What I’m Reading

Posted: October 15, 2009 in What Im Reading, writing update
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Been a few months since I had a look at what books were cluttering on the bedside table, so it is time for another look. Some are new, and some are still there from last time.

Oddly, most aren’t there to simply be read. Some are for inspiration and ideas, and others I’m trying to critically analyse – the first time I’ve ever looked at books in that way – to see how they are written. Specifically I’m looking at how conversations are handled and descriptions done. Sometimes the conversations I write seem to bog down into two people just starting blankly across at each other stating their lines, which needs fixing. They need to be alive, carrying out tasks, with facial expressions and tones of voice. Likewise for descriptions, what takes a couple of lines for me can be a couple of paragraphs for others. I need to learn to pad a bit better.

The Silmarillion – J.R.R.Tolkien. As my favourite book, its pretty much a permanent fixture beside the bed.

Hornblower and the Hotspur – C.S.Forester. I read this first in my first year of high school and it was my introduction to the world of Hornblower and the wider world of the Napoleonic War era. Currently there for clues to making a couple of scenes at sea for Tears of the Mountain more realistic.

Sharpe’s Honour and Sharpe’s Trafalgar – Bernard Cornwell. More Napoleonic War era fun, and being read for the same reason as Hornblower, for scenes of the sea and the land.

Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling.. A collection of short stories about things like how the elephant got its trunk and the leopard got its spots. Read it to spark ideas for the writing of more Cahuac myths.

Queen of Sorcery – David Eddings. The fantasy equivalent of a hamburger and coke – sometimes you just crave fast food and this series fulfils that.

The Summer Tree – Guy Gavriel Kay. It has been a long, long time since I read this series. At the time of reading I was going through a bit of a bad time and this series was emotionally draining enough without that on top of it. Great read otherwise.

The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan. Book one of the Whale of Time. Er Wheel of Time. Pulled this one out just the other day to flick through after I started churning out the new stories, to see how he did it padding out the book so much.

Gardens of the Moon – Stephen Erikson. Ditto for The Eye of the World. More critical research than reading.

Toll the Hounds – Stephen Erikson. Its been sitting there so long I’ve forgotten where I was up to and what half the series is about. That is the problem with these door-stopper series – you need to reread them all first before starting on the latest one just so you can remember what was going on 5000 pages earlier.

The Complete Chronicles of Conan the Barbarian – Robert E. Howard. That one is still there because I simply haven’t gotten around to putting it away

On Fire

Posted: October 14, 2009 in fantasy, writing update
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As I mentioned on Monday, I had started working on something new, something with no plot and no clue to where it was leading.

As of today it has continued to explode into life. From 5pm Saturday to 5pm today (Wednesday), I have managed 4k+ a day and in those 96 hours have written 20,000 words – and I’ve got a couple more hours of writing left in me today. I have been trying to have this kind of progress all year, so am mystified why it has happened all of a sudden now – and on a project I have no idea where is going.

I am also stoked, to say the least, by the progress. In an odd way – with no plot to follow, no characters planned, no guidelines – it has been oddly liberating. I can smash up things as I see fit with no thought to consequences, kill off who I want when I want and generally go to town. The other stories I couldn’t really do that with – too much planning about events that transpire later on that prevents such total disregard for everything.

I guess a little about what it is about – it is turning out to be Big Epic Fantasy, much like the Wheel of Time or Malazan Book of the Fallen, at least in scale. The vast power magic has, the larger than life characters – and plenty of them – death, destruction and mayhem. The first 20K words has a city completely destroyed and a fleet smashed by powerful elemental creatures that escape the control of their summoners and two fairly major deaths – with at least two more I know of whom I plan to kill – a few plot points have developed as I surge on, but not many. There are knights and wizards, kings and princesses and monsters.

Currently one thing I am not happy with is the names – most aren’t going to survive and are just placeholders until I get a chance to sit down and figure out something better Which won’t be hard. Most are awful.

Hopefully I can keep this pace up – if I can, then be the end of the month I’ll be pushing 90K done and hopefully be finished with the first run through. I may even have a sit down and read through it then – I’m dreading to discover just how bad it is and how much polishing it will require.

And because it requires a name, it has very, very tentatively been given the code name He Stands Between

A Strange Turn Of Events

Posted: October 12, 2009 in fantasy, writing update
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The last couple of days have been unusual to say the least.

Saturday morning started fairly normally. I scratched out around 1000 words of the rewrite of Tears of the Mountain, but I was, as normal, not putting a lot of effort into it. Come afternoon I was trawling the ‘net wasting time. Along the way I was reading through various pages on TvTropes and also some World of Warcraft forums, including a debate on most powerful characters in lore.

All of a sudden I get the briefest hint of an idea, normally not enough of one to do anything much with yet, not without more barnstorming at least.

Yet I sat down at 5pm and started writing, and by the time I was done for the night I had cranked out 3000 words.

Sunday, despite half the day being taken out with other things, saw another 4500 words written.

Somehow, in less than two days, I’d written 7500 words. What made it more unusual is that when I started I had no plot to work on, no characters, nothing. Yet somehow I’d managed to write all that, and am likely to hit the 10K mark today easily.

Its turning out to be looking like one of those big epic fantasy’s, completely unlike the world of Sharael. We’ll have to see where it ends up and how long it turns out to be.

Wolf and the Stars

Posted: October 9, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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The second of the Cahuac Cycle short stories has been finished off and upoaded now.

