite is Killing Cone, which I bet none of you have heard. Sometimes I daydream that I bring my guitar to a street corner and play this song, just so I can see peoples' jaws hit the pavement.

Insanely Great Music

2012-02-02T04:13:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time there was musical genius in the world and bands wrote and performed their own music. Life was good. We had Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who, Donovan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Stones, and so many more.

Well, time went on and newer generations of kids decided they didn't like talented musicians anymore. They wanted choreographed pretty boys and girls lip-synching to throbbing beats that they couldn't write or perform themselves in a million years. Yeah, music pretty much sucks these days.

Genius is still out there, however, even if you have to search for it long and hard. I've got lots of it in my collection, but I'll just give a sampling from one great singer/songwriter -- Maynard James Keenan. If you haven't heard of him, well he sings for Tool and A Perfect Circle (and some other bands when he feels like it). He's one odd duck, but he has an amazing voice and writes some of the best modern songs around. I dare you to listen to these five or six times and tell me he's not a genius.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2012-02-01T02:23:00.000+01:00

Given it's huge international success, I felt it necessary to read Stieg Larsson's book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was better than I expected. I wouldn't read it again, but then only my very favorite books fall into the reread category.

Naturally, having read the book, I decided to see the movies. I started with the original Swedish version, not just because it was released first but also because I tend to enjoy the original foreign versions of such films better than the American remakes. I thought the Swedish version was fairly well done, and given the shortcomings of filmmaking, I don't think it was a big deal that they changed so many details. I didn't like the movie as much as the book, but that is to be expected.

What really surprised me was how much I liked the American remake. Other than the lame opening credits, overlaid with an odd mangling of Led Zeppelin's classic Immigrant Song, I really enjoyed this version far more than the Swedish one. Each film had elements done better than the other, but the overall movie-watching experience was better in the US version for me.

Especially impressive was the acting of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. She won't win the Academy Award for which she is nominated, but she should, in my opinion. I think the voting members are a bit too staid and stuffy to let a newcomer like Ms. Mara win, but she embodies this role almost perfectly. I enjoyed seeing her work far more than the other nominees that I have so far seen.

Once I return home to Budapest (I'm stuck in Washington DC for work for a month), I'll read the other two of Larssen's books, at least once I finish the ones I am currently reading. This may take awhile, since one of them is War and Peace!

And for something completely different, my Patriots are playing in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in the past decade. This is a repeat of the matchup four years ago when the Patriots had a chance to be the first 19-0 team ever but were upset by the Giants. I hope the Patsies get revenge, but I have this odd feeling that they won't. I keep reading about how Patriot running back Green-Ellis has never once fumbled in his five years in the NFL, so I can't help but feel that this is the perfect setup -- my Patriots losing due to his first fumble.

Game of Thrones

2012-01-13T22:13:00.001+01:00

I noticed a new follower and clicked over to check out his blog. This one appealed to me immediately since the author's taste seems to coincide very much with my own. The first posting I read was about George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones novel. He mentioned that he rereads the series when a new book comes out, and that is exactly what I do. I can't just read the new book -- the series is such a pleasure for me that I have to go back and read it all again from the beginning before I can touch the new book. Since I'm waiting for A Dance of Dragons to come out in paperback, I'm relishing the thought of starting over yet again!

The television series has been great as well, and I can't wait for season two. I hope they not only keep going through all of the books, but maintain the high quality we have seen so far. I'm only sorry that the actor who played Gregor "The Mountain That Rides" Clegane left the series and had to be replaced by another. I hope we don't lose any more of the cast.

Weekend in Vienna

2012-01-09T12:00:00.000+01:00

We took the train to Vienna, Austria on Friday morning and stayed there until Sunday. We got lucky since it only rained lightly and for a short time. It got dark very quickly, around 4 PM, so I didn't take a lot of pictures in daylight. I visited Vienna in 1997, but this was the first time there for my family. There are simply too many amazing sights, too many photos, so I'll just give a small sample.

Moon over one of the cathedrals

The Rathaus, or City Hall

There were beautiful lights all over the center over town

Vienna Street Scene

Where Soviet Monuments Go to Die

2012-01-03T11:53:00.000+01:00

It's been unseasonably warm here in Budapest, so we've had some nice family outings to see various sights.

My wife and eldest son share a happy moment during the expedition

One place we had heard about but could find no one who had actually gone to see it was Memento Park, a place just outside of Budapest where they decided to put all the old Soviet monuments and statues after Hungary regained her independence. As you can imagine, it was a pretty surreal outdoor museum.

Statues at the entrance to the park

Lenin welcomes you!

My youngest son being attacked by the Red Army

...and standing near a very large statue!

Nothing New Under the Sun

2011-12-30T22:41:00.000+01:00

I suppose it is inevitable that as the world's population grows beyond all reasonable levels it becomes harder and harder to ever have a truly original idea. I like to think that many of the ideas in my work-in-progress, a sci-fi thriller set in the near future, are original. I've never heard of them or seen them anywhere, and I'm quite proud of coming up with these ideas.

Yesterday I was stunned to come across a book that has eerie similarities to some elements of my book. It's a completely different story, of course, and has none of my technological ideas, but it has...well, see for yourself:

My book is set in a near-future Moscow with the main male character named Artyom and a segment of the very poor populace living underground in the abandoned metro system.

The book Metro 2033 by Dmitri Glukhovski is set in a near-future Moscow with everyone living underground in the abandoned metro system and the main character is named Artyom.

I can just see it now, should my book ever be published, as some readers accuse me of copping my ideas from this book. I'm not going to change my details; I've had my story since the early 1990's. I never heard about this book until yesterday. I chose these details for my story for very specific reasons that are important to me.

The metro in Moscow played a big role in my life for the four years I lived there (1993 to 1997), and I always planned on it figuring into my mobster thriller. When that story morphed into a sci-fi, it only made sense that the metro would be abandoned, since it was already old and newer technologies would take its place. The idea of a group of poor taking residence there seemed fun and a bit creepy.

I chose the name Artyom very carefully, too. I wanted a name that wouldn't be too odd to an American audience, yet I wanted it to be slightly uncommon rather than the standard few Russian names that we see each time a Russian character is used in any movie or book. Artyom fit what I was after nicely. I used the name in my first novel, written several years ago since that book has a couple of the same characters as this sci-fi (the first book was a fantasy).

I guess my point is that this post serves both to air my frustration and incredulity over such rotten luck and also as a sort of proof that I did not steal my ideas from someone else's book. I came to my ideas honestly. If or when someone later accuses me of taking these ideas, I will refer them to this post, for whatever good it might do.

Happy New Year everyone! I only managed to write thirteen new chapters this year, which is disappointing even though I have the excuse of moving to a new country and settling into a new job. I hope to do better this coming year, perhaps even finish this new book.

Chess Tournament

2011-11-16T12:25:00.001+01:00

I'm exhausted after competing in a tough chess tournament. I used to compete a lot when I was younger, but it's much tougher these days. I hadn't played for nearly three years, so my goal was to knock some rust off and hope I didn't collapse completely.

It was a round robin-style tournament in which I play each other player, and since there were twelve players that means there were eleven rounds, one per day. I started relatively well, with one win, one loss, and four draws in the first six rounds, all against the higher rated people in the tournament. Then I had my dreaded collapse, losing three in a row. What makes it worse is that I was winning the first two of these games, but blew them. I finished the event by winning my last two nicely, but it was against the two lowest performers, so I was expected to win.

Here is the crosstable - http://chess-results.com/tnr59450.aspx?art=4&lan=1&turdet=YES&flag=30

String Bridge by Jessica Bell

2011-11-11T10:25:00.000+01:00

I'm pleased to be able to help out with blog friend Jessica Bell, whose first novel has recently been released. She's a lovely and extremely talented writer and musician.

Today is THE day to help Jessica Bell's debut, STRING BRIDGE, hitthe bestseller list on Amazon, and receive the all-original soundtrack, Melody Hill: On the Other Side, written and performed by the author herself, for free!

All you have to do ispurchase the book today (paperback, or eBook), November 11th, andthen email the receipt to:

jessica.carmen.bell(at)gmail(dot)com

She willthen email you a link to download the album at no extra cost!

To purchase the paperback:

Amazon USA

To purchase the eBook:

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

To listen to samples of the soundtrack, visit iTunes.

If you arenot familiar with String Bridge,check out the book trailer:

Rave Reviews for String Bridge:

“Jessica Bell’s STRING BRIDGE strummed the fret of myveins, thrummed my blood into a mad rush, played me taut until the final page,yet with echoes still reverberating. A rhythmic debut with metrical tones ofheavied dark, fleeting prisms of light, and finally, a burst of joy—just aswith any good song, my hopeful heartbeat kept tempo with Bell’s narrative.” ~ Kathryn Magendie, author of Sweetie and Publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn Journal

“Poet andmusician Jessica Bell's debut novel String Bridge is a rich exploration of desire, guilt, and thedifficult balancing act of the modern woman. The writing is lyrical throughout,seamlessly integrating setting, character and plot in a musical structure thatallows the reader to identify with Melody's growing insecurity as her worldbegins to unravel … String Bridge isa powerful debut from a promising writer, full of music, metaphor, and just ahint of magic.” ~ Magdalena Ball, author of RepulsionThrust and Sleep Before Evening

“Jessica Bell is a brilliant writerof great skill and depth. She doesn't pull back from the difficultscenes, from conflict, pain, intensity. She puts it all out there, no holdsbarred, no holding back. She knows how to craft a scene, how to developcharacter, how to create suspense. This is an absolutely brilliant debut novel.I look forward to reading hernext novel, and next and next.” ~ Karen JonesGowen, author of Farm Girl, Uncut Diamonds and House of Diamonds

Connect with Jessica:

String Bridge: http://www.stringbridge.com/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/jessica_bell
Website: http://www.jessicacbell.com/
Blog: http://thealliterativeallomorph.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/author.jessica.bell
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MsBessieBell
Publisher: http://www.luckypress.com

Please TWEET and/or FACEBOOK this post using #StringBridge!

Feeling Insignificant

2011-10-26T18:46:00.001+02:00

I saw a video of a Fleetwood Mac song that blew me away and made me feel so small at the same time.

Yeah, so it's about twenty years after their heyday, but still they take what was a semi-good song on the album and make it so much more passionate here. Lindsey Buckingham can do it all, yet he never had guitar lessons and doesn't even use a pick. I couldn't imagine simply being able to play that music, let alone singing so well while doing it. And he's a lot better looking than I am, too!

That's a little of why I am so sad. I know that the only type of immortality we really have a shot at in this life is perhaps leaving behind some fantastic piece of art - whether a painting, a song, a book, etc. - that may be remembered by people long after we are gone. It doesn't bother me when someone is better than me at some particular talent, because I can always tell myself that I have talents where I am better than they are. Then someone like Lindsey comes along and is better at way too much all at the same time, and I can never hope to compare with even a single one of his talents. He has an amazing voice, plays incredible guitar, and is extremely charismatic. He's a great songwriter and, who knows, he can probably write rings around me in fiction if he wanted to.

For those of us in the writing game these days, it's about as tough as it has ever been. We can write a book now that, if published two hundred years ago, could have stood out and become a classic, but today it would most likely be buried in the avalanche of books being poured out by far too many talented writers. So rather than our book becoming a classic and making us well-known even after passing on, our book is quickly lost in the shuffle and forgotten.

I suppose getting older is making me far too aware of my mortality and of how quickly time is slipping away as far as being able to make a lasting mark on the world.

The Best Ever

2011-09-12T20:07:00.002+02:00

Family, that is. Lots of people say such things, but in my case it's actually true: I have the greatest family ever seen in the history of the world.

My wife pointed out a few cute photos that I hadn't seen before. The first one was taken by a friend of hers in Baku, and she didn't have a digital copy, so I had to scan it. That's why it's not perfect, but check out the hilarious faces!

On the left is a neighbor girl. The middle is my eldest son Anton and Alex is on the right. I keep trying to convince them to try out drama, as I think they would be great, but they are too shy.

Here are a couple of pictures from our trip to London in the summer of 2010. They were taken by a friend who met up with my wife at a botanical garden.

I've never seen such affectionate and empathetic kids as my boys. I hope this world doesn't change them too drastically. Don't grow up too fast, sons!

My sons and my wife in the botanical garden. Often I wish time could slow way down to allow us to linger through the great periods. Getting old should be illegal!

A Walk Through the Castle District of Budapest

2011-09-10T21:07:00.002+02:00

Yeah, yeah, I've been gone a long time. Sorry. Although Budapest is a lovely city, it's still an adjustment to get settled down in the new apartment, new job, new bosses and colleagues. I haven't been posting and I haven't yet started writing again. I owe a good buddy a crit of his large book, and I'm only three chapters in so far. I'd like to get that done by December, if possible.

On August 20 there was a big holiday here in Hungary. The embassy community celebrated it at the compound of the US Marines, which is a gorgeous place in the castle district, which you can see in the pictures below. I wish I had my camera with me that night, because the fireworks over the Parliament were spectacular.

Before I get to the photos I took today, I thought I'd throw out a couple that I liked from over the summer. Here is my younger son Alex with our cockatiel Gosha just before leaving Baku.

Another shot I liked is this picture of Multnomah Falls in Oregon.

So, today was a wine festival in the castle district of Budapest, and my wife enjoys wine and decided to go. I'm not a drinker, so I brought my camera and walked around the district with my two sons. I liked a lot of the photos, but I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll just give you a taste.

Above is my older son Anton near one of the oddly-shaped buildings within the castle.

This is a view from the castle wall down to the Danube and the Hungarian Parliament building. When I go to work in the morning I cross the river in the metro and get out just at that building, then walk a block south (to the right) to get to the embassy.

Here is the big cathedral. It looks smaller in the photo than it does in real life (you can click any photo to enlarge). It's covered in amazing designs. Below is an example of some inset statues.

And finally a shot of Hungary's favorite St. Istvan.

I probably won't blog a lot for the moment, partly because I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the new things going on, and partly because I need to get the creative juices flowing again at some point before I feel ready to jump back into this game. I do keep track of your blogs, even if I only comment when something grabs my fancy.

Home At Last

2011-08-03T15:02:00.002+02:00

Finally arrived in lovely Budapest this past Saturday. The weather is great, work seems like it will be just fine, and our tiny apartment is at least livable. What more can I ask for, except perhaps for all my household goods to arrive so I can relax and get back into writing?

DC Swamp

2011-07-23T03:23:00.003+02:00

Usually when I depart Arizona for Washington DC during these home leave vacations it is a relief. This time Washington weather is worse than Arizona! Today it was well over a hundred degrees out, but with something like 90% humidity. Insane!

I met an old friend today and we talked about my writing, which was nice. He's always enjoyed helping me with my books.

We've met so many people over the years that my wife has every single day scheduled with various meetings with friends. It's funny how exhausting these 'vacations' always turn out to be. It will be a relief to finally get to Budapest next Friday.

Portland

2011-07-10T19:30:00.000+02:00

My long summer with almost no internet continues. We are in Portland, Oregon for a week staying with some old friends, and it has been relaxing and fun. I've gone to a couple of parks to play football and baseball with the boys (my two sons and the son of our friends). We toured around Portland and walked through the downtown, including taking in an antique car show. We went down to the river so the boys could swim. My wife particularly liked the Japanese Garden and rose garden at the top of the hill.

My favorite so far was last night, when our friends took us to the Tony Starlight club to see the owner perform. He was quite amazing -- a really talented musician and mimic. He can sing like so many other famous people that it's astonishing. He ranged from Sinatra and Neil Diamond to Stealers Wheel, Gerry Rafferty, Blondie, and Stevie Nicks! If you are in Portland ever, I recommend you try to find a night when he is performing (it's fairly rare, as he usually just has other acts booked for his club).

Quick Note

2011-06-28T19:10:00.001+02:00

A quick note to apologize that I have not been able to visit or comment on blog posts. My uncle's internet is down, so I have only been able to get on for short periods to check email while stopping at Starbucks or Barnes & Noble. I miss the blogosphere, and I feel like I am missing so many great posts out there.

Tornado

2011-06-23T04:08:00.002+02:00

After a crazy trip, my family is tired but alive in Phoenix, Arizona. On a perfect journey it was already going to take around 21 hours. We had to first fly from Baku to London. When we arrived we found we had only twenty minutes to make the flight to Chicago. Turns out our gate was a LONG way from the place we needed to be, so we had to run. It was super-frustrating to hit another security check-through, as they really slowed us down past the point where we thought we had to have missed our flight. Luckily we barely made it.

Then Chicago. Just as the time for our departure to Phoenix was creeping around, a tornado alert sounded and they ushered everyone down to a lower level to wait it out. After more than an hour we heard rumors that a plane had been damaged. The news that I can find today says that about 360 flights were cancelled. Luckily for us they didn't cancel our flight, but it lifted off about four hours late, making me worry that the rental car company wouldn't hold our reservation.

We arrived in Phoenix at around 2 AM, and though I barely made it to the rental company under the 3 hour limit, they didn't have any cars in the size I had ordered. Again luck was with us as they had one SUV left that they let us have. So, we got to my Uncle's house at around 3:30 AM and slept like the dead.

In more interesting news. Nathan Bransford chose a posting that I did in his forum (it was my previous blog post, but I liked some of the thoughts in it, so I posted it at NB) to put on his front page. It was kind of exciting, though part of me wished I'd had a warning so I could have polished it a bit more. I tend to just type my posts out in about 15 minutes and go with them, while for Nathan I would have parsed every word and phrase until they shone. As it was, some people misinterpreted some of the things I said, and since I had to fly away, I didn't get to defend myself much.

I thought perhaps a couple people from Nathan's huge audience might come over to my blog, but the statistics show that I had fewer hits than normal. Oh well!

On Memory...and Books

2011-06-20T08:54:00.001+02:00

Think of the person you know who has the best memory. Can they quote from hundreds of books? Do they wow you with what can only be their photographic memory? It may be hard for modern people to fully comprehend, but the great memories of today can hardly compare to those of ancient times.

As the book I am reading now states (the following quote and all other quotes here are taken from The Discoverers by Daniel Boorsten) -- "Before the printed book, Memory ruled daily life..." Memory, both from individuals and communities, was the common means of passing knowledge on through the generations. People in those far off times had to intentionally cultivate an incredible memory in order to memorize amounts of information that would astound modern people.

"The elder Seneca (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 37), a famous teacher of rhetoric, was said to be able to repeat long passages of speeches he had heard only once many years before. He would impress his students by asking each member of a class of two hundred to recite lines of poetry, and then he would recite all the lines they had quoted--in reverse order, from last to first."

Before the days of printing, "a highly developed Memory was needed by the entertainer, the poet, the singer, the physician, the lawyer, and the priest." We all know about the great ancient epics, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which were passed down orally for many centuries.

Even when the first writings became more common, Memory remained the primary means in use by lawyers and judges or anyone wishing to quote from the scrolls or manuscripts of the times. With no page numbers or other markings, it was too inconvenient to attempt to locate the necessary parts of text, often rolled up in scrolls dozens or even hundreds of feet long.

After the printing press was developed, books evolved into "an aid, and sometimes a substitute, for Memory." It was Socrates, two millennia earlier, who had first "lamented the effects of writing itself on Memory..." The more accurate and widespread the book became, the less important became the cultivation of a good memory.

The great anachronism of our age is Islam, which still sees as ideal for any Muslim child the full memorization of the Koran. A lesser one is the incredible use of memory of the elite chess grandmasters, who must memorize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positions, tactics, strategies, and lines of openings, middle games, and endgames.

The reason I decided to write this was because the (far more detailed) story from The Discoverers reminded me of some thoughts I had been having regarding the effects on memory of the internet age. If the rise of books had been a death knell for developing memory as a tool, how much worse is the internet, which in effect serves as a substitute memory for the world? Regardless of issues of accuracy, almost all data is now placed onto the internet. Google and similar search engines become the key to accessing this modern day Memory.

And what effect on memory will come of the decline of leisure reading? Reading, which long served to teach and broaden the minds of educated people, is clearly on the decline amongst (primarily) young males, at least when it comes to spending long hours and days poring over long books for leisure purposes. Now kids turn to email, blogs, text messages, and tweets as primary substitutes for the hours once spent reading. Are we going to reach a point where the average person feels they no longer need to have much 'data' stored within their minds, since they can access it at will on the internet? Will high quality writing and the desire to enjoy such writing decline as people become used to the shorthand of modern communications? When 'lol' and 'rofl' take over for actual knowledge of good English, what does it say of our future?

It is hard to say exactly how much impact the internet will have on the area of memory, but my belief is that the coming of the internet age will eventually have nearly as great an effect on memory as the invention of the printing press.

Tagged...

2011-06-17T09:34:00.003+02:00

I've seen this tagging game all over the place, so I knew it was just a matter of time before I got hit. The super-nice Victoria Caswell hit me up with this one, and I can't refuse her anything, so here goes...

Do you think you're hot?
I suppose I will be when I reach Arizona next week. Honestly, who can be comfortable answering a question like this? I think I am not bad, but I'm no Johnny Depp or anyone else my wife thinks is 'hot'. I don't think my wife has ever called me hot, though since she is from Russia, I don't think they use that word.

Upload a picture of wallpaper you are using at the moment.
I can't do this, sorry. I don't have my computer since it got packed away by the moving company. I'm typing on a computer with no wallpaper. How about a picture of my cockateil that we have to give away on Monday? Bye Gosha! **Sad**

When was the last time you ate chicken?

Is this an appropriate question after talking about my bird? I eat chicken quite a lot since I stopped eating so much red meat. Having said that, the move is throwing everything out of whack, so I haven't had chicken since my going away party last Friday at work.

The songs you listened to recently?

I don't have my beloved iTunes, so I am not getting to listen to much of anything. All I have left is a cd in my car, and it has:

Soundgarden - Searching With My Good Eye Closed, 4th of July, Boot Camp

White Zombie - Thunder Kiss '65

Filter - You Walk Away, American Cliche

Tool - Eulogy

and a few other really cool songs

What were you thinking as you were doing this?

Well, because of the last question, I've had White Zombie rocking in my head.

Do you have nicknames?

