New story out

Daily Science Fiction published my flash story, "Draconic Motivation," a week ago in their e-mail list.  It came out on their website earlier today.  It's a silly little story, but I liked it, and apparently I wasn't the only one.  Read it here.

New stuff, a lot of work

I managed to acquire quite a bit of new stuff in the past couple of weeks.  So much so, that it's been keeping me from getting work done.

One of those items is a Kindle Fire HD.  I knew I wanted one as soon as it had been announced, as it fixed many of the annoying things about the original.  I received a couple of Amazon Gift Cards for Christmas, and this seemed the perfect use for them. My first impression of the new Fire was that it was sleeker than the old one.  I got the 32 GB 7" version, since I liked the 7" form factor of the original Kindle Fire.  But in comparison to the new one, the old Fire is clunky and boxy.  I'll do a more thorough review later, once I peel myself away from Final Fantasy III for the Kindle long enough to experiment with some of its other capabilities.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with my old Kindle Fire.

The other thing that arrived this week is a desk.  I ordered the Versa Center from VersaTables and spent some time this week putting it together.  I got this desk because I was buying a desk treadmill from Lifespan, and needed a standing desk to use with it.  The Versa Center isn't really a standing desk, but each and every shelf is adjustable to any height, so I was able to make it into a standing desk.

Treadmill and Versa  Center

From the treadmill, I have a good view of the television in my living room, which is hooked up to one of my computers (the one I mostly use for gaming).

The view of the television, and my wireless keyboard.

I really liked the Versa Center's flexibility, but I'm reluctant to recommend it to others.  There are no fixed mount points--all the shelves clamp onto the poles on either side of the desk, and it took two people, a measuring tape, and a level to get the two sides of each shelf lined up. Nor was there any indication of the angle that the components clamp on, so getting them parallel was an iterative process of  eyeballing it, bolting in the shelves and support bars, and then adjusting so you could get the other side bolted in. And even then, I don't think the tolerances were quite right--I still wasn't able to line it up well enough to get all the screws in.  But I think I'm at the point where it's good enough for now.  I can now walk on the treadmill while writing this post on my laptop (I suppose I could use the computer connected to the television, but that's for games).     I haven't quite decided whether I'm comfortable with the distance, or whether it's worth going through the expense and trouble of installing a keyboard arm.

I like having a treadmill desk, but I still miss by old treadmill.  I got rid of it when I moved into my previous apartment.  The old treadmill was significantly bigger, and wouldn't have worked with a desk anyway, as its lowest speed was 2.5 mph, which is too fast to comfortably write.  Right now I'm walking at 1.2 mph, which works for me, and I may pick up the pace a bit more, but I doubt I can comfortably type above 2 mph, and certainly not while running.  But at least I could run on my old treadmill.  The new one only goes up to 4 mph, which is just a light jog.

My old treadmill.

Review of A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I was going to write a long review of the final book of the Wheel of Time.  But, really, I'm not sure that much more needs to be said.  The Wheel of Time has been an important mainstay of epic fantasy for over 20 years.  Begun by Robert Jordan with the publication of The Eye of the World, after his death it was completed by Brandon Sanderson with the last three novels: The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light.  At least portions of the final novel were written by Robert Jordan before his death, though I won't hazard a guess as to which portions.  The Wheel of Time has had ups and downs.  I personally didn't get into it until the third book, The Dragon Reborn, and there were certainly books along the way that were significantly below par.  Some of the novels around books seven to nine  seemed to contain no significant plot developments, and the whole book seemed to be spent catching up with each character, reminding you of what they were up to, and then switching to the next.  But then things began to pick up just before Robert Jordan died, and Brandon Sanderson was able to bring it to a conclusion.

