Troll Mountain Episode II and III

Wow.

What starts out as a travel adventure story quickly turns into familiar Matthew Reilly territory; trying to trump one action scene with the next action scene.  It is, essentially, a hero's journey story for kids.  The author's notes/interview at the end of the book pretty much covers anything I would say.  I'm really happy I read it.

Will I be buying any more e-books?

That really depends on Matthew Reilly.  I'm really looking forward to whatever comes next out of that man.

No one gets it right the first time. Not even He Who Must Not Be Named

I can not remember the last time I laughed so hard and for so long.

I want to find the person who created this.  And I want to shake their hand.  

...unless this was an actual page from Voldermort's journal.  Then I should probably start fleeing for my life.

Over the finish line

After a day of lazing around in my pajamas and drifting to and fro from my computer, I have managed to finish Librarian.  Outwardly, I'm sipping tea and eating minty chocolates in a refined sort of way.

Inwardly, I've climbed Tokyo tower and I'm beating my chest and grabbing airplanes from the sky. Yes.  I am both Godzilla and King Kong combined.

I started Librarian on the 15th, and today is the 25th.  Which means I finished a story in 10 days!  It's only a short story, 10 000 words.

Also, I think the 'i' button on my keyboard is losing sensitivity.

Procrastination ahoy!

So, if Librarian started off as procrastination, what is making a cover graphic for Librarian?  Procrastination upon procrastination?  Must it be turtles all the way down?

Watching anime has put me in a silly mood.

But here's the cover for Librarian if I decide I want to post it somewhere.

The end of another chapter

I did it.  I knuckled down.  I finished writing the Heart of Fin.

It's about 34000 words, which is comparative in length to the first installment.  No doubt I will read over it later and groan.  But that's what editing is for - exercising my vocal chords through grunts of discontent.

I've got a third installment planned, but when I get around to it is anybody's guess.  At this point, I'm all Sasha-ed out I'm afraid.  Maybe after I work on a couple of other things, I'll come back to it.  I mean, I really do want to write the next part - there's going to be a lot more kick-assery, and the appearance of an actual bad guy (or, rather, girl)!  Thanks to Solemn, I've got a lot of ideas for fighting styles.  But I'm a bit stumped by the relationship aspect of things.  I think I need to have more of a think about how to write the drama side of things.  But those are all thoughts and plans for another day.  For now, I'm going to drag my flu-y self to bed so that I might have the chance of being all recovered by tomorrow.  This is totally likely, given my 4 in CON.

Yet another story

Tomorrow is Wednesday, my Heart of Fin posting day.  Sometimes, I wonder if being so predictable is like painting a target on my back for muggers.  Well, you can rob me if you want, but I don't carry cash and I lost my bank card last week, so neiner neiner weiner.  

Instead of working on finishing Heart of Fin over Easter, I got completely sidetracked with a random aside which I've working titled 'Librarian'.  It started out as a  'I don't feel like writing anything, but I just gotta put pen to paper... well, fingers to keyboard', to 'I'll make this a three parter', and now it's 6000 words and 5 chapter long.  I think I'm about 2/3 of the way done, but who knows what will happen?  I've stopped trying to predict what I will write.

Here's the first few paragraphs (warning, not edited, and yes, I did just cheap out and abuse latin for spell words):

If Santi had thought that his time as Head Librarian would consist mainly of the leisurely pursuit of wisdom, then he was mistaken.  As he stared into the sunken hollows that might have been the bookworm’s eyes, he wondered if this was a mistake that would be paid with his life.

“Oh, Great Devour of Books, my mortal enemy, would you kindly drop dead?” he asked hopefully.  With the first three volumes of the original Oraculi Alchemiae, Prophecies of Alchemy, in his hands, there was no way that he would be able to cast defensively in time.  He should have known that such delicious volumes would attract the beast.  “Or at the very least, would you considerately come back later?”

In reply, the bookwoom’s looming, serpentine body struck at him, missing narrowly only because the librarian dived out of the way at the last second.  Its thick tail swung around and barrelled into the poor man’s stomach.  The brown powder coating the bookworm’s hide puffed out on impact, creating a choking cloud that smelled of book dust.  

Coughing and wincing, with the books pressed to his chest, Santi rolled unsteadily to his feet.  Unfortunately for him, the bookworm wasn’t one to allow him time to recover.  It threw itselt at him again, this time, its mouth latched onto Santi’s shoulder.  Enzymes in the bookworm’s saliva, evolved to digest the tough leathery covers of books, made short work of Santi’s shirt before burning his skin. 