Sorry, no. My wife calls me 'Teddie', which I would hate if it was anyone else, but since she has such an adorable accent, it doesn't sound so bad coming from her. My kids call me Dad.

Tag five bloggers:

I think everyone's been tagged already. Aren't I the last one?

Whose listed as number one?

Everyone knows Simon, right? Shame on you if you don't. He's one of the funniest and best writers I know, and he helped me a lot with crits on my first novel. I'd have tapped Matt Rush here also, except Victoria tagged him already.

Leave a lovey dovey message for number 2.

Oooo, I wish I knew how to flirt. Hart the Tart is great at it! Music is really sexy, and Jessica is splendid in that regard (not to mention her writing - she has a new book out!)

How did you get to know number 3?

The Naked Tart is a real character and also very helpful. She read my entire first book and gave me very nice feedback on it, for which I will always be grateful. She even pretended to like it!

How about number 4?

Hmm, I forget when I first 'met' L.G. (you see the problem of using initials for your name? I can't put a proper period there!). She's been a regular commenter and does really interesting posts. I hope any of you who haven't tried her blog will do so now!

Say something about number 5

I stumbled across Bru when I saw her interview of another blogger I follow. She did such a wonderful interview with me later. She's so kind and brave, too, as she battles near-blindness and other issues which she has bravely recounted to us. I wish so many good things for her.

Blog Award of DOOM

2011-06-16T08:38:00.001+02:00

The lovely L.G. Smith of Bards and Prophets (doesn't she have the greatest banner?) gave me this fun blog award, which gives me the opportunity to present one of my beloved characters in a very unpleasant situation. I have so many such scenes, which to choose?

The Rules:

1. When you receive the Blog Award of DOOM your task is to post a short selection of your writing, 100-300 words, in which your favorite character suffers a horrible fate. It can be your favorite character from your own writing or from something you've read, it can be from a finished manuscript, a WIP or something you just made up on the spot. Your choice, but it has to be full of DOOM!

2. Pass it on to one other blogger and let them know their DOOM has come.

3. Remember that the person who passed the award on to you also received it as well. Go back to their post to read and comment on their writing sample. Make sure to thank them for sending the DOOM your way.

4. Whenever you use the word DOOM in your post, you must capitalize the whole thing.

Let me first pass this along so I can finish this post with my excerpt. Hmm, who to give it to? I wonder if Joseph Selby and Sasha Barin would be willing to share a scene of DOOM with us? They are relative newcomers for me in the blogosphere, so I am curious what they might show us.

Here is a short excerpt from my fantasy novel The Shard. The young tinker's son, Geldrath, has become trapped inside a mountain along with some soldiers. They pass over a chasm and creep along a passageway to a small cavern, where they get a big shock, and poor Geldrath learns that he is nowhere close to becoming a hero yet.

*****

Dragon! Geldrath couldn’t believe his eyes. He was never meant to see the dragon. It was supposed to be in the Great Hall beyond. He saw the awful plunge of the dragon’s head, the quick death of one of the soldiers, and panic flooded through him like a molten river. He dropped the shield he was carrying, turned, and fled.

His arm struck someone as he ran. He felt fingers dig at his side and heard a shout, distantly as if from down a deep well. His mind refused to work. All he could think was--Dragon! Dragon! Run!

A tiny portion of his mind tickled at him, reminding him that he should feel shame; that he had responsibilities to friends and couldn’t desert them. The overriding part of his mind shoved those thoughts aside and forced him to run faster.

There was another shout behind him and he felt that someone was chasing him. Through the fear his mind teased him again with another thought: I’m forgetting something import--

His front foot came down on nothingness.

His throat jerked out a strangled scream as he pitched forward headfirst, his arms flailing. The back of his shoulders and head slammed into stone, followed by his buttocks and feet. His head rang and he felt consciousness slipping away as he plunged through cold air.

Authonomy

2011-06-15T09:46:00.000+02:00

I've noticed that although the blogosphere is filled with writers eagerly learning their craft, almost none of them seem to be taking advantage of sites like Authonomy (link is to my book there). I've been a member since December 2009, and it's one of the most useful sites I have joined. It leans slightly toward the British side of things, since it is a Harper Collins site, but there are writers from all over the world there. I've recently been getting some great feedback for my book from a wonderful Belorussian writer.

As with any such site, one must have a bit of a thick skin to be able to ignore the few people who are not diplomatic enough, but most there are decent critiquers and pretty supportive. You just need to filter out the bad and concern yourself with the good.

The first time I posted a book there I had already completed it. Not many take the time to read the entire novel, which I can understand since reading on a monitor isn't the most pleasant experience, but a few do, and most will read some of it and generally leave some useful feedback. I have made thousands of corrections on my books due to Authonomy critters.

I've been posting my latest book chapter by chapter as I write it, and I've found this very useful. The critters have pointed out a number of things that have saved me lots of further effort down the line if I had waited to post only after completing the book. People seem to be enjoying this book far more than my first, perhaps because thrillers are more popular than Tolkienesque fantasy, but also perhaps because I am a slightly better writer the second time around.

I would never ask anyone to support me blindly, but if anyone finds Authonomy useful and checks out my book, I can always use more support. BTW, it actually doesn't help a book if you support it immediately upon joining. You need to add some books that don't mean much to you (or other ones you find that are good) and first get a ranking before adding the books you truly like to your shelf. Only with a ranking will books accrue benefit from your support. The longer you leave them on your shelf, the more points they gain.

After a year and a half, my first book reached around 191 in the rankings (out of tens of thousands of books on there). My second book has reached 84 after just over one month! If you like thrillers and/or science fiction, perhaps check it out!

Writing vs Story

2011-06-14T10:11:00.000+02:00

My feeling is that most of us newbie writers have a serious problem with story. When we first take to the blogosphere, we learn an incredible amount about writing, and after a year or two we gain a lot of confidence. However, I think the bulk of what we learn concerns only one aspect of writing a novel, and that is the writing side of it. I don't mean only grammar, though of course that is an important part of it, but rather all of the disparate elements of creating decent prose and dialogue.

Imagine for a moment that you have learned to write perfectly, that you have perfect grammar, perfect prose, perfect dialogue. You can still write a terrible story.

Story is where most of us go wrong in our early efforts. Part of it is that it is a bit elusive. Who is to say for your particular subgenre where the best place to begin your story truly is? Who can tell you whether to have a single POV character, or whether several might work better for the needs of the story? There are some things that I can give an opinion on, though they are not universal. For instance, these days I feel that omniscient is not the best POV to use, though having said that I still see good books by famous authors using it and using it well. I feel that close 3rd works best for me, and for YA books first person seems to be the most commonly used POV.

Do you ratchet up the tension enough in your story? Do you deflate it too quickly? Do you use too much exposition? I keep hearing that there should be almost no exposition in the first fifty or so pages. You need to hook the reader and gain their trust before you start doing a little 'telling'. There are no hard and fast rules that will work in all cases, which is why becoming good at 'story' is so hard and frustrating.

So many times I see writers not getting it when it comes to story. They will post a chapter or excerpt online and others will let them know that something is wrong with it, yet when they come back with an edited version it is easy to see that they didn't truly 'get it'. It might be too much exposition, or perhaps the writer is overwhelming the reader with too many new characters in one chapter, but when the writer is warned about the issue, they more often than not tinker a bit with it rather than actually resolving the problem.

What are your thoughts on story?

Top 20 U2 Songs

2011-06-10T10:24:00.002+02:00

I'm avoiding doing writing posts for now, primarily because I am in the process of moving and cannot do any writing or editing for the moment. My computers are all packed up and I won't see them again until probably October. I have to spend the next two months wandering around the US before I can finally settle down in our new home in lovely Budapest, Hungary.

So, I will continue my stroll through my favorite music groups. After the glorious rock of the early 70's, U2 was the next rock group I fell in love with. I'm proud that I loved them for years before most other people caught on to them. I'm also disappointed that after so many incredible albums they turned away from what they did best and started doing pop/electronica dreck.

1. New Year's Day (live from Under a Blood Red Sky) - The album version is okay, but it is this live version from the original Under a Blood Red Sky cd that really has the fire. The Edge plays both piano and guitar, and his echo-heavy touches really help to highlight Bono's soaring vocals in the middle part.

2. Bad (live from Wide Awake in America) - U2 is a fantastic live band. I've seen them several times, and often I love their live versions better than what they produced on the albums. Bad is far, far better in this live version than the studio version. It has a slow, relentless buildup, adding one instrument at a time, before exploding.

3. Where the Streets Have No Name - I prefer the single version, simply because it cuts out some of the overly long intro of the album version. This is a perfect song for opening a concert. I get chills down the spine during parts of it.

4. Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2 are great at anthems. The ringing intro and driving guitar on this one are unforgettable, while Bono's lyrics pay tribute to Martin Luther King.

5. Gloria - I like the studio version fine, but the live version from Under a Blood Red Sky is the best.

6. Sunday Bloody Sunday - Yet again, the live version from Under a Blood Red Sky is the definitive version for me. This song defines what an anthem is.

7. The Fly - I absolutely love the guitar solo on this one.

8. Mysterious Ways - I remember hearing this on the radio for the first time. The very first sounds of the guitar reminded me of Jimmy Hendrix, but as soon as the full band came on I knew it was U2.

9. In God's Country - A nice song, but it's the guitar solo at the end that always gives me shivers.

10. I Will Follow - The studio version was...okay. The live version from Under a Blood Red Sky is wonderful, especially the interlude in the middle.

11. A Day Without Me - The Edge was always great about mixing his riffs with little memorable echoey notes, and he does that splendidly here.

12. Seconds - This catchy songs features both Bono and Edge singing off of each other.

13. Surrender - Not the studio version. I love the live version from Live at Red Rocks. Edge even breaks out his pedal steel guitar.

14. Until the End of the World - The driving guitar riff and terrific solo raise this song above mediocrity.

15. Promenade - Most people would never pay any attention to this song, but I find it so lovely.

16. Fire - A wonderful guitar riff.

17. Two Hearts Beat As One - Yeah, I tend to love their older stuff better than the new.

18. Electric Co. - Again, I prefer the live version from Under a Blood Red Sky. Blazing fast guitar riffing.

19. I Threw a Brick Through a Window - I love Edge's added vocal lines, acting like an echo at the end of Bono's lines.

20. Out of Control - Fast paced and addictive.

Honorable Mention:
The Unforgettable Fire
A Sort of Homecoming
One Tree Hill
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Twilight
I Fall Down
Numb
Vertigo
Bullet the Blue Sky
One
Even Better Than the Real Thing
With or Without You
Rejoice
Red Hill Mining Town
Desire
Silver and Gold

Top 20 Led Zeppelin Songs

2011-06-09T12:26:00.000+02:00

I did my other two huge favorites from the time period of the late sixties and early seventies (Pink Floyd and The Beatles), so I need to finish up by including Led Zeppelin. I do also love bands like The Who, Cream, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, Hendrix, etc., but Floyd, Beatles, and Zeppelin are my very favorites from that time. I save Zeppelin for last only because their songs are harder for me to rank than with Floyd or The Beatles.

1. No Quarter - This is one of the most hauntingly beautiful, lyrical songs I have ever heard, and the mix of hard riffs with soft interludes and echoey vocals makes this the most listened to Zep song in my iTunes. I also highly recommend the cover of this song by Tool.

2. Black Dog - As a four year old boy, this was the very first song that pounded its way into my consciousness. It was the first time I ever thought about MUSIC as something other than what Sesame Street or other TV shows provided. The best album of all time -- Led Zeppelin's untitled Fourth album -- had just come out and my parents played it over and over again. This song led it off, and the sound of Jimmy Page's guitar warming up made a fascinating intro for a 4 year old kid. The song was unusual, too, with its alternating music and vocal parts, capped off with a relentless ending guitar solo.

3. Stairway to Heaven - There's a reason this song topped all the charts for best song of the century. It's perfect blend of haunting melody, buildup of tension, mystical vocals, blazing guitar solo, and crunching coda seemed, well...heaven sent. This is also the very first song I taught myself to play on guitar, and I believe I do a pretty fine job.

4. Ramble On - I seem to have a soft-spot for the Zeppelin songs that are mostly soft acoustic numbers but suddenly throw in a wallop of hard crunchiness, and that's exactly what this song delivers. It doesn't hurt that it is about Tolkien, too!

5. Tangerine - I love playing this song on my guitar. It has such a lovely melody, and the outro is gorgeous.

6. Over the Hills and Far Away - Another song I love to play on my guitar. The riff is addictive and when the hard part hits, it packs a great punch.

7. Rock and Roll - Perhaps the greatest intro drum riff ever, and since it followed immediately after Black Dog on Zep's masterpiece fourth album, it formed the greatest duo of rock songs in my mind.

8. Immigrant Song - Another fantastic Page riff, and it's about Vikings, too! I love the original, but sometimes I love the LA Drone version better.

9. Fool in the Rain - A very funky song for Zeppelin, considering their usual blues/rock roots.

10. Whole Lotta Love - When I was little this seemed like such a heavy rock song. Nowadays other bands have come along that are far harder, but this one was special way back then. What a riff and what a solo!

11. Ten Years Gone - Another of those songs that alternates between super-soft loveliness and crunchy distortion.

12. Travelling Riverside Blues - This was recorded live for a BBC broadcast, but it sounds amazingly clean. Blues rock at its finest.

13. What Is and What Should Never Be - Like I said before, I have a soft spot for these soft songs that turn hard, and the outro is echoey fun.

14. When the Levee Breaks - John Bonham's drum sound on this song rewrote the books for drummers everywhere. It was huge and made you sit up and take notice immediately. This song closed the fantastic fourth album perfectly.

15. Achilles Last Stand - A guitar tour-de-force for Jimmy Page, though Plant's vocals fit the song perfectly as well.

16. Moby Dick/Bring It On Home - I have my favorite edited version of this, which might be sacrilege to some, but works wonderfully for me. I cut out the annoying drum solo in Moby Dick, leaving in the splendid guitar, and melding this directly into the follow up Bring It On Home.

17. Four Sticks - One of my favorite songs to play on my guitar. It's said that Bonzo used four drum sticks to get his pounding sound. All of the songs from this fourth album are amongst my favorites. This one is mainly instrumental, since Plants' vocals are mostly there to accompany the sound Page and Bonzo are making.

18. Kashmir - Many people rate this song much higher. I do love it, but not as much as the above songs. The guitar sound and chord progression are an amazing invention for Page, and I love the little violin part they threw in.

19. The Rain Song - I pretty much ignore the vocals on this one, as they don't thrill me, but the guitar part is special. I taught myself to play it because of how gorgeous it was, especially the way it finishes.

20. That's the Way - There's something addictive about this simple, soft acoustic song that I just love.

Honorable Mention:
Going to California
Thank You
In the Light
Misty Mountain Hop
The Battle of Evermore
How Many More Times
Good Times Bad Times
Heart Breaker
Dazed and Confused
Nobody's Fault But Mine
Poor Tom
You Shook Me
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Custard Pie
The Song Remains the Same
The Ocean
Since I've Been Loving You
Out On the Tiles
Hey Hey What Can I Do
Living Loving Maid
In My Time of Dying
White Summer/Black Mountainside

All Fun & Games Blogfest

2011-06-06T07:39:00.001+02:00

I had to enter this blogfest, since some games have had a tremendous impact on my life. In fact, I believe one of them had everything to do with who I am today. I'm only going to mention two games (though I like many more), since those two had far greater influence on me than any others.

Let's begin with the lesser of the two, so I can save the greater for last. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D: an all-encompassing term I will use to represent all versions I played, including Middle Earth RPG) was the first huge game in my life. It swept me away, along with my younger brothers, for a good several years beginning in my early teens, and its impact is one I can still feel, especially in my writing.

My mother thought it was a terrible waste of time. I know she was wrong. I learned so much from D&D. My vocabulary certainly improved, along with my imagination. I finally found something that allowed me to indulge in the greatest fantasies of my youth, from sword fighting to knights in shining armor. D&D also pushed me a bit out of my shell of shyness, forcing me to actually socialize with other fans of the game. It was something so deeply compelling, almost magical, that we could play all day and wonder where all the time went. I'm grateful for what role playing games added to my life.

The game that transformed my life, however, was chess. I was first given a cheap plastic set when I was about four, but no one knew how to play, so all I did was push the pieces around in mock battles until someone threw the set away. I didn't notice chess again for many years, which is too bad since I later learned that I was quite talented at it.

In junior high school, a friend told me he was in the chess club and invited me to come. I did and I was fascinated to see this game treated so seriously by people. I even saw some magazines with an arcane notation, obviously used to portray moves of games played between professional grandmasters. I never imagined a simple game had a whole world revolving around it. The club required payment of a dollar per visit, however, and my family was very poor, so I couldn't return.

I was swept up in my soccer leagues for the next few years, so it wasn't until my junior year of high school that another friend invited me to the chess club and I got hooked for good. I saw people playing blitz chess, where they have to play the entire game within either three or five minutes per person. Playing so quickly seemed amazing to me, and I knew I wanted to be able to do that.

Sadly, I had joined near the end of the year, and every player in the club was graduating. Would there even be a club the next year? I spent that summer checking out chess books from the library and reading them frantically. When my senior year started, I harassed a teacher into becoming the coach (though she had no idea how to play chess) and advertised in the paper to get more players. We did get around ten players, but no one knew how to play, so I was the best player in the club. We had a blast playing in the tournaments that year, though we stank.

I continued to improve rapidly, though, and soon I joined a real chess tournament for adults. I did very well, scoring five points out of seven, and the only game I lost was one I was winning easily only to throw it away due to inexperience. From that point on I went to a dozen or so tournaments each year, improving steadily from Class C player to Class A.

How did chess change my life? I started college in computer engineering. Three and a half years into college I realized I didn't enjoy my major. I wanted to change to a career that I liked. I tried out a few different classes, and one I picked because of my fascination with the Russian chess grandmasters. I ended up loving that class, so I changed my major to Russian and Soviet Studies. I had no idea what I could do with such a major, but I didn't care. I wanted to enjoy my education.

As I drew close to graduation, a recruiter came to the university seeking Russian language speakers to work at the American Embassy in Moscow. I leapt at the chance, since it was the first sign I had of work I could do using my major, plus it meant perhaps getting to play chess in the heartland of the game.

Playing in Moscow was far more than I ever imagined. Tournaments were completely different than in America, and I was challenged far more by the strong competition. Because of the bad financial situation there, I was able to hire one of former world champion Anatoly Karpov's trainers for a cheap price. Even better, as a member of the embassy, I began receiving invitations to compete against famous grandmasters. Among them, I played against world champions Kasparov, Karpov, Anand, and Kramnik.

Playing World Champion Anatoly Karpov

I met and married my wife there, so I have chess to thank for that, as well as for our two beautiful sons. When I returned to the US in 1997, I was a much stronger player, and it showed. I had some fabulous tournament results, including several undefeated events. I won ten games in a row leading to a tie for first place in the 2001 US Amateur Championship in Tucson.

I rejoined the Foreign Service and moved overseas again. I keep seeking out new adventures in chess, playing in Iceland and Hungary. Now I am moving to Hungary this summer, since they have one of the best chess organizers there, and I hope to play often.

I find the experience of playing serious chess very much like writing a new chapter in a book. My mind seems to vanish into a mystical zone, from which I awake several hours later, hopefully with something quite nice as the result. Thank you, chess, for all that you have done for me!

Top 20 Beatles Songs

2011-06-03T08:29:00.002+02:00

Sorry for those who find these boring, but music is an enormous part of who I am, and since I started off with one of my big favorites, I might as well continue on with my others.

Oh, how to do a best of with The Beatles? They were so fantastic and I love so many of their songs. They have a timeless brilliance, so I fully expect them to remain popular no matter how much time passes. Sometimes I am in the mood for some of their earlier stuff, and sometimes (more often actually) their later. Note that my list will be a mix of quality, nostalgia, and simply which tunes I listen to most often. So, there may be songs that I think are brilliant (like A Day in the Life), but don't actually listen to as often, so they fall to a lower spot. Pretty much any song you don't see on here is one that I probably do like, just not enough to make it to my top list.

1. Get Back - I prefer the one from the Past Master's album, since I like the ending better. The rollicking rhythm is addictive and McCartney's vocals work perfectly with it.

2. Yesterday - Such a beautiful song, and so simple. The soft little guitar intro always gets me.

3. Something - Yes, as much as I love rock, I am a sucker for beauty in music, too, so this one follows quite logically from the previous track.

4. Medley (Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window/etc.) - I know they strung a lot of unrelated stuff together here, but it is all so awesome and blends great together right on through to The End.

5. Sgt. Pepper - I shortened the title so that I could say that I dearly love both the beginning and the reprise of this song, and I also count A Little Help From My Friends as part of it.

6. Things We Said Today - I love how this song changes up the pace and feel, yet I really enjoy each of the differing parts. This is one of the two songs (along with Mother Nature's Son) that I always sang my sons to bed at night with when they were young. My youngest knew all the words to these two songs by the age of two and sang right along with me.

7. Mother Nature's Son - See the previous tune. Another lovely song.

8. Love Me Do - I once heard the alternate version where John and Paul reversed the parts that they sang, and I couldn't stand it. The original is simple and great, though.

9. For You Blue - I seem to like a lot of George Harrison's songs with The Beatles, though he never did much for me as a solo artist.

10. I've Got a Feeling - I can't figure out how to describe why I love this one so much. I just do.

11. I Feel Fine - I just love the guitar part, and I taught myself to play it!

12. Helter Skelter - I heard that this was the first ever heavy metal song. As a kid I didn't like it, but it grew on me.

13. Revolution - The one with the amazing, rocking guitar; not the slow version.

14. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) - Off-beat and ingenious.

15. Come Together - Another off-beat song, demonstrating the creative genius of Lennon and McCartney.

16. Hey Jude - I don't listen to this one that often, primarily because it goes on far too long, but it still is incredible and addictive.

17. Let It Be - I prefer the version from Past Masters, since it highlights the guitar solo better.

18. Hello, Goodbye - There was a time when I was listening to this one and Penny Lane over and over.

19. I Am the Walrus - Psychedelic and crazily brilliant.

20. Obladi Oblada - An upbeat pacing with funny vocals.

Honorable Mention:
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
She's a Woman
Taxman
Drive My Car
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Rock and Roll Music
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
A Day in the Life
Strawberry Fields
Long Tall Sally
Money (It's What I Want)
I Me Mine
Twist and Shout
We Can Work It Out
Two of Us
I Saw Her Standing There
Back in the USSR
Glass Onion

...and so many more that I will stop here!