The whole final book centers around Tarmon Gaidon, the Last Battle.  It's actually about a series of battles, on numerous fronts.  And if you find battle scenes boring, then you're going to have difficulty with this one.  There's one 200 page chapter about a single battle.  It is the main one, and deserves a lot of attention, but still, that's a long time to spend on a single battle. Rand al'Thor, the main character, has what is actually a pretty minimal part on this front.  He's too focused on his own struggle with the Dark One, which is a lot more personal and focused--practically a duel, though one fought with ideas and the threads of reality, not swords or magic.  But many of the major characters, and most of the minor ones, are involved in the battle, including Lan, Elayne, Egwene, Suiane, Gareth, Tuon, Gawyn, Galad, Faile, Olver, and especially Mat, in the role we always knew he would have.  Now, I've said before that Brandon Sanderson doesn't really seem to get Mat, and that shows up in the early parts of the novel, but in the Last Battle he seems to be in fine form, showing the sort of mad brilliance we expect from him when it comes to war.

I won't say the battle dragged, because it kept me up all night trying to finish it, but there were moments where I wished Brandon would pick up the pace.  On the bright side, everybody had a role and a chance to shine in this book.  They needed to.  On the other hand, not everyone's role was what I might have wished.  Perrin managed to miss the big battle in the south, and only showed up for the showdown in the North, a smaller but equally important battle.

One of the requirements of the final book in a series is to fulfill all the promises given in the previous ones.  As there were a lot of prophecies, that was a lot to fulfill, and not all of them were met in a very satisfying way.  Suiane's and Gareth Bryne's, for example.  Or Alivia's.  In some places it felt like shortcuts were taken to get the prophecy resolved, but I suppose that was inevitable, given the scope of this vast series, and exactly how many promises there were to fulfill.

But ultimately, I was satisfied with the ending.  Not everyone survived, and in some cases I was surprised by who did and who didn't, but that was satisfying in its own way.  And the last chapter contained a couple of final surprises that I think were worth waiting for.

Redundancy Checker update

A week ago, I discussed my travails in getting my Java program working.

After some hunting, I've found an improved version of the RTFEditorKit at this site--an AdvancedRTFEditorKit. It's still not perfect, and it still loses smart quotes, but it does allow you to subclass its classes, which is something the old RTFEditorKit did not allow. You could subclass the kit itself, but not any of the classes it used to do the real work, which is what I needed. By subclassing the new RTFReader, I may be able to do some preprocessing and post processing in order to deal with the idiosyncrasies that are showing up. Unfortunately, some experimenting showed that my original idea (replacing \'93 with \ldblquote) won't work, though I suppose I could replace it with straight quotes.

It's all very annoying.  The whole idea of object oriented programming is that I wouldn't have to write an RTF reader from scratch.  I'm beginning to wonder just how much time I'm willing to dedicate to this.

Book Review at Black Gate

My first book review of a self-published book is up at Black Gate.  First up, Tiger Lily by K. Bird Lincoln.

In other news, I just finished A Memory of Light, the final book of the Wheel of Time series, begun by Robert Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson.  I expect that I'll be writing a review, after I get some sleep.

Redundancy Checker

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been spending some time learning Java.  In addition to the exercises suggested by the book I'm using, I've also been working on my own project, developing it as my book (Head-First Java) covered each topic that I needed.  I've finally reached the sections on the GUI and saving objects, which means that I have now completed a working alpha version of the code.

Here's what it looks like:

Screenshot from Redundancy Checker

Redundancy Checker loads an RTF file, and scans it.  Every time it finds a word or phrase used repeatedly in close proximity, it marks it as a redundancy and highlights it in the text.  That produces the output above.

You can also change the settings, controlling for how close the words or phrases need to be, and what words should be skipped for being too common:

The Options window

Finally, you can edit the text and save it.  So the program works, and does all the things I set out to do, but it doesn't necessarily do them well.  The biggest issue is that the RTFEditorKit in Java is buggy.  It doesn't read smartquotes properly, and it can lose other basic formatting too.  So loading a file, editing it to fix the redundancies, and saving it  isn't really an option.  I'm not sure how, or even if, I can fix it.  I suppose I could make my own RTF parser, but that would be quite a pain, and I don't really think it would be worth the time.

Update: One thing I've realized is that the source code for the RTFEditorKit is available. Rather than replacing it, I could edit the original. I'd have to check to see how the code was licensed. I should probably create a class that extends the kit, and then only modify the methods I need to.