This one is called Wolf and the Stars, and is a little different than the other three in that, though it features Cahuac, it doesn’t revolve around him.

I think it should be obvious what the story is referring too, but it is the kind of thing that would be explained in mythological creation stories.

Cahuac and the Bees

Posted: October 9, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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The third short story of the series of mythological fantasy tales about Cahauc has been added to the site and to smashwords.

This one is called Cahuac and the Bees and follows on from the events of the first two, though is still a stand alone story.

In this one Cahuac must find out why the flowers are no longer growing which is stopping the bees producing their bounty of sweet honey. Cahuac’s journey takes him places both new as well as familiar.

A fourth story for the collection is close to being finished as well.

Smashwords Update

Posted: October 8, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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Was surprised when I did a count of the number of downloads of the various Pure Escapism short stories on Smashwords to discover there have been almost 1700 to date. Which would imply a few people are reading my stories – or at least starting to read them.

The Hall of Black Trees is to date the most popular of the downloads, narrowly ahead of The Pit. The various parts of Cara’s Choice are the ones most linked in member’s libraries – though there is no way to see who has linked them sadly.

Not a huge amount of feedback, but you can’t have everything.

Been a while since I last finished a short story to upload – need to do so soon.

Looking For Some New Trolls

Posted: October 6, 2009 in fantasy, World Building, writing update
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Trolls are one of the more interesting mythological and fantasy creatures to play around with, mainly because they are such blank slates.

While Elves are Elves (pointy-eared, long-lived, hang out in forests), Dwarves are Dwarves (short, bearded, live underground and dig up stuff), Dragons are Dragons (big, reptilian, flying and fire-breathing), it is not the case for Trolls. All Trolls Are Different as TvTropes put it. The reason behind that is because mythological they were so varied that it allows each author to put their own unique slant on them.

There are two that are my favourites – the trolls of Discworld and the trolls of Warcraft.

Discworld trolls use the more common stereotype of the big dumb troll, but not for obvious reasons. They are made of stone, with diamond teeth and silicon brains. The warmer the temperature, the slower their brains work until they can practically turn to rock in very hot weather in the daylight. In optimal conditions (ie very cold) their brains work much better and one troll, Detritus, almost worked out the Grand Unified Theory of Everything while freezing to death. Detritus is one of my favourite Discworld characters. A minor character at first, first seen working as a splatter (like a bouncer only much harder), he eventually joined the City Watch and ended up a sergeant.

Warcraft trolls are much differnet. Tall and lanky, they walk hunched over and speak in Jamaican accents, mon. They also sport tusks and mohawks, are incredible ancient and once had empires stretching across most of Azeroth, practising head-hunting, voodoo and cannibalism (though they got very good at it, so don’t need to practice anymore). The only word to describe them, as a die-hard Hordie, is awesome. And they get to be druids in the expansion – yay trolls!

I’ve been wanting to work trolls into my world for some time, but as yet haven’t found the correct form for them. I want them to be uniqueish, with my own slant on them, but not a clone of something I like. I’m thinking of folding them into the more traditional roles that elves fulfilled – forest dwelling creatures who are highly magical (which would explain their regenerative properties given the way magic functions in my setting), but obviously not looking like elves (or warcraft trolls.) Hopefully I can finalise the details before too long.

Puttering Along

Posted: October 5, 2009 in fantasy, Tears of the Mountain, writing update
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Making progress on the writing, which is good. The rewrite of Tears of the Mountain is at about 20,000 words now. Around a quarter of what I’m aiming for. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be close to completing the rewrite.

Still also mucking about with ideas for the plot of Shadow Watch in preparation for NaNoWriMo. Some more ideas clicked and I rearranged the plot a bit as well to fit them in. As I was working on ideas, some of the background details of the nature of the universe took on more of a final shape – including some to do with the mist and shadows of the name of the blog. Of course details won’t be forthcoming until the story is written.

September Report

Posted: October 1, 2009 in Tears of the Mountain, writing update
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And that is September done – just three more months left of the year.

All up for the month managed only around 35,000 words, which was a bit of a let down.

Only managed to add one more story to the collection, Cara’s Choice Part Four, though did start on a couple more Cahuac stories, which I really need to get back and finish off.

Most of the word was done on Tears of the Mountain. Finished off the rough draft/synopsis and commenced work on the rewrite, which to date is up to 13,600 words and slowly making progress.

I also started writing up notes for the idea that came to me recently, temporarily titled Shadow Watch. Done about 3,000 words of notes for it.

Plan for October is to try and finish off the rewrite of Tears of the Mountain and also get enough notes together for Shadow Watch to make it my NaNoWriMo project.

Another Idea

Posted: September 27, 2009 in fantasy, writing update
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True to form, as I’m starting to make progress in the rewrite of Tear of the Mountain – 13,000 words in – another new idea comes along.

Cept it isn’t like any idea I’ve had before. A couple of days ago there was nothing. Next thing I knew, without even trying, I had, well, near everything. Five main characters came along and I knew what they looked like, their personalities and how they interacted with one another. In addition there were five minor characters with similar details. Much of the overall plot was there, as well as some minor plot details. Various scenes and conversations were whirling around as well.

In all my time fiddling around writing I’ve never had a project just jump so vividly into existence before. Stopping Tears of the Mountain when I’ve done so much already would be a bit silly, but this new project has really taken a hold and refuses to let go. At the very least I’m going to have to make some notes so I don’t forget it.

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