Top 20 Pink Floyd Songs

2011-06-02T09:38:00.001+02:00

I'm in a musical mood today, so I picked one of my favorite bands, Pink Floyd, and wrote out all of my favorite songs. It's hard to put them in an exact order of favorites, since my mood changes all the time, but I'll see if I can get them into a generally good order. Perhaps you'll discover some hidden gems!

1. Comfortably Numb - There's a reason this one tops so many lists of Floyd songs. It's lovely, but also mixes the slightly crazy vocalizing of Roger Waters with the beautiful counterpoint of David Gilmour, and finishes off with one of the more gorgeous guitar solos ever done.

2. Time - Has my all-time favorite guitar solo, which zooms in with such power and then soars. I taught myself to play it, but even so I cannot come anywhere close to the tone and masterful touch Gilmour uses.

3. Dogs - It's so sad that this song almost never gets any airtime. Radio stations consider it way too long, at around 15 minutes, but this is easily one of the most fantastic of Floyd's songs. Gilmour's slightly sad vocals and terrific guitar build up slowly but surely, and then after a slightly overlong interlude with dogs barking, Waters finishes off the song with a scorching menace.

4. Goodbye Blue Sky - Most fans wouldn't have this one so high, but I just love it. It's probably the song I play most on my guitar, and what a lovely guitar piece it is.

5. Run Like Hell - Gilmour says this is their attempt at a disco song. Whatever. It is certainly an off-beat, rocking song, and the echoing guitars and dueling, frantic vocals between Gilmour and Waters make this a memorable tune.

6. Wish You Were Here - I tend to love the prettier of Floyd's songs the most, and this one certainly qualifies. It is also easy to play on guitar, so I enjoy sitting back and relaxing while playing it. Heck, even with my poor voice I can manage to sing along with this one.

7. Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Like the previous song, this one is a tribute to the lost founder of Pink Floyd Syd Barrett. It takes some getting used to, since it builds up so slowly and with such a long guitar solo before finally getting to the vocals, but this song amazes me. I am a guitar guy, so the long solo thrills me, and I taught myself to play it many years ago. I prefer the live version from Delicate Sound of Thunder to the studio version.

8. Brain Damage - Beautiful guitar. "The lunatic is on the grass..." How many pretty songs about insanity are there?

9. Money - You have to love the bass line. Gilmour is incredible, and can take a few simple notes and make them soar to amazing heights.

10. Hey You - Another song that I like playing on my guitar, though I do it the hard way since I don't like to re-tune it (this song uses a non-standard tuning).

11. One of These Days - Nearly all instrumental, this has a throbbing bass line and spectacular pedal steel guitar, especially in my favorite version from Delicate Sound of Thunder.

12. Empty Spaces/Young Lust - I always prefer to listen to these together as one song.

13. The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall part II - Like the previous song, I consider these two to be one song.

14. Have a Cigar - A jazzy rocker with amazing guitar that I just wish I was good enough to do. It's not that it's hard to play it, but that it won't sound decent unless you can recreate the tone, and I can't.

15. Pigs on the Wing - It's tiny, but it's so pretty. I should probably just include all three pig songs from Animals here, and throw in Sheep as well.

16. The Nile Song - One no one ever plays, but I love it. It rocks.

17. Ibiza Bar - Another version of the Nile Song basically, using the same music with different vocals.

18. Echoes - Another song you never hear, because it's more than twenty minutes long. It really has some amazing guitar in it, though.

19. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun - The version I love is taken from the movie Live in Pompeii, as it's much better than the album version.

20. Astronomy Domine - The live version from Pulse. By the way, I saw that concert live in London in 1994.

Top Fifteen Horror Flicks

2011-05-31T10:19:00.002+02:00

My post over the weekend draw hardly any hits. That'll teach me to post on a holiday weekend!

Ooooh, I just love horror movies! I know so many people don't, but for those of us who do, horror movies are a special treat, at least when done well. I always have to watch them alone, since my wife won't watch them, and she's made my sons afraid of them. When I was their age I was an old hand at watching such films.

Let me note up front that I won't include movies that I already used on other lists, such as Alien, Aliens, or Hardware. They are horror movies, but also sci-fi, so I put them there. If I did include them here, they would be at the top. Note that I am choosing based upon what I enjoy watching the most, not upon which is scariest. I'm also not including ones that some might list as horror, such as Stephen King's Stand By Me or Shawshank Redemption, because to me they don't quite fall into the horror category.

1. The Silence of the Lambs - I was loathe to put this here, as to me it is more suspense than horror, but I don't plan on doing a suspense list, so here it is. The acting and directing are superb, and this is one taught and suspenseful film.

2. John Carpenter's The Thing - It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I love this one so much. There's just something about being trapped in Antarctica on a little base, and the storyline is done brilliantly.

3. IT - There are a lot of great Stephen King movies (along with some clunkers), but of the horror flicks, this is the best, in my opinion. So many great actors, both in the children's storyline and in the adults'.

4. Scream - Smart and funny mixed in with the chills and gore.

5. Final Destination 2 - I like all of the movies in this series, but this one is the eeriest and scariest.

6. Fright Night - A cool mixture of horror and comedy. I love how nobody believes the poor kid and he turns to a cowardly television horror host for help.

7. The Lost Boys - Slick and funny as much as it is scary, and again it has some great actors in it.

8. Exorcist 3 - The first one was just too sickening for me to enjoy watching, the second sucked. This one is amazing, with the best actors of any of the films. It's sad that so few have watched this one, the best of the franchise.

9. Graveyard Shift - A bit low budget, but to me it only seems to add to the realistic feel of this scariest Stephen King movie.

10. Shaun of the Dead - More comedy than horror, but this English sendup of zombie flicks is a must-see.

11. Salem's Lot - Not the horrible original, but the tv miniseries starring Rob Lowe.

12. Arachnophobia - Another great horror/comedy. Millions of spiders coming to get you!

13. The Dark Half - A downright scary Stephen King movie. The book is incredible, but Tim Hutton does a creditable job of bringing it to the screen.

14. 28 Days Later - Perhaps the best of the zombie flicks, though I really enjoy the newer Dawn of the Dead also.

15. Descent - I watched this in a theater in Manila, never having heard of it before. It's one of the few times I thought a movie was truly frightening, while also being fun.

Honorable Mentions:
Sleepy Hollow
The Shining
From Dusk Til Dawn
Jurassic Park
Beetlejuice
Jaws
The 6th Sense
Resident Evil
Wrong Turn
Seven
Hostel
Saw
I Know What You Did Last Summer
An American Werewolf in London (also the one in Paris is decent)
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Halloween
A Nightmare on Elmstreet
The Hitcher
The Mist
Creepshow
House
The Blob
Dreamcatchers
Night Watch/Day Watch (slick Russian horror)
Joy Ride
Slither
Snakes on a Plane
The Fly
Severance
Blade
Sometimes They Come Back
The Hills Have Eyes
Pet Sematary
Identity
Vacancy

Intro Chapter for Sci-Fi Novel

2011-05-29T12:14:00.008+02:00

Some beta readers have given me feedback suggesting that my main character is thrust into the action so quickly that we don't get to know her first. While I did want to jump quickly into the drama, I can understand wanting to first know something about a character. It's so hard to balance the need for some early excitement with the also important need to relate in some manner with the POV character.

So, I have tried writing this short new chapter to see if it works for introducing my main character. I'd love to know your thoughts on it. Does it work? Not? This is a sci-fi thriller set in Moscow in the year 2138.

--------------------------

It’s too easy to say one hates working with corpses. Who could enjoy the smell of embalming fluid, the mannequin rigidity, the cold of a body that had once been full of warmth and dreams? Zoya had prepped bodies for more than six years now, painting their faces to a ghoulish mimicry of life, so relatives and friends could view their loved one without having to face the stark horror of the empty shell death leaves behind. She was used to cadavers, but she never stopped hating being around them.

Generally she listened to music while she worked, since it helped take her mind from the peculiar canvas upon which she plied her art. Her preference was for ancient rock tunes, from the quaint times when people played their own instruments and wrote their own songs. Lennon and McCartney, Waters and Gilmour, Plant and Page...demigods of a long lost age.

She hummed along to Hurdy Gurdy Man as she sketched a final line of purple lipstick onto the grossly fat man on the stainless steel slab. She stood up to get a better view of the face, and jumped as someone dug fingers into her side from behind.

Snapping off the music from her slot interface, she whirled and was swept into the arms of her brother Georgy.

“Hey, little Sis. Did I scare you?”

“Georgy!” She pretended to punch his shoulder. “Won’t you ever grow up?” Despite the tender warmth she always felt around him, she felt a chill now. He had never visited the morgue before. A day’s worth of stubble scratched her cheeks as he kissed them; he was always so meticulous about shaving. Something must be wrong. “Why are you here?”

He stepped back, still holding her narrow shoulders in his steely grip. “I need you to do something for me. You know I’d--”

“Georgy!” she interrupted. “You swore you wouldn’t involve me.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t ask this if I had anywhere else to turn. You know that.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small package, a rectangle of old-fashioned brown paper tied off with twine.

“You have lots of friends, Georgy,” Zoya said. “Don’t do this to me.”

“My friends can’t help me now, Sis. You’re all I have. Take this.”

He thrust the package at her, but she backed away, holding up her hands like a shield. “I won’t ruin my life, even for you.”

Georgy set the package on the table next to the cadaver. “I’m sorry, but I have no one else I can trust right now. Please, just bring it to me tomorrow, say around ten.” He pulled a small Web cable from a pocket and snapped it into the slot interface hidden in the black hair behind his left ear. “Here, let me show you where to go.” He reached out to plug the other end of the cable into Zoya’s slot.

“No, Georgy!” She shoved his arm back. “I won’t do it.”

Gently, he took her shoulders again and pulled her face close. “Look at me, Sis. What do you see?”

Zoya stared into his deep brown eyes. There was a hunted, haunted look she had never seen before. “You’re afraid?”

“I’m terrified, Zoya. I fucked up so badly this time. You have no idea. I’ve got to disappear for awhile. I need some time to prepare, and I can’t have this on me.”

He used the moment to slide his hand up close to Zoya’s ear, and now he slipped the cable end into her slot. Instantly, she saw the location where he wanted her to go. It was in a dangerous, deserted part of old Moscow; a crumbling wasteland where only the drunk or the dangerous ventured.

“Yugo-Zapadnaya? I can’t--”

“Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. I have a safe house there. You’ll be fine, you’ll see. Tomorrow, around ten, okay?” He pulled out the cable and leaned in to kiss her cheek again. “I owe you big time.”

“Georgy,” she moaned, but he had already turned away, walking swiftly toward the morgue exit.

Zoya sagged against the edge of the table and dropped her eyes to the small package. Fear made it difficult to swallow. Fear for Georgy and for herself, though the fear was tinged with anger that he had forced this upon her. She closed her grip around the package, and her hand brushed against the clammy skin of the corpse. An image filled her mind of Georgy laid out on the slab while she rouged his cold cheeks. She shuddered and tucked the package into a pocket of her lab coat.

Top Fantasy Movies

2011-05-26T08:11:00.005+02:00

First off, let me say that Google didn't allow me to log in last night, so I couldn't respond to all the wonderful comments to yesterday's post until this morning. I loved hearing your thoughts and learning about some movies I hadn't seen.

I can't do a top ten with fantasy movies, first because there are simply far more of them that I like than with science fiction, but also because the quality level in fantasy is much iffier than with sci-fi usually, so some movies that I enjoyed also bothered me with their low quality.

I don't have my movie collection here with me as I write this, so I Googled a top 100 list. I think some of my favorites are not on there, so I am most likely leaving off some that I really love. I also disagreed with many of the movies on the list, as they were not fantasy movies, in my opinion.

I believe the quality dropoff from the first few to the others is significant, so I will rate my first few and then simply list a bunch of honorable mentions.

1. The Harry Potter movies - I'm including them all together, since to me it would be silly to list them apart. I could tell you that The Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite, though. It might seem heretical to those who know me that I list this ahead of the Lord of the Rings movies. Let me explain. I absolutely love the LOTR movies. They are awesome. However, I find myself watching the Harry Potter movies over and over again with my sons, and there is simply something undeniably fun about them. While I love the LOTR films and do rewatch them, I have to give Harry the tiny edge simply due to rewatchability. On another day, I would swap their places, though, as they are so close as the best two fantasy franchises ever.

2. The Lord of the Rings films - I am only talking about the extended editions, as I ignore the theatrical versions. The Fellowship of the Ring was the best of them, but all of them are wonderful. I couldn't have asked for a better translation of the movies into film. No one could have done it perfectly, so this is as close as I think it can be done.

After the above two, everything has to pale in comparison! I can't list the rest in order, since so many of them fall into distinct types of fantasy to me, or are not even really fantasy as far as I am concerned, yet I know so many of you will consider them to be. If a really awesome fantasy is not listed here, it is probably because I didn't consider it fantasy (or it just didn't quite make my top list).

The Princess Bride - This one probably does deserve the number 3 slot. It is a timeless classic, and I can watch it again and again without growing tired of it. It blends wonderful fantasy elements with such wit and humor, while giving us unforgettable characters and dialogue. It's very nearly a perfect fantasy movie.

Now let me do some clear fantasy movies before I move onto the borderline ones and cartoons.

Dragonslayer - It's low budget and a bit corny, as most fantasy movies were before Peter Jackson taught everyone how to do it properly. I actually wouldn't put it high on my list, but this one is a clear fantasy, and it isn't so bad.

Willow - Again, a real fantasy, and despite some cheesiness, it is fun and has some great characters, such as Val Kilmer's roguish warrior.

Labyrinth - Some poor special effects, but that is what we always got with fantasy movies before Harry Potter and LOTR. It's still a very good movie, especially for kids.

Time Bandits - Oh, I really love this one, probably because when I was a little kid the only way to watch movies was to go to the drive-in (we were too poor for theaters), and my mom took us to see this one a couple of times and it stuck with me. It is just so FUN and funny, and there are so many tiny cool details. What's not to love?

Okay, now let me list my favorite cartoons, some of which are true fantasy and some of which are very borderline.

Fire and Ice - I always loved the art of Frank Frazetta. He can't do his full-blown magic over the course of a film, but it is still quite good. The story is fairly standard 70's-style fantasy fare, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

Wizards - Fantasy with some sci-fi elements. There are lots of nuances to the story, so it pays to watch it a few times.

Shrek - Fun and funny fantasy, cleverly done, at least in the first one.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Borderline fantasy as are the rest of the ones listed below, but what a brilliant movie. The soundtrack is incredible, and Tim Burton manages to make each character in a vast cast distinctive and truly memorable.

Monster's Inc. - One of the best and funniest cartoons I have ever seen.

The Incredibles - Not as wonderful as Monster's, but very close.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit - I really love this one, too, but it's not really a fantasy, in my opinion.

Toy Story - Ditto

Howl's Moving Castle - I don't have a taste for Japanese animation styles, but this movie is just too fascinating to ignore.

Finally, the movies listed in other fantasy lists that I consider very borderline fantasy; I really enjoy all of these:

Dark City
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Jurassic Park
Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one only)
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder version)
Beetlejuice
Sleepy Hollow (more horror than fantasy, but very good)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Bridge to Terabithia
King Kong
The 13th Warrior
Edward Scissorhands
The Goonies
Robin Hood (the Patrick Bergen and Uma Thurman version)

This is going on too long. I suspect you will let me know where I have missed some. I imagine there will be a few 'duh' moments!

Top Ten Science Fiction Movies

2011-05-25T11:09:00.002+02:00

I heard a vicious rumor that top-10 or top-100 lists draw the most hits on blogs, so I figured I should test this theory out. It has been funny to see how, in a writing blog, it is not the posts on writing that generally draw the most views and comments, but rather unrelated posts, such as my one last week about food. Perhaps I need to find a way to write more entertaining posts about writing.

Anyhow, I thought I would start my top-10 experiment with an easy one -- my choices for the top ten science fiction movies of all time. You will notice that there are few old ones here, as my taste is rather limited in regards to older films. There are also some I won't list that I see on other top lists, because I don't consider them to be sci-fi.

1. Blade Runner -- Hands-down the best science fiction movie of all time, in my opinion. The soundtrack by Vangelis is the most beautiful soundtrack I have ever encountered. There has been a lot of fighting amongst fans over which versions of this film are the 'good' versions, primarily because some fans hate the Harrison Ford voice-over that was added to the theatrical release. I have to say that I enjoy all the versions. I love the movie without the narration, but I also think it is really good with it. The hard-bitten, world-weary sound of Ford's voice only adds to the noirish quality of the movie, at least for me. Each and every scene in this movie resonates deeply with me, and I cannot imagine any greater beauty ever being brought to the screen.

2. and 3. Alien and Aliens -- What a duo of fantastic sci-fi movies, and each so different from the other! Alien (directed by Ridley Scott, who also did Blade Runner) provides a realistic-seeming take on a deep-space ship stopping at a planet due to a distress signal. This movie is the very essence of tension and suspense. Aliens gave us heart-thumping action as space marines return to the lost colony to try to reclaim it. Supposedly they are there to rescue any survivors, but in reality they are there for very different reasons...

4. Serenity - Truth be told, I prefer the television series Firefly, as it goes into far more depth with the characters and story lines. However, a movie has limits on how long it can be, and they still did a fine job of bringing some terrific space-cowboy action. I recommend checking out this film, and then running as fast as you can to your PC to order Firefly!

5. The Road Warrior - Mel Gibson is perfect as Max in this post-Apocalyptic film that sort of but not really follows the not-so-great Mad Max movie. Maybe it's a male thing, but I always enjoy well-done survival of the fittest movies like this. Having to scrounge amongst the waste just to survive wouldn't be fun in real life, but it sure is in a movie.

6. and 7. Star Wars episodes V and IV - No need to link to these, as everyone has seen them, right? Episode V, called The Empire Strikes Back, was the best written of all these films, while episode IV was the original that started it all, and it does still have that magic. There's not a whole lot to say about these, as everyone knows them too well!

8. Back to the Future - I suppose this one is only borderline sci-fi, though it certainly has the right elements mixed in with the more contemporary stuff. This movie is simply a lot of fun, and very cleverly done. The cast couldn't have been chosen any better. The follow up movies were not nearly as good, but still fun.

9. ET - I won't link this one either. Who hasn't seen it? Steven Spielberg has a deft touch for these types of movies. He adds loads of realistic little touches and details to his films that really make them work. As a kid, I loved the D&D parts and also the Halloween stuff. Young Drew Barrymore stole the movie, in my opinion, with her adorably funny scenes.

10. Hardware - I couldn't resist putting this little known movie here. It is a very well done Australian low-budget flick that is a little like a scarier version of The Terminator, only funner. A scavenger in a post-Apocalyptic world picks up the remnants of a destroyed machine out in the war zone, thinking the scraps might make his artist girlfriend happy. She loves it and begins using the parts in one of her metal sculptures. However, the scrap turns out to have been an advanced type of new war machine, and once it can get access to electricity, it can piece itself back together. And it sees everyone as a threat. I love the dirty pig of a next door neighbor!

I couldn't end things without naming some others I really like: Brazil, The Matrix, The Terminator (1 and 2), Children of Men. I didn't bother with cartoons, or I might have added Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and I also left off zombie films and such, as they don't seem like sci-fi to me.

What favorites of yours did I leave off?

Movie and TV Science Fiction Can't Show the Real Future

2011-05-23T07:47:00.001+02:00

My science fiction novel didn't come out of the blue. I've had plot points, characters, and technology ideas for it rolling around in my head since I was a teen. The ideas I have for future technology aren't so much ideas as they are things that I truly believe will happen (barring something happening that stops us from progressing).

I've recently been watching the follow-on series to Battlestar Galactica, called Caprica. I've also watched a ton of science fiction movies, such as my favorites Blade Runner and Aliens. What I noticed recently (since I've been doing a lot more active thinking about future tech) is that movies and tv shows always scale back the realism of technology in order to make things watchable. It makes perfect sense, since audiences want things to be watchable. However, it does mean that my book may not translate well into movie format, since I am being as realistic as I can.

In far future shows we still see people using things like cell phones or computers. In Caprica they have people putting devices over their eyes in order to enter a virtual world. See, I think reality will be far more impressive than that. I don't think interaction via calls or the internet will require any such devices in the not too distant future. I think we will have full digital/mind interfaces that will allow us to deal directly with trusted sources. Once we have advanced enough interfaces, they should be able to add a form of wireless to the interface, thus eliminating the need for external devices. We could 'see' anything necessary directly within our minds. We could place calls directly from mind to mind via the interfaces.

This all sounds fine, but it makes for boring movies. Cyborgs look cool when they have obviously robotic parts, rather than the more realistic version, which will simply look human. Putting a device over your eyes to see a virtual world works better for audiences, as does using an external phone, rather than the actor being able to do everything solely within the mind. I believe the more advanced we become, the harder it is to make our technology translate in an interesting manner to the screen.

Low Brow Taste

2011-05-20T07:08:00.006+02:00

I have low brow taste.

I think it comes from growing up very poor and developing a taste for the types of food that I grew up with. I have been to really good restaurants and tried their supposedly really good food, but it literally doesn't taste good to me. Offer me a choice between a free dinner at a five-star French restaurant or paying for myself at Taco Bell, and I will be eating 2 tacos and a bean burrito with Pepsi. Sorry to make so many of you cringe, but that's the flat-out truth. Taco Bell was so cheap when I was in college that I ate there pretty much every day. It cost me $2 for the abovementioned meal.

This is the thing my wife hates most about me. She is my polar opposite when it comes to food, a caviar and wine girl if there ever was one. Give her a choice between something that looks amazing but tastes like crap verses something low brow but good tasting, and she will pick the presentation or pedigree any day.

