Looking to 2013

I may be guilty of following blog trends too closely. For example, today I'm going to go along with the "Word of the Year" thing.

First I get to decide what 2012's word was. I suppose "Transformation" would be the most fitting one. This gets into a bit more of the personal stuff, but at the beginning of the year I was content with who I was and hoping that some miracle would help me make a giant leap. It wasn't until the last few months that I decided that I had to become someone much greater, and start putting in the real work. Because of that, I actually have New Year's Resolutions this year, which I'll get to later.

Next, I'd better come up with a word for 2013. Unfortunately, I don't think the English language really has one word for going all-out, giving it everything I've got, doing everything I can without holding back. I kind of wonder why that word doesn't exist, but if it did, it would be my new word. (Correct me in the comments if there IS a word that I didn't think of!)

So that brings us to what I'm expecting myself to do with all of that. In fact, I'm expecting a lot of things, so I'm just going to make a list.

• Finish and publish both The Third Face and its sequel, The Demon's Guardian.
• Make 3 blog posts every week, including a Drabble Thursday, for at least 40 weeks of the year. (Try to get one or two in during the other 12 weeks, too.)
• Read a book every week. No exceptions.
• Beta read 4 novels.
• And all the non-writing goals too...

Yeah. It's a lot. I have some hard work ahead of me. I don't expect to accomplish all of them, but I ought to at least get pretty close. I'm going to keep at it every day. I'm serious. Like I said, no holding back.

Review: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Every adventure can use a bit of comedy, some silly moments. It pops up more in movies than in books, though there are some exceptions. In Leven Thumps, silly moments are the mainstay of the story.

Although Leven, the titular character, starts off with a tragic cookie-cutter backstory (an orphan that lives with mean relatives), the laughs are quickly forthcoming. The jokes start with a simple incident of a supposed pest causing a large group of people to panic and knock each other over, but eventually the fate of Foo is resting on a talking toothpick!

Speaking of fate, it plays a huge role in the plot. Things that might normally be considered ridiculous coincidences are always pointed out as the working of fate, which always seems to be on the heroes' side. You can always count on this, so eventually it kind of kills the fear that the characters might fail, and in fact you might find that some of their accomplishments just can't be awarded to them in that light.

One might argue that this is completely necessary, though, because the characters have more than just the villain to worry about. Leven spends the entire book beset by shadows that convince him that it's not worth it to join this cause--either because he can't help, or because it's not justified. The other characters spend as much time dealing with this as they do on their quest, if not more. Although his doubts don't really originate in his own mind, it's still one of the stronger character arcs I've read.

Reading Leven Thumps is a lot like watching a children's cartoon or anime. If you can stop trying to make sense of it and just enjoy the ride, there's a lot of fun to be had.

Review: Ender's Game

Wow. Where can I possibly begin with a book like this one?

Ender is chosen, or perhaps created, by the international government's search for a fleet commander. Even in normal school, they single him out until he has to get in fights with other kids in order to make it. But the real test comes when he's only six years old, when they send him out into space to join Battle School.

There, Ender advances far faster than anyone else ever has, rarely getting even a small taste of failure. The teachers are constantly messing with things to push him to his limits. Not only does he improve himself, but he teaches an entire generation of students a whole new way of thinking that vastly improves their skills. With his genius he starts to change the nature of the no-gravity shootout games that determine students' rankings.

And it's in these games that you start to really respect Orson Scott Card's writing. At first he skims through situations because these are no challenge for Ender, but even there you can see the beginnings of strategy. In fact, the things you see Ender learning make you wonder if Card hasn't spent a bit of time in space himself! If battles seem a bit far away, it's because you're looking at them through a tactician's eyes.

This is to say nothing of the big pile of moral dilemmas and other thought-provoking questions that are hidden in the text. Is Ender anything like his calculating, pain-loving brother Peter? And if so, is it because of who he is, or because Battle School made him that way? And most importantly, is it right to want to get rid of the invading alien force at all?

