A Book Recommendation, Some Writing Tips, and Mother-in-Laws

Sorry about the last post, I thought about deleting it but then left there as a reminder not to write a blog post during a lupus flare up, no matter how mild, nothing like a sudden onset of severe arthritis pain to make you feel old. But I am back to my generally happy, pain-free self. My mother in law has been visiting so there is very little getting done on the writing front. She came out for my wife's baby shower. I get along pretty well with my in laws but I will be glad to have the house back to normal, company, no matter how pleasant, can be exhausting.

I did get most of Brandon Sanderson’s Alloy of Law read this week, and I have to tell you it is really great. It is set in his Mistborn series but hundreds of years after the last book. Unlike other fantasy series the passage of time has meant an advance in technology. They use guns and the book reads pretty much like a western, but a really cool one.

Also, if you are into writing fantasy here is a this week’s Writing Excuses Podcast. Brandon Sanderson talks about his new epic fantasy, The Way of Kings. He goes in depth into some of the edits he made to the manuscript, and why he chose to have the POV characters he did. It is a really great glimpse into the writing process of a NY times bestselling author.

The Best Book Ever Part III

Here it is the long awaited final installment of the best book ever. This the list of my favorite books in the year that I read them(Note: The year I read a book had nothing to do with its release, Note #2: This list was compiled from memory so if I say I read a book before it was published I apologize. ) Previous entries can be read here and here.

My favorite book of 2000 was… um… well you see this was the year I turned twenty-one and well…um…I had other stuff to do. The stuff I did read I only have a vague memory of.

My favorite book of 2001 was… The Dome of Fire by David Eddings. This was my first Eddings book and it inspired me to go find his other stuff. A great book.

My favorite book of 2002 was… Dissolution by Richard Lee Byers. At this point I was drifting away from The Forgotten Realms and Dungeons and Dragons but The War of the Spider Queen brought me back for a little while.

My favorite book of 2003 was… A History of Western Civilization author unknown. This was a hard year for me to remember anything I read that I enjoyed. I had just started back in college and was taking 18 credit hours a semester for the time I took off, but this was my favorite class so…

My favorite book of 2004 was…Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin. This book provided me with a whole series of humorous light hearted stories. The perfect read between classes.

My favorite book of 2005 was…Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan. The continuation of my favorite series of all time, and my copy was signed by the author!

My favorite book of 2006 was… Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I read this one shortly before Robert Jordan’s death and loved it. I was really pleased when they announced he would finish The Wheel of Time

My favorite book of 2007 was… Sacrifice of the Widow by Lisa Smedman. By this point I was done with D&D. Everyone I gamed with had left town, and the only Forgotten Realms books I read in years was the The War of the Spider Queen but I was sold on Lisa Smedman’s writing from her entry, Extinction, in The War of the Spider Queen.

My favorite book of 2008 was… Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This was a great book, I hate first person but I loved this one.

My favorite book of 2009 was… Storm Front by Jim Butcher. Again another start of a series that I really enjoyed.

My favorite book of 2010 was… Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson. The latest entry in the Wheel of Time, who knew you could pack so much awesome in one book?

The Best Book Ever Part 2: Cypher's Fall

The Best Books Ever: Part Two Cipher’s Fall.

Okay so the sub title doesn’t make sense, but what did you really expect in a sequel? It caught your attention and that is all a subtitle is really for, anyway here’s the list.


Note: These are my favorite books of all time, the year that I read them has nothing to do with the year they were released.


11. My favorite book of 1989 was…The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. I was in fourth grade, and I loved this book. The way the children entered Narnia was super awesome to me, it was years until I realized that social services probably should have taken the children from their guardian. Can anyone say child neglect?

12. My favorite book of 1990 was… The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. I blame this book and the Lord of the Rings series for all the $$ that I have spent on epic fantasy since then. Reading it was…well…epic.

13. My favorite book of 1991 was…Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This book started a frenzy of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms reading and got me interested in D&D. So it is one of the contributing factors to my severe case of dateless-iotis in high school. But don’t let that dissuade you it really was a good book.

14. My favorite book of 1992 was...All The Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Science fiction dragons??? Wow!

15. My favorite book of 1993 was…The First Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen. The god’s created a great game and hand out magic swords to humans, just to see what happens. How fucking cool is that?

16. My favorite book of 1994 was... The Eye of the World by Roberts Jordan. Okay can you say coolest book ever? I was just starting high school and while I never really minded school and I did fake the flu for a couple of days so I could stay home and finish this one. Yeah I played hookie to read a book, I never claimed to be cool so stop laughing.

