Adam Callaway at A Dribble of Ink has a great article that dissects violence, particularly in relation to fantasy. He makes some great points (especially using BioShock 3 where the violence there is ridiculous). The entire time I read it, I was trying to think of novels I loved that didn’t employ violence. I have a few, but none of them are fantasy. And it got me thinking about my own story. In the first novel, Sorcerer Rising, I have a good bit of violence. I think of it as action, but really, that’s how we as a society put a nicer label on violence. That’s not really a problem for me, I’ve always handled that rather well and I think it has a point. Virgil isn’t dark or an anti-hero, but his reaction to horrible things is to throw a whole bunch of horrible right back at it. Very rarely…
I did much better last night than the weekend. 16 pages edited (plan calls for ten on Monday), so pretty happy there. 1,002 words added to second novel. I’m not keeping up with how many words I’m writing in Sorcerer Rising for two reasons. First, it’s done. I’m not here to add things, if anything I am cutting out words. Theoretically, I could keep up with what is added, but it would be more trouble than it’s worth. Second, it doesn’t count. This is reworking. If I started counting the words I had deleted, rewrote, added, deleted, added again, I would be the most prolific person in the world who’d ever written only one novel.
It is with great pleasure that I formally announce Sorcerer Rising. I have been working on this story for over four years and finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m going to continue to do some posts about the series as a whole, what I learned about it, etc, but here is the gist of it: Sorcerer Rising begins the story of Virgil McDane. Once he was a powerful Wizard, an explorer, scholar, and soldier. Outcast from the Wizard’s Guild, stripped of his power and relegated to a lowly Sorcerer, he finds himself more and more desperate. His world is much like our own, only magic is an everyday occurrence. The greatest resource is Aether, patches of raw magic that spawn whole dimensions. Forged from emotion and thought, the possibilities held within these worlds are endless. Some are featureless nightmares, others whole planets filled…
Friday, I posted my goals for the weekend. Today I am posting a report on how well those goals were accomplished. Unfortunately, it would be better to say this is a report on how well they were avoided. It was a miserable failure and I have no choice but to own up to it, however much I would like to think up an excuse. So what did I accomplish? No writing for one. That’s right, not a single word. I feel the worst about that. I allowed other things to get in the way, but really I just didn’t feel like writing. That is a fatal error. I allowed that type of thinking for far too long, to the point that it took me four years to write my first novel. Tonight, I am going to write. I am looking for around a thousand words. I did do my plan. I have…
I have recently gotten into Geek and Sundry‘s Sword and Laser webshow. I haven’t found any show that interview authors, particularly fantasy and science fictions authors, like they do. And they get some pretty big damn names too. George R. R. Martin, Salidin Ahmed, Cherie Priest, and several others. I’ve found a few books I had never encountered and I love hearing fantasy authors talk about their work. And in catching up, I came upon this interview with Jim Butcher. Jim friggin Butcher! My head nearly EXPLODED! If you haven’t read Mr. Butcher’s work, really, stop reading this and go buy Storm Front. It’s not he best of the series, so push on because The Dresden Files is, in my personal opinion, the best fantasy series I have ever read. Furies of Calderon is also pretty damn good, but has more obvious weaknesses. His work (probably coupled with The Name…