Living overseas means being away from all the foods I crave most. It's the number one thing I miss due to my life away from the States. I dream of Red Lobster, Arby's, Village Inn, Schlotzsky's, Denny's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Hot Dog on a Stick, and so many other junk food places. I dream of firing up my oven at home and being able to cook up some Gorton's Crunchy Fish fillets with Ore Ida Texas Crispers french fries, or perhaps a nice Tombstone pepperoni pizza.

No, I am stuck with all these local foods that taste pretty crappy to me. June 21 can't come quickly enough, when I will get to spend a few weeks back home and get some decent food for a change!

The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams

2011-05-18T06:57:00.005+02:00

I've had Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn novels sitting on my to-read shelf for years. They are so long that I always put them off in order to read shorter things first. I was really looking forward to them, though, since I had read a short story by Williams set in the same realm of Osten Ard. This short story was called The Burning Man, and it is one of my favorite shorts ever. I even read it twice and plan on reading it again soon. It can be found in the Legends short story collection.

I'm almost finished with the first book of the series, The Dragonbone Chair. It is slightly disappointing to me, in that the short story really highlighted so many elements that I love in fantasy, while this novel has mixed those elements that I love with other elements that I cannot stand. For instance, changing trolls into tiny people. Sorry, but for me trolls are big, hulking monsters. We already have tiny people, whether they be gnomes, dwarves, or leprechauns. Also, I really didn't enjoy him using Inuit-sounding names and words for the trolls. Finally, he has elves in his book, but decides that it is somehow more original to call them Sithi rather than simply call them what they are. I don't mind the word 'Sithi', but it always bugs me when someone decides to simply give a new name to something we are already familiar with.

It doesn't bother me at all that relatively little happens for the first hundred pages or so. I am one who enjoys world building and character development, so this was fine with me. Reading this book, I keep seeing elements that I saw in Martin's ASOIAF series, and since this came out shortly before Martin began writing his series, I can't help but think that Martin was influenced by Williams to a degree. Martin does it all much better, though.

What elements do I see as similar between Martin and Williams? Some may seem farfetched, but here they are:

1. The coming of an unusual winter is a strong theme in the story.
2. A very unusual throne, i.e. made of blades with Martin, made of dragon bones and skull in Williams.
3. Major lord character losing a hand.
4. Wolf character playing a major role.
5. A character that is the 'Hand of the king' in both stories.
6. A sword named 'Needle' in each.

There are other similarities that kept striking me as I read, but none as clear to me as those listed. (Some are simply standard fantasy tropes, so no big deal that they are in both.)

I don't mind if Martin got ideas for his epic from Williams. The stories are very different, and Martin took everything to a much higher level. I'll always be grateful he wrote his series. Now, I may have only given Williams three stars so far at Good Reads, but I will continue on and hope that he gets better as the series progresses.

Fantasy Movies Must Use British Accents

2011-05-16T10:01:00.000+02:00

I've been looking over my large collection of fantasy films, trying to figure out what exactly made me like some and dislike others. What caused me to write this post, however, was watching Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in 'Season of the Witch', a movie so bad I couldn't make it to the halfway mark.

What I found when I looked everything over was that I absolutely cannot stand seeing a medieval setting with actors using American accents. It flat out doesn't work for me. Yeah, I know that British accents were not the same way back then, but a good British accent, at least from an American perspective, adds a touch of old-world authenticity, whereas an American accent kills the movie dead.

Try to imagine the Lord of the Rings movies with every character speaking in our flat American phrasings! Ugh! At least the American actors in LOTR and Game of Thrones alter their accents enough to make them passable.

Writing Science Fiction

2011-05-12T08:28:00.000+02:00

I've found that writing a science fiction story is very different from writing a fantasy. This probably sounds absurdly obvious, but I think you need to actually try writing both before it slams home just how significant the differences are.

For me one of the major issues is voice. I have to use a completely different voice for a story set in the 2100's than I do for a fantasy in a medieval setting. I actually find that fun, and the few readers I have had so far seem to like this voice better than my fantasy voice.

The hardest part for me has been dealing with technological issues. For almost any action that a character takes, I have to ask myself whether the means of performing that action would have changed over the years. It's not just a matter of whether a character will have a flying vehicle or not. Will you need cash in any form? Will you need to even use thumb or eye scanners, or will advances allow, say, your apartment door to recognize you in some even more advanced manner, such that you don't need to actively do anything for it to open up and let you in?

Since basic mind/data interfaces are already being developed, I expect very advanced ones to eventually become affordable to the masses. Imagine inserting cards into your head to directly access data, from languages to history to...whatever. In that case, I think the need for judges and juries would evaporate, since the authorities could simply plug into your data interface and scan your mind directly to see if you are guilty or innocent. You may no longer have to take tests, as they could simply scan your mind to see if you have the requisite knowledge and understanding. My story begins with a character graduating from college after plugging in for about twelve minutes for the university to scan him. I have to think like this for everything, even the smallest daily activities. This really slows things down, but if I don't do it I will end up with a story filled with inconsistencies.

I think I have a lot of new ideas, ones that I feel are logical and I fully expect them to happen at some point in the future. But I haven't read every science fiction novel ever produced, let alone every short story, so there will always be those who will look at what I do and say that so and so already did it. I think these people will miss the point -- I may come up with ideas that in a general sense have been done before, but the specifics of how I do it are most likely unique.

Flowery Description

2011-05-11T09:14:00.002+02:00

In yesterday's post I talked a bit about overuse of adjectives. I have some real strengths as a writer, but like all of us I also have weaknesses, and one of them is description. I will never be a literary writer. Writing beautiful prose doesn't come naturally to me, so I always feel that my prose is too stark, perhaps too simplistic.

I took the suggestion of some of yesterdays commenters and tried to write an intro paragraph to bring out more about the summer season in Moscow where the poplar seeds fly like snow all over the city. I look at what I came up with and it feels strange, unnatural, as if I'm faking it somehow. I wonder if some of my more literary inclined readers might look at what I am trying to convey and see some clearly better means of expressing it?

I want to introduce the character Zoya, who normally loves the poplar seed season, but she's been forced to come to a part of the city that frightens her. This is my awkward attempt:

Poplar seeds floated on the summer breeze, as they did each summer in Moscow, a reminder that winter would come again before too long. Zoya loved strolling through the flurries, watching the white drifts pile up along the curbs and in the gutters, her thrill dampened only by having to visit this abandoned part of the city.

She stepped carefully over broken sections of concrete. Trash and glass littered the yellowed grass and weeds that lined the sidewalk. A sound from the building to her right brought her to a halt. A crash of metal followed by a yelp. A wild dog, she thought. Perhaps a pack. Why did I let Georgy talk me into this?

Overuse of Adjectives

2011-05-10T10:35:00.003+02:00

I've been a bit perplexed, both happy and sad, that my new science fiction book is getting far more rave reviews on Authonomy than my fantasy book did. After only a week on the site, my book is already number 1 under thrillers and number 2 in sci-fi. It's great to see people liking the work you do, but I consider myself mainly a fantasy writer, and I only started writing the sci-fi book because it fit into the backstory of my fantasy series. I'm guessing it is because there are so many readers who don't want more Tolkienesque fantasy, along with the fact that the 'voice' in the sci-fi thriller has to be quite different from what I use in fantasy.

Here's a quote from the latest review I got on Authonomy:
"Damn! This is a good read. Fast-paced, interesting characters and a rich setting that is both fantastic and believable."

Another recent one:
"This is science fiction the way I like it. I would have read chapter one in the bookstore and bought it on the spot."

You can't complain about that!

One reviewer perplexed me, though. He said I used 'far too many descriptors' in a paragraph. I understand that overuse of adjectives is supposed to be a bad thing, but I just don't see it. Perhaps you can help me to understand? Here is the offending paragraph:

Fuzzy white poplar seeds floated on the summer breeze. Zoya stepped carefully over broken sections of concrete. Trash and shattered glass littered the yellowed grass and weeds that lined the sidewalk. A sound from the abandoned building to her right brought Zoya to a halt. There was a crash of metal followed by a yelp. A wild dog, she thought. Perhaps a pack. Why did I let Georgy talk me into this?

Yes, I see how many adjectives I use, but to me it detracts from the building of the world to remove any of them. I can't see removing 'fuzzy' or 'white' from the description of the poplar seeds. 'Pukh', as these seeds are called, is a weird happening in Moscow each summer, where a veritable blizzard of the stuff floats all over, almost like snow. I want the reader to know early on that it is summer, thus 'summer breeze' and 'yellowed grass'. And the trash and broken things are to let the reader know she is walking in a run-down part of the city.

What are your experiences with description?

Being Authentic in Writing

2011-05-06T08:47:00.005+02:00

For speculative fiction writers it is often said that we need as much authenticity as possible on our books in order to make our created worlds believable. I keep running into situations, however, where being authentic hurts the story for some readers.

The most recent example of this has to do with the second chapter of my science fiction thriller, in which I use Russian mafia antagonists. I tried to make these characters as authentic as I could, based upon my extensive experience with Russian Mafiosi. They were all over the place in Moscow when I lived there. You couldn't even tell who was genuine and who wasn't, because there were so many young men copying their styles.

The problem is that some readers have complained that the Mafiosi in my story are too clichéd, yet that is precisely what makes them authentic. Russian mobsters, at least in the 90's, seemed to take pride in imitating famous mobsters of the past, such as Al Capone or the Godfather. Other than their clothing (they seemed to like track suits and flat-top haircuts), they didn't try to be unique. The more outlandish and unusual I make my Mafiosi, the less authentic I am being. If my Mafiosi seem overly brutal and speak like thugs, it's because that's the way they really behave in my experience. I suppose many would say that the story is what matters, so forget being authentic and just make the characters memorable. I do want to make the characters memorable, but I prefer to do it within the constraints of what I know these folks are actually like in reality.

Big Explosion

2011-05-05T08:46:00.010+02:00

Okay, I was going to title this 'Moscow, part 3', but lovely Victoria Caswell pointed out that it was probably my boring titles that were keeping readers away over the past two days. She suggested I spice the title up.

The Russian mafia wasn't the only danger to be faced in Moscow in the '90's. Russians seem to have an odd connection with Serbs, so when the US began bombing the Serbs in 1995, there was clear anger directed at the embassy.

On September 13, 1995 I was working in the old Embassy building on the ring road. I spent most of the morning on the 9th floor, where the executive offices were. I went to lunch and then got sidetracked by some other work. As I began walking back toward the building, I was told that it had been attacked by a rocket propelled grenade. The person didn't know more. I hadn't heard anything, so I continued toward the back entrance. Had I gone to the front, I never would have gotten in, but few people used the back entrance. I came to the door that only the marine guard could open remotely, and I wouldn't have gotten through there either if at that moment a marine hadn't come bareling through it, allowing me to slip in.

I didn't notice anything strange in the building except that it was mostly devoid of people. I went up to finish my work.

Later I heard that a car had raced up on the ring road, a man had jumped out with the RPG and fired it into the 5th or 6th floor (I can't remember which now), and the car raced away. I could see the shrapnel holes in the wall and the hole where the RPG punched through. I was told it struck a large copy machine, and that perhaps the grenade had not detonated. No one was injured, thankfully.

Diplomats have no natural constituency back home to support us. When Congress wants to make cuts, they usually look at us as the easiest target to slash without raising a cry from the US public. The news likes to project an image of diplomats as coddled. They never bother to admit that from the end of the Viet Nam war until the newest wars began, more diplomats were killed overseas than military personnel.

Moscow, part 2

2011-05-04T07:22:00.000+02:00

The mafia attack in yesterday's post wasn't the only one I witnessed while living in Moscow, though thank goodness I never saw any that were really dangerous to my health (barring a truly crazy twist of luck).

I had a friend named Gary who was the opposite of me when it came to socializing. He had no hint of shyness to him. He 'made' me go to clubs with him, and I am grateful for it, because even though I don't drink or really enjoy going to such places, Moscow in the '90's was an amazing time to visit and soak up a truly unique atmosphere. The only frustrating thing was that there were lots of very pretty young women being far friendlier than I had ever experienced in the US, yet embassy rules forbade us from dating them (this rule was dropped after I was there two years, thank goodness or I never would have been able to marry my wonderful wife). I got to watch Gary have girlfriend after girlfriend, while my options were limited to the few non-Russians who sometimes made an appearance.

One day Gary met a Belgian in our favorite club, a dingy, smoke-filled underground room called Krizis Zhanra where there was usually pretty cool live music and loads of young Russians and foreigners. Gary's new girlfriend wanted to drag us to a dinner party at her foreigners dormitory. We took the metro to a rather seedy part of town where the poor foreign students were housed. I was introduced to a very pretty but rather overly bold Belgian girl named Sabine, who proceeded to tell me lots of facts about myself, though she had never met me before. She got most of them right, too.

Gary and his girlfriend Ann wanted to go up to the roof to look at the city lights. The elevator didn't work, so we had to climb out onto a rickety fire escape to climb up the fifteen stories to the roof. It turned out to be a (mostly) good idea, since snow was just starting to fall, and the city looked particularly nice with all the lights coming on. We were standing there at peace when we suddenly began hearing odd popping sounds. We were confused for a moment, but then I followed the noise to one edge of the roof and looked down.

On the road in front of the dormitory were two parked cars, and a third car was speeding away from them. Two men stood in front of the parked cars firing pistols at the speeding car. We spent the next five minutes or so (since we had such a high view, and it wasn't as dark as the photos here) watching as the men leapt into the cars and gave chase to the first. The cars split up, but we never saw the end of the chase as they finally escaped our sight.

This night was the inspiration for my first Moscow scene in the book, which I have take place in an ancient, crumbling dormitory in this very part of town. The place has been abandoned over the decades as the Dark Times caused a contraction in the population, and a mafia group has taken over a room in the building as a safe house.

Moscow, part 1

2011-05-03T08:30:00.013+02:00

I've been getting some writing done lately, which is amazing considering I went through about a two year slump. I was so twisted up between editing my first novel and trying to figure out which of the next two novels that I wanted to work on (not to mention a couple of short stories I wanted to polish up) that I ended up not getting much done on any of it.

I'm six chapters in now on my science fiction prequel to The Shard. You could check out the first three chapters on bookcountry.com if you like (though in the meantime I have switched the order of the first two chapters), or easier yet use the link on the right to the six chapters on Authonomy. It would be nice to get some five or six star reviews to counter the writers there who go around giving rivals one or two stars.

A large part of the inspiration for this story came from the four years that I lived in Moscow, from October 1993 to October 1997. I thought I might tell a little bit about that. **disclaimer: everything in these posts is strictly my own personal experience, and none of it can be taken as the view of the US government.

I started working for the State Department in August of 1993. They first sent me for language training at the Foreign Service Institute in Rosslyn, Virginia, which I thought odd since I had just completed three years of Russian language at the university, while these courses were starting at the beginning. Anyhow, I did eight weeks of that before they shipped me off to Moscow.

My mother was really nervous about me going, because events had really gone to heck there just at the time I was scheduled to go. You see that picture of the Russian parliament building smoking from all the tank fire? That building is directly across the street from the newer part of the American embassy (behind and to the right of the parliament in this photo). See those nasty tanks? Yeah, it was a fun time.

I was warned when I arrived that there was a real danger from sniper fire. One of our marines had been clipped in the neck from a huge empty lot across the street. Many believed it was the KSV (KGB) who were using the opportunity to harass us.

At first I was housed at a French hotel. The first year I was there they had me working night shifts. I would take the shuttle at 10 PM and return at 7 AM. One night in November I was waiting to depart on the shuttle. It was snowing, and the driver was standing under the hotel entrance smoking and waiting for 10 so we could leave. Across the street was a row of kiosks. Suddenly three black cars (Volgas, I think) raced up together and screeched to a halt across the street. Several guys hopped out, ran to one of the kiosks, and started spraying bullets into it with some sort of automatic rifles. It only took fifteen seconds or so before they had all hopped back into their cars and sped off.

The shuttle driver and I looked at each other and silently agreed that it was time to go, regardless of the official departure time. I learned as time went on that Moscow at that time was very similar to Chicago in the 1920's. Mafiosi were everywhere, and there were assssinations and bombings just about every day. I didn't write anything down, but I certainly internalized many of the mafia stories from those years, and I began piecing some of them together into the first inklings of a story. It wasn't meant to be science fiction at the time, but later when I was trying to improve a sci-fi plotline, the old mafia story seemed to fit right into place.

Been There, Done That

2011-05-02T08:25:00.007+02:00

Let's say you grew up on Dungeons & Dragons (or other similar role-playing games like MERP). You love that type of world and you now want to write about it. You people your world with all the elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls, and dragons that you loved so much from your gaming days. You know in advance that a lot of readers will be turned off by this, since they've seen it a few times before and these readers never like to read anything similar to what they've read previously, but you aren't worried about that because you know there are still lots of readers out there who do like these types of stories.

So, you write and you write, and eventually you finish. Then you are dismayed when all your beta readers keep telling you how so many scenes remind them of Tolkien. How can this be, you say, since you were not thinking about Lord of the Rings when you wrote your story.

Well, it's simple really. Tolkien did it all (or pretty close to it). His books were so in-depth that as far as taking a party of mixed races and having them move about on a map (in pursuit of a grand, epic adventure, naturally), you are pretty much out of luck if you don't want anyone to draw any parallels to Tolkien. Want to move from one place to another? Okay, have the characters walk. Oops, Tolkien did that. Ride horses or ponies? Check. Ride in a cart? Check.

How about you come to a river? Take a ferry across? Nope, he's done that. Find a ford? Been there, done that. Ride a boat down the river? Cross on a bridge? Check and check.

Swamps or marshes? He's done it. Forests? He's done it all. Mountains? Cross in a pass? Find an unknown path? Find caves that lead you through it? He's covered them all. You might as well just have some big eagles swoop down and pick you up, but he's done that, too. I guess you could have the characters rig up a hot air balloon to carry them across, but that, at least to me, is a more modern version of fantasy than suits my D&D-inspired tastes.

I got some spot-on feedback on my book recently, and I am grateful as heck for it. I will really be able to examine some scenes and figure out a way to make them a little more unique. The only way it bothered me was in knowing that I had already tried to avoid Tolkien's more famous stories, yet some scenes still reminded the reader of parts of The Hobbit or LOTR. The fact is, much of my story was inspired not by either of those books but rather by the part of Beren's story in The Silmarillion where he escapes from Dorthonian by crossing under the mountains. That piece of his story always stuck with me, because Tolkien teased us by saying that Beren endured much horror during the crossing, but he didn't go into specifics. I always wanted to do a story that dealt with an extremely hazardous crossing beneath a mountain range. I didn't intend it to be like Moria.

The problem is that there are only so many realistic variations of passages under a mountain, and Tolkien pretty much hit them all. Rough stone, worked stone, small rooms, big rooms with pillars for support, chasms, bridges...there's not much else you can realistically work with, yet Tolkien did all those.

My reader was right, though. I may not be able to avoid Tolkien altogether, but I can at least ensure that big moments of the journey don't fall within similar settings. In other words, if I currently have an important battle taking place on an underground bridge, it's probably best to move it to someplace else so it doesn't make readers think of the ending of the Fellowship movie or book. It would have been embarrassing to me to have the book published and only then to hear from readers about such similarities, since I didn't know they were there, so to this friend I say, "Thank you."

To those who would say, "Well, don't use elves and dwarves and such.", I can only respond that this is my passion. I spent years playing D&D and living within this type of world. I always rued the fact that no one was ever publishing any stories set in such a world that dealt with it in a truly serious manner. Tolkien took his world very seriously, and that's why so many love him. The official D&D or Dragonlance novels? Not serious (at least in my view).

Gritty Fantasy

2011-04-28T08:27:00.002+02:00

I've seen many blog posts, interviews, and articles over the past couple years talking about the new wave of gritty fantasy. The usual authors mentioned include Joe Abercrombie, Richard Morgan, and George R. R. Martin. Mostly what the articles mention is the focus on realism and everything being shades of gray rather than the old black and white of high fantasy.

I agree with the assessments only in regards to Martin. I love his shades of gray and the truly gritty, mostly realistic portrayals of human nature. I tend to disagree, though, when it comes to the other writers.

I love gritty realism if done properly. This is why Martin is my favorite living fantasy writer. Created worlds that are treated with the same seriousness of our own real world appeal to me.

Abercrombie and Morgan certainly do gritty and absolutely do shades of gray, but what they don't do, in my opinion, is realism. You see, realism doesn't mean only gray, with no admirable people, as we mainly get in their novels. In the real life that I know, people have lots of faults, and there are truly some bad characters out there, but mostly what I see are people who truly try their best to be decent. I've found this to be true even in the most backwards countries that I visit.

That's where these writers go wrong for me. They make everyone pretty much repugnant. No one in their worlds seems to have much altruism. One might argue that their times are different than ours, but I would argue back that regardless of how bad life may have been at any time in history, there have always been at least some people with more positive attitudes toward life or generally more cheerful dispositions. There have always been a few who try to do right. There have always been some heroes, even if not perfect. In Best Served Cold Abercrombie did briefly have one character make a few noises in the direction of wishing to be a better person, but that died quickly as the character evolved into a monster. He did also have another character have a generally cheerful disposition...while being utterly vile in all other respects (and this was the character I liked best in the book).

Martin does a great job of getting this balance right. He has a few flat out bad characters, such as The Mountain That Rides or Tywin Lannister, but mostly he gives us characters that may appear evil at first, but once you get to know them a little better you can see that your first thoughts about them were not necessarily the entire story. This would apply to Jaime Lannister, Tyrion, and a few others.

I don't mean to be overly harsh with Abercrombie and Morgan. I got some enjoyment from their books, and I certainly believe there is an audience for what they do. Their work just doesn't seem as realistic to me as so many bloggers or critics suggest.

My own aim in writing has been to take the sweetness that I love in high fantasy and instill some of the serious realism that I love from Martin. I put shades of gray, but I also have altruism and real heroes...even if flawed.

Self-Publishing Dream

2011-04-27T09:48:00.002+02:00

Self-publishing is gaining a more and more respect these days, at least to a degree, but traditional publishing retains most of the advantages still. I primarily hold out hope for traditional publishing at some point, but I do have one intriguing idea that nags at my mind every so often, however unrealistic it may be.

