Amber Magic and Sky Magic are the first two books in B.V. Larson’s Haven series.  They are also the first two fantasy novels I read on kindle, and the first two indie published fantasy novels I have read.  As I consider reviewing the books, I am finding it hard to separate those new experiences.

Briefly on my early kindle reading experiences: very positive.  For this review I learned how to search the kindle text (simple) and to crudely use location numbers.

Amber Magic is a novella, and I purchased it for ninty-nine cents from the kindle store.  It is not unusual for e-book-only authors to sell their first book cheap, hoping to gather an audience for their other work.  And while I certainly got a dollar’s worth of pleasure from reading this book, I found it to be lightweight in other ways besides its size.

It’s a fairly simple, straightforward yarn.  There is largely only one point-of-view character, which is not unusual for a novella. All the major characters are engaging, and have motivations that make sense, although some are not obvious until later chapters, which is great.

My favorite thing about this book was its treatment of such races as goblins, fairies, dwarves and wee folk.  In the great tradition of Tolkien himself, Larson obviously patterned his races after the folklore of the British Isles. I have read too many fantasy books that based races on other fantasy books, or worse, on role playing game races.

The author renamed some of the races but he did it in English (dwarves are Battleaxe Folk).  I do not love the overuse of fictional languages in my fiction.

The magic in Amber Magic is easy enough to understand, which is important in a novella, and it is not so powerful and broadly applicable as to make you wonder why the heroes don’t just wish away their problems, but also not weak and lame.  There are a finite number of very powerful artifacts, awesome in power and cleverly used for plot development, and other magic is weak, rare, and people fear and distrust those who use it.  That’s how fantasy magic should be; fun, but limited.

Sky Magic is the second book in the series, and it is also a novella, which I guessed by the price $2.99.  I am disappointed, not in the price but in the length of the book, barely longer then Amber Magic by kindle’s dot count.  I really had hoped the author wrote a novella to open the series and then went into beefier novels.  Other then some excellent opening vignettes showing some of the races, it’s the one POV character again, and the story goes forward in a straight line, which is not a criticism of the plot itself, which keeps the pages turning.  I did not find these books to be predictable, which is unusual and high praise for fantasy.

In Sky Magic the story quickly grows darker.  These books dance on the edge of being fantasy/horror.  There’s nothing too gory, but fear abounds.

Regarding these books as my first indie published fantasy reading, I will say I am glad they did not die on the vine waiting for an agent and publisher.  If I’m vetting books, these get a pass, for good characters, plot and more.  A good editor would have improved these books.   I find modern idioms, expressions and phraseology distracting in  quasi-medieval fantasy.  I am well aware that if it were written in medieval English, few would be able to read it.  But when I come across an  expression that I heard for the first time as adult, it feels like new lingo, in an old setting, and it’s jarring.  Which makes me think of a comic (below).

I recommend these books for younger fantasy readers, fans who like straightforward novellas, and anyone who likes the free sample available from the kindle store.

Reprinted from xkcd.com in accordance with policy: xkcd.com/about

Also I plan to review a couple of them in this space, and I would like to report the approximate size of the book.

So I am frustrated because the book size is not available.  I will be very grateful if someone proves me wrong.  Here are some things I googled up that are no help:
Little dots on the kindle Home screen: They appear under the title.  The more dots, the longer the book.  Spiffy.  Shall I count them and mention in my review that kindle gave it nine little dots?  Of course I have to buy and download the book first, then I can see how long it is, in dots.  No help.

File size: It is presented in kilobites (KB). Cover art, charts, graphs, illustrations, are all part of the same file, so if there are lots of those, the file size is larger, that’s obvious.  Here’s a mystery:  I bought the revised Freakanomics, and it had a cover picture, and a few tables presented.  And it’s a big book, lots of little dots.  It took me several evenings to read it.  It’s file size is 378 KB.  I also bought Amber Magic, by B.V. Larson.  It’s a novella, according to descriptions, and I read it in just a few hours.  Only half as many dots as Freakanomics.  File size, with cover picture, 473 KB.  Huh??  No help.

Location numbers: there are tools like this that convert location numbers to page numbers and do other useful things, but first you have to enter the number of locations and the number of pages.  Pages?  In which edition?  Hardbound or paperback?  If I don’t own the book, I can look it up on Amazon, but what if it’s e-pub ONLY??  No help.

Help?!?

I want to populate my Google Reader with useful blogs about writing, and especially fantasy writing.  I googled up a couple of lists.  SF Signal published this exhaustive list but it has not been updated, aparently, since 2007.   If they were blogging in 2007, and are still blogging, that’s good.  But roughly a third of the ones I looked at are dormant.  These were all SciFi and Fantasy authors published by major houses.

