Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles de Lint

Tapping the Dream Tree is a collection of short stories that take place in de Lint's fictional town of Newford. The stories include several recurring characters from other Newford novels, such as Jilly and Geordie; Holly, the bookstore owner; the Kelledys, a couple that play music in town and happen to know a lot about the faerie world; Christie Riddel, who records real stories of magic he comes accross; and others.

There were stories I really liked and others that I could have skipped, but over all, its a good introduction to Newford and the magic that lives there. De Lint has created a wonderful city in Newford (based on his hometown of Ottawa) and has peopled it with realistic characters that you can care about. Dealing with a realistic city with people who live on after a story is told, its only natural that certain people would return in other stories. Sometimes its just a cameo, sometimes its as a central figure.

I would really recommend this collection to anyone who likes urban fantasy. For anyone who may shy away from the genre, they should know that a lot of the stories are simply stories about people and only have a slight supernatural bent.

For my part, de Lint has done an excellent job drawing me in as a fan of his work. I started with the YA novel, The Blue Girl (which I still love), and now Tapping the Dream Tree has secured me as a fan. I'll be looking forward to the next book I read.

But for now I'm moving on to the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage. It seems to be a children's magic story somewhere along the lines of the first Harry Potter novel. I hope to finish it by the end of the year.

Milestone

I finished the latest revision of my book just now. Now all I have to do is go through and make the changes I marked. That may take a week or so, then I'll write a new query and start sending it out.

I'm pretty happy with this draft. Some things that weren't too important to the main plot got cut, while Cosette's (my main character) romantic options were expanded. I thought it important to expand that line a little to make the character a little more real. At least one character was cut, and one that I really liked was added. At the end, there may still be parts that could have been improved, but that's true of any book. If I fail to sell the book this time, I'll just move on. There's a few short stories I'd like to write, then I can go back to my ghost story and start revising it. The extremely rough draft shows promise, but it needs more story, and the characters need developing.

But writing is like building a house. You lay the foundation and put up the studs. Then you nail on drywall and paint it last. Editing is like painting and decorating. You can't do that until the main part of the house is up. Right now I'd say the ghost story has the studs up. The main stuff is there. Now it just needs detail and heart.

Furies of Calderon

Writing update: I finished reviewing Chapter 30 in my draft, which puts me on page 157 of 208 in the revision process; 51 pages to go. My last updated said I had a total of 207 pages, but using the review feature of MS Word makes it longer when I put in comments until I delete them, so the total page count might go up one or two while I do this. When I'm done I hope to have fewer than 200 pages. Of course, this is MS Word format. Actual book format makes the book quite a bit longer. And now the review:

Furies of Calderon is Jim Butcher's first book of pure fantasy. His Dresden Files books fit more into an urban fantasy category: people using magic in a modern city setting. Furies is definitely in the tradition of Tolkien, but it in no way is a rip-off. The system of magic is similar to Dresden, the power of magic comes from you, though you can borrow from the forces of nature. If you use your magic too much, you're going to get worn out.

In Furies, though, magic is more restricted with each person. When a child gets old enough, they inherit one or more furies. A fury is a sort of magical spirit that bonds with you and will obey your commands. They're divided by elements, mostly, such as water, wind, earth, fire, and a few others. A fury allows a person to be skilled in one of these elements, depending on the strength of the fury. Most people have one fury, some have two. Our main character, Tavi, has none. This is where ingenuity and hard work have to override the ability of a fury.

The story starts out with Amara, however, who is a Cursor. A Cursor works for the king and does anything from delivering messages to spying. Basically a kind of information gatherer (think Tolkien's ranger, except there's a lot of them). Amara is a student performing her graduation exercise with her mentor when she stumbles on a plot to dethrone the king. She runs for her life (or flies, her fury is a wind fury) and learns that the plot will come at a head in the Calderon valley. This valley is comprised mostly of farmsteads and not much military support. The traitors have enlisted the aid of the Marat, a human-like race, without the aid of furies, but with the ability to bond with animals (the four animals they bond with are a sort of giant buffalo, a powerful and aggressive bird creature, wolves, and horses).

Tavi comes into the story as a young kid who neglected his duties and lost his sheep. Trying to regain his uncle's trust he goes to rescue them on his own and ends up lost in a storm. Storms in this world involve not just wind and rain but a sort of storm creature that can kill a person in a matter of seconds. Without a fury to protect him, he runs for his life, running into Amara. They are able to evade the storm and start to work together to save the valley.

Tavi's side of things is to perform tasks and gain loyalties with only his wits. In his home he is seen by a freak by most because of his lack of fury. The nicest people see him as one with a disability, not able to take care of himself. He proves them wrong by accomplishing great feats to save the lives of those he loves.

Furies of Calderon doesn't have a lot of the humor that appealed to me in the Dresden Files, and Butcher annoys me a little when we go into big scenes and he says something like "Tavi would remember this time later...." It kills a little suspense knowing that someone's going to be all right. Sure, I don't really think he's going to kill his main character, but don't tell me you're not.