New Year's Resolutions

These are a bit late this year, but I hadn't really come up with them before now.  I'm actually not much of a fan of New Year's Resolutions.  When I decide to do something, I do it, and don't worry about making silly promises to myself.  I'm usually pretty good at disciplining myself that way.  That said, there are a few things I intend to do this year, of various levels of difficulty.  I'll list them in order of easiest to most difficult.

1. Finish my RedundancyChecker program.  Off and on I've been teaching myself Java.  One might think I'd already know such an important and popular language, and if I were a real programmer, rather than an Electrical Engineer who graduated just before Java became popular, that would probably be the case.  But no, I'm just learning Java now.  Of course, I do know C++, which Java was based on, so it's not really that difficult.  In the course of learning it, I've been writing a simple program called RedundancyChecker.  It's purpose is to improve my writing.  I've discovered that I have a tendency to repeat myself in my writing, using the same words and phrases repeatedly.  I usually manage to catch myself in the revision process, but I'm writing this program to give myself some computer assistance.  It searches through an RTF document, finds examples of repeated words and phrases, and highlights them.  Just today, I've got it working in loading and scanning a file, and highlighting the redundancies.  However, it doesn't allow me to edit the RTF and save it.  That's mostly because Java's RTFEditorKit is buggy, and it manages to lose smart quotes in the process of reading the file, so I'd be very reluctant to replace anything I've painstakingly written and formatted with the output from this Java program.  I suspect that I'll be spending more than a little time trying to find a workaround.  Other than that, it's mostly polishing, and adding features such as an editable common word list and adjustable phrase length and proximity parameters.  So this is almost done.
2. Exercise more. When I started this job about a year and a half ago, I had to decide between writing and exercising, because I didn't think I had time for both.  I chose writing.  Now it's time to see if I can put some exercise back in my schedule, preferably by finding a form of exercise I can do while writing.  A treadmill or bicycle desk would be ideal.
3. Write more consistently. I go through phases with this.  I'd like to spend at least an hour every weeknight writing.  Unfortunately, my weeks are often interrupted by things like travel, or visiting with friends, or a late night at work, or our weekly Church small group.  I can't avoid all of them (and probably shouldn't), but my plan to make up for it on the weekends keeps running into difficulties, especially when I'm supposed to make up three nights worth of writing.  But the biggest problem is not the unavoidable interruptions, but the sheer laziness that causes me to skip a night, or slack off and spend only half an hour on writing, or blog instead.  That I can help, and if I can consistently write for an hour three weeknights each week, then making up the two nights I unavoidably missed on Saturday is a lot more reasonable.

Year in Review -- Sort of

I've been letting this blog sit idle over the holidays, while I've been enjoying time with my wife and friends, and a few days off of work.  I'm almost reluctant to break that, but I have a tradition of doing a year in review, and I'm reluctant to break that as well.  So, instead of not doing it entirely, I'm just going to do a lazy and sloppy job of it, and that way I can have it both ways.

The most relevant news for this blog is that I've begun blogging regularly again.  At least twice a week, which is not exactly phenomenal, and I've kind of slacked off during the holidays, but it's better than I've been doing.  In honor of the new blogging, I redesigned the blog.  On the other hand, maybe it was the other way around.

Kristin and I went to a lot of conventions this year: Boskone, Readercon, WorldCon, and World Fantasy.  We also went to visit her brother and his family, her parents and sister, and my family.  All this traveling used up most of my vacation time, so I didn't have enough to travel for the holidays, so it's just been some relaxing  in Boston for us this holiday season.

Also a big story is that my short novel, A Phoenix in Darkness, was finally published at Black Gate.  I'm fond of that story, and I'm glad that John O'Neill wanted it for his magazine, as one of the first stories published in the new online format.  It is an older story, though, and I like to think that I'm a better writer now than when I first wrote it, so there are some places where I wish the prose was more polished and the plotting cleaner and the pace smoother.  But I'm sure that five years from now I'll look at the stories I'm writing now and wish I could revise them, and if I waited for stories to be perfect before they were published, I'd never publish anything.

