Novel Summary

Or, what an editor may put on the back of my book when it gets published.

My brother asked me the other other day for a summary of my novel. So I sketched it out this morning, roughly, trying to make it sound interesting, and popped it over to him. This is what it said:

Stuff happens. People die. Heroes arise. Babies are made.


Ok. So maybe that wasn't a very good back cover. Unless, of course, Bruce Campbell was starring in the movie version. This is what I actually wrote:

"The Butcher's Price"

Xerxes, one of the last heirs of the Direthorn race (a race of powerful warriors and sorcerers descended from dragons) after a pogrom ten years earlier, is searching the world for his sister, sold into slavery long ago. His search leads him to Sassa Hin, a city on the very southern tip of the Republic. Meanwhile, a young, bright soldier named Benji has been inexplicably sent to a dead-end position in a crappy little trader's city called Sassa Hin. He's shoved into a squad whose sole duty seems to be cleaning out horse stalls. Quickly, however, he realizes that his squad is more than just a bunch of dung muckers. They begin to investigate a mysterious race simply known as the Faceless (they don't have faces. Go figure), who seem to have something to do with disappearances in and out of the city. As Xerxes and Benji both go about their work, forces are culminating beyond the edge of the Republic, forces that will soon smash into Sassa Hin, the city of stars, where civilization end.


A real back cover is going to be a bit shorter than this. Nor will it have parenthesis. After writing this synopsis, I have a mixed feeling of geekiness/lameness, and pride at having created something of my very own that is actually a lot more unique than it might sound above. I'm just glad that someone else will have the job of writing the blurb (of course, I have the job of selling the dang thing; fortunately I will be able to depend upon my natural good looks and charm to outweigh my lack of skill in synopsizing.)

Book update: I have 123,000 words done. I may still be able to finish the first draft by the end of February. Anyone keeping track will notice I've written 31,000 words in the last week. It was crazy. It was fun. It was satisfying. If school doesn't get in the way, I'll do the same thing this week and then Michele and I will begin on the second draft.

LTUE Report

"Life, the Universe, and Everything," BYU's premier science fiction and fantasy convention, was far better than it has been in years past.

Given, I didn't spend a lot of time there, and the time I did spend was hanging around the table that Brandon Sanderson shared with Howard Tayler (of Schlock Mercenary fame) and Robert Defendi (Who owns a company called "Final Redoubt" that publishes DnD style role-playing games, has worked on a great many other projects and was a finalist in Writers of the Future, and also is a friend of mine). Brandon and Howard were pretty busy, so I bothered Bob a lot, and tried to get Howard to sign a Schlock poster for me, but was edged out by a couple punks with sketch books. Howard looked tired enough by that time that I decided not to elbow my way through and just left him to the vultures. Looking back, that might not have been so kind of me, and he lost out on a poster sale. Oh well.

When you've gone to a few conventions and sat through Orson Scott Card's six day bootcamp, as well as taken a full semester class from Brandon Sanderson four, count em, four times...well, you get kind of sick of writing lectures. So I didn't actually attend any of the panels this year, nor Orson Scott Card's main address. That given, the convention was a lot bigger than it usually is (no doubt bolstered by both Card's presence, and the recent announcement that Brandon would be writing the twelfth Wheel of Time book). But it seemed to me that they were better organized than they usually were. And the dealer's room, which still only had a few tables in it, actually had a lot of people go through, instead of doing its normal impression of a deserted mining town (minus sage brush).

Bob Defendi, whom I haven't seen for a while, has had his company grow in leaps and bounds since I first met him at Worldcon '06 in LA. If you're a fan of roleplaying, he uses an ADnD system (I think, I'm a little rusty on my roleplaying terminology), and his world seems very well developed. The books are quite cool. Available in hardback, softback, and as PDFs, you can find his company at Final Redoubt, or his personal site here.

Schlock Mercenary, of course, is my favorite webcomic. To be honest, I don't read a lot, because I'm a cynical jerk and most of what I've seen is crap, but Schlock Mercenary is very, very funny, and you can read all the archives for free.

It's been a couple weeks. I'm still adjusting to married life, but I'm also getting back into my writing and reading a little more every day.

Jim Butcher:

The Dresdon Files have turned out to be quite clever. Take classic film noir style, set in Chicago, and make the private investigator a wizard, and you have the Dresdon Files. Harry Dresdon. The only wizard in the phone book.

Either Jim Butcher is a genius or he's really lucky. Because I've been bitter and annoyed about finding a decent author lately, I like to think of him as a genius. The tongue and cheek of Dresdon works perfectly in the style that Butcher has set, as does the flippant, almost movie-esque dialogue. I've seen a lot of authors try this style. It rarely works. Most of the time, I see it in fantasy--when I see it there, it's just kinda gets on my nerves because it's so ridiculously out of character to have every single persona-non-grata have a pithy comeback. But when you're writing in noir style, with a wizard, you've allowed yourself certain liberties.

I recommend the Dresdon Files highly. I read Storm Front, (first book), and then I read the seventh book (because it was the only one the bookstore had). They seem fairly linear, so I'd recommend something a little more conventional, like starting with the first book and moving on to say, the second book. And then the third. Etc. Content-wise, it's a strong pg-13, maybe even R. There's a good amount of blood and guts, a bit of sexual content. When you're main character is fighting black magic, that sort of stuff comes up a lot.

I fell away from Battlestar Galactica. It started out that I wanted to watch less, in order to stretch out the remainder of the third season so I finished it about the same time the fourth season started. Then I just became lazy, and started playing Sim City and WoW a lot, and haven't really got back into it. As soon as I find out when season four starts, however, I will jump on top of finishing three.


Finally, I have started again on my novel. It won't be finished by the end of February like I wanted, but I have made a little bit of progress and I feel better about continuing the story line than I did a few weeks ago. My hesitance has been solved by making a few pages of notes that I will address when the novel is over. I have no problems that are too big to take care of later.

I'm also starting to save up for Worldcon. I'm getting a room with a couple of the guys I went to LAcon with in '06. I'll probably end up buying a plane ticket and just flying out there. It's either that, or sitting in a car for 24 hrs that week, which doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. Michele wanted to go to Worldcon with me, but there's very little chance we will have the money for both of us, which is kinda sad. As it is, I'm going to be setting aside 5% of my paycheck every week for the next five months in order to afford it.

I have nothing terribly useful to talk about at the moment other than above updates. I'll try to find some time to sketch out a few lectures and ideas, and I'll also try to format my new web design a little better. I lost all of the links I had before (including ones to old posts that may have been of interest).