Art by Stephan Martiniere

I dream of a book that is as much a work of art as it is a novel. I dream of finding just the right artist - one who loves my work and likes the idea of working with it, in the way that Alan Lee and John Howe and others did with Tolkien's work, while having a style that fits what I wish for in an artist. I dream of having that artist agree to be a partner in creating a high-quality self-published set of works that would stand out from the general self-publishing crowd. Imagine having not just a gorgeous cover, but thirty or so fabulous paintings scattered throughout each book, depicting the most amazing scenes.

Rueful

2011-04-26T07:51:00.001+02:00

Being forward thinking has its drawbacks, I guess. I began querying my epic fantasy about a year and a half ago, and in my queries I commented that it was the perfect time to pick up such a book due to the forthcoming Game of Thrones and Hobbit movies. I got some requests from some really great agents but they all ended up saying 'close but not what I'm after right now'.

So, now Game of Thrones has actually come out, and as I knew it would be, it is huge. I expect a few agents are now interested in taking a fresh look at epic fantasy stories. I dislike the fact that I now feel I can't requery any of the many agents I tried already. It's sad, because one of them might actually consider my story in a fresh light now. Heck, George R. R. Martin was the very inspiration for my story, in style at least, though my story is very different. Wouldn't it have been better for an agent to do the work with me to polish the story a year and a half ago so that it could be ready for publishing now when the fire is hot, rather than only now showing interest in epic fantasy?

Mercurial Memories

2011-04-25T07:37:00.005+02:00

My work in progress is a distant prequel to my fantasy novel The Shard. It is tentatively called The Immortality Game and is a near-future sci-fi thriller set in Moscow in the year 2138. Many things are not as advanced as one might expect, because some catastrophic things have happened between now and then that caused a mini-'dark ages'. In other words, most of the world regressed dramatically for a few decades before new governments were able to restore the veneer of civilization. America, for instance, has been broken up into several smaller countries. One of my characters comes from Western America (I'm trying to think up a more appropriate name for the western part of America breaking off into its own country, so any suggestions are appreciated).

by Christian Hecker

I am having trouble in my current chapter, because the main character is fleeing into the old metro station at Kolomenskaya in Moscow. The entire metro system has long been abandoned, but has been taken over as living space for the many homeless. Since they live in the darkness underground, people refer to the metro dwellers as Trogs (short for Troglodytes).

My memory is betraying me here. I visited Kolomenskaya many times when I lived in Moscow. The park there (a refugee camp in my story) was a place I loved to visit for walks. I simply cannot remember whether the Kolomenskaya metro station had an escalator or just stairs. Most metro stations in Moscow have escalators, many of them quite long, but there are a few that are closer to the surface and have only stairs. I think that this station was one of the latter. Getting a detail like this right is important for a story. I have Googled the station, but the images I get show only the interior. One image looked promising, but it turned out to be for a different station.

*Sigh* This is part of the reason it is great to write fantasy. You don't have to worry about getting real-world details wrong!

Fantasy: Where Has the Excitement Gone?

2011-04-22T09:28:00.002+02:00

Maybe it has always been this way and I just don't realize it because I am not old enough to have lived through earlier periods, but it sure seems to me that we live in a time where the fantasy is, well, good, perhaps even quite good at times, yet it lacks the excitement I crave.

There were a good many authors in earlier times who produced books that I would pick up excitedly and move them right to the top of my to-read list. Tolkien; Howard; Leiber; LeGuin; the Thieves World series; the early Shannara books; the first five McKiernan books, and so forth, all were must-read for me.

Nowadays the only books that really get me excited and I simply must have them immediately are George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Sure, there are some other pretty good ones out there, from Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series to Patrick Rothfuss's Kvothe books, but even those don't truly get my blood boiling with must-read anticipation.

Is it just me? Have I changed so much? I don't think so, because when I revisit old favorites I still feel that excitement for them. I can reread A Wizard of Earthsea or the first Fafhrd and Gray Mouser book as many times as I like and always love them. Only Martin's books do that for me today. I recently finished The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan and Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, both of which got rave reviews, yet they were very unexciting for me. I liked them okay and will probably never read them over again.

It's true that I am leaving out YA for the most part (though I suspect LeGuin's books might have been called YA if there was such a category back then), but then I don't much care for YA other than the Harry Potter series (sacrilege, I know, given how many of you out there are so heavily into YA).

What are your thoughts on fantasy today?

The Cover I Want

2011-04-19T11:26:00.005+02:00

Let me try to show you the cover art that I dream about for my fantasy novel The Shard. It starts here:
Just the knight and horse, not the background, and he should be near the right edge of the painting. Now turn him so that he is facing slightly away from the viewer. I want him in just such a slumped posture and the same with the horse. The man knows he is looking at a scene that changes everything. He knows the long peace the land has known is gone. The only thing wrong with him is that he doesn't wear plate mail armor like this. So, on to the next picture:

This shows what the knight should be wearing...almost. It should look like this except that the surcoat design should have a red and black checkerboard pattern. If the artist puts a shield on him it should have the same pattern.

The knight has some men with him, though the ones on horses could be mainly out of the picture, perhaps just a hint of them showing up behind the primary figure.

Across from the knight is a wall of forest receding to the horizon, the trees all looking like giant redwoods, except that the bark is silver. Between the knight and the forest is sun burnt grass. Two of the trees should have hacking marks in them, with red sap leaking down from the cut. Five bodies should be scattered near the trees, with one out in the field, lying with his head toward the knight. Each body has a single silver-fletched arrow jutting from its back. There should be an axe or two lying near the cut trees. Depending on the balance of the picture, there could be a man-at-arms kneeling near the body and looking up at the knight, or he can be absent. There should be some crows hanging about.

That's about it. This is a scene from early in my book, and I feel it would be a good one to use as cover art. My dream would be to have it done in the style of Alan Lee, since I love his muted colors and elegant realism. I don't need the colors to be quite this muted, but I do want the realism. See this picture for example:

Game of Thrones Love

2011-04-18T07:35:00.008+02:00

I realized that it is a little odd that I have posted nothing about the new HBO adaptation of A Game of Thrones, given that George R. R. Martin was primarily responsible for inspiring me to actually begin writing a book. I consider his A Song of Ice and Fire series to be the best fantasy by a living writer (in second place for me would be A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin).

The reason, I suppose, is that I feel the need to dampen my own excitement over the show, because I won't be able to watch it for many months. Living in Azerbaijan, I have no legal means of watching it until it is released on DVD.

I was saddened to read today about some generally high-quality news media allowing fantasy-hating reviewers to bash the show while smearing women in general. I won't go into detail since others have done much better, but if you haven't read about it, try this link or this one on Tor. It would be better, in my opinion, for these news sources to have people who actually enjoy fantasy do such reviews. That way we could get an honest opinion on how well it was done.

Oh, and while running about the web today, I came across a Gene Wolfe essay on Tolkien and found this great quote (apologies for being off topic):

"Terry Brooks has often been disparaged for imitating Tolkien, particularly by those reviewers who find his books inferior to Tolkien's own. I can say only that I wish there were more imitators -- we need them -- and that all imitations of so great an original must necessarily be inferior."

I'd like to tell all of my readers who love fantasy and sci-fi about The Silver Key, which I just discovered. The writer is far superior to me, yet sadly he has few followers (perhaps he needs to move his Followers widget higher on his page!). I found it well worth my while to spend a couple of hours reading through old posts there, and I imagine many of you would, too.

Origin of Midas

2011-04-13T09:34:00.005+02:00

Do you know why I have that particular photo in the header of my blog? I took this photo when I lived in Zagreb, Croatia from 2002 to 2004. I loved it because of how different it was from the usual statues. Rather than a noble figure on a noble steed with something outthrust (usually a sword or hand or spear), this knight appears weary, slumped, and his horse has its head down.

Ever since I was a teen I had a favorite Dungeons & Dragons character, a paladin named Midas Welby (...he might as well be). Unlike most such knights, who always seem a touch arrogant, my Midas was a truly humble fellow, meant to embody all of the traits that I would ideally like to see in a knight.

In 2006 when I first thought about actually trying to write a book, my mind linked the photo of this statue to Midas, and a scene was born. I imagined him sitting on his horse with a few of his men around him, staring sadly at a scene of devestation that he was well aware meant the end of peace. I loved that you could read everything in his posture. He didn't need to say anything, which was his style anyway. So, I typed out the scene and showed it to a buddy. He liked it, and that encouraged me to continue, slowly but surely.

I am happy with the book. It came out pretty much the way I meant it to. I am a little sad that it isn't a page-burning, can't-put-it-down scorcher. Several readers have said they liked it, but no one has loved it, except for my youngest son (he keeps re-reading it again and again), and he doesn't count as objective. **sigh** I hope someday I can do justice to a story that I love.

Synopses

2011-04-12T08:49:00.000+02:00

I can't write synopses. Rather, I can write them, but not in a manner that works for agents and publishers.

Query letters are a drag, but I can manage them. One doesn't have to tell the whole plot in a query letter. We can pick a single character and a major early catalyst and make an interesting hook to draw in an agent.

It doesn't work that way with a synopsis. There we have to tell about all major characters and plotlines, and give the resolution of the story. Since my stories tend to be very complex with many plotlines and several POV characters, I find writing a synopsis to be so difficult as to be not worth my while. So, when an agent or a publisher asks for a synopsis I simply don't bother submitting to them.

I'm sure that makes them happy. With their shortage of time and huge slushpiles, I am sure they are quite happy not to have my novels adding to their work. I can't help but think, however, that the perfect agent or publisher might be out there and I won't hook up with them simply because they demand a synopsis.

Angry Robot publishing was only the latest such site that sounded promising. It sounded to me like they were really looking for the types of books that I am writing. They wanted a two page synopsis. My complex stories make it impossible for me to write a good five or ten page synopsis, so there is no way I will even attempt a two page one.

Bad Books?

2011-04-11T07:33:00.004+02:00

I couple of writer buddies and I were discussing some old fantasy novels we had liked when we were teens. I mentioned that I remember liking them but that I had always wished they were a little more realistic. Another mentioned that he still liked them. The third said that he had re-read them as an adult and they were just plain bad.

This got me to thinking about books that are supposedly bad. Yes, to our adult minds such books may indeed be bad. Yet does that qualify them as a bad book if in the taste of teens they are really good? Many of us might argue that yes they are bad, but publishing is a business -- if teens will spend money on books that we adults will sniff at, well that still makes them money-makers.

I wish agents would consider this more often when it comes to certain types of fantasy, such as traditional high fantasy, where almost all agents and publishers seem burnt out on anything that resembles Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons in any way. So what if you think all such work is derivative? If teens and old-timer gaming fans will shell out the bucks for such books, you should be picking them up. One person's 'bad' is another person's favorite type of book.

ABNA Fail

2011-03-23T09:10:00.003+01:00

First of all, congratulations to my blogger friend Hart Johnson for making the second round cut in the YA category!

I was a little proud to make it through the first cut of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, even if I pretty much knew I should given that my query had worked on several really great agents. That cut was just the pitch alone. The second round had two reviewers look at an excerpt of the beginning of the novel, which for me was the prologue and two chapters.

Looking through the ABNA forum, there appears to have been a pretty severe problem with one of the reviewers this year, as some writers received reviews that are simply unacceptable. Some wrote to ABNA and received apologies. I'm not sure if I got one of those reviewers, but I do feel that I got at least slightly shafted. Here are my two reviews:

Review 1:
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

I liked the character of Midas a lot. Midas is a more interesting and conflicted warrior/leader then (sic) many that I have read about in the past. The background we get on him is satisfying. The loss of his eldest son, Miros, during a troll-hunt has shattered his spirit. He has two remaining son's left to raise with his withdrawn and sullen wife Rina, who only wants to go back to her homeland to be with her family. She seems to have retreated into herself since her son's death almost more then her husband. Midas was the best part of the story because you could feel the stress of ruling over his land taking a toll on him since his son's death. It was played out very realistically for a fantasy genre entry.

I like this because it shows she really got what I was after with Midas and his wife.

I liked the mystery surrounding the elven arrows and the slain peasants outside the bordering Laithtaris (the Elven wood) which is a protected area of woods specifically preserved for the Elves. Why were the men found dead with elven arrows imbedded in them?

The author crafted enough mystery and suspense to keep us on edge and to get us reading more. I really enjoyed this entry.

What aspect needs the most work?

I wish there had been just a bit more female perspective in the novel. The only female character we are given a glimpse into was Rina and she is a saddened, lifeless character. She felt a little wooden to me and I couldn't quite wrap my head around her. I don't like when fantasy plays into the atypical stereotype of making a female character a damsal in distress of a mindless side-character who has no true role in the action and that is what I felt from Rina. I wanted more feminine energy in the story, as strange as that sounds. There was a lot of masculinity to the story with the fighting and Midas and his son's activities. The wizard Xax's character could have been made into a Sorceress to add some estrogen to the tale and I would have liked it a bit more. I am being nitpicky though!

Not too bad, except that this was just the prologue and two small chapters. I do have a very strong female character in the book, but she comes in a few chapters later. Also, Rina may seem wooden, but to me that is a realistic portrayal of a woman devestated by the loss of her first-born child. Also, my book is mainly a masculine story, given that it is a medieval war story and the truth of medieval war is that it is primarily a masculine pursuit. However, the strong female lead that I use is the best warrior in the book and is the one who slays the dragon. I have a nice chapter where there is a conversation between the typically medieval female Rina and the warrior elf Alvanaria, which gives me a great chance to highlight the differences between the two races' expectations for women.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

I really enjoyed this fantasy entry. I haven't read a lot of fantasy lately that has compelled me and kept me intrigued enough to keep reading. This was definitely a keeper. I would have kept reading well into the night with this one. I liked the author's way with words and how he started out of the gates with something as unexpected as the death of a young boy. I was NOT expecting young Miros to be killed by that troll and I found that very, very gripping and shocking. It was a nice jolt to the system.

I felt like the segment with Xax and his magical communication with the kestrel was a bit strange but it only made me want to learn more about him. Does he have something to do with the elven arrows that were found in the murdered peasants? Is he good or evil? I couldn't quite tell but I liked that there was a mystery surrounding him. I really wanted to read more and see where the characters went in this tale. I really enjoyed it.

This is nice. The chapter with Xax is purposely kept very short and mysterious, because that is what is needed with him at this point. When he returns to the story, much is made clear.

ABNA Expert Reviewer It's too bad that it is the 'Expert' reviewer that seems to me to fall short...

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Assuming Miros isn't really dead, "killing" him off at the beginning is quite a compelling hook. The writing is smooth.

I can't tell if the person read my excerpt or not. If he had read it all, he would already know that Miros is certainly dead.

What aspect needs the most work?

The pacing jumps around too much. First we're with Miros. He dies. Then we're with Xax in the wood, not having a clue what's going on, then we're with Midas and his sons, then his wife in a family crisis, then another crisis.

I get the feeling from this complaint that this person much prefers stories with a straightforward single POV plotline. Perhaps he doesn't like the very successful books that use many POV threads, such as George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series? Martin uses dozens of POV characters, while I use only four. Is four really too many?

Oh, and again, did the guy just skim? He says Xax is in a wood, when the text makes it very clear that he is on a flat grassy plain.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

It is well-written and there are the stirrings of a plot, but it is hard to tell the trajectory (and therefore the strength) of the book from the excerpt.

This really bothers me. My book is an epic fantasy. It has around a hundred chapters and is 140,000 words long. He saw a short prologue and a short chapter followed by one meaty chapter. I don't believe I am doing my job properly with my plot if you can tell what it is all about already at this point. I give loads of hints and clues and mysteries. I don't get the feeling that this reviewer took his job seriously enough.

Diplomacy in Trouble

2011-03-16T06:51:00.001+01:00

I don't write much about my work as a diplomat in the US Foreign Service, mainly because we have heavy restrictions placed upon us as to what we may and may not publicly discuss, and though much of what I could say is okay, it is too easy to accidentally cross the line. However, diplomacy is as critical today as it has ever been for our country, yet with no natural constituency at home Congress views us as the easiest piece of the budget to slash given that few in the US will notice or raise a cry. Congress is trying to cripple US diplomacy right now, and I strongly urge all Americans to stand up to them. Please read these terrific defenses of diplomacy (from democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and republican Senator Lindsey Graham), and then if you have a moment, write to your senators and representatives in both the Senate and House and let them know your opinion.

Great John Scalzi Post

2011-03-15T07:34:00.000+01:00

I feel it is generally best to avoid discussing religion here, even though I really love doing so, because the subject offends too many people and that isn't my purpose in writing this blog. However, a writer that I really admire wrote a great post on the subject and I would feel remiss if I failed to point it out to those who might have missed it. John Scalzi is a great writer who did one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Old Man's War. He seems to have nearly the exact same set of beliefs as I do, and I was quick to send this link off to my own kids (since I always love discussing such things with them!).

Stewing on Fantasy

2011-03-09T06:42:00.003+01:00

If you've spent a good amount of time researching fantasy writing online then you have no doubt come across any number of posts about clichés in fantasy. One of the big no-no’s according to the various lists is having the characters on a road trip make stew. Yes, making stew seems to be quite popular in fantasy novels, and a good number of readers apparently take exception to this given how long it takes for a good stew to actually cook. Personally, I think they forget how hard it is to cook at all on the road (not to mention how sick and tired one would get of roasted rabbit), so tossing some things into a pot to boil for awhile is not exactly the end of the world.

Anyhow, I was reminded of this cliché by John Scalzi's review of The Name of the Wind. I love Scalzi and Rothfuss, so the review is worth checking out.

I had a point early in my fantasy novel where some characters needed to take a break early from their travels. I thought it would be a good point to poke fun at both the cliché and those who like to jump on it. Here is an excerpt:

Valgorn decided they’d camp early, just where the road left the woods. When Geldrath asked why they were stopping so early, Valgorn responded, “Do you know how long it takes to cook stew? Don’t get used to it."

Oddly enough, I have had a good number of readers actually try to tell me that I was doing something wrong here and didn't I know that having stew was wrong in a fantasy? Is it truly not apparent to these readers that I did this on purpose?

Artwork for the Book

2011-03-04T12:46:00.001+01:00

Since yesterday's post gave a spoiler about the great dragon being dead, here is artwork I commissioned from Shane Tyree that depicts the dead dragon in a scene from the book. The group reaches a point in the mountain caverns where they believe they should be hearing, smelling, and seeing signs of the dragon, but there is only silence. The elf Alvanaria silently creeps into the pitch black lair, and the man who has begun to fall in love with her, Lord Midas, blindly follows her. When Alvanaria realizes the dragon is dead, she lights a torch, nearly frightening poor Midas to death.

The painting would work fine as interior artwork for the book, but it isn't suitable for the cover, both because the layout doesn't work for cover sizes and also because the art gives away a plot point.

Have you ever or do you think you might ever commission art for your book?

It's History, Baby!

2011-03-03T07:57:00.001+01:00

**spoiler alert - that means you Matt Rush!**

I've had comments here and there from readers of my first fantasy novel who say that I shouldn't lead readers on with things such as the big war against the elves that threatens to break out during the first quarter of the book only to be overcome by bigger events, or the buildup of dread toward the eventual encounter with the horrible dragon only to find that it has died of old age. They say this is a letdown for readers. For me it is history.

I know that seems irrational. For you it is fiction, and thus the writer could simply change the plot. For me, my fantasy world has existed for around a quarter of a century. I know it almost as well as I know the real world. It is real for me. Its history is real for me. And like real history, events cannot simply be changed at a whim to be more appropriate to your needs (unless you are the FOX Propaganda Channel). History is messy, so I find it unbelievable when events in fantasy books always fall like dominos along a perfect plotline. Real stories should be messy (at least to a degree), just like real history.

The war with elves is something that almost happened and then didn't. Sorry, but that's the history. The prince tried to touch off that war, because he had designs on their land. The war would have happened if my main character hadn't acted to sabotage the prince's plans along with everyone learning about an impending invasion by a never-before-heard-of race. Some readers can call that a letdown. I call it realistic.

I suppose it is because I have been a historian by nature all of my life. The first book I ever asked for, when I was five, was the Illustrated History of the World. When I got into grade school, I read every history book in the library, and when I was done I reread them. I would have majored in history in college except that I have never wanted to be a teacher and I couldn't see any good careers available otherwise. I did still minor in history, though.

I fully understand why readers would be baffled by my attitude. I should be able to change anything and everything. I get it. I just can't do it. The history of my universe is as real to me as the Silmarillion for Middle Earth is for Tolkien. I can change the details revolving about the characters, but I can't change the events that have occurred within the world. If a publisher ever came to me and said my book was close, but I need to change this one event, well then I would have to think hard about it.

The Clash of Readers Versus Professionals

2011-03-02T13:00:00.006+01:00

It feels like every day that I read another professional -- whether an agent, writer, publisher, or editor -- complaining about too much fantasy being derivative of other works. One today was from Paul Goat Allen and it went, "As a full-time book reviewer, I’ve read a lot of fantasy over the last few decades – and a sizable percentage of it is derivative (...) imitation.", this coming just after Patrick Rothfuss said, "...more and more people are finally realizing that there's more to fantasy stories than elves and wizards and goblin armies."

Now I totally understand why many if not most pros feel this way (though I do believe they are exaggerating on at least Tolkienesque fantasies; I have blogged in the past about how few Tolkienesque fantasy books there are to be found if one actually looks for them). My objection comes from the fact that publishing is supposed to be about making money. It shouldn't matter one bit whether every publishing pro in the world (as well as many readers) hates derivative fantasy; as long as there are lots of fantasy readers who do love it then it should be published. The problem is that I think the pros are screening out a ton of such fantasy that readers like myself wish to read.

My advice to these publishing pros: go ahead and look down your nose at it, but stop rejecting derivative fantasy just because you dislike it. Derivative fantasy can still be great, such as the Iron Tower trilogy by McKiernan, and there are far more fans of it out here than you realize. A whole bunch of us happen to love elves and wizards and goblin armies.

A Couple of Goodbyes

2011-03-01T10:22:00.000+01:00

This past weekend two family members passed away. Though it is always sad, both of them had very long and very good lives. My grandmother on my father's side was 92. I'll mourn her privately, but the second family member was more public, so I think I can talk a little about him here.