In other news, I now have a book under contract, meaning that it will be published someday.  Unfortunately, I don't know the release date yet, and the publisher hasn't yet announced it, so I'm keeping details under wraps for now.

I've also begun blogging occasionally at Black Gate.  I'll be doing monthly reviews of self-published books, the first of which should be out soon.

So it's been a busy year for me, and I've had a lot of fun.  I'll be back in a couple of days with my New Year's Resolutions, such as they are.

Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Kristin and I saw the first episode of The Hobbit last night, in "glorious" IMAX 3D. We didn't feel that the 3D added much, and because it was done with polarized glasses, the movie tended to get blurry whenever we tilted our heads, but overall the experience was fun.

My strongest impression of the movie was that it was too long. Peter Jackson, the same director who did The Lord of the Rings, split the book into three parts, and this part, at least, had considerable filler and flashbacks. Thorin Oakenshield's backstory was interesting, and probably worthwhile for the story they're trying to tell, but did we really need ten minutes or so of the older Bilbo working on his book and discussing the Sackville-Bagginses with Frodo? That seems like it was just an excuse to have an Elijah Wood cameo.  And did the fight between the rock giants add anything? Did the running fight with the goblins have to go on for quite so long?  In case you're wondering, I'm thinking the answer to these is no.

Since you can't get eight hours worth of three movies just from the book alone, there was always going to be plenty of additional material. Some of it was rather silly. Radagast, the brown wizard and Gandalf's peer, came across that way. However, while I wish his character had been treated more seriously, I approve of his inclusion and what it means. Radagast was the means of introducing the audience to the necromancer who is responsible for the darkening of Mirkwood. That necromancer barely gets a mention in the books, but the wizards' battle against him is an important chapter in the events preceding The Lord of the Rings. I take his presence and Radagast's introduction to mean that Peter Jackson intends to give this battle a full treatment, of which I approve.

Other silly parts were pretty unavoidable, as they were lifted directly from the book. The dwarves singing as they cleaned Bilbo's dishes while flinging them around, for example. Actually, the treatment in the movie was probably more serious than in the book, and helped to give some insight into dwarves. The dish washing scene showed them working together with preternatural coordination, and in this sense the song becomes a work song, meant to keep rhythm as the dwarves work together in concert. A scene of dwarf smiths working together in the prologue served both to foreshadow and explain this. I would have liked to see more of this coordination, especially in the fight scenes. It came through in the fight with the trolls, but not so much in the fight with the goblins. That was partly because there were hundreds of goblins, and the running battle, where each dwarf has to fight off a dozen or so goblins at a time, made it hard to show this. Plus the scene was so frenetic that I may have missed what there was of it. I hope that Peter Jackson does show more of this dwarven coordination in the future, as it helps to give them more character, and explain how they can be such a powerful influence on Middle Earth without the magical power of the elves.

Speaking of the dwarves, one problem with both the movie and the book is that there are a lot of dwarves, and it's hard to keep them all straight. Peter Jackson did a decent job of making them visually distinctive, but for the most part only a few of them stand out. Thorin himself, the twins Kili and Fili, the old warrior, the deaf dwarf, and the youngest one--see, I'm forgetting their names. But these did and said stuff that made them memorable. The other six, not so much. With three movies, I hope Jackson has a chance to develop them more.

So what did I think, overall? Some parts of it work better than others, and it's not always because of whether it was in the books or not. And I think the movie could have been at least half an hour shorter, if not more. But if you're a Tolkien fan, or you liked The Lord of the Rings movies, it's not a question of if you'll see this movie, but when. And being both of those myself, I think this was worth seeing.

Kristin has a new story up

My wife now has a new story up at Silver Blade Magazine.  The Guild of Swordsmen is sword-and-sorcery without the sorcery, and it's worth a read.

Review of Cold Days by Jim Butcher

The Dresden Files have been around for a while. Cold Days is, I believe, the fourteenth book in the series. Like any long series, there's a lot of backstory and supporting characters, and it's easy to get lost if you haven't read the previous books. But that same history gives the characters and conflicts a lot of richness. We've had over a dozen books to get to know and care for these people, starting with Harry himself.