17. My favorite book of 1995 was… Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett. While I knew that books could be entertaining and moving I never guessed that could be this funny. And while my sense of humor had matured slightly I still think this is funny today.

18. My favorite book of 1996 was.. Fire Sea by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I read the first two books in the Death Gate Cycle and thought they were good, but this one blew me away. An underground kingdom by a lake of fire whose inhabitants were Necromancers. That is all I needed to know. The cover pic for this is still the background on my cell phone.

19. My favorite book of 1997 was.. Homeland by RA Salvatore. This was a busy year for me, graduating high school and all. But I still found time for Drizzt, though I never did figure out how to say his name.

20. My favorite book of 1998 was… A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. The good guys can die. What a concept.

21. My favorite book of 1999 was… The Bartender’s Black Book. I struggled with this one for awhile the year I turned twenty is a little hazy but I remember reading this one pretty often.

The best book ever...

Ever wonder what books inspire a writer to write? Ever wonder how a super fantasy nerd is created?

Well I started to today at work (the library for those of you who don't know) when a seven year old was telling me about their favorite book, and had a very different favorite book than the one he told me about back in March.

Well, here it is folks, my list of my favorite books of my lifetime(haha I new I could use the word my three time in 8 words, I can cross that off my bucket list). Anyway this a year by year guide to all that is awesome in fiction, at least to me. As a precursor I have to say that this list took a bit of research, after all how am I suppose to remember what my favorite book was back in 1980?

I was only a year old for Christ’s sake, and trying to memorize your favorite book for a blog you are going to write thirty years later is just too much pressure for a one year old. Luckily my aunts and uncles had no problem remembering what my favorite books were, apparently I liked to have them read to me over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Much the way I reread The Lord of the Rings every other year.

In a side note I have broken this posting into three parts, because…well thirty books is a heck of a lot of reading, even when you are just reading about them.

So without further ado, here it is:

1. My favorite book of 1979 was… the letter A. In the months leading up to my milestone one year birthday I found the letter A to be a master work of literature. The two sweeping slopy sides connected by a hard horizontal slash, who could possibly disagree?

2. My favorite book of 1980 was…Duck. A simple book made on thick cardstock that had no author, the book Duck thrilled me with its wonderful graphics, until I tried to flush it down the toilet.

3. My favorite book of 1981 was…Go Dog, Go by PD Eastman this wonderful book included the timeless passage remembered by all “Now it is night. Three dogs at a party on a boat at night.” It still gets to me.

4. My favorite book of 1982 was… Sesame Street: The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone. Can you say surprise ending? This one was a shocker! The only thing that has even come close since was the sixth sense.

5. My favorite book of 1983 was… Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. I would eat them in a box with a fox!

6. My favorite book of 1984 was…The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie DePaola. In this epic 32 page tale a knight and a dragon prepare to do battle but at the end decided to open up a BBQ restaurant instead. Dragons and BBQ? Come on, you know you want to read it now.

7. My favorite book of 1985 was... a He-man mini-comic that came with my He-Man action figure. Skeletor vs He-man, do I need to say anything else?

8. My favorite book of 1986 was… a tough one to pick, I was entering first grade and my tastes were maturing. But I finally went with a Spider-man comic book. It doesn’t matter which comic, they were all super awesome.

9. My favorite book of 1987 was… Time Life Books Legends of Valor. If you have never tried any of the Time Life Enchanted Worlds books I still highly recommend them. They are an invaluable resource for any fantasy writer or eight year old boy.

10. My favorite book of 1988 was…Time Life Books The Fall of Camelot. This was my first introduction to King Arthur and his knights. For the rest of the year I read anything and everything I could find about the round table.

Ten down, only twenty-one to go. I promise the books will get a little more main stream as it goes. I knew I could find a way to procrastinate and put off nanowrimo, I just had to put my mind to it.

Book Recommendation

I am in a reflective mood today, and I began thinking about my rather uneventful high school days. I spent most of high school in my room reading a book, very different from my college days most of which I spent drinking large quantities of alcohol and making and ass of myself.

Anyway, I decided to post two book recommendations for books I read back in high school. So here are a few recommendations that have been colored by the years between me reading them and recommending them to today. Some might not be as good as I remember having been visited by the “suck fairy”. To read more about the suck fairy visit HERE, they may have also been visited by the super awesome fairy and are much better than I remember.

The books themselves are both about a distant future, which seemed oddly fitting. Reflecting about my past experience of reading about the future. Of course there is a slight chance that this blog post might tear the fabric of space and time. But I am willing to risk it.

Okay up first, The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

These books are about a distant future of earth where magic has returned. There are two magical races one evil and one good that lesser peoples worship as gods.