Perhaps you saw recent news articles about him? His name was Frank Buckles and at 110 he was the last surviving American WWI veteran. My grandmother on my mother's side had the maiden name of Buckles, and Frank was her uncle. So, I think that makes him my great great uncle. My mom calls him Uncle Woodruff, so I think he went by his middle name. I am sad that I never got to meet him.

Goodbye Grandma Cross. I'll miss you. And goodbye Great Great Uncle Woodruff. I wish I could have met you.

Best Movies Adapted From Books

2011-02-24T10:19:00.003+01:00

Nathan Bransford started an interesting discussion yesterday with a post asking us what we thought were the best movie adaptions of books. I thought it would be fun to list my choices.

1. Blade Runner -- Hands down the best! The music alone is better than anything any other movie has come up with. I thought the original story by Phillip K. Dick, titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, was pretty decent, but I didn't love it. However, if I could only pick one movie to watch in my life it would be this one. The atmosphere, the soundtrack, the awesome casting, and the spot on perfect acting make this a movie to cherish. It was also the last great sci-fi movie to use no CGI.

2. The Princess Bride -- I have never met anyone who doesn't love this movie, and I am not sure I would want to know someone who doesn't like it. Great casting and a terrific, funny script make this one to watch again and again.

3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- I can't believe I was the only one to mention this one out of all those comments on Nathan's site! Ken Kesey's book is great, but Jack Nicholson and the amazing cast (check out how many of those bit actors went on to become famous) owned this story. It's sad, scary, and hilarious at the same time, and I never tire of seeing it.

4. The Lord of the Rings -- No one could possible adapt these novels perfectly, but Peter Jackson came as close as humanly possible (at least in the extended editions) with his films. The soundtrack can't quite measure up to Blade Runner, but Enya's Council of Elrond may be the single best soundtrack song ever.

There are loads of other great ones: The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Silence of the Lambs, Bridge to Terabithia, and many more. What are yours?

Magic in My Universe

2011-02-23T08:58:00.001+01:00

In my fantasy series, a group of scientists from Earth arrives at the closest habitable planet and is shocked to discover that life on the planet is nearly identical to that on Earth. Despite being atheists or agnostics, the first conclusion that the group arrives at is that there must be some sort of pattern or design to the universe after all. They begin to question their own lack of belief, at least until they discovered an alternative explanation.

An experiment while studying local microorganisms leads one of the scientists to discover that he could switch his 'view' of the world and see energy flowing in vivid colors through every particle in the world. Later he learned that he could teach this ability to the other scientists, but not to any of the natives of the planet. Through much experimentation, the scientists learned that they could not only see the energy, but could in small ways use their minds to manipulate it. For example, if they held up a lit candle, they could 'send' energy through the flame and amplify it. The tiny flame could be turned into a burst of fire. The downside was that any manipulation of the energy, or magic as they half-jokingly began to call it, drained energy from the user, leaving them exhausted. This made any regular use of the magic impracticable.

Two decades after their arrival, the scientists realized that there was more to the magic than they first realized. For one thing, none of the scientists appeared to be aging. For another, many things that they took for granted on Earth did not work the same on this planet. If they mixed the ingredients for gunpowder, for example, it would only fizzle or spark rather than explode. If they developed a means of producing electricity, it would only provide the weakest hint of a current. They could only theorize, but they started to believe that the strong presence of this magical energy somehow inhibited or otherwise affected the standards of physics as understood on Earth.

Furthermore, the scientists began to believe that the magical energy connected every atom in the universe and provided a sort of template for life, thus explaining why life on this planet is nearly identical to that on Earth. The magical energy was influencing the evolution of life on each habitable planet. The scientists theorized that the magical connection was not solely physical, but that certain individuals may be more attuned to magic than others. This could explain why the life forms that are different, such as the dragons and dwarves of this planet, show up as legends and folklore back on Earth.

At the time of my first story, only three of the scientists are still alive. They have lived for more than six thousand years on the new planet, yet appear to have aged only a quarter of a century. They have witnessed the evolution of the local humanoid tribes, and have influenced some of them and helped them advance faster than others. The magic is so strong on this planet that scientific progress is severely hampered, and civilization evolves at a much slower rate than on Earth. The scientists themselves became this planet's only 'wizards'.

Hmm, looks like I need to come up with a name for the planet, as it isn't fun calling it 'this planet' over and over. The standard names that such a group of scientists might generally use, such as New Earth, all seem boring to me!

George R. R. Martin plays chess!

2011-02-18T14:01:00.000+01:00

It's funny how the tiniest things can give you a little thrill sometimes. I was searching around on Goodreads and began reading the bio of my favorite living author, George R. R. Martin, when I saw that he had once really been into chess (which is one of my big hobbies). I had no idea that I shared two huge hobbies with my man George!

I'd gladly swap my slightly better talent for chess for his much bigger talent for writing! The bio only says that he directed a few tournaments long ago, so I visited the US Chess Federation site and looked him up. There he was, with a Class A rating.

Hey, George! I'll give you chess lessons if you'll work with me a bit on writing!

Must They Always Be Beautiful?

2011-02-16T12:17:00.001+01:00

Hart Johnson had a post yesterday that tied in to my last post on unbelievable characters. She gets a lot more traffic and comments than I do, naturally, which makes for a more interesting discussion between commenters.

The question that arose in my mind while reading through all the comments was this -- do most readers want flaws in protagonists but still insist that they be physically beautiful? (I mean this mainly for commercial fiction, as I imagine literary fiction can get away with a lot more) Can we get away with ugly main characters, or does that turn readers off? I probably went overboard in my book by having extremely flawed characters, and rarely a pretty face to be seen, but that is what I see in real life, and I enjoy authenticity in what I read.

So, I wonder what the average book reading audience really desires. I may want realism, but perhaps they care more about superficial beauty and wanting only slightly flawed heroes? I'm not sure that we, being writers, can answer these questions. At the very least, I expect if any of our books ever got optioned for film, Hollywood would change our ugly characters to pretty ones!

Unbelievable Characters

2011-02-14T09:39:00.003+01:00

I have been reading Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies, the sequel to his terrific The Lies of Locke Lamora. Lynch's writing style is clever and fun, and though the books are quite large, they are quick reads since the reader never has a chance to get bored.

Lynch does commit what I consider to be some rather large mistakes, but he does so in such a delightful way that the typical reader would not even notice. The biggest mistake in my opinion has been to make the main character have abilities that are simply too good to be true, and thus the character becomes unbelievable. For example, he enters the most prestigious gambling den in the world and some guards who are supposed to be the very height of professionalism thoroughly search him. Later when he meets the owner he amazes the guy and shows his guards to be inept by pulling out five different packs of playing cards from various parts of this clothing. Sorry, but this is flat-out unbelievable. It did pull me temporarily out of the story, even if most readers would just accept it.

He also makes use quite often of deus ex machina, which is considered a particularly egregious crime by today's writing standards. The main character is always getting himself into situations that feel impossible to get out of, and only after he has miraculously escaped do we find out some pertinent information that makes perfect sense as to why he could escape.

I'm not complaining, really, as Lynch manages to weave such a wonderful story that he simply proves that not all rules can be set in stone. Despite my nitpicks, I still think he is one of the very best of the newer fantasy authors, and readers will generally love his work.

The Fall of the American Empire

2011-02-10T08:02:00.007+01:00

The American Empire is doomed. Oh, it will take its time, but rest assured the U.S. economy will completely collapse sometime within this century. The main reason is simple: politicians care more about their reelections and having 'their' party in power than they do about America. They simply will not do what is needed to resolve our biggest problems.

I view our national debt issues like this:
You charge a thousand dollars to your credit card each and every month without fail. You realize that you are in serious financial trouble because of this. So, you decide to forgo buying a cup of coffee once a week.

Yep, that will certainly help.

Or this:

Mr. Defense Budget and Mr. All The Rest

You have the big, real financial problem standing there (primarily the military budget, though health care and social security are a part of it). You know for a fact that if you want any chance at all of saving your country you need to tell that big guy to start losing a few pounds. Instead, you tell the skinny guy he must drop a hundred pounds. Make sense? No, of course not. Yet this is exactly what our Congress is doing to us. Oh no, we can't cut the military budget, even though that is what is sinking us. That would keep me from getting reelected. How about we cut things like diplomacy, even though it is already stretched thin and is but a tiny drop in the vast ocean of defense spending.

Sorry, but magic doesn't actually exist in the world. I don't see this as a political post, as the problem we face is one that affects all of us regardless of ideology. President Eisenhower was once our supreme commander of the armed forces, yet he warned us in no uncertain terms not to allow the bloating of the military-industrial complex, and we have done exactly what he warned us not to do.

Interview With Lord Midas Welby

2011-02-08T11:22:00.000+01:00

I've been occupied with a lot of things, such as our new ambassador's arrival at the embassy, so I feel bad that I am not posting enough. This post was the most viewed and commented post that I have ever had, so I thought that anyone who has not read it before might enjoy a peek at the main character from my epic fantasy The Shard. This was done originally for the Character Interview Blogfest.

**Repost**
I've chosen to interview the main character from my fantasy novel The Shard. It's tough, because Midas is a fairly serious fellow, so it's not easy to get anything funny out of him. I decided to interview him a few years prior to the start of the novel (it would be interesting to do an after-novel interview someday).

Interview with Lord Midas Welby

A tall slim man, his brown goatee touched with gray, sits down beside me under the elm tree. He wears chainmail and a surcoat decorated with a black and red checkerboard pattern.

Me: So, you’re a lord?

A very minor one. I think few of the other nobles truly consider me to be one. I actually got kicked into a moat once by a knight who was insulted by the very idea that I could be considered a noble.

Did you get revenge on that knight?

It's a long story. He's my vassal now.

You weren’t born a noble?

No. I was born in a tiny fishing village a little north of Mitinya in the Westlands.
(Map here)

Go on, how did you become a lord?

Well, for centuries it has been a rule that every able-bodied 16 year old boy must serve two years in the military, either at the capital of Pangalia or at the defensive fortress of East Gate. I began serving in Pangalia, but just a few weeks after I arrived, there was an attack by barbarians against some settlers beyond the gate, so King Alderic sent the army to crush them. It turned into a long campaign, as the neighboring Alsean tribe was joined by several others. This was how I met Lord Havlin Tathis of Iskimir. I was placed under his command.

I liked him, and he seemed to like me. He promoted me twice after battles, and when it was over he took me on as captain of the guard in Iskimir. Our friendship grew. I knew he was sad because he had failed to produce a male heir. One day he hit me up with the idea of marrying his daughter Rina. I was shocked, naturally. I didn’t know Rina; I had just seen her a few times at the castle. She was pretty, but always so aloof. I couldn’t say no to Lord Tathis, though.

So, he knighted me and arranged for our wedding to take place after a big tournament the king was throwing in Pangalia. We met King Alderic, who had me swear fealty, and that was it -- I was a noble. Lord Tathis gave me a tiny province on his southern border with Laithtaris and Vimar Keep.

So, does that make you Lord Tathis’s heir now?

No, though it’s possible I might be a steward if necessary. Hopefully not! I’ve had three sons with Rina, so my oldest boy Miros is Lord Tathis’s heir.

How is your marriage going?

Umm, do we have to talk about it? Rina’s a lovely woman, very smart and headstrong. She felt I was far beneath her, so she was quite unhappy with her father’s arrangement. She also doesn’t like Welby. It is tiny and she has no friends there, unlike her life in the huge city of Iskimir. She loves our children, especially our daughter Daria, but I think that’s all that keeps her happy. She’s started drinking a bit too much wine lately.

Are you happy as a noble, or would you rather be back in the fishing village?

I loved fishing with my father, though the ocean makes for a hard life. Those three moons cause crazy tides and choppy water. I wish I could be happier in my marriage, of course, but I am content. My sons are all growing fast and show great promise, plus they get along well together. I have a few good friends. My neighbor at Vimar Keep, Lord Solomon Arthanis, is a good friend, but his daughters are terrors, so I admit I avoid visiting. My closest friends are my vassals -- the knights Brindor, Voor, and Victus, and also my captain of the guard Dalthis. We go hunting sometimes, and now that my son Miros is getting older we are even taking him with us.

I know the lands have been at peace for years. Any looming dangers?

Not that I know about. That blasted dragon keeps coming out of hibernation every ten years or so and laying waste to the Eastlands, but the barbarians seem to have settled down. I hear they are actively trading with us now.

Welby borders on Laithtaris, where the elves live. Can you tell us about them?

They might as well be mythical as far as I can see. I’ve never seen an elf. Have you?

It's All Just Words

2011-02-07T14:02:00.007+01:00

There are many words in the English language that we take for granted when we were just plain readers, but once we turn to serious writing we find out nuances we were unaware of. I will just show a few of the ones I learned about.

Flammable, Inflammable -- All my life it never occurred to me to even think about these words. I always assumed that flammable meant something would burn while inflammable meant the opposite. Nope, they both mean the same thing. I really don't like having confusing pairs like this!

Further/Farther -- Farther seems to be relatively new compared to further. Many Brits still prefer to only use further; for instance, check out Lord of the Rings and you will never find farther in it. Modern English now prefers to use farther for instances of physical distance.

Gray/Grey -- It is again strange to have two such similar words mean exactly the same thing. My feeling was that it was simply a matter of taste, so I began to write my novel using grey. Later I ran into a longer word that incorporated gray into it, so for consistency I had to change all of my greys to grays.

Amid/Amidst, Among/Amongst -- I never thought about these prior to taking up writing. As far as I can tell, these are purely a matter of taste, no difference in meaning. As with Gray/Grey and Further/Farther, I believe in being consistent in usage. It constantly amazes me to see even famous authors having farther in some spots and further in others when they all referred to physical distances.

First Paragraphs

2011-02-04T10:10:00.001+01:00

Nathan Bransford ran his annual first paragraph contest, and naturally a great many people entered. What strikes me hardest each year when he does this is just how many writers out there are absolutely convinced that the first paragraph is of paramount importance and must grab the reader immediately.

Now, it certainly doesn't hurt to write such a paragraph, but many of my favorite books have paragraphs that, should they be entered into Nathan's contest, would have been ignored by almost everybody. I, for one, tended to skip right over any paragraph I read in the contest that tried too hard to 'grab' the reader. I prefer a simple paragraph that helps guide the reader properly into the flow of the story.

Meanwhile, I just started a new book of short stories by various famous authors, and it made me laugh to see just how badly the first paragraphs of these very famous authors would have done in Nathan's contest. It shows just why no one should be feeling upset that their paragraph didn't make the cut.

Here is one example:

"The wind blew off the mountains, filling the air with fine ice crystals."

There you go. First paragraph. Would you have even noticed this one if it were posted in there with all those other entries? I know I wouldn't have. Yet this is by the world famous Terry Pratchett.

Here's another:

"The way along the upper sea cliff had always been the secondary road into the Hold. Erosion had left only a narrow thread of a trail, laced with ice from the touch of stormdriven waves."

Not too bad, but nothing that would have grabbed Nathan's attention in my opinion. Yet that is the grandmistress of fantasy herself, Andre Norton.

So, I will keep entering Nathan's contest each year and not even getting honorable mention, but it won't bother me. I don't really believe in grabbing the reader by the throat in the first paragraph. I prefer to do it my way.

I will add one more note: I dislike most first paragraphs that feel like beginnings. Life is generally not like that. Any particular moment in life that you choose to start describing had moments prior to it. Every moment is but a continuation of previous moments. Thus, I like to begin my story with the feel that whatever is happening is but a continuation of something that was already going on. Too many of the first paragraphs that I read were blatant about telling us that this is the beginning.

Xax's Journal

2011-01-29T17:04:00.007+01:00

I've been toying with the idea of scattering some excerpts from the journal of the wizard Xax throughout my fantasy novel, mainly because without them the novel is purely fantasy with the readers getting little idea of the sci-fi roots of the story. My feeling is that agents who read the story as it stands will keep rejecting it on the basis of it not seeming original enough. Would the journal excerpts make a difference?

I began typing out entries in the 'journal'. This one below was the first, but it doesn't feel authentic to me. After all, Xax already knows the history behind the journey to the new habitable planet, so why would he bother writing about it? He would write from his own perspective, even if that is less illuminating for my readers.

****************
Excerpt from the Journal of Artyom Komarov

It was the first habitable planet found by the new Hubble/Yi VII telescope, or as close to habitable as 97.8% certainty can provide. And it was less than eighty light years from Earth. Who could resist? China began building the first generation ship, and a Mormon sect led by trillionaire Trev Johnson started the second, naturally called Mayflower II. They had no clue that they would be beaten to the punch by poor, corrupt Russia.

Even our own government was surprised by the turn of events. It had secretly funded our group, nine of the best Russian scientists along with an Icelandic geneticist, a biologist from Bosnia, and a Danish molecular engineer, for more than three decades for the purpose of perfecting new military clones. On the side we called ourselves the ‘Immortality Club’ and set about figuring out how to digitize a dump of all data from a living being’s mind and reinject that data back into the empty brain of the being’s cloned body. Thirty-three years it took us, along with enough chimpanzees to repopulate the Congo, but we succeeded. We proved there was no such thing as a soul.

Immortality was our primary aim. We were all getting on in years, with Kostya nearing eighty. It took twenty years to properly prepare a human clone, so all of us were impatient to set a few copies baking. We began taking new snapshots of our brain data each week, so we could always have nearly up-to-date versions of ourselves ready to go.

It was Volodya who gazed up at the two generation ships lighting up the nighttime sky and imagined another use for our new technology. We could automate the cloning and reconstitution process using super-advanced crèches on a small, fast ship and beat the Chinese and Americans, claiming the new world for ourselves. We didn’t even tell our bosses what we were up to, since we dared take no chances they would strip away our funding.

It’s an odd feeling to wake in a fresh young body more than three centuries later and know that another version of yourself may still be living back home on Earth.

Writing and Story

2011-01-27T09:07:00.001+01:00

One of my terrific critting buddies, Matt Rush, made a comment recently that got me thinking about the differences between being a good writer and knowing how to craft a good story. The more I think about it the more I believe this is a very important distinction for most new writers to learn.

Most of us who have started down this road toward publishing a book are pretty decent at writing. Some of us are really good at it. My feeling is that most of us are good writers but not necessarily good story tellers yet. I see blog after blog talking about improving our writing, but while this is truly important, I feel what most of us really need to improve more than anything is our story telling.

We can all string together words in a sensible and sometimes beautiful fashion, and when we look back at the drafts we have created, we are understandably proud of what we have accomplished. Often we think we are close to having something that could sell. Now I think that the number one thing we could do to reach that selling point is to understand that writing really well isn't enough. We need to dramatically improve on the craft of laying out a great story.

Thoughts?

A Little About Me

2011-01-25T14:28:00.003+01:00

I just read Elana Johnson's blog post in which she tells the readers a bit about herself (she admits she got the idea from Ali Cross's blog), and I thought it wasn't a bad idea since I had never really done this myself. Perhaps no one is interested, but who knows?

So, a little about me...

I grew up in Arizona. I've been shy all my life, and perhaps even antisocial. I love being social, actually, but only with people that I really connect with. Small talk drives me nuts. I became passionate early on with both reading and music, but when I was 8 I discovered soccer and was completely in love. I was better at it than at anything else that mattered to me at the time. My brothers convinced me to join a baseball league one year, where as the starting pitcher I won every game and we won the championship, but it just wasn't my thing. I loved soccer and did very well at it. At the age of 16 a scout tried to convince my mom to let me sign for a pro team in Mexico City, but she wouldn't allow it.

Since there was no soccer in college at the time I finished high school, I suddenly had nothing to do. So, I started up three new hobbies -- guitar, basketball, and chess. I still love all of them, but when I shattered my left hand playing football in Beijing I could no longer fret properly, so guitar is pretty much out now. Chess became the thing I was best at, and it changed my life. I had been studying computer engineering in college, but since all the best chess grandmasters were from the Soviet Union, I switched my major (after 3.5 years!) to Russian Studies. Talk about changing one's life!

This led to me taking a job with the US State Department after graduation and going to work at the embassy in Moscow. This still ranks as my favorite time in life. I arrived in October, 1993, just as the coup attempt failed, with the tanks blasting away the Russian Parliament (which is right across the street from the embassy). Russia was a mess, but it was exciting there. I met so many fantastic people, including the two who remain my best friends to this day. I got to play chess against some great players, such as world champions Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik, and British champ Nigel Short.

Me against Garry Kasparov

We weren't allowed to date Russians for the first two years I was in Moscow, so social activity was limited. I traveled a bit with friends, the highlight being a trip to London to see Pink Floyd and Stone Temple Pilots in a couple of fantastic concerts. When they finally changed the rules and allow us to date Russians, I was introduced to the amazing woman who became my wife. We're still perfect for each other fifteen years and two sons later.

In 1997 I went back to the states since we were about to have our first child. I got a job as an IT consultant for Compuware Corporation in Phoenix. It was a great company that treated me better than any other ever has, but I got bored with living in the US after the excitement of life overseas, so in 2001 I applied to go back to the Foreign Service. 2001 turned into a high point in my life, as I tied for first place in the US Amateur Chess Championships in Tucson with an undefeated score.

Zagreb, Croatia

After a year of training in Washington, we moved to Zagreb, Croatia. I can't speak much about my job online, so I'll just say that it is great to get a chance to travel around. The US is so large and far away from most other countries that it is nice to be in Europe where so many other great countries are nearby. In 2004 we moved to Beijing, China, which was an interesting and odd experience. Three years there was more than enough. While there I finally took up writing. I had always been good at writing in school, but I never thought I would actually get around to really writing a book.

At the Great Wall

In 2007 we got to move to a fascinating place -- Reykjavik, Iceland. I heartily recommend that everyone experience at least one New Year's celebration there, as they have the best fireworks display in the world. I finished my first book there, incorporating some of the flavor of where I was living, and we moved on to Baku, Azerbaijan in 2009.

I thought I would get to play chess again here in Baku, since three of the top 15 players in the world are from here, as well as this being the birthplace of Garry Kasparov, but I haven't been able to play at all here. The highlight so far was a vacation to London to see Green Day and Pearl Jam in concert. I've started my second book, but it is slow going as I keep procrastinating too much. The best news, though, is that we are heading for the gorgeous city of Budapest next summer for a three year tour. I already know the chess is great there, since I played in a tournament there in 2003, and the beauty of the city should be conducive to writing.