I also found this list, which is a guest post from the same SF Signal listing their top 10 favorite blogs.  Eight of them are still active, and several look really good to me.

So the first list is too big, the second too small.  Also I am interested in indie, self published, and e-published writers too.

If you have recommendations, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

I am increasingly impressed with the acting chops of Bridges.  This film asks him to play three different versions of himself, within the framework of a ridiculous plot, and he handles it.

The rest of the acting is acceptable, certainly worthy of the plot, which is setting the bar plenty low.  Garrett Hedlund has everything the hero son of a hero needs, including a face that, I kept thinking, resembles Bridges.  Olivia Wilde was fine in a role that demanded little.  I would count her among the more enjoyable visual aspects of the movie.

I like SciFi that engages the mind.  This film asks you to disengage it and enjoy the sights and sounds.  Sure, most SciFi asks you to suspend disbelief in something, but when I am asked to believe that corporal humans can disappear into a digital world, well, that’s more like bad fantasy then speculative science.

There is a common element, or theme, in science fiction where some form of artificial intelligence does bad things, usually because it was given unwise instructions.  This has been done well, repeatedly.  There was Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Isac Asimov’s robots, and I even enjoyed Star Trek TNG’s Moriarty.  It is not impossible that someone may improve on those or add something, but this script failed to do so.

I recommend this film to hardcore SciFi fans and gamer geeks.  But if you are reluctant to pay extra for IMAX and 3D, consider waiting for the Netflix version.

I do not feel a need to add to that plethora of literature.  But I do feel I have a Christmas story living in my head, that I should try to put in pixels someday.  That is where most of my writing starts, actually.  It’s as much about the process as the product.

I have no shortage of strong feelings associated with this time of year.  Anger and angst, irony and sarcasm are the easy choices, but not the most honest.  I will write a better holiday story if I am willing to be honest about the sadness, jealousy, and sense of betrayal and loss that hides beneath the rest of that noise.  And there is joy and peace in there someplace too, which is where many Christmas stories end up.  I’m not imposing that as a rule, however.

My childhood holiday memories are heavily edited, leaving mostly happy things.  I remember enjoying the excitement around gifts, like every kid does, and I also enjoyed the music, the food, and the gatherings of friends and family that took place from Thanksgiving through New Years.

This year I had a few more gifts to buy then in the past, and I enjoyed it, but at the same time I am glad I didn’t have lots of shopping to do.  But we all outgrow Santa Claus, and I matured past the Christmas morning excitement at probably the customary age.
Next to go was the food.  I do not handle hard core sugar well, even in small doses, and as a diabetic, I have no business flirting with it even on holidays.  So that carbohydrate feast that began with my mother’s sausage stuffing, and egg nog with my dad on Thanksgiving night, and continued until all the hard Christmas candy was gone after New Years, is no longer a part of my seasonal observance.

I still like the music, and listen occasionally on radio.  I have not gotten around to importing my favorite Christmas albums into my iPhone, but that still might happen.  Or at least I may find the CDs before I take a long car trip tomorrow in someone else’s car with no adapter.

But I miss singing, in general, and at Christmas time in particular.  I was in choirs and ensembles in school, church, and more.  I had a spiritual and idealogical parting with the church some years ago.  I have replaced the social and fellowship aspects of it with other things, but I still miss the music.

My immediate family was always small, and my parents are gone now.  I have no children, due to relationship choices I made years ago, and I rarely have regrets about that.  But there is no shortage of people who welcome me to spend holidays with them.  I will divide Christmas Day between two locations, because I don’t want to miss either one.
Last Christmas, I was grieving the death of Jana, who had shared my home for fourteen years.  My plans on Christmas Day were the same as this year, starting with a hour+ drive out into the country.  I was acutely aware of driving alone on Christmas Day.  It was an opportunity to be alone with the grief, on my way to someplace to not be alone.  Both were important.  It was snowy, cloudy and cold that day, and while the roads were not dangerous, there was tense concern they might become so.  Jana would have been tense, but I was alone.  The countryside grew more beautiful as the snow gradually smoothed it’s edges and covered it’s blemishes.  Jana would have loved the beauty of it, but I was alone.

There’s a story in that somewhere.

This year, there is someone new in my life.  My gratitude for Shannon’s love is something I do not have words for, and I can do a lot, with words.  Last Christmas, I did not expect to have love in my life again.  I felt old before my time, tired.  I have some significant heath issues.  Against the odds I found love again, and love to give back.  Shannon has a daughter who just turned 10, so, very unexpectedly, there is a child in my life again.  (Shannon and I have no Vegas chapels or U-hauls in our immediate plans, but still I see her daughter occasionally and hope to grow a relationship with her.)  So there are things I feel joyful about, and there are reasons for me to find joy in the Christmas season again.

