A Conspiracy of Alchemists — Review

Liesel Schwarz’s debut novel, A Conspiracy of Alchemists, blends the aesthetics of Steampunk historical fantasy with a dash of urban fantasy for a unique world with just enough grittiness for verisimilitude. This young adult novel is available for preorder, and comes out on March 5th.

Eleanor (Elle) Chance isn’t the typical young lady of her time. Instead of preparing to marry and run her own household, she runs a freight company with her helium filled transport zeppelin.  Her business brings her into contact with people who realize who she is, the oracle — the only individual who can balance the world of Light and the world of Shadows — something Elle doesn’t even know herself.

She’s quickly swept into danger and intrigue when her father, a genius scientist, is abducted and she is targeted for a sacrifice that would break down the veil between light and shadow, transforming the world into a place of powerful darkness.

Her quest is complicated by her growing feelings for a dashing warlock who agrees to help her, but who may have plans of his own that Elle wouldn’t appreciate.

The book is well researched, but not weighed down with extraneous details from the era in which it is set. Though the themes it deals with are somewhat cliche (women’s rights in the Victorian era, science vs. magic. vs. religion), Schwarz does a good job avoiding beating her reader over the head with it, something I appreciate.

I think the book’s greatest weakness is the dialogue, which, for the most part, is quite appropriate to the period and sounds very genuine, but occasionally pops out of the more formal sounding discourse, or comes out with a word that just doesn’t fit, like referring to the kidnappers as “blighters” — a term that lacked the usual formality of the speaker and didn’t convey the seriousness of the situation.

Other than that, I’d say this is a very strong debut novel, and I hope to get the chance to read and review the next book in the series, which is coming out in August.

I give it three out of five owls.

SEAL of Honor – Cover Reveal

Author Tonya Burrows just revealed the cover of her novel, SEAL of Honor, first book in the HORNET series. The book is coming out from Entangled Publishing on May 28th. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading Tonya’s work in the past, so I can tell you that she writes strong characters, builds good atmosphere into her stories, and knows how to tell a satisfying tale.

I can’t wait til my copy of this book arrives so that I can read about her hot Navy SEAL, his daring exploits rescuing hostages in the jungle, and the romance that will change his life.

The book is listed in Goodreads, and you can follow Tonya on Facebook or Twitter @TonyaBurrows.

The Next Big Thing

So, I’ve been blogging for about a year now, and have been tagged for a couple of these “pass it on” type of things. At first, I didn’t do them since I had no clue what I was doing, then I was really busy for a while. In December, Rachel Robins tagged me to do this, and I meant to, but just forgot. Heather Sedlak just tagged me, reminding me that I’d forgotten to do it when Rachel tapped me for it. So here I go now, in honor of both of them.

The Next Big Thing

Here’s how it works: Each week an author provides his or her answers to the ten questions below and then tags five additional writers, each of whom answers the questions on the subsequent Wednesday, again tagging five writers, and so on.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

The Chronicles of Errahtyre Book One: The Demon’s Gate

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Oddly enough, it came from another book. OK, so that’s not odd after all. In the story, there’s a girl who was raised by a sorceress who says she made the girl out of wax (a lie). It got me thinking about what it would be like to actually be the construct of a witch or wizard, and not to know it at first. Right then, my first character was born, from there, I developed  the antagonist, the supporting characters, and then the plot and setting.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

It’s high/epic fantasy, but I write so much science fiction that I can see it turning my story in to science fantasy. I’m trying to decide if I want to get rid of that influence, or if I should just let things stand.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Hmm… I didn’t actually imagine any of my characters looking like any of the actors I know, so this is a tough one. I did some searches and the only two characters I could find decent matches for were two of the secondary characters that become more important in book two. I thought Lily Cole would have been great for Eedie when she (Lily) was twelve. Saoirse Ronan would be really good for Todanny. They’re both lovely women with the kind of spunk they’d need to pull off my girls. They aren’t what I imagined, but they’d work.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Seeking vengeance for their mother’s murder, Beryl and Nickel join an anti wizard army, but are soon in over their heads when they save a girl who’s not what she seems, the wizard becomes possessed by one of the few free demons, and they’re the only ones in the right place to stop him from opening the demon’s gate and unleashing fiery destruction on the world.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I understand that self publishing can be a really good way to go, but that it’s a lot of work. I get pretty overwhelmed with everything in life as it is, so I’d like to have it represented by an agency, just to simplify things for me. Letting an agent and publisher do the technical stuff sounds pretty ideal to me.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The first draft took about a year since I was writing about thirty pages a month (and not always that much). I know I could have written it much faster, but I was learning so much that rushing through it without giving myself the chance to avoid making mistakes that I’d only just learned about seemed counterproductive. Next book I mean to churn out in less than six months. ::crosses fingers::

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
 

Another hard question! Honestly, there isn’t a lot of recent high fantasy to compare this to, and it’s pretty different from the books I used to read. There, are of course, some of the standard tropes like dragons, magic, hidden lands, demons, a journey, etc. But these aren’t the dragons from Eragon, or The Hobbit (I told myself I wasn’t bringing Tolkien into this, but it just happened, I guess). They’re more like the dragons from one of  Patricia A. McKillip’s books, The Cygnet and the Firebird.

My characters are also different from the usual heroes of high fantasy. They aren’t the chosen ones, they aren’t weathered adventurers coming back for another journey. They are the heroes because they were in the right place and had the fortitude to do what was necessary to save the world.

I also have two strong girls in my three POV characters, which is still a new thing in high/epic fantasy.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

This particular story? All my favorite authors, my passion for writing, my love for epic fantasy, my fear that epic fantasy was dead, my dislike of some of the stifling patterns of epic fantasy, I could go on. Mainly, I’m just writing a book that I would have loved to read if I’d found it at the bookstore.

10. So who’s up next?

Amarilys Acosta, Katie Kenyhercz, Tiffany Avery, I choose YOU!

The Best of All Possible Worlds – Review

I just had the opportunity to read  The Best of All Possible Worlds by award winning writer, Karen Lord (Redemption in Indigo). It will be released February 12th, and is available for pre-order.

Set on a planet called Cygnus Beta, the book details the struggles of the Sadiri survivors of a terrible genocide as they attempt to gather what remains of their kind, while reaching out to groups of people with Sadiri DNA in hopes of strengthening their suddenly thin gene pool.

The protagonist, Grace Delarua, is not herself a Sadiri. She’s part Terran, part Ntshune (empath), bright, intuitive, and vivacious. Since she’s a field anthropologist working for the Cygnian government, she is chosen to