After having spent the previous book as a ghost, Harry Dresden is back from the dead. This is not a good thing, as it defeats the purpose of his suicide by assassin. Harry's sold his soul to the Winter Queen of Faerie, Mab, to become the Winter Knight. That grants him a great deal of power, but it comes at a price. For one, it means that he has to become Mab's assassin, killing anyone she wants dead. Worse, the Winter Knight Mantle is changing him. Winter is sometimes called the wicked side of Faerie in the books, but that's not entirely accurate. Winter isn't evil, but it is primal, reflecting the part of nature that's about survival of the fittest and procreation of the species and the ultimate end of all nature: death. The changes the Mantle causes, and Harry's fear of them, are the reason for the aforementioned suicide by assassin. Too bad Mab and Demonreach, the genius loci of Harry's island, won't let him escape that easy.

The story starts with Harry going through rehab in Mab's palace. Weight training, motor control, assassination attempts--that sort of thing. Once he graduates from that, he's off on his first assignment, to kill an immortal. Along the way, he discovers that someone's attacking his island, intent on freeing what's imprisoned there, with possibly disastrous consequences for the Midwest. Fortunately, both plots come together in a spectacular finish.

The greatest strength of this book is its place in the series. We get to see old friends, and learn how things have changed since Harry's been away. This is also the greatest weakness of the novel. Old problems get brief mentions and remain unresolved (the Swords of the Cross, for example), new problems get created but remain unresolved (Molly's new role, Mac). And when old mysteries do finally get answered, it's often unsatisfying--I didn't find Demonreach's true purpose as interesting as its promise. Ditto for the Gatekeeper's role in things. On the other hand, sometimes the payoff is surprisingly good, such as the purpose of Winter. (The fact that it was one and the same as the Gatekeeper's role is what diminished the latter's reveal.)

However, I think that the biggest disappointment with this book is that it didn't feel like Harry did a whole lot. Sure, Dresden always spends much of the book floundering around, trying to figure out what's going on. But he usually manages to get his act together and beat the big bad at the end. This time it felt like he kept on floundering until someone else had to do the job for him. Oh sure, he was still there, hitting stuff, but at each step he'd been manipulated to where he was supposed to be, and at the end, he doesn't even throw the deciding punch himself.

Ultimately, this didn't feel like a book so much as an episode. That's not entirely a bad thing, and a series this long isn't ruined. by a book or two where the hero never really gets his act together. Failure is part of the drama. But I hope that Butcher doesn't make a habit of it.

First books to review

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you probably know that I'm reviewing self-published books for Black Gate. To that end, I've set up a submission system via which authors can ask me to review their books. This weekend, I selected the first two books to review, and asked their authors to send me review copies.

This does not mean that I've rejected all the other submissions. It's not even a sure thing that I'll review the books I've requested, though I most likely will. I expect that I'll be doing one review a month, and it's quite possible that I'll dip into the submissions I've already received when it's time to find a new book to review. In the meantime, I'm still accepting more books to review in the coming months.

Where's my Android? (or Why can't they make a normal sized phone?)

I've been looking at Android smartphones recently. I still have a year left on my contract for my iPhone 4S, but once that's done, I'd like to get an Android.  However, I'm having trouble finding one that meets my stringent specifications. So, I'm putting you on notice, Android phone manufacturers. If you want my business, you're going to need to make the phone I want, with at least the following specifications:

• A 4"+ AMOLED display
• A top of the line processor
• Plenty of memory, and an SDcard slot
• 4G LTE
• Decent front and back facing cameras
• Preferably, an HDMI port
• Small enough to fit comfortably in my hand

The last point is the trickiest. Android manufacturers have concluded that bigger is better, and all of the top-of-the-line phones have a 4.7" screen, if not bigger. And they're talking 5" screens for next year.

