A Memory of Light Review

 

 

Let me start this post by saying I don't plan on censoring myself as I talk about the book, so in other words SPOILER ALERT. Stop reading now if you don't want to find out details of A Memory of Light.

First let me say that I am having a lot of trouble writing this post. I have been reading The Wheel of Time for twenty years and having the series end has been an odd mixture of sadness and elation. One thing I was not counting on when I picked up the book was how much reading it would remind me of the reading the other books in the series.

It took me about a week or so to read the book and every time I sat it down I was forcefully reminded of reading the other books. I am sure remembering reading TEOTW at my grandma's house, or reading TGH sitting next to my dad (both of whom have passed away) contributed to the sadness I was feeling at the end of the series. Not to mention that the characters in these books have been an active part of my imagination for twenty fricking years. I knew I was losing something as I finished the story but I was very excited to do so.

Anyway, this book was epic in its…um…epic-ness. Most of the book was fight scenes, but when you read a book that is about the last battle between good and evil at the end of the world, what else do you expect. This was a great example of the kinds of books they wrote when I was a teenager, that just don't get published any more. Overall I enjoyed the book.

Everything happened as I thought it would. The bad ass character showed their badassery and killed like a billion trollocs.

Too bad there was five billion trollocs.

Eventually the heroes get worn down by sheer numbers and then characters both big and small start dying by the boat load. Oh, and to those of you that I had this discussion with before: Rand DID use the Dark One's own power against it, ah ha!

Okay, okay Rand did not kill the Dark One, letting Fain take his place…I'll give you that one.

The end was not what I expected but looking back at the series as a whole I think it was very fitting. My one gripe being that Rand sneaks off in his new body without letting his friends or his father know he is alive. I get not advertising the fact that you lived but come on, Tam deserves to know his boy is still (kind of) alive.

The novel wasn't perfect. There were a few plot threads that never got tied up. There were a few meetings between characters I wanted to see that never happened. And why did you have to kill Bela? That poor horse got dragged all over the world, you could have let the sad thing have a rest at the end of the series, but no you have to go and kill it. I mean damn that horse didn't do anything to deserve that I-

…okay…I'm okay. But Bela? That's messed up.

Anyway, it was the Last Battle I was hoping for though Rand's role was totally not what I was expecting.

Brandon Sanderson did a great job bringing Robert Jordan's series to its conclusion. The writing reminded me a lot of Mr. Jordan. I am curious how Jordan would have handled the descriptions and the characters, in my opinion he had a great way of making characters jump off the page, but after reading this book I think Sanderson might be better at writing action scenes.

I have some thoughts on series as a whole, but I think I will save that for another post, but until then

…it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending.

Update

It has been awhile since my last post so I thought I'd write an update for you all. First I want to apologize to the PHP authors still waiting for letters, they are coming. Life has been pretty hectic the last few months and it keeps getting pushed back.

Without being too specific since I didn't ask my family members if it was okay to talk about them: we had an older family member diagnosed with cancer, and spent a few weeks in hospitals. The surgery worked and it is removed. Then we helped another family member move across country to live in our little town. He decided to open a restaurant and we have been helping him. I have finished my first three classes for my new degree, and I have been spending lots of time with the kids. There were also some car and house issues that had to be taken care of.

The one thing I didn't realize about online school was how much writing was involved. Term papers, essays, and discussion board replies have been pretty much all I have written. I think I wrote two chapters in my current novel since my last post.

I can also blame part of my lack of production on my Wheel of Time reread. What free time I had the last few months has been spent immersing myself in Robert Jordan's world. I have already started writing a few thoughts about A Memory of Light that I will post in the next few days.

I plan on starting up my writing again this week sometime.

Changes & A Writing Update

I am finally feeling better, and just in time. It’s my first day of school. I have decided to go back to college and get another bachelors degree. There are a lot more jobs in my area for someone with an IT degree than there are for someone with an Applied History degree.

So I am taking online classes full time through Bellevue University, with the college credits I already have it will take me about a year to get a new degree, with two babies at home I thought this was the perfect time to spend a little more time at home.

Last semester I took a prerequisite class while I was trying to decide if I wanted to go back to school. Online classes were a little different than I remembered. Anyway I thought I would tell everybody why my blog posts and writing have slowed down a bit, and will probably slow down a bit more. I will keep writing, but homework will come first.

My writing has been going pretty well. The novel I am working on is coming along nicely. Dynasties and Demagogues actually did help. It put into words some concepts I had been mulling over. I am not sure it would be all that helpful to most people but it really did help me.