With a cry of pain, the librarian flung the books as far as he could from the bookworm.  Though every fibre of his body told him to pry the bookworm’s sucking mouth from him, to do so would unleash the creature on the scent of books again.  If it noticed the volumes of Oraculi Alchemiae now, it would surely devour the books before Santi could stop it. 

He drew a nugget of gold the size of an infant’s thumb from his pockets.  Pain made concentration slippery, but he mustered what he could into a simple, but effective spell.

“Parvorum,” he hissed through gritted teeth.    

My first e-book purchase: Troll Mountain Episode I

After a couple weeks of internal debate, I signed up to Amazon and downloaded the Kindle App so that I could get to Troll Mountain by Matthew Reilly, my favourite author of all time.  I finished reading Episode I this afternoon, and I've got Episode II ready to go.  Episode III hasn't come out yet, so I'm a bit iffy on reading Episode II yet just in case it ends on a cliffhanger (as one of Matthew's Jack West books did... I thought I needed to say this just so you all know what this man is capable of).  Who am I kidding?  I will probably read it before the week's end.

The story follows the journey of Raf, a linear 15 year old who leaves his tribe in search of a cure for his sick sister.  He gains two interesting companions on his impossible quest.  

The language is fairly simple, and reads like it is accessible to very young readers.  The characters exist to propel the plot and for the author to present his ideologies on strong/weak, kind/cruel.  It reads like your typical fantasy player-character adventure.  The backdrop is fantasy, which is another interesting deviation from the author's usual action-packed 'real world' thriller.  Do I like the departure from the norm?  Definitely.  It's like seeing teachers dressed like normal people on the weekend.  Like your GP at a Bon Jovi concert.  Refreshing. 

Can't wait for this to become a paperback.  

RED

Someone's chain reading though Game in Play, which gives me joy to no end.

Anyway, I found some concept art I created for Red and Lofae, characters that feature in the Manifesto story.  Can you tell that I like art noveau?

The Arvarlis Emerald - the magical gem that saves Red from...

...the psionic mind eater, Lofae!  What does a psionic creature look like?  Beats me, but this was the creepiest thing my mind could come up with.

Many points, Red tried to off herself, but Lofae had enough wiggle room to stop her.

And here's concept art for the pair of them.

I'm not sure if this is insight into my mind, or incriminating evidence of my poor drawing skills and my tendency to abuse patterns.  ;)

Ridiculous names

30 000 words!  I'm nearing the end of writing Heart of Fin!

My partner says that the names I make up are too ridiculous.  He pointed out that one sounded like a verb + post-positive adjective combo or an onomatopoeia.

Mortimer was the last to arrive.  Emron nodded at the man who walked beside Mortimer, pointing him out to Sasha.  He was a few years older than Mortimer, and rounder too, with blond hair and green-grey eyes.  “Squalt Chomondeley, Marquis of Glous, one of your prince’s chief advisors.” He could see Sasha about to protest the possessive pronoun he had deliberately used when referring to Mortimer.  Before she could snap back, he added, “did you notice how the marquis’ name sounds like a hamster being run over?”

ROTF

Ok, I was going to post some paragraph I just wrote.  But these are so much better:

The World of Sasha Suter

Wow.  Ok.  Last night I stayed up to midnight talking with Solemn about the next installation of the Sasha Suter story, where I can no longer 'wing' the martial arts side of things.  Basically, I needed to find distinct fighting styles for each rough geographic area.  This involved me frantically searching to find all the names of places I've mentioned before in the Birthday Presents/Heart of Fin story AND Vert Glace (and sequel story Lordchaser which I started writing when I was waiting for people to get back to me about Vert Glace... I know, I really need to get out more), then piecing that information into a map.

Then Solemn comes along with his story building and fighting know-how and suddenly, this is starting to look legit.  It's odd that I'm actually starting to have some sort of world here.  And by odd, I mean awesome and frightening.  

The setting of the big reveal... maybe.

The festivities were held on the riverside of the palace in a custom built ice pavilion that extended onto the water.  The structure was organic; it curved and fractalled like a giant, hollow pine cone.  It was lit with beams of solar powered lights that refracted off the ice to create white starbursts.  There were niches furnished with slabs of chiselled ice, topped with pillows and furs.  At the centre of the pavilion was a round bar built of translucent and transparent honeycomb shaped sculptures.  Food was plentiful there, and rumour was that the man behind the bar could create any drink that took the mind’s fancy.

Well, this got awkward quickly

I'm writing a fight scene between Sasha and Mortimer.  It was pretty kick-ass until... well...

It just doesn't sound right when a man pins a woman down, does it? :\

Don't know how to get out of this one.

Maybe I'm over thinking it.

But I don't want to perpetuate misogyny.