I've had a chance to play with the HTC Trophy and Titan (Windows phones, I know). While the Trophy fits in my hand well enough, the Titan is too big. Now let's compare sizes:

• HTC Trophy (3.8" screen)-  118.5 x 61.5 x 12 mm (4.67 x 2.42 x 0.47 in)
• HTC Titan (4.7" screen) - 131.5 x 70.9 x 9.9 mm (5.17 x 2.79 x 0.39 in) 

And here are all the top-of-the-line Android phones:

• RAZR MAXX HD (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 67.9 x 9.3 mm (5.19 x 2.67 x 0.37 in)
• LG Optimus G (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 68.9 x 8.5 mm (5.19 x 2.71 x 0.33 in
• HTC One X+ (4.7" screen) - 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm (5.29 x 2.75 x 0.35 in
• Samsung Galaxy S III (4.7" screen) - 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm (5.38 x 2.78 x 0.34 in)

Notice a trend? They're all about the same size as the Titan--a little bit taller, and, at best, an eight of an inch narrower. The width is what matters the most for comfortably holding the phone upright in one hand.  Apple, meanwhile, offers the iPhone 5:

•  iPhone 5 (4" screen) - 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in)

It's the exact same width as the iPhone 4 and even narrower than the HTC Trophy. In order to get an Android phone I can comfortably hold, I'd have to get a midlist phone, such as the DROID RAZR M:

•  RAZR M (4.3" screen) - 122.5 x 60.9 x 8.3 mm (4.82 x 2.40 x 0.33 in)

To be honest, it looks like a pretty nice phone, though I hear the camera leaves something to be desired, and I'd really like an HDMI port. But it's the best I can find right now.

The problem is, I want a top-of-the-line Android phone. I'm willing to pay a premium for one. But if Android manufacturers can't figure out how to make a top flight phone that I can comfortably hold, my next phone may be an iPhone 5S, or whatever Apple calls next year's model.

Really old books

It seems like mostly I've been talking about the things I've been doing with Black Gate recently, and haven't talked about much else.  I figure it's time to change that.

Kristin has been reading Don Quixote recently, and has a nice, long post up about the book:

I mentioned that I had been reading Don Quixote, and at one point there are these women who’ve supposedly been cursed to grow beards (actually, they’re men pretending to be women as a joke on Don Quixote, but that’s beside the point).  Don Quixote’s squire Sancho Panza says, “I’ll wager they don’t have enough money to pay for somebody to shave them.”  And I realized, which I never had before, that if your fantasy world doesn’t have safety razors and good mirrors, you can’t have all the men walking around clean-shaven unless there are a lot of inexpensive barbers.

Learning things from old fiction is an especially good way to research writing historical fiction.  You can read all the books on the history and daily life of a certain time period that you can get your hands on, but none of these will give you as good a feel for what was considered the normal daily routine, and what was considered unusual and noteworthy, as reading fiction written by those living in that age.  I've recently been reading Ovid's love poems (the Amores, the Art of Love, Love's Cure, and The Art of Beauty).  Some of the advice is surprisingly modern.  For example, women are advised not to let their armpits smell or their legs bristle.  And some of it is barbaric by our standards.  The Romans, it seemed, had no concept of date rape. (Ovid's advice to men amounts to "Go for it.")  I still haven't quite gotten what I wanted from these books, though, which is a sense of the Roman attitude toward love, rather than their attitudes towards sex. Ovid's book amounts to advice for pick-up artists, though there is a sense that there were a lot of loveless marriages in Ovid's time.  I'll have to give a more full report once I finish the last couple of books.

The bottom line is that if you really want to understand a culture, you can learn a lot from its writings.

Reviewing Self-published Books Continued

Over at the Black Gate blog, I've taken on the task of reviewing self-published fantasy novels. I've received about 20 submissions so far, and I'm still expecting a batch of review copies of books which John O'Neill's received. So I thought I'd talk a bit about how I intend to choose the book I'll ultimately review.

I have two criteria:

First, it has to be a self-published fantasy novel. That means I can answer "yes" to three questions: Is it self-published?  Is it fantasy?  Is it a novel?  The novel question, at least, is easy to answer, as that's a question of hard numbers.  Is it 40,000 words or more?  If so, it's a novel.  The other two can be more complicated.  Is steampunk fantasy?  I suppose it depends on how exactly the technology, and the world, works.  Would a mix of sci-fi and fantasy count as fantasy?  What about alternate history?  In general, I'm trying to apply a broad definition of fantasy, but there are still some that are borderline.  The self-published question is giving me even more headaches.  By definition, a small press is not self-publishing.  Unless the small press is your own imprint.  What if you published with a small press, but it didn't do such a good job with your book, so now you're self-publishing?  What if it's a vanity press?  I'm still considering these questions.