Have I bored you all enough? Did anyone actually get this far? Any questions?

Top Ten Music Bloghop

2011-01-24T05:50:00.005+01:00

From Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog comes the Top Ten Music Bloghop. Please visit all of these blogs to see our wonderful community music tastes in action.

Okay! How to pick just ten songs? This seems crazy, because I live and breathe music. I love so many songs that I couldn't even begin to describe them to you. It's even worse to imagine trying to describe why I love each song, as most of what I love about them simply cannot be put into words. Well, here goes...

1. Black Dog by Led Zeppelin -- Led Zeppelin's fourth album was the first music to catch my full attention as a young boy of 3. I had heard music before, of course, but this was the first time I ever listened to the music and consciously thought about it and loved it. I love this whole album, but the sound of Jimmy Page warming up his guitar at the very beginning has stuck in my mind ever since. A close second is the amazing drum intro to the second track, Rock & Roll. Not on this album, No Quarter is my favorite Zep song.

2. Get Back by The Beatles -- After Led Zeppelin kick started my passion for music, The Beatles quickly became my first true love. I could listen to Zep IV forever, but I could listen to the whole Beatles catalogue and never get tired! I love so many Beatles songs that I won't bore you by listing them, but this one always held a special place in my heart. The driving beat is addictive in a beautiful way.

3. The Council of Elrond by Enya -- I am not a huge Enya fan, but this one song (my own edited version that cuts out the long musical interlude after the lyrics stop) is so gorgeous and sweeping that it sits way ahead of all other songs atop my Most Played list in iTunes (and it's not even close). When I am in the mood for beautiful, I sometimes put this one on a loop and play it over and over again. It doesn't hurt that it is about Lord of the Rings, which is my favorite book ever.

4. Memories of Green by Vangelis -- This is my favorite piece of music from one of my all-time favorite albums, Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack. I love the movie and I love the music from the movie, and so should you all! The only flaw in the album is that it is lacking the song Main Titles & Prologue, which is my second favorite after this one. Get the album and track down Main Titles (which should be track one) and you have a perfect set of music to play when you want to lie on the couch (or sit at your computer) peacefully and be swept away by beauty.

5. Time by Pink Floyd -- As a kid I foolishly thought that I could be forever content to listen and be loyal to nothing but Zeppelin and Beatles. How silly we are when we are kids! The soaring guitar solo in this song brought on my love affair with the amazing music of Pink Floyd, which led to me starting to play guitar. I spent the next several years learning to play all of my favorite Floyd and Zeppelin songs.

6. New Year's Day (Live at Red Rocks) by U2 -- Similar story to the above. Hearing this ringing, glorious anthem got me hooked on U2 before most people (at least in my area) had heard of them. I spent several years listening to almost nothing but them.

7. Pinball Wizard by The Who -- The guitar on this song always blows me away, and I am always amazed that I somehow never really heard The Who as a kid. I guess it is the fault of my parents. They have so many other great songs besides this one, such as Behind Blue Eyes and Baba O'Riley.

8. Searching With My Good Eye Closed by Soundgarden -- The song that started me down my heavy rock kick. I actually first heard it live, when Soundgarden was the opening act for Guns n Roses, and I thought Soundgarden stole the show. I edit off the silly intro and have it fade in with the devil scream, but the slow, heavy dropped-D riff at the beginning is one of my favorites.

9. Father and Son by Cat Stevens -- I heard the amazing Tea For the Tillerman album many times as a kid, but it took several years for me to realize how much I really loved it, and this is my favorite song on an album where every song is fantastic.

10. Alive by Pearl Jam -- The glorious opening riff introduced me to a new band that I instantly loved and have never let go of (I even went to England this past summer to see them in concert). I love other Pearl Jam songs more than this one (In My Tree, Unthought Known, Tremor Christ, Green Disease, Yellow Ledbetter, etc.), but this one started it.

*Sigh* There is no way I can leave it there and be true to myself. I simply must add on a few others.

11. Right in Two by Tool -- The song Aenima was the one that hooked me on this amazing, heavy band. Metal music with soaring vocals like I had never heard before! This is my favorite song, though many others are close.

12. Thomas by A Perfect Circle -- This one follows directly from Tool, as the singer is the same for both bands. This is my favorite song from their first album, but there are so many other great songs by APC, such as Magdalena, Sleeping Beauty, Blue, and Thinking of You.

13. Plush by Stone Temple Pilots -- The song that introduced me to STP, which had the best two albums of the 90's, in my opinion. I flew all the way to London in 1994 to see them in concert.

I'll end with this album, Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, because though no individual song beats my favorites above, the entire album is so wonderful and beautiful that no one should miss it. Kathy's Song, Homeward Bound, El Condor Pasa, The Boxer, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Scarborough Fair Canticle...heck, every song on this is great!

It hurts to leave off so much great music. I keep thinking of more and more...Don't Fear (The Reaper), Panama, I'd Love to Change the World, Layla, Hey Joe, Band on the Run. Agh! Somebody stop me!

The Empty Canvas

2011-01-20T12:35:00.000+01:00

If you put the word 'Tolkienesque' into Google and then filter by 'blogs' you will find any number of posts disparaging people like me. I came across a couple that called writers who write Tolkienesque fantasy 'lazy' and 'unimaginative'.

I view the Middle Earth works of Tolkien like a painting that a great master began, completing just a tiny portion of it before dying and leaving it unfinished. That one tiny part is so brilliant that some fall in love with the possibilities that it offered. It is so vivid that we can accurately envision what the finished painting might have been like.

The critics have a right to their opinions, but they are wrong to consider writers like me lazy or unimaginative. They don't understand the depths of passion we have for that incomplete painting. They would be right to say that only that master could have finished the painting, but they miss the point. Those of us with the deep love for the tiny portion of the master's work that exists are pained at the thought that no more of the painting can be revealed to the world. We desperately want to see more of it and not just in our imaginations. So the painting can never be finished. However, it eases the heartache for us to even add another tiny patch to the painting, to bring to life another story that adds just another brush stroke to illuminate a tiny bit more of the master work.

Let the critics say what they will, I intend to spend the bulk of my writing life working on my own imaginative, non-lazy vision of what I see in that beloved painting. Most writers out there want to go their own way and create their own paintings, even knowing that they can never rival the great master. I have already found the one painting that I love more than all others. It's just a few brilliant brush strokes in the bottom corner, and I want to try my best to fill in just a little more of that empty canvas.

The Divided States of America

2011-01-18T13:22:00.000+01:00

The divisiveness in America these days is just plain depressing. It feels like no one will ever put aside selfishness to try to hammer out their differences with the other side. One has to wonder about anyone who goes into politics -- they must be insane, stupid, or power hungry.

This leads to one of my recurring daydream fantasies, in which the fed up citizens of the country decide enough is enough and split the country in two. It could be just like the old Risk game, with the Western U.S. and the Eastern U.S. Everyone gets ten years to move, if necessary. The conservatives get one half (I'd give them the west, since Utah is already there and we all know how much the Republicans would love to get their paws on California, but then again they have such a disdain for our friends coming to visit us from south of the border, I think they would be better off with the east) and the liberals the other. Ooooh, I can just see all the trade agreements collapsing within the first decade!

Neither side is perfect, of course, but I simply cannot imagine that life would be anything other than utterly horrific in a country populated by nothing but conservatives. A real bowl of laughs there. At least the liberal side would have most of the artistic types and scientists.

Ah, well. I can dream, can't I?

The Odd Case of the Missing Dwarves

2011-01-14T08:56:00.001+01:00

One thing that has always struck me as strange in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was that we had this vast evil that was threatening to take over everything, yet almost all races were just blithely going about their normal business without a care in the world. Gondor had no choice but to get involved. Rohan didn't seem interested until Saruman took that choice away from them. The hobbits would have done nothing at all if it weren't for Bilbo and his ring. No other humans did anything (except for the ones who joined in with Sauron!). The great hero races of past ages, the elves and dwarves, seemed content to send off a single representative apiece while the rest of them went on with their lives as if nothing much was happening.

I wonder if this was Tolkien's perception of the rest of the world while World War I was raging? Did it bother him that this horrific conflict was tearing up much of Europe while the rest of the world's citizens went about their daily lives? I still think the blasé approach to the end of the world by all the races in Middle Earth is simply incredible. There should have been alliences, leading to armies of dwarves, elves, and men marching toward Mordor, but we all know that this would have undercut the strength of the story that Tolkien wished to tell.

I can kind of understand the elves, as they were in their twilight years in Middle Earth and were basically marking time until they all hit the Gray Havens and departed. But, on the other hand, this Sauron fellow had been far more than a mere thorn in their side for thousands of years. You would think that they would have some final settling to do with him.

Were the Middle Earth dwarves really so dense as to think Sauron would leave them in peace once he had conquered Gondor and Rohan? I guess all I can imagine is how the US must have looked to the European countries during both WWI and WWII when we sat back and tried not to get involved while much of the civilized world was drenched in blood. Any thoughts?

Tolkien vs. Howard -- High Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery

2011-01-13T11:18:00.000+01:00

I read an interesting little essay today about looking at today's fantasy through the filter of both Tolkien and Robert Howard. The idea was that readers generally view the two writers as being at the extreme poles of fantasy -- Tolkien with high fantasy and Howard with sword & sorcery -- but that when it comes down to it, the two have more similarities than most would care to admit. I recommend reading the essay.

What it made me think about, though, was my own unswerving difference of opinion with many fantasy readers. So many keep saying that they never want to see any more Tolkienesque fantasy, and they also seem to define Tolkienesque fantasy as having to be the super-complex, world-building, epic journey that Tolkien gave us with LOTR. To me this is just plain silly. I like to imagine Middle Earth as a real place, and further imagine what Tolkien might have done had he had a lifetime more in line with his immortal elves rather than the short life that we mortals must endure. He gave us just the barest taste of Middle Earth, a whisper of what could have been. He laid out so many possible epics in his historical outline The Silmarillion, yet he gave us only one (LOTR).

I like all types of fantasy story. I love the setting of Middle Earth, mostly because it was reinforced by my love of Dungeons & Dragons. So, I would love to see all types of stories set within a Middle Earth-style setting. I want low fantasies, sword & sorcery, epics, and high. This is why the essay about Tolkien and Howard resonated with me. So what if LOTR was high fantasy. Does that mean that there are not denizens of Middle Earth living life more along the lines of Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser? I love to imagine the more down to earth tales that might take place in cities such as Tharbad or Lond Daer. They each have their own gritty tales to tell.

Tolkien's most famous work was epic high fantasy. Does that mean that given a much longer life he wouldn't have written other tales of Middle Earth that were not epic in scope? I see no reason whatsoever to say that a story cannot be Tolkienesque while having almost nothing to do with high fantasy other than having some of the same races in it. This is what I want to do with my Tolkien-style world. I want to write any kind of fantasy story that I wish to tell, only set within a realm that reminds me of what I loved so much in Tolkien's works. I want to write stories that Howard might have been proud of, only with a high fantasy tinge to them.

Cultures in Fantasy Novels

2011-01-10T13:42:00.001+01:00

While writing my first fantasy books I have been fully conscious of the fact that the great J.R.R. Tolkien was slammed quite a lot by critics for his fictional cultures being a bit too homogenous. When he did have dark skinned races, they always showed up as dragon fodder in the bad guy's armies.

In my world the tribe that became the Greatlanders and occupies the Known Lands became different from all the others because they welcomed the arrival of a ship from Earth (rather than responding with fear or attacks as other tribes did), so they gained the benefits of what the Earth scientists were willing to teach them (the wheel, stirrups, etc.) while other tribes languished in relative barbarity. Eventually these other tribes banded together and drove the advanced tribe away, which is when they found the sheltered land that they now call the Known Lands.

The problem is that this leaves me with a kingdom that essentially has a single race. I run the risk of having critics roast me the same way they did with Tolkien. I do use the barbarian tribes to the east a bit, but the ones who live nearby are relatively similar to the Gauls and Celts of ancient Europe, so they don't help me a whole lot as far as diversity goes.

In my second book, I have been toying with the idea of including a couple of characters from far to the south, an arid plain where the nomadic tribes are olive skinned and of a very different culture to the Greatlanders. The problem I am having so far is that these characters don't have a natural part within the storyline as it currently exists in my head, so I would have to enlarge and complicate the story to make them fit. I don't think it is a huge issue, as once I start to write them in, the story will naturally change to work with them. But, it does make me wonder about our politically correct atmosphere these days. Have you ever altered a perfectly fine storyline just so you could stave off any potential criticism from the PC police? Have you forced a strong female role into a storyline, or made some characters fit into racial types that aren't your own even if the story didn't need it?

I see a lot of good in making people be considerate of racial and sexual issues, but I admit to some trepidation about overdoing political correctness. If, say, a Mongolian writer wrote a great story about Mongolian society, we would laud him or her and never dream of saying that he or she must include other races in the story, yet if a writer is white then he or she is almost expected to have to do so. This is what has always bugged me about the critics of Tolkien. It seems natural to me that most people are interested in writing about their own cultures. I am certainly most interested in European-type cultures, because my family background is English and German. I have some interest in other world cultures, but they don't resonate much with me when it comes to my writing. I read a book now and then about non-European cultures, but the ones that I really love are always about ancient Rome or England or the Middle Ages in Europe. I don't feel I should have to apologize for being most interested in my own ancestral history.

So, will I use these nomad characters? I think I will, if I can make the story work. If I can't then I will cut them out. What about you, has political correctness ever affected your writing?

Back From Vacation

2011-01-07T17:15:00.001+01:00

Last night we arrived back in Baku from our vacation in Thailand. We had long layovers in Dubai each way, so we are exhausted. The vacation was terrific and the weather was so nice to us.

This photo was taken just before we left Azerbaijan and shows a mud volcano near Baku. Very strange, huh?

We spent the first five days in Bangkok. Here is a shot of my eldest son and my wife with me at the Grand Palace.

Below are my two wonderful sons at the Grand Palace.

Below is a shot of Wat Arun, also called The Temple of the Dawn. It is just across the river from the Grand Palace.

And here is a shot my son Anton took of me climbing Wat Arun.

For New Year's we went to Jomtien, near Pattaya, since it is the nearest decent beach to Bangkok.

Here you can see me standing on Jomtien Beach.

I wish you could see the sunset we saw there, but I didn't have my good camera with me (I didn't feel like bringing it because it is too bulky). The sun was a huge blazing red ball. My son's little camera reduced it to what you see here.

We took elephant rides at Pattaya, which my family thought was great fun. Here my wife is taking a picture of me. I hope you all had a great holiday season. May this next year be our best one yet!

I'm Dreaming of a Sandy Christmas

2010-12-23T08:30:00.002+01:00

I began planning for this next vacation a few months ago. Vacations are great, but knowing you must take on in the middle of winter can be a bit limiting. We first tried to plan a trip to Florida to visit my favorite aunt and take in the Harry Potter theme park, but the flights were incredibly bad. So, we decided to head to Thailand.

I have been to Thailand twice before, so I knew that the weather there is generally fantastic around Christmas and New Year's. My family has never been there, and Bangkok is gorgeous, so I am really excited to show it to them. We lived in Beijing for three years, but it isn't exactly a beautiful city, and they have destroyed a lot of what made it exotic.

Here is a shot I took while riding an elephant on Christmas Day in 1995, and below is a picture of me on James Bond Island near Phuket (part of one of the Bond movies was filmed there).

We'll spend the first week in Bangkok, and then head for the beaches of Pattaya. I'll be gone until mid-January, so I want to wish all of those who visit a great holiday season!

We're Getting Better All The Time

2010-12-22T09:48:00.000+01:00

I imagine that most first-time writers follow a similar path to my own, in that we first write our novel and only then (or in my case it was about halfway through my first book) do we really start checking out 'writing' online via blogs and articles. In other words, we write our first books while relatively uneducated about all things writing/agenting/publishing.

If you are like me, you look back over each year spent online and are just amazed at how much you have learned about writing. No matter how much I love my first book, after everything that I have learned I know I could rewrite it far better than I did.

This leads to a potential trap for writers -- we realize how much more we have to learn and how much we are in fact learning all the time, so we can wonder whether we should really be bothering to put our first works out there for agents and publishers to see. I think it's a valid concern, and for many of us (myself included) I think the answer may be that we really should (at some point) go back and rewrite that first novel. I know so much more now that I am really excited about my second novel, so I plan on shelving my first until I complete the second. But I don't want my beloved first book to collect dust forever. I want it to be published. I don't think it needs a complete rewrite, but I do think I can at least rework the beginning to make it more immediately exciting for readers.

How about you? What are your thoughts on what it means to enter into the online writing world?

Nitpicking Great Authors

2010-12-20T07:16:00.001+01:00

I've been doing a lot more reading lately, which is great since I just love reading, but I've been doing so with a writer's eye so that I can try to pick up small hints at bettering my own writing.

The book I am reading right now is Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora. I am enjoying it very much so far (I am about a third of the way through this very hefty tome). Lynch has a way with witty dialogue, interesting world building, and good description.

He breaks some rules (such as using lots of parenthetical remarks, like this) but makes it a part of his voice, so it works.

I don't really wish to sound like I am being nitpicky on a very successful author, but I do so from the point of view of trying to always learn and better myself as a writer. I think that even the best authors make small mistakes and can get better. I've seen only two things that I would do differently if I were writing this book, and they are relatively minor, which means that Lynch is really very good (and definitely worth reading!).

One is that he has every character that I have met so far have the same witty dialogue. Even in a world where citizens all pride themselves on witty repartee not everyone would be good at it.

The second one is certainly very nitpicky, but no less true. The city where this story takes place is a lot like Venice, with lots of islands. Lynch put a bunch of ancient bridges and buildings from some vanished race all over the islands. This is a cool idea, but the problem is that islands are not set in stone. Tides change along with ocean levels (and with three moons this would be even more true than on Earth), so all these bridges and catwalks would not necessarily still be in the correct places after so many centuries. See, I told you it was nitpicky, but it was something that I noticed as a reader. I try to avoid such inaccuracies in my own writing, though I imagine someone will point out something to me eventually!

Breaking Into Epic Fantasy As An Unknown Writer

2010-12-16T11:31:00.000+01:00

In this blog post I read about an epic fantasy panel at the World Fantasy Convention. What I liked most about the panel was when they spoke about new writers trying to break into epic fantasy. They suggested that new writers would have a harder time trying to sell the typical trilogy, and that they may be better off trying to sell stand-alone epic fantasies, though each book may still reside within the same make-believe world.

Hey, this is what I am already doing! I have five stories prepared within the fantasy world that I created, and I expect I will come up with many more. All of them are so far designed as stand-alone stories. There are some characters who are the same in each, but none of the stories follow directly after another.

I didn't set out to avoid the trilogy model. I set out to write one epic fantasy. But the world I created had a whole history, or the book wouldn't have been any good, and creating that history naturally led to events in other time periods that were interesting enough to warrant books of their own.

So, I like the stone skipping analogy in that blog post. It fits nicely with what I am planning for my own fantasy world. Now if I can only get an agent or publisher to share this vision with me!

Agents, I Dare You!

2010-12-15T08:57:00.006+01:00

I've touched on this idea before, but not once has anyone taken me up on it. Basically it's this -- I challenge you to find a single well-written Tolkienesque fantasy novel that did not sell well. Honestly, I would love to know if there is one. I am fairly well read within the fantasy genre, and I cannot find even one. In other words, my idea is that if writing a good Tolkienesque fantasy always sells very well, then it is as close to a sure thing as one can get in publishing. So then why would agents pass up a well-written Tolkienesque fantasy novel?

I don't count the official Dungeons & Dragons books, because in my opinion they don't fall into the category of 'well written' (with apologies to the many people who really love Drizzt). I count books such as The Sword of Shannara, which was a blatant rip-off of Tolkien that was a mega-best seller, and McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy and Silver Call duology, which were also extremely blatant in their following of Tolkien, yet again they sold very well.

My books do not copy any of Tolkien's plot lines; they merely dwell within the Dungeons & Dragons/Tolkien-style world that I grew to love so much as a young D&D player. I purposely set out to avoid what bugs most people about the official D&D books, i.e. that they seem to much like a game, are not realistic enough, and have plasticky characters. I wanted mine to read like a true, well-written novel, but set within a D&D type world. There are a ton of readers out there who never want to see another elf or dwarf in a book again, and more power to them, but they would be wrong to think that there aren't also a ton of readers out there who crave more.

So, I challenge any agent to show me a well-written Tolkienesque fantasy book that didn't sell well. I would love for that agent to tell me why my books shouldn't be given a chance, since they fall directly into the category of 'a sure thing' (not to mention that Game of Thrones and the Hobbit movies will draw a lot of attention back to epic fantasy).

Fantasy As Escapism

2010-12-14T08:41:00.002+01:00

I read on this blog about the World Fantasy Convention, and I was struck by one of the blogger's very first quotes from one of the panels: "J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were living in a war era; they were living in an unsatisfactory present, so in their writing they looked back to a more appealing era."

I don't love fantasy explicitly because of this. I just happened to read my first fantasy novel when I was young and absolutely loved it. I loved it far more than all the other types of books that I enjoyed, so I naturally began reading more fantasy. I also got into playing Dungeons & Dragons, so that further pushed me in this direction.

However, I really think there is at least something to this idea that fantasy offers a desirable escape from an unpleasant world. I know that I, for one, am thoroughly discouraged about humanity in general. There are certainly many wonderful individuals out there, but the pure amount of selfishness, corruption, and the vast lack of empathy that I encounter in so many people leave me with a strong distaste for this world. I have no hope left that this world will ever truly become a wonderful place in which to live. There are small victories over time (America has resolved most of the corruption issues that plague most other countries in the world) and these are certainly worth fighting for. I live to try to improve what I can, even in small but significant ways such as instilling true empathy in my children. But for me it is not enough, and that is why I more and more love to dwell within the beautiful, if unrealistic, worlds of my favorite fantasy novels.

Twenty Years Later...