The one thing I am a little worried about in my novel now is that my character is too…proficient for lack of a better word. I can see a rewrite in my future, but for now I finished three chapters in the last three weeks, though I am not sure I want to count last week, I was so sick I did not write at all.

Hey all

I decided to write a blog today because it has been nearly a month since I wrote one. I have just been kind of busy. Right now I am fighting off a potent flu virus so instead of writing something interesting I will leave with this youtube video of Disney's Adentures of the Gummi Bears, it was a childhood stapple of mine and I just found it on youtube. I always feel a little nostolgic when I am sick and I actually sat down and watched four episodes before I realized that I was a grown man sitting on my couch watching over twenty year old cartoons.

Intriguing

Today I am feeling a little more optimistic about my writing than I have in a while. In the last week I have gotten two requests for partials from editors, one for Kingdom of the Dead, and one for The Lion of Solkara. Now this doesn’t mean that either book is going to be published, it just means that someone read the synopsis, and in one case a few chapters, and they wanted to read more.

It is a nice feeling. Progress on my latest novel has been pretty slow, and this kind of makes up for it.

Why has progress been so slow?

Without getting into too many details, I have decided to push myself a little and try something I haven’t done before.  My latest novel is set in a world full of political intrigue. Twice now I have tied the story into such a knot I couldn’t unravel it, and had to start over.

After that, I had the idea of basing some of the intrigue in the story on actual events which happened in the Roman Empire, only to be told by an alpha reader that those parts where “unbelievable” and “could never happen in real life”

I searched the internet for some writing tips and found a few, but I am still trying to figure out exactly how to do this a) without putting in an overload of extraneous information into the story b) in a believable manner c) with enough twists and turns to make it interesting.

I just order Dynasties and Demagogues, a role playing manual.

 

Item Description: Rulers make history -- Dynasties and Demagogues helps you make some history of your own with an in-depth look at the hidden rules of political intrigue and power brokering. Players are challenged to unravel the schemes of duplicitous enemies and allies alike as part of their characters' own rise to power. And for GMs, Dynasties and Demagogues affords a close look at the nitty-gritty of political campaigns fraught with plots and counter-plots, assassinations, duels, and changing allegiances, all tied together in an intricate web of power relations.

I’ll let you know if it helps. I haven’t played D&D since college but I remember being the DM was pretty much just writing a story, which is why I liked doing it so much. Hopefully it is the secret ingredient that helps me “get it”.

The one saving grace that will make the novel a little easier is that most of the intrigue is going to be taking place in the background. And my main character’s arc has him moving away from his life embroiled in political intrigue. We’ll see how it goes.

If anyone has any tips, please leave them in the comments.

Starting/Running A Small Press

I promised a post about starting/running a small press, but I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to format it, as bulleted tips, as a story, in essay format, epic poem, and so on. I have finally decided to throw it out there as jumbled mess, question-and-answer-stream-of-consciousness pile and let you sort it out, but I did add a bunch of pictures so that it looks pretty.

Who to use as printer? There are really only two choices. Create Space and Lightning Source. We went with lighting source, the books are higher quality and they have more distribution channels. You do need adobe illustrator or another graphic design program for the covers. Note: Things might have changed. It was a few years ago when we weighed the pros and cons of the two. You might want to do the same.

Adobe Illustrator? Whew, that’s expensive: Yes, a new version is. And it takes a while to learn. Fortunately, I had taken some graphic design classes in school and we found a copy of illustrator 9 on ebay for $60. Then we used the profits from the first books to buy CS5 including illustrator, photoshop and adobe indesign. Indesign makes formatting books soooooo much easier once you get the hang of the program. Heck, it’s what most of the big publishing houses use.

Illustrator eventually paid for itself. I did a lot of work for other small presses: formatting covers for lightning source, creating ads, making bookmarks, etc. $10-$50 a project really added up after awhile.

Where did you get cover art? Lurk here until you find an artist you like, that is in your price range. Also you could always try big stock photo or dreamstime. We used stock art on our first few books since we didn’t know where to find an artist. You can get some nice covers with stock art, check out the mock up I did for the first issue of Dark Things: Horror Magazine, that sadly never got published. I think it came out pretty well. And no those articles and author names are not real, I was just seeing how the text would look.

 

 

Personal rejection letters? Just say no to them. We tried it and got some very angry people. Some people can’t take criticism.

Website? We used weebly, it’s a pretty easy way to create a website and then you can purchase your own domain name.

Advertising? This is a hard one. We tried a lot of things, and it seemed like what worked for one book did not work for another. What makes a book sell over 1000 copies when another book (that I personally liked better) sold less than 50. It’s weird.