Fortunately, I have a pretty free hand and some options.  While I probably want to stick with something purely self-published for my first review, that doesn't stop me from reviewing other things, either in later months or as a separate review from my self-published books series.  This also allows me to consider books that are borderline non-fantasy.  But before I do any of that, the book has to meet my second criteria.

My second requirement is that the book has to be something I want to read.  This is harder for an author to select for. While strong prose, characters, and world-building will make any book more enjoyable, if I don't like epic fantasies, then it's unlikely I'll want to read your epic fantasy (for the record, I love epic fantasy--I'm just using that as an example).  In order to decide whether I want to read the book, I first read the blurb and see if it sounds interesting.  Then, if it does (and so far, more than half my submissions do--I'm going to have to become more selective), I start to read the sample chapter.  This is where the prose can make or break the book.  If I find the prose style difficult to read--which isn't always bad prose, just difficult--then I'll stop and move on to the next one.  I may also lose interest if I notice numerous grammatical or stylistic errors, or clumsy infodumping, or lifeless description, or clichéd characters, or a plodding plot.  If, however, both the story and the characters are engaging enough to keep me reading, and I reach the end of the sample chapter wanting to know what happens next, then I know I have a book I want to review.

I still have to decide on which book I actually will be reviewing, and that means selecting the one I think looks the best. That's as much guesswork as good judgment.  On the bright side, just because I decide not to review a book this time around doesn't mean I can't come back and review it later.

News

I have a post up at Black Gate asking for submissions of self-published books for me to review.  I discussed this idea here earlier this week, and actually implemented it at Black Gate yesterday.  So far I have a few submissions, and John O'Neill's promising to send me some of the review copies he's received at Black Gate.  The idea is to gather a lot of possible books, sort through them, and select the most promising to review.  Next week, I'll assess whether I'm receiving enough submissions to get a reasonable selection, and if not, announce it in a few different places.

Meanwhile, Kristin has a post up about World Fantasy.  This is much more detailed than my post a few weeks back, with details about each of the panels she went to.  She also has pictures of Niagara Falls and, and reviews of Richmond Hill restaurants, and probably more about crocheting than I was really interested in, but you may have better taste.

Reviewing Self-published Books

A while ago, I talked a little about reviewing people's self-published Kindle novels.  The reason for doing this is pretty obvious.  Self-published novels lack gatekeepers.  There's no editor or agent to say whether it's good or bad.  So when the author puts it out, potential readers have no clue how good it is.  It would be helpful if someone would read some of those novels, and write reviews, to let potential readers know where the good stuff is.

But I only did one review. Part of the problem was that I didn't really know where to begin.  I could just browse through Amazon, but the most usual ways rank either by most popular or best reviewed by Amazon customers.  Frankly, that defeats the purpose.  If I'm looking for undiscovered books, I hardly want to be looking at the books everyone has already discovered.  Granted, the Amazon reviews can be gamed, and there may be some value in seeing whether those well-reviewed books are actually good, or if the author is writing his own reviews (or paying someone else to do it).  But finding false reviews is not my objective.  I'm interested in undiscovered books.

One option is to ask people who have books they want reviewed to contact me.  I'd probably need a bigger stage than this little blog, both to make it possible for people to find me, and to make it worth their while to do so.  I may be able to do that.  But assuming that I could get such attention, how would I decide what to review?  Obviously, I won't be reading and reviewing a new book every day.  More like once  a month.  And if there's even mild interest in my offer, there are going to have to be some filters.  I figure I could ask potential reviewees to send a submission, with a blurb and a link to a free chapter, and then I'll select my favorite one to review.  This is not quite the same thing as going through all the self-published novels and telling people whether they're good or bad, but that's not my objective: my objective is to find good, undiscovered novels.  Of course, I'm not promising a good review.  Just because I like a submission doesn't mean I'll like the whole novel, just that it's showing enough promise to take the time to read it.