There’s a story in that, too.

My Writing is it’s Own Worst Enemy

The draft that resulted from my first Nano was really not worth editing, but last year’s is much better.  It has promise.  It might be edited and revised and turn into something people would like to read.  But by the end of November ’09, I was suddenly obsessed with short story writing.  I wrote several, and some of them might be usable someday.  But I never began editing that Nano draft.

This year, I like my draft even more, despite some frustrations with editing it.  Its story is complete, for one wonderful thing.  There’s a plot hole that needs research, and a decision to be made that will effect the last few chapters, but still it has an ending that will not change.  It has engaging believable characters, including an interesting villain, and the story moves along nicely.

And I desperately want to start working on a new novel, in a different genre, utilizing all the things I have learned during November and since.  I am on the verge of setting aside my second usable novel draft and starting another one, which might end up the same.  At this rate I will get what the Nano haters think Nano produces: a stack of first drafts and nothing more.

So I hereby commit to continuing to work on my most recent draft.  Maybe it will help if I use it’s working title: Kept in Sight.  I will spend some time on it every day, as my first writing effort.  I will work on getting it better organized, first, and then doing the edit / re-write, scene by scene.

After I make some progress on Kept in Sight each day, then I may work on the outline for the next novel.  It will be good to stay excited about that and also to get some of these ideas down so I don’t lose them.  But my first focus has to be on the work that’s closest to (albeit still far from) finished.

Tips / feedback / experience welcome.

What Editing Can Teach Me about Writing

Earnest Hemingway said “The first draft of anything is shit.”  So I did not have high expectations for the quality of the first draft manuscript for my Nano novel.  But it is worse then I thought, in several ways, making editing an even more difficult and demanding chore.  I am just getting started and have already learned several things.  Here is my advice to myself, for my next large first draft:

1.  Plan and outline.  Hours spent planning and outlining come back to you double when editing.  Fitting scenes in to the middle of the story is harder then it seems.  Sequencing problems abound.  There is some great foreshadowing in chapter 12.  Too bad what it hints at is in chapter 10.

2.  Write a timeline, or include it with the outline. I wonder how many times I changed my mind about what day the big plot conflict took place?  It started out on Friday, but then I needed more days between it and the weekend so I backed it up to Tuesday.  It is particularly hard to straighten all that out in the editing process.

3.  Don’t get too carried away with speed, on the writing.  Word Wars at write-ins can be fun, but make sure that whatever idea you are expressing is clear, at least.  And the typing / spelling errors!  Sure spell check can be helpful but when you click the Spell Check icon and hear it say “You’ve GOT to be kidding!” you might have typed that section too fast.

4.  Write scenes, and combine them into chapters, as you go.  Add notes (Scrivener’s index card view is great for this) on each scene and each chapter.  Mention the sequencing items in the notes, so they are easy to find if the timeline gets compromised.

5.  Allow for two weeks of editing for every week of writing, unless the above advice makes a big difference.

The antagonist in my recently drafted novel is a wife beater, a child abuser, and is obsessed with jealousy.  The character is loosely based on a man I knew.

I never made him a point of view character in the first draft.  I was not confident that I could get his voice right.  This was a NaNoWriMo effort, where the challenge is to write a fifty thousand word draft in thirty days.  I got there, in part by leaving the difficult pieces for later.  Later has come.

This character is not honest, even with himself.  I have toyed with the idea of making him the POV character in an early chapter, maybe the first, and let him present himself, as he would, in a positive light.  Then as the other characters interact and respond to him, the reader gradually realizes that their initial impressions were incorrect, mirroring my real world experience with the inspiration for this character.

At a Nano write-in over coffee, I described his suspicion of his wife, and his extreme behavior that results, and a friend suggested that the man is at least OCD, and possibly paranoid schizophrenic.  I did not want to hear this, because if he is sick he deserves treatment.  What my plot gave him was a shovel to the back of the head.  I need the reader to believe this character knows right from wrong, and to feel he should be held accountable for his actions.

I will cautiously avoid revealing too much too soon.  If the reader gets a complete understanding of his motivations, the plot will become predictable.  His actions are the catalyst that moves the story.  Isn’t that often an antagonist’s job?  But when he is viewed completely through the eyes of others, as the draft now reads, he feels flat, one dimensional, and completely unsympathetic.  He is a villain that is too easy to hate, leading to a story that is too easy to dismiss.

I am interested in other writers’ experiences with writing point of view villains, or non-POV villains.  Am I missing any pitfalls?