2010-12-09T08:36:00.004+01:00

I encounter my old crit group partner Matt Rush at an enormous Seattle writers convention.

*******
Matt: Hey, Ted! Man, it's been a long time!

Me: No kidding! We've both been busy, though. What's that now, you've gotta be closing in on your twentieth book?

Matt: It only feels that way! This one was my thirteenth. And you! When are you ever going to break the mold, live a little? I mean, what is it, fifteen books and every one of them in the same fantasy world? I thought you said you were a sci-fi writer, too?

Me: I always did want to do that. You know how it works. They pigeonholed me. Said my audience wants more of what I've already given them.

Matt: Ah, I guess I got lucky that the young adult phase passed and my agent let me move on. Oh hey! I was looking through my archives last week and stumbled across my old blog. Can you believe we were ever that lame?!

Me: Aw, man, don't even remind me! Publishing sucked back then. We all secretly thought we were good and were being overlooked; wondered if we'd ever get picked up.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. Hey, it all worked out. It's amazing how many of those old blogging pals are still around. Mid-listers, a few big-timers like Simon.

Me: Simon. We all knew he'd do it once he got off his lazy butt and stopped writing about vampires. Never knew he'd do this well, though. Move over Stephen King!

Matt: Yeah, won't even talk to us anymore. And a romance author! Who'da thunk it? Hey, I hate to run off this quick, but I've got a lecture. We need to catch up more. Drinks later at the club?

Me: I don't drink.

Matt: Damn! I always forget that! Okay, the Pepsi's on me. Good seeing ya, man.
********

Sorry, Matt, for putting words in your mouth! I was just in the mood for a little fun. If anyone doesn't know who Simon is, check out Matt's post about our crit group.

Patrick Rothfuss

2010-12-08T09:37:00.004+01:00

I checked out Patrick Rothfuss's blog for the first time today. Now come on, don't any of you tell me you haven't heard of him! He's only the most successful debut author of epic fantasy in recent history for his book The Name of the Wind.

I had never read anything about the author himself, so what hit me the most was how down-to-earth he seemed. Reading about him reminded me so much of myself in certain small ways, or at least in our down-to-earthness. I was also struck hard by him saying that his book had been rejected by every agent in the known universe. You see, that's the thing that eats at me about agents and publishers these days -- they write all these blog posts about how wrong we are to call them out about overlooking great books, yet how could anyone have passed up this one? It just didn't grab them? How come they all LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it now?

Okay, so it wasn't exactly the same when they saw it as opposed to the published version. That's the whole point to me -- why are they only looking for a completely perfect, finished version of a book rather than recognizing real writing talent when it is there? It took Patrick going to a conference before he was finally able to get someone to take notice, and - voila - he gets one of the biggest fantasy debuts in ages. I bet it took some real work from the agent and editors to polish it into what it became, but wasn't that worth it? I would say 'YES', obviously.

Sorry for the mini-rant, but I feel like I am in a similar situation to where Patrick was before he finally got discovered. I have spent more than twenty years building my world in my head. I spent more than three writing the first book. I know it needs some polishing to make it shine. I know I am getting better as a writer all the time. But, why wouldn't an agent see the talent that is there and want to help turn out another Patrick Rothfuss rather than allow some other agent to get me somewhere down the line? It's not like I have amateurish big-issues with my first book; it just needs a bit of rewriting in the early stages to make it more tense. I'm fully convinced that I can be a well-known fantasy author. I know I can do it eventually over many years of hard work, but I still think that an agent should be good enough to recognize talent early and want to snag the writer before another gets him or her.

I'm not suggesting that agents or publishers should want to deal with writers who need a ton of help. I just wish they would be more willing to nurture those who show real talent, have an interesting concept, and look like they could really have something awesome with just a bit of guidance.

And since I am in THAT kind of mood right now, I'll mention that I did query Rothfuss's agent, and he never responded at all. Okay, I'll be back to my usual cheerful self tomorrow (I think it's my sore throat and headache that did this to me today)!

Rethinking My POV Characters

2010-12-06T09:18:00.001+01:00

If you read my previous post you would know that I had been planning at least two central point-of-view (POV) characters in this second fantasy novel I am writing. I described the first one last time and I promised to describe the second this time. I was excited that day because I had just come up with the idea of that second character, and I felt that this new character helped me to resolve the very issue that was my greatest weakness in my first book -- there was no immediate connection of my characters to the antagonist, so conflict and tension (at least through the first third of the book) always felt too remote.

Well, I have had time to think and ponder and mull over and stew and whatever else we writers do when we are building our stories, and I have come to the conclusion that I may not need this second character to be a POV character after all.

His name is Villem Tathis. He is the third son of a minor noble, meaning that he has been raised to become a knight. At some point in his young life (he is 17 when the story opens) he realizes just how unfair the feudal system is, i.e. that only his oldest brother will inherit the small keep and town that his father owns, and he will get nothing but his war horse and gear and perhaps a marriage to the daughter of another minor noble. His bitterness grew to the point where the magic of the spire forces him to live in fear and weakness. Like most such people in the Known Lands, he can't live for long that way, so he sets off to join the army at East Gate (many able-bodied men who can't handle the magic of the spire go to East Gate since it lies outside of the spire's area of effect). I figured this made him a perfect character to start off 'bad' and later be redeemed, all the while giving readers the close connection to the primary antagonist, Prince Darus Kaldarion (who, like the others, spends his time with the army because he is affected badly by the spire).

There are two problems that I thought about over the weekend. One is that there are only a few natural scenes early on for this character, and his major storyline doesn't begin until the last third of the book. The second is that if I find ways to force him to have a full number of chapters throughout, I believe it will make the book too long, especially for it to maybe fall into the Young Adult category.

So, I am now thinking of sticking to the one POV character of Imric. I haven't ever written a story solely from the viewpoint of one character, so this should be challenging for me!

The Shattered Spire

2010-12-02T11:12:00.004+01:00

I am writing my second novel now, tentatively titled The Shattered Spire until I can come up with something more inspired. It is set around eight centuries prior to my story in The Shard. My last blog post detailed the high level concept for this next book, and I think this idea gives me a lot of room for adding a lot more tension and conflict from the very start than my first book did.

I haven't completely decided on how many point-of-view (POV) characters I will use in this story, but I do know two of them so far, so I figured I could tell you a bit about them here.

The first (and primary character) is Imric Kaldarion, the 13-year-old youngest son of the king. Now hold on with the eye rolling. I know loads of fantasy protagonists are royalty, but this is a bit different than usual. Poor Imric has never been acknowledged by his father, who so loved the queen that when she died giving birth he was inconsolable. He blamed the wizard Xax, who had understood the queen was beyond saving and cut her open to try to save the baby, and he blamed the baby as well. The baby was so sickly that no one expected him to live, so the king abandoned Imric to his fate. With the help of his eldest sister Liva, Imric did survive, though he purposely pretends to remain sickly so that he will remain unnoticed by his father and not have to join his brothers in being raised as a knight but can instead study (he loves to read histories of the Known Lands) under Liva's tutelage. His older brothers call him 'Rat' since he always seems to be scuttling about the back halls of the castle 'spying' on everything that goes on.

Imric has two brothers. The apparent heir is feebleminded. Everyone expects that the king will pass him over in favor of the younger son, only the king has never gotten around to actually announcing this. The younger son is off leading the army at distant East Gate because he is one of those who cannot stomach living within the influence of the spire, since he has grown up bitter and jealous about being clearly better than his older brother but not being the heir. Nearly the entire army is made up of men who could not live within the realm due to the negative influence of the magic upon those who have too much of some bad trait within their hearts. When the spire is destroyed by a dragon and the king later slain (when the dragon attacks the capital), this younger son will be the most obvious antagonist as he leads the army from East Gate against his older brother (who is being championed by his uncle since the king never truly renounced his eldest as heir).

Since this post is already getting too long, I'll talk about the second POV character in my next post.

The Drawbacks of Peace

2010-11-30T10:29:00.002+01:00

The book I am currently writing is set eight hundred years prior to the events in The Shard (my first fantasy novel). It begins with the event that destroys a peace that has been magically enforced upon the major civilized realm for more than five thousand years. This gives me the opportunity to explore some interesting ideas concerning this enforced peace.

The Peace Spire was a monument built to bring the races back together at the end of a terrible war. In this war, the races of elf and dwarf were tricked by an evil wizard (who nobody yet knew had gone bad) into going to war with each other. They went at each other with a vengeance until the evil wizard struck them with his armies of orcs, trolls, and goblins. The elves and dwarves belatedly realized they had been duped, but they put aside their enmity to join together to fight back, and eventually after years of bloody conflict they prevailed.

The council of wizards felt that something was needed to help heal the wounds of the war, so they helped the elves and dwarves construct an enormous spire, and on the top they placed a huge crystal that they imbued with powerful magic. The magic could look into the hearts of all living beings within its area of effect and see whether they were basically good or evil (since these are artificial constructs, it actually had a complex means of looking at various vices and emotions, such as empathy, jealousy, hatred, love, etc.). If one was good then at times of great need (when one's pulse raced, or as modern people would see it, when adrenaline was pumping) the person would gain courage and strength, while those with evil in their hearts would despair and feel weak.

The consequences of this are obvious. Anyone who was basically bad could not stomach living under such conditions and migrated to towns and cities that sprang up beyond the area of effect of the spire. Those who were good began, over time, to no longer choose on their own to be good, but were conditioned to be so.

So, what happens when the Peace Spire is destroyed? That's the big idea for this new book, and I am relishing the challenge. Can people conditioned to only peaceful thoughts and feelings defend themselves from evil? Naturally those on the fringes will gleefully take advantage of the situation. This is going on too long, so I'll reserve space to tell about the actual story line for the next post.

Tension and Conflict

2010-11-29T10:45:00.001+01:00

Tension and Conflict are arguably the most critical elements for maintaining reader interest in a fantasy story. Sadly, this appears to be my biggest weakness as a writer. For my book's first hundred pages or so the conflict never becomes dire and always seems remote. Well, that's because it is remote. I tell the story using close 3rd, which means I can't show what's happening if the character is not there to see it.

My epic fantasy basically follows this model:

1. Life changing event happens for a character
2. The character must journey to the place where the action is
3. The character arrives and the action really starts

My weakness is in number 2, the journey to where the action begins. Now, writers have always used little plot events to make journeys more entertaining. Tolkien threw in black riders to give real menace to the journey of Frodo and company, and he added in all kinds of waypoints such as Tom Bombadil. My problem is that I absolutely loathe contrived action. I don't like throwing in a band of robbers along the road or other such things, unless it can feel like an authentic part of the story. Also, a band of robbers is just a tiny event along the way and doesn't lend itself to maintaining tension. Black riders who continue to hound you all along your journey do keep this tension, but it's already been done before. For the life of me I can't come up with a similar plot device to maintain tension throughout the journeys of each of my POV characters. I do have little events that happen to them, but as I explained above, they don't maintain tension if they don't follow the characters along their road.

I suppose this is just a weakness I'll have to spend a lot of time working on. My action really takes off once the characters arrive at their destinations, but that does no good if the readers don't read that far. How do you deal with this issue?

Home Run Books

2010-11-24T14:09:00.000+01:00

I keep reading various articles and blogs talking about how these days the major publishing houses have moved to a model where they are seeking to publish fewer books while selling larger amounts of the ones they do publish. Rather than remain diverse in what they sell, they are looking for more 'home run' books that sell mega-amounts.

This is really depressing for most of us, I think. I am writing books that I wish to read, and I don't think my primary tastes fall into the category of what makes up a home run book. I didn't much care for The DaVinci Code or Twilight. I did like Harry Potter, and that has spawned a whole Young Adult phase that is also killing off writers like me who do adult speculative fiction. I have nothing against Young Adult books. I just wish all the agents and publishers weren't jumping on the YA bandwagon so heavily that many of them specifically ask only for YA on their websites these days.

Sure, they are selling a lot of YA today. But that can blind them to tomorrow's trends. I see A Game of Thrones HBO series being produced and building up a tremendous amount of excitement because it looks like they may be doing it right (the way that Peter Jackson finally did a fantasy the right way after decades of pathetic fantasy efforts). I see the two Hobbit movies coming out in the next few years. The Hobbit may technically be YA, but it doesn't have that feel. It feels more like epic fantasy, and A Game of Thrones is completely adult fantasy. Any half smart publishing exec looking for home run books right now should be thinking about this.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of epic fantasy lovers already purchased the Tolkien books because of the Lord of the Rings movies. They will be looking for something new once the above shows come out.

The problem remains that most epic fantasy novels are not so huge that they make it into the 'home run' category. They can do very well, as The Sword of Shannara demonstrated and A Game of Thrones also, but still they don't sell the tens of millions of copies that we saw with Harry Potter or DaVinci Code. If publishers insist on only going after home run books, it means that it will continue to be nearly impossible for writers like me to get published.

My hope is that some very smart small publishers will recognize the void and step in to snatch up books like mine. So far I don't see this happening. A couple months ago I looked up a big list of small publishers for fantasy. I went to each of their sites. Almost all of them were either closed to submissions or were looking for only YA or urban or paranormal fantasies. I found no one I could submit my books to.

So, I am writing my second novel right now. I wish I could write it in the same adult style that I used for the first. However, I keep fighting myself on this, thinking that if I just tailored it to the YA audience it would give me a much better shot at being published. I really don't want to go that route, but I can't stop thinking that I may have little choice, since I do wish to be a published writer.

The Iron Druid Chronicles

2010-11-21T06:44:00.001+01:00

Blogging buddy and all around good guy Kevin Hearne is living the dream right now with not one but all three of his first novels on pre-order through Amazon. Anyone who likes urban fantasy should at least check out the first book!

Missing Link

2010-11-15T17:43:00.000+01:00

I know I haven't been blogging much. Sorry. Part of it is that my brain was hijacked by a new story idea. I was already writing a prequel to my first novel, but this new idea hit me like the proverbial freight train and I haven't been able to let it go.

I haven't been able to start typing out the story yet. The reason is that there is something missing. I have the characters. I know a whole bunch of great plot points. But I need something to tie it all up in a way that seems fresh and new. I don't want to simply look at the motivations of each character along with the chaos sown by the plot points and logically write out what happens next. Why? Because what happens next -- if done logically -- would probably sound an awful lot like any number of other past stories. This is the problem. I need something that is both logical but shockingly different.

I have several ideas for the best starting point, but each of them has certain drawbacks. Thus I can't get myself to begin until my mind can come up with a solution to these drawbacks.

Agh! My last book was so much easier, because I had no idea I was ever going to write it. The story evolved over more than twenty years and it was basically complete by the time I did decide to write it. This new story is killing me. It's been almost two months now since it hit and I still can't figure out the whole path.

It's Good to Feel Wanted

2010-11-08T08:07:00.003+01:00

Life at a crossroads. We've all been there. You know those times in life when you have a big choice to make, and you hope that the choice you go with is the right one? Do you go to Stanford or to Princeton? (Ha, we should all be so lucky as to have a choice like that!)

In the Foreign Service we get these big choices every few years. A posting can be anywhere from two to four years long (actually three years is the max, but in certain positions one can extend for a fourth year). This means that we are continuously having to push for a new position, and often we end up having to choose between offerings. The choices are sometimes not hard to make, as one will be clearly nicer than another. Other times you get more than one offer that you like, so you have to pick one.

The State Department rates posts by level of hardship based upon lots of different criteria. I have had five hardship-level postings in a row, ranging from the harder posts like Baku, Moscow, and Beijing, to the mild hardships like Zagreb and Reykjavik. My family wanted a break from this; we wanted a non-hardship posting this time around.

So, I bid on nothing but nice posts this time. This can backfire on you, because these types of posts tend to have a large number of bidders for each position, so there is nothing to say you will actually be offered any of these nice positions. If you end up with no offers, you can end up with the truly unsavory posts because that may be all that is left. There is a huge difference between competing for a job in, say, Bamako, with a mere three bidders versus trying to get a nice job in London or Prague with more than thirty bidders.

I ended up being very lucky this cycle. I got to choose from among several really nice positions, because I was selected as the top choice for each of them. There is a drawback, however (even if it is a nice one to have, so I am not complaining!), and that is that we can only choose one. How sad to have to turn down Paris, Vancouver, and Brussels. My family would have loved all of those places. My wife and I honeymooned in Paris, so we knew we would love it there, and I have always wanted to check out Vancouver and Brussels.

We simply could not turn down Budapest, though. My wife and I both love Budapest. I have been there twice before, including this past July. It is a lovely city with tons to do. One of my favorite hobbies is chess, and Budapest is perhaps the best city in the world in which to pursue this hobby. One can participate in high-level professional chess tournaments each and every month of the year there!

There is also a good school for our children, which is another of the most important criteria for us. Also, it is very easy to travel to many amazing places close to Budapest, such as Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Zagreb, and so many others. It isn't hard to take the train or drive into Italy, Austria, Germany and so forth.

Lastly, I am so starved for my favorite American foods. In many of my postings I have had to survive on local foods and a smattering of what I can order through the mail, which isn't enough. In Budapest we have the ability to order food from our bases in Germany. Yay, I will finally be able to have a broader range of dinners!

I have been dreaming of being posted to Budapest for years, but an appropriate position has never been available in my previous bidding cycles. When I saw it open this time, I held out little hope of getting such a highly sought after job. I feel so fortune right now, and my family is excited. We should finish up here in Baku by next June and arrive in Hungary in either July or August.

Inaccuracy Means Mediocrity

2010-10-18T08:13:00.002+02:00

Sorry, I have been in a bit of a slump lately and haven't been inspired to blog. Yesterday, though, I watched a movie that should have been just the type of movie I love, but do to a common problem in movies I ended up disliking it very much. The problem is directors being purposely inaccurate in how they depict things, most likely playing to what they think the audience wants rather than what is actually true.

The movie was called Centurion. Now, I am a great lover of Roman history, and I snatch up all movies and books on this subject as long as they look at least halfway decent. I liked the series Rome, for instance, and Colleen McCullough's huge series of historical fiction novels about Rome is one of my all-time favorites.

I so wanted this movie to be good (dare I even imagine one that could be great?). They did do quite well with the way they made things look in the movie. However, the director committed one of the cardinal sins of movies with combat in them -- he made the combat utterly unrealistic.

This movie reminded me of other recent ones that did the same thing -- Troy and 300. In each of these films the directors had the combatants set out to fight as individuals. For some reason they each had their Greeks or Romans put in a brief appearance of a proper formation, but this was just for show and as soon as actual combat began the men all sprang out of place and fought one on one. This is NOT how Greeks and Romans fought. They fought in shield walls, maximizing their strength of organization against the often superior numbers of their foes.

I can't explain just how appalling it is to me to see supposed Greeks or Romans fighting in a manner that is diametrically opposed to everything they believed in. To read about how they truly fought, I highly recommend Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, perhaps the most awesome historical fiction novel I have ever read.

Would it truly hurt a director someday to make a realistic portrayal of combat during Greek or Roman times? I think it would be like fantasy movies, where every director did mediocre low-budget tripe until Peter Jackson came along and showed everyone just how great such movies can be if done properly.

In my fantasy novel The Shard, I attempted to be as accurate as possible with combat while still hopefully making it interesting for the reader (and not be overly gruesome!). A couple of examples are in this post and in this one.

Steel Enema

2010-09-27T09:04:00.000+02:00

Some people on Authonomy last week got a kick out of this excerpt from my fantasy novel The Shard, so I figured why not post it here. To set the scene, my MC Midas and his sons got themselves trapped inside a mountain along with a small group that was going after a dragon. Since Midas's primary goal was keeping his sons safe, he wasn't at all happy about this. After much exertion, the group manages to pass through the mountain and get within sight of the exit only to encounter an overwhelming number of goblins along with three trolls. The situation seems hopeless...

BTW, since the excerpt mentions the 'Kaldarion Sword', I had better let you know that this was found in the dragon hoard and was a dwarf-made weapon presented to the first great king of the Known Lands, Aronis Kaldarion, two thousand years earlier. It was lost when the dragon destroyed the capital city eight centuries ago.
**********

The first goblins smashed into the line and were cut down. Years of training snapped Midas out of his panic. He bulled forward into three goblins, bowling them over with his shield. He kicked at them while they flailed on the ground, and plunged his sword into the belly of the nearest. He thought for one last second about yelling to his sons to move to the rear, but then he was forced to turn all his attention to mere survival as new waves of goblins enveloped the group. The hall was too large to allow the party to maintain a shield wall, so the goblins easily swarmed around the flanks.

This is it! We’re dead! These words passed repeatedly through Midas’s head as he thrust and punched and kicked at howling figures that came at him from all sides. He swept his shield around in an arc, clearing a small space to his left. Then much of the torchlight dimmed as a massive figure loomed over him, sweeping a huge mace back over its head.

He couldn’t think. He knew he was about to die. The only bit of open ground he saw was the space beneath the troll’s legs, so with the logic of pure desperation he jumped forward and ducked under the massive pot belly. The troll’s ring mail skirt scraped against his helm, and with a surge of strength born of fear Midas plunged the Kaldarion Sword upward through the troll’s buttocks. Blood drenched his sword arm. He was shocked at how easily the blade penetrated all the way to the hilt.

Underlying Message Within a Story

2010-09-24T22:08:00.000+02:00

Almost all stories have some sort of underlying message, in many cases more than one. I touch on many issues in my fantasy novel, from women's rights to evolution to religion to racism. However, there is one true emotional undercurrent to my book, and it is based upon my own greatest fear in life.

In my story, the main character has certain expectations to meet, from his duty to the king to his own expectations on how to properly prepare his children for life. These expectations are offset by his tremendous fear for the safety of his children, especially since he already experienced the death of his eldest son in a manner for which he holds himself responsible.

This ties in exactly with my greatest nightmare, which is a fear of something bad happening to one or both of my sons. As logical and sane as I consider myself to be, I cannot imagine what I would do if something happened to them. I feel like I would lose my mind and no longer want to live. So, I poured some of that fear into the story line of my main character, only I had him actually have to confront the reality of his fears coming true, not just with the original death of his eldest, but later with his youngest son also dying. I have to admit that I cannot read that part of the story without tearing up a bit. I read it aloud to my family and I had to pause when I reached that scene. I sure hope I never have to face this fear during my life.