Overall, it sounds like a decent idea.  Maybe I'll look into implementing it.

Blog post at Black Gate

I've been promoted to the status of blogger at the Black Gate blog.  My first post, a review of Vox Day's A Magic Broken, is now up at Black Gate.  I'm not sure how much I'll be posting there, but I suspect that John O'Neill will be inviting me to contribute again.  I won't be cross-posting items, but I'll be sure to point you to the Black Gate posts when they happen.

A Phoenix in Darkness, Part III

The third and final part of my short novel "A Phoenix in Darkness," has now been published at Black Gate.  This is where the Domini have their climactic battle with the Necromancers, and the question of who truly wins is resolved.

Originally, this part of the story was a lot more anti-climactic.  That's because it ended at chapter 5, and didn't include the final showdown in Chapter 6, though it did include something similar to the current epilogue, though much more ambiguous.  Why did I end it that way?  Because that's how I originally saw it ending--the story wasn't about the climactic final battle, so much as the tensions between the Domini. That was what originally inspired this story: a throwaway line in my novel, now called Heirs of Fire, revealing one of the sources of the conflict between Aulus and Kulsin.   It was John O'Neill, the editor at Black Gate, who pointed out that a Black Gate story needed a more action-oriented climax.  I thought about it some, went back over the story, and realized that there was a significant plot hole.  It was not the sort of hole a reader of "A Phoenix in Darkness" would really appreciate, not unless he knew as much about the Necromancers as I did.  In which case it became glaring.  Thinking about that, I told John that I could write a new ending, which would fill in that particular plot hole, and end the story with something exciting.  So that's what I did.

Which is also how my 35,000 word novella grew to a 50,000 word short novel.  But I don't regret it in the least.  So, go ahead and read it, and enjoy the new, more exciting ending of "A Phoenix in Darkness."

World Fantasy Convention 2012

The World Fantasy Convention 2012 has wrapped up.  It took place in Toronto, ON, which is within driving distance from Bostn, but it's a pretty long drive.  The convention was a great chance to meet people, old friends and new, and to catch up on what they're doing these days.  The publishing industry in fantasy and science fiction is smaller than most people realize.  This is both a good thing and a bad thing.  It's quite possible to go to conventions, and meet most of the important people in the industry.  But it also tends to be pretty insular, and sometimes tends to look inward rather than outward.  I like to think that we're less insular than some folks, but there's a definite danger of groupthink, especially when it comes to things like politics and religion.  Most of the folks in the industry tend to live on the east or west coast, and tend to absorb the attitudes there, which are usually secular and politically liberal.  The irony is that they then write fantasy, often set in pre-industrial societies, without fully appreciating the sort of cultural and spiritual attitudes that such societies tend to have.  That was one of the topics we discussed in our "The Real World in Fantastic Fiction" panel, which Kristin and I were panelists for.  The moderator was Ian Drury, and we also had Geoff Hart, Kenneth Schneyer, and Christopher Kovacs on the panel.  In addition to the role of religion in most societies, ancient and modern, we also discussed the importance of reading the literature of a society in order to get an idea of how it viewed itself, and of doing research in technical topics such as medicine and engineering, in order to get things straight.  For example, conking someone on the back of the head with a brick does not, usually, knock them unconscious so they revive a short time later.

Of course, I firmly believe in the importance of research.  But I'll also be quick to point out that you can get away with certain tropes (such as knocking someone out via a blow to the head), because they're well accepted.  I've used that one myself, though advisedly.  (It's tried multiple times in my story, and only works once.)  And frankly, research can be exhausting, and you can end up as far away from a usable answer as when you started.  That's why it's important to have beta readers--folks with expert knowledge whom you can show your stories to, and who will get back to you and point out those sorts of problems.  A writing critique group also helps, though it's often the case that they too lack the expertise you need.

Anyway, that's getting rather far afield, since I wanted to talk about the convention as a whole, rather than just a panel.  The bottom line is that it was fun, and I really enjoyed it.