But over all, this is a good high fantasy book. It's not my favorite book of all time, but it's a good start to a series and I like the magic system Butcher has worked out.

POD and Novel Update

First, the novel update. I just finished going through chapter 26, which puts me at page 137 of 207 in the editing process. Seventy pages to go.

Next, I've been looking at what might be the future of the publishing industry. Let's first look at the basic idea of how it happens now. When a book is published, it is usually printed in a large quantity called a print run. For a new author that could be 3,000 copies. Maybe more maybe less, but about that amount. The books get released to stores like Barnes and Nobles and Borders where they compete for shelf space. Maybe some will get bought. Maybe all will. If all get bought, then the publishing company will print another run of books. Maybe it will be the same amount, or more, depending on how well the first set sold. A lot of times, especially for new authors, most of the books won't get sold. Even for best-selling authors some copies won't sell. So, what happens to all those extras? Sometimes the store will sell them at a reduced price. Often enough, though, the books get sent back to the publisher. See, the publishers have a deal with the bookstores that they will buy back any unsold copies at the same price the bookstore bought them for. So, now they have a bunch of books they paid to print that they can't do anything with. So, even for successful authors, there's some loss. For new authors there will probably be substantial loss (this is why publishers are hesitant to take on new authors).

Well, there's a few technologies and new business models out there that could solve some of this. It's basically called Print on Demand (POD). It works in a few ways. Here's two:

• Online sellers like Amazon take an order for a book. When they get that order, they print the book themselves at their own plant. Then they send the book to the buyer. The buyer doesn't know that Amazon printed it and they don't notice any delay in getting the book. They have a book they can read, but there's no waste. A buyer wanted a book, Amazon printed the book, no extras were printed.
• Or, a retail store has books on display. You see a book you like, you read a little of it and decide to buy it. You take the display book to the register and pay for it. They start a printing process where they print the book on site. Four minutes later, you have your book, with no waste. The only waste is the display book, which the store can sell when they decide not to carry it anymore. The most waste would be one book per store.

It works for online shoppers and it works for people who like to go to the store and peruse the book. It works for publishers that no longer have to print the book, they just send a text file to each store where they print when someone wants it. It works for the author because there's less cost to produce the book. It works for new authors because there's less risk in publishing new authors.

Now, the company I saw that builds the machines that can print a book in four minutes sells them for $50,000 a pop, so that's a sizable investment. But then, to stock a store with thousands of books costs as much and probably more, right? There's only two of those printers in the world now (one in DC and one in Egypt), but wouldn't that revolutionize the business? In an age where fewer people are reading, wouldn't it be great to streamline the process? I'm hoping something like this is in the near future.

Just Write the Damn Thing

I listened to an interview with Neil Gaiman today that kind of set me back on track. I wasn't really off any track, other than I was starting to obsess with publishing again. This happens every once in a while. I start to worry that no one will want my book and what will I do then? Will I self-publish? Will I use a Print on Demand service. Will I sit at home and cry? So I obsess and my focus wavers. But the interview helped. Gaiman says that when people ask him for writing advice he says: Write. Real writers get that. The true secret to writing is to write. You aren't a writer if you don't. Other people, who like the idea of being a writer but don't want to do the hard work want to know the secret. And sure, there are many pathways to being published, but none apply if you don't write.

So, I got out of that temporary funk. The secret to writing is to write. You can't publish a book that isn't written. You can't market a book that isn't written. You can't tell your friends and family to buy a book that isn't written.

So, I wrote. Or, I edited, which is also writing in my opinion. You have to be able to edit to be successful. Once my book is edited I will start to query publishers (which is not really writing, not creative, anyway). As I do that, I will start writing something else. Or I'll edit something else. It's a process. Write, rewrite if necessary, query/submit, repeat until successful/dead. Rinse. Lather. Something.

And I've figured out how to edit in a way that takes less time and isn't as annoying as before. I use MS Word's Review and Track Changes functions. It let's me go through my manuscript, cross things out (it keeps the text so I can still see what was there) make comments that stick on the side, and it does it all in red so when I make the revisions I can easily see what I want to change.

The Book of the Dragons

In January of 2006 I decided to start a book. I had toyed with the idea of writing for some time, but had never really done anything about it. I was afraid I'd invest a lot of time into something that would never pay off. Then I decided that success didn't matter if I was having fun. So, I started writing. I've been doing it for almost two years and I've come back on that a little. I do want to be successful. I want to be published and I want to be able to do this full time. If that doesn't happen, I won't quit writing, but this is what I want to do with my life.

I'm not really sure where the idea for my first book came from. I just decided on the genre and started putting ideas together. Ideas became more ideas. Those ideas became paragraphs and eventually became an outline. That outline created the first draft of the book. At the time I thought it was really good. It sucked. It was a skeleton: all the pieces were there but there was not meat. My fourth draft, now, has gotten up to 113,000 words. I'm told that the absolute cap for a first time fantasy author should be 120,000.