For anthologies it is totally based on the authors. If you get 16-30 people all telling their friends what great a book it is, going to cons, talking it up on the internet then you will have pretty good sales. If you fill the book with authors who are like “that’s awesome” and throw the book on their stack of contributors’ copies and never think of the book again, then sales are not good. On the other hand having a book filled with first timers would probably be bad too. I think the best formula for an anthology (when you can’t spend tons of money getting famous authors) is to get one or two recognizable names, one or two newbies and then the rest somewhere in between. Of course we never tried following any formulas, we just picked the stories we liked best, but I think that this formula would work.

 Book reviews are nice, but they don’t create a buzz. People have to start the buzz, and then the reviews will make the chatter louder.

Novels were a bit different. Reviews did help, sometimes. Authors promoting their own work helped, sometimes. Advertising in magazines did not work. We contacted local television, radio, and newspapers near all of the novelist’s homes and only received a positive response once, from a public television show. The author balked at the idea and wouldn’t do it, despite the fact that we checked with the author  first, so I am not sure if they work. Some Podcasts helped, sometimes. We did notice a difference when some authors went to cons, sometimes. Postcards worked…sometimes. Hmmm…I guess the same thing never worked twice. Don’t know what to tell you here.

To Kindle or Not To Kindle? We had a few months when kindle sales beat out print sales, but for the most part print sales were better. But kindle and nook sales can certainly give you a boost. It did seem like sci-fi sold better on kindle than in print. Fantasy sold better in print. Horror was split down the middle. Anyway, ebooks are definitely worth doing.

Help? Our business was a family run operation. But we did talk to our local college and could have gotten an intern at some point. We would have had to pay $3/hour, not bad for a little help.

Forum? I loved the forum. I wish I could have been a little better about keeping up with it. It was nice to have a community of writers to throw ideas off of, or discuss writing topics. Other writing forums I have tried come with an overabundance of snark, which we tried to keep to a minimum. We got a lot of emails thanking us for the forum. Getting members wasn't too hard, we just gave away some free stuff and bam, instant community.

How to deal with detractors? No matter what you do, someone won’t like it. If you start a small press you will eventually get some hate mail. On the internet people say whatever they want, things they really wouldn't say in person. We have gotten hate mail about pay rates, rejection letters, our covers, our website, our logo, and even the wording in our calls for submission. For the most part we ignored it. Occasionally, if somebody was waaay out of line we would send out an email to other small presses telling them that the person was hard to work with.

But usually, it was best just to look at the submission cue and see all the familiar names. Then it was easy to see that we also had a lot of supporters. In the end it was really easy to see, with the dozens of emails thanking us and wishing us well. Thanks to everyone for that.

That’s everything I can think of. If you have any questions feel free to use the contact form or post in the comments.

Pill Hill Press Closes

 

I just had to do something pretty hard. Last night, my wife came to a tear soaked decision to close her small press, Pill Hill Press. Being the person she is, she tried to immediately post on her website and ended up deleting it (which has happened before, it has always been easy enough to recreate with weebly, she just didn’t see the point this time) and then she tried to find out how to delete her forum and ended up deleting her account.

So as the last administrator of the forum it fell to me to send out the mass email telling everyone the PHP was closing. Jessy just did not feel she could give the PHP the time it deserved.  

Here is what I wrote:

I’m afraid I have some unpleasant news. Jessy was going to write this, but she has accidentally deleted her account. We have decided to close PHP. Jessy has been trying to go back to work for the past few weeks and, with the babies she cannot give Pill Hill or the authors’ creations the time, attention, and love they deserve. All short stories currently in submissions are returned to the authors. All rights on unpublished books revert back to the author. Authors who are currently getting royalty statements will be getting a snail mail letter about rights, etc.

The website is down, and we are contacting lefora about closing the forum.

This decision did not come without a few tears. We have truly enjoyed working with all of you, and have met some wonderful people, some of whom I consider to be friends. Thank you for sharing your creations with us, the glimpses into your imaginations have been entertaining, thought provoking, wondrous, and at times a little scary. It has been a privilege to work with all of you.

All our best,

Alva J Roberts

Pill Hill Press

 

 

 

I feel a little sad about it, but I understand. She could not work and take care of the kids, she has been trying and it is driving her crazy.

 

Pill Hill was making money, but it wasn't MAKING MONEY. To continue with PHP Jessy would have had to hire a babysitter or day care. She would be working to pay for childcare and a little spending money (some months).  It just didn't make sense.  But still I am feeling kind of sad about the whole thing. Who knows, maybe when the kids start school Jessy will reopen. We still have quite a few ISBNs and all the knowledge and equipment to do it.

 

Over the next week or so I will probably post a few blogs about starting and running a small press before I start forgetting a lot of details.