Emma Bull pointed out that Marla's next installment Bride of Death is available through a Kickstarter campaign. At $10, you get the eBook and your name in acknowledgements. Tim Pratt writes lots of good stuff. (Link lauds a short-story compendium.) The new Marla Mason title follows Grim Tides in a series that avoids fantasy clichés (slow climb to increasing power, inevitable romance, etc.) to present an unvarnished badass babe whose capacity for destruction works against her almost as much as against her enemies.
If you don't know the series, start with Blood Engines – your love of leading ladies deserves it. Or better, the $40 contribution level in the Kickstarter campaign gets you the whole series to date – seven books. Attractive. If you *do* know the series, decide whether you want to support up front, or calendar the release date to buy when it's out. The Kickstarter campaign has met its funding level, so the book is coming: the question is how much interior art people will get as the funding total rises.
Enjoy!
- New Marla Mason Book "Bride of Death" from Tim Pratt
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cdragons- February 17th, 9:37
- Bull Uses Common Words For Fun
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- cdragons
- January 28th, 8:10
The Cat In The Hat was the result of Theodore Giesel receiving a list of 223 words for beginner readers with which to respond to a challenge to make an early-reading book with the richness of other writing. 'Cat' and 'Hat' were the first two suitable words that rhymed. Restrictions like word choice and the need to meet meter requirements can spur creativity.
This recent post from Emma Bull (War for the Oaks) explains how she described what she did for a living using only the thousand most common English words. Given the list's inclusion of there and there's as separate words (and also they, they'd, and they're as separate words), there's not a lot of room to bring the full color of one's vocabulary to an idea. So there's a certain amount of sport in using The Up-Goer Five Text Editor to try to express a complicated idea.
I described my own work that way with these results. I think I'll bookmark it to test out lines for characters with extremely limited vocabulary.
Enjoy :-)
- Innkeeper chapter 8 is up
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- cdragons
- January 27th, 21:17
excited
Those of you who haven't yet had the opportunity to enjoy Ilona Andrews' urban fantasy can try a taste for free at the authors' website (the pseudonym belongs to a couple), where the second part of Chapter 8 was added Friday to the online-only Innkeeper Chronicles serial. If you like that, there are ten novels you can buy already completed to enjoy without the need for delayed gratification. I can recommend their Kate Daniels series nd its related Gunmetal Magic (main character is a were).
Kate Daniels is a heroine of the badassed-babe variety, whose background and powers are part of the series' slow reveal. The series-spanning plot arcs include a strong romantic co-plot involving Happily-Ever-After endings, though of course there is always trouble in paradise. It's not "paranormal romance" of the sort expected by fans of Christine Feehan, but urban fantasy with romance in it.
The good news is, the Innkeeper Chronicles is shaping into another urban fantasy with a strong romantic plot arc – and it's marching steadily toward completion. For those of us hungry for the next Kate Daniels book, this is good news.
- On the Importance of Craft
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- cdragons
- December 10th, 2012
I just saw this blog entry written in support of some songwriting software, and loved its Janis Ian quote:
Q: Inspiration versus craft, which is of more importance?
A: Inspiration is great, but craft will save your . . . .
I love my inspirations too much to do anything less than present them with top-notch craft, which is why I'm working as hard as I am on my writing. Crummy tales told on a wonderful premise just aren't as cool as a the same premise – or maybe even a merely solid one – prepared properly.
- The History of Words
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- cdragons
- November 1st, 2012
In the interest of advancing the public's comprehension of language (and in furtherance of research into a work set in another time period) I made some progress on the history of the term "quid" to refer to a British pound. Albert Jack's book It's a Wonderful Word: The Real Origins of Our Favorite Words is full of outstanding explanations of words and phrases in current use, some of which are extremely helpful in dating them for use in (or exclusion from) period fiction.
- The Tastiest Victim
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- cdragons
- October 31st, 2012
Me: So, my little hatchling, what do you think makes the most tastiest victim?
My Five-Year-Old: Cannibal!
Me: A cannibal?
My Five-Year-Old: [Nods vigorously]
Me: Why does a cannibal make the tastiest victim?
My Five-Year-Old: They eat the BEST FOOD!
My little dragon hatchling has given the problem real thought.
- Literary Pinup Calendar Available for 2013
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- cdragons
- October 19th, 2012
Pre-order is available now. The announcement article includes delightful discussion of Neil Gaiman's pinup page, the model for which is his wife Amanda "F." Palmer, apparently posing as Media from Gaiman's American Gods. Proceeds go to charity – specifically, Worldbuilders, run by Patrick Rothfuss.
- Picking A Person
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- cdragons
- October 4th, 2012
I recently asked Deb Chester about picking the voice in which to write, with the specific question whether using a first-person narrator really made any difference in getting readers to sympathize with a character.
But I didn't just rely on an expert. I did some data collection: I took a couple of chapters from Snowflake (intro posted here) and – having converted one version into third person ("he thought" vs "I thought") – solicited feedback from a new-to-the-story reader as to which was better. I just got a call from the beta-reader who'd been given the chapters – which I stress were identical, except I'd converted one into third person. A couple of paragraphs in, he said the first person was closer and gave a better view of what was going on in the character's head. This was, of course, a complete illusion: nothing was different in the content except the switch of "I" and "he" and the endings of the corresponding verbs. Objectively, they had the exact same content.After we chatted, he read a few more pages of the third-person version then called back to report that he didn't think there was much difference. But for gripping a reader out of the gate, the "big difference" he perceived in the first few paragraphs could make a big impact on hooking and keeping a new reader.
So, what's the result? Perhaps Deb Chester is right and I'm better at telling that character's story in the first person. Perhaps I've been reading so much first-person fiction lately that I have its pulse better. But at the end of the day, it looks like for the time being I should not work on converting Snowflake into Third Person, but work more on telling my intended story within the limits of First Person (what's going on in the other room when the narrator is absent? what about the plot against the narrator's objective that we'd enjoy having the reader anticipate, but which must be a surprise to the narrator when sprung?).
At any rate, a lovely benefit of using First is that I can continue to tell the story from the point of view of a character who is blissfuly lacking in self-awareness, so I can keep crucial facts secret from the reader even as they influence everyone who (a) interacts with the character but (b) says nothing about his distinguishing characteristics on the assumption these key facts are obvious to anyone looking at him. Playing with narrator's naïveté shall continue to provide good sport.
Mwu-hu-ha-ha-ha!
- New Online serial from Ilona Andrews
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- cdragons
- September 29th, 2012
Ilona Andrews (pen name of the couple responsible for the butch-babe urban fantasy series featuring Kate Daniels) has a new online serial, which can be read here.
The plan is apparently to post it online as a serial, then make it into an eBook on completion.
So far, it looks like fun :-)
In other news, those truly desperate to read Cold Days can bid on a donated-to-charity uncorrected (but autographed) proof of the book. At the time of posting, only $730!
- On Security and Snowglobes
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- cdragons
- September 20th, 2012
In a quick trip through some photos posted by Neil Gaiman, I saw he didn't properly understand the principles driving airport security under the careful eye of the Transportation Security Administration. So in the interest of raising public support for important national security efforts, and in the hope I don't inadvertently educate potential miscreants, let me just say that when the Christmas season approaches, and the weather outdoors in North American begins looking more and more like the weather one can conjure within a snow globe, the potential for snow globe misuse by practitioners of sympathetic magic becomes unacceptable in the vicinity of densely-traveled airports.
Enough said, I think.