Now on my fifth draft, I'm going through and using MS Word's tracking and comment features to find little errors and mark them and to find parts I could remove and rework. Once finished, I will query all the publishers I can get to, starting with the big ones and moving to smaller ones. Afterwards I may self-publish and see if I can sell on my own, though I'm not holding my breath on that one.

The point of my blog entry today is that I'm halfway through editing this draft, after only a few weeks, and hope to finish soon. It will be exciting to start the submission process again. Wish me luck!

Spock's New Mommy

According to scifi.com Winona Ryder has been tapped to play Amanda, Spock's mother, in the new Star Trek movie. The news caught me as a little odd. I mean, Winona Ryder? Sure, I like her, but Spock's mom? Aside from the fact that she seems a strange pick, she's only 36, which would make Spock about 18 years old. But then, she did play an old lady at the end of Edward Scissorhands.
So, in light of this, I decided to look at the actress who played Amanda in the Original Series episode "Journey to Babel" and the feature, "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home". That role was played by Jane Wyatt who was 57 when she first shot the role. Before Trek she played Margaret Anderson in "Father Knows Best" (1954-1960). The actress passed away a year ago.

Back to Ryder, I suppose the best explanation would be to look at the rest of the casting choices:

• Zachary Quinto of Heroes will be playing Spock
• Chris Pine, an up-and-comer having starred in several small roles plays Kirk
• Simon Pegg of Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Mission Impossible 3 plays Scotty
• Karl Urban who played Eomer in Lord of the Rings plays Dr. McCoy
• John Cho has starred in 50 roles in the last ten years is Sulu
• Eric Bana from 2003's Hulk and 2004's Troy plays a character named Nero
• Zoe Saldana from Guess Who plays Uhura
• Anton Yelchin, a real Russian, plays Chekov
• Leonard Nimoy returns to play an aged Spock

All of this tells me, along with JJ Abrams directing, that the studio wants to bring in as many names as possible to make this movie as big as possible. Star Trek has been a huge franchise with a worldwide following but has suffered recently. Star Trek: Nemesis bombed at the box office and Enterprise was cancelled after four seasons (not bad for most shows, but this one was allowed to suffer longer than necessary).

So what do I feel about the role? It doesn't bother me. She'll probably be in five minutes of the movie and she is a decent actress. And if it brings more people to the theater, all the better.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

After a couple months of reading, I finally finished this book. At almost 800 pages, it was a book that attracted my eye, I usually prefer longer books. But this one was an especial challenge. The novel takes place in the early 1800's and is written in that style, with lengthy descriptions and frequently misspelled words (like using chuse for choose).

The storyline is compelling, though. I just think that if the book was a third the size, the pacing would have been much better.

To me, it seemed Ms Clarke was trying more to create a history of England, weaving in a rich and lengthy magical history with the realistic events of the period, including the wars against Napoleon. And if Clarke wanted to write a history book with an alternate history of England, she did a great job (she even included lengthy footnotes, the only thing missing was a bibliography). But if she wanted to create a compelling narrative, a lot could have been cut.

For one, almost every character is described meticulously. This is good in that you feel like you really know the main characters. Its bad because she did this to minor characters who were only in one scene or that we may have only met in passing. This description extends to most of the setting as well. Every home, castle, library, forest, and moor is described in painstaking detail that is almost painful to read.

As I was getting to the end of the book, I started to think that maybe there'd be a great payoff at the end, something to make everything else worth it. Well, while the ending was decent and interesting, it wasn't the result I was hoping for. Like the rest of the book, it was slow and slightly disappointing.

But all of that is okay, because Clarke has reportedly signed a six, maybe even seven-figure movie deal. I'll be looking forward to the movie. I bet this book will translate well to the big screen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A note on the writer's strike.

I've seen on the news that the Writer's Guild, the union responsible for writing movies, TV shows, and late night comics like Jay Leno and David Letterman, has decided to strike. They want a bigger cut on DVD and internet sales of movies and TV shows. What do I think about this? Sure, they deserve a cut, but like baseball strikes, I don't really feel that bad. First, the industry makes enough money, and while I don't begrudge anyone making money (I'd like to make more myself), my real concern is the current quality of writing. When most of the flicks at the theater are sequels or idiotic comedy, I feel like maybe we should find new writers.

Some writers complain about job security, saying the market is volatile and they never know if they'll have work. Well, they chose the profession. I get tired about people complaining about job security. They make it sound like the job is theirs, like its their property. A job belongs to the person who creates it. If a studio needs a script, they hire a writer. They keep that writer until the job is done or until the writing starts to suck.

Its the same for any profession. I have a job. It's not my job, it belongs to the hospital I work for. If my quality drops, or if the hospital decides to cut the possession, then I don't have the job anymore. Or, since its their job, they can cut me for any reason or no reason (unless its discriminatory). The real definition of job security is for me to do my job so well that my employers will recognize my value and want to keep me.

If the Hollywood writers want jobs, then they need to write well and make entertaining television and movies. They shouldn't keep their jobs and make more money simply because they can shut down production whenever they choose.