The good magical race sunders the earth into worlds based on elements and imprisons the evil magic users. The main character of the series is a scout for the evil magic users, they are returning and need to find out the state of the world.

These books are great, I love the characters and the depth of the world. I have been afraid to reread them because Book 3 Fire Seas is on my favorite books of all time list and I would hate to take it off.

Next up the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey

I started the series with All the Weyrs of Pern, the 11th book in the series. All the Weyrs of Pern starts with Dragon Riders unearthing a super computer.

This was the first novel I had ever read that really blended fantasy and sci-fi together. I remember being amazed that something so cool could exist. Basically the plot of the series is that humans colonize Pern in the distant future. As they are enjoying their new earth-like planet Thread begins falling from the skies. Thread is an unintelligent organism from outer space that eats all organic material.

This is a real problem since they were trying to build a low-tech society and did not bring most of their technology from Earth. The solution? Genetically engineer dragons, which they ride, to fight Thread. How awesome is that?

There you go to book series from my distant past that helped shape what I read today. If you haven’t tried them go out and do so now. Anyway see you next time.

Working...

My break from writing is over, I just got done writing another 1000 words on Godswar. That puts me over 30,000 and I am starting to wonder if this story is going to end up being more than one book long, it is just beginning. I am also starting to wonder if it is possible to have the opposite of writer's block. I have so many ideas for this novel that I don't know where to go next. I guess that's what I get for never outlining.

During my break I read a couple of books and worked on covers for PHP. Below is art for a Whodunnit Halloween and then the cover I made. I tried to make the 6 x 9 artwork into a 12.5 x 9 wrap around cover. I'll let you decide how good a job I did. I also got the artwork for a novel Kinberra Down, Eric S Brown's next novel from PHP. Phil really out did himself on this one, I can't wait for Jessy to post it on our forum.

Original Art

Whodunnit Halloween Cover

Book Review:

This is one of the books I read during my break, I would definitely recommend it. Jimmy was one of my favorite characters in the riftwar saga and I loved to a novel focused on him. I give this one 5 out of 5 stars. But I would tell anyone who is interested to start with the first book of the riftwar saga, Magician and work your way through the series. My favorite book in the series is A Darkness at Sethanon.

I am going to have a busy week at work. Monday should be normal. The Friends of the Library book sale is this week, so I have two days of hauling books around, then on Thursday I have to visit one of the elementary schools and talk about the Summer Reading Program. I don't really know what to say to the classes other than "Hey, there is a Summer Reading Program, you should come!" but I am working on it. Public speaking is my kryptonite, but the oldest kids I talk to will be in 4th grade, so it shouldn't be so bad. We have 1 hour to walk between all six classrooms and give our presentation to each. If nothing else it should be good practice for the bigger schools, that I have to visit in May.

Then on Friday I get to go to the dentist. I have one more wisdom tooth and apparently I am not allowed to keep it. While I'm there he wants to do a in depth cleaning and fill in another cavity. He said for me to plan on being in the chair for at least an hour. Finally I have to work on Saturday this week, which would be fine, but I will be nursing a sore mouth and I will have to start taking down the book sale.

Sigh... Maybe I should write faster so that I can become a famous novelist and not have to worry about book sales and school visits.

Proxies of Fate

Proxies of Fate is out. I have never written a book review, and to be honest I don't read very many. But I had to post about this novel, and not just because we put the novel out.

I was lucky enough to be taking a turn as a slush reader when this novel came in. I only had to read the first three chapters and tell Jessy if I liked it or not. But when she requested the manuscript I had to get a copy just for me to read (and I really don't like reading fiction on a computer screen). This is a really great novel, Matthew sets up his scenes in such a great way. You can picture everything in the story.

The story is sci-fi, the annotation follows. When you are reading it it is obvious that Matthew loves comic books, the action is awesome, and I love Matthew's writing style. It reminded me of George RR Martin's writing.

The world teeters on the brink of hope and despair during the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s.

Out of the darkness come the Krush, brutal warriors and destroyers of worlds. Drawn by the Earth's glow, they seek death and conquest. Their genocidal invasion is halted in orbit by the last of the Theria, godlike protectors of the universe. Forced into an unsteady armistice, the two factions agree to a battle by proxy to settle the fate of Earth.

Chris Donner, a jaded Great War veteran, is granted the divine powers of the Theria and strives to understand why he has been given such a gift. Li Chen, an idealistic Chinese peasant, is chosen by the Krush and becomes the fabled Dragon King. Both men irrevocably change history as they are drawn together in a final battle to decide the outcome of mankind.