Card purposely leaves all of these questions without a clear answer, and that only adds to the depth of this work. It gives an effect that I rarely see in any other book: it has that "literary" quality to it, but it's also a fast-paced adventure that keeps you reading.

So there's definitely a good reason Ender's Game is the science fiction classic that it's considered to be. It's the Book of the Month for December 2012 over at West Michigan Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fans, if that means anything. If you haven't read it yet, give it a shot--you might start to look at things in a new way.

Drabble Thursdays #3

Wow, this week's stories are overwhelmingly dark. Maybe next week I'll have some happier ones.

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.

Cover Art Contest

I've been kind of talking about doing a cover art contest for The Third Face for a while now. While I originally mentioned that I might have it right after the actual novel is finished, I decided that I want to start much sooner, to give artists more time to discover the contest and work on entries.

So, the contest officially begins today, and will last until February 24th, 2013. That's just over two months, and in that time I'd like to promote it as much as possible, so if you have friends that are cover artists, definitely invite them to enter! There's a $50 prize at stake, not to mention the fact that I'll broadcast the winner and do my best to give the artist the exposure he or she deserves. There will most likely also be free books involved.

I'm leaving the contest more or less open-ended. The site with all of the contest information includes a decent helping of information on the book itself, as well. It should give you an idea of what elements you might include. From there, though, everything from the medium to the composition is up to the artist.

 Sound interesting? Think a friend might be up to it? Here's the link. Hope to see that entry soon!

The Revision Journey

 When asked exactly what I was doing in revising The Third Face, I realized that I didn't have an answer. It's kind of like how a lot of inexperienced authors freeze up when they have to explain to someone what their novel is actually about (I had that for a long time and I'm just now overcoming it). Today, I'm going to try to actually answer that question.

Basically, I had three major goals in mind for this edition: to make it significantly longer, to re-center the book on Rasuke as a main character with clear growth, and to get rid of some other major plot issues that were bogging down the first edition.

If you're not too familiar with word counts, this might not mean anything to you, but before, The Third Face clocked in at about 25,000 words. To give you an idea, a lot of people claim that 50,000 words is barely enough to qualify as a novel. A young adult or teen novel can sometimes get away with as little as 30,000, but most readers expect more. In fact, in the paperback version, I used spacing and other cheap tricks to make the book appear bigger than it really was. That's bad, I know. Rather than hiding its skimpiness, I want to actually make it a good length, and my minimum target for it is 40,000 words. (You can see that right now on my little progress bar on the left side of the page!)

Another thing that I tried to do in earlier versions was to just not take traditional story structure seriously. At all. There's no reason for that. I just wasn't really paying attention. And it turns out that you can't just have a bunch of things happening that are related, throw in a few plot twists and lead up to a final battle and call it good. In a story like this one there is a hero, who beats personal challenges more or less at the same time as external ones. There's an overarching conflict that is built from caring what happens to this hero, and that slowly emerges at the beginning and carries all the way to the end. All subplots need to take a backseat to this. Thus, almost all of my jumps in perspective this time around function mainly to support the journey of Rasuke to self-understanding, and into his confrontation with the forces of the universe.

What else did I do to the story in the meantime? For one thing, there aren't as many major jumps in time as there were before. Whereas originally the prologue took place several years before Part 1, which in turn was a few years before Part 2, now these events are either made to happen one right after another, or presented in flashbacks. On the other hand, I eliminated a lot of the times when the characters are simply waiting around for something to happen to them, brooding on the many questions of the world and arguing with each other. Finally, I made sure that all of the main characters are properly introduced in the first ten chapters, rather than giving them only passing mentions until they suddenly appeared much later on.

It's amazing how this all comes together. There are a lot of other details that I'm messing with while I'm at it, but these important things are the focus of my work right now. I've been trying to get out a chapter every day, and to get around 1000 words out of each one. While I haven't been able to do that perfectly all the time, the fact remains that this story is hurtling towards completion faster than I could have dreamed. The end is a lot closer than you might think! I hope this post holds you over until then.

Drabble Thursdays #2

Time for a few more of these!

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.