Book Recommendations

I was looking over this blog today and one thing became clear to me---it is kind of boring. So rather than just giving the play by play of my writing career, I’m also going to include other things…Like book recommendations. I'm a librarian I talk to people about books all day, why not share what people are saying?

Today I’m going to start with the books of Brandon Sanderson, why? Because I have a copy of his newest book Warbreaker sitting next to my computer.

But first things first and first is Elantris:

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Sanderson's outstanding fantasy debut, refreshingly complete unto itself and free of the usual genre clichés, offers something for everyone: mystery, magic, romance, political wrangling, religious conflict, fights for equality, sharp writing and wonderful, robust characters. The godlike inhabitants of Elantris, once the capital of the land of Arelon, have degenerated into powerless, tortured souls, unable to die, after the city's magic inexplicably broke 10 years earlier. When the same curse strikes Prince Raoden of Arelon and he's imprisoned in Elantris, he refuses to surrender to his grim fate and instead strives to create a society out of the fallen and to unlock the secret that will restore the city's glory. Meanwhile, Princess Sarene of Kae (Arelon's new capital), who was betrothed to Raoden sight unseen, believes her intended has died. Officially declared his widow, she must use her political savvy and wit to protect Kae from malevolent forces without and within the city, chiefly Hrathen, a leader of the creepy Shu-Dereth faith, who aims to either convert Kae or destroy it within three months. The intrigue and excitement grow steadily in this smoothly written, perfectly balanced narrative; by the end readers won't want to put it down. As the blurb from Orson Scott Card suggests, Sanderson is a writer to watch.

From Me:

This book was really good, it joined the two dozen books on my "keeper shelf" which means it was good enough for me to think I might want to reread it, what else is on the "keeper shelf"? Robert Jordan, JRR Tolkien, RA Salvatore, Margaret Weiss, Terry Prachett, just to name a few. This novel has a great concept, it is well written and it held my attention.

The Mistborn Trilogy

From Publishers Weekly

Sanderson's eerie second fantasy (after 2005's Elantris), set in a mist-haunted, ash-ridden world, pits Kelsier, "the Survivor of Hathsin," against the immortal Lord Ruler's 1,000-year domination of both the Great Houses and their serflike "skaa." Through Allomancy acquired in the Ruler's most hellish prison, Kelsier can "burn" 10 metals internally, fueling superhuman powers he uses to assemble rebels in a loose plan to destroy the nobility, the empire and the Lord Ruler himself. Kelsier uses Vin, a street urchin with the same Mistborn powers Kelsier possesses, to infiltrate the Great Houses' society, where she falls in love with philosopher prince Elend Venture. This mystico-metallurgical fantasy combines Vin's coming-of-age-in-magic and its well-worn theme of revolt against oppression with copious mutilations, a large-scale cast of thieves, cutthroats, conniving nobles and exotic mutants. The fast-paced action scenes temper Vin's interminable ballroom intrigues, while the characters, though not profoundly drawn, have a raw stereotypic appeal.

From Me:Can't say a whole lot about this one I haven't read them yet, but they are popular at the library, in fact one of the most popular books in adult fantasy.

Okay next is Warbreaker:

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Epic fantasy heavyweight Sanderson (the Mistborn series) pens a powerful stand-alone tale of unpredictable loyalties, dark intrigue and dangerous magic. To keep a treaty made long ago, the king of Idris must send his daughter to marry Susebron, the God King of Hallandren. Loath to part with his eldest daughter, Vivenna, King Dedelin instead sends his youngest daughter, tomboyish 17-year-old Siri, who struggles to make sense of the schemers and spies in Susebron's court. Hoping to rescue her sister, Vivenna joins a group of Idrian operatives with questionable motives. As Vivenna comes to terms with her magical abilities, resurrected hero Lightsong questions the role of the undead Returned Gods, who command Hallandren's mighty army of zombie soldiers. Sanderson melds complex, believable characters, a marvelous world and thoughtful, ironic humor into an extraordinary and highly entertaining story.

From Me: I debated about posting this one or not I am not quite done with this one but unless something happens in the last 70 pages that ruins the first 520 then it is a good book. Again I like the characters and Brandon's style of writing.

One thing I can say about all of his books is that they all have very interesting systems of magic, which are well thought out and unique.

Now a quick writing update, I just got a story accepted to Static Movement and I will post more about that later. The publisher Chris Batholomew is a really nice person who always has a kind word to say on the various forums and I am excited to have my very short story in her ezine.

I finally came up with a title for my newest novel, or at least a working title Summer's Blood is at 75,000 words and only has a few chapters left to go. Hopefully one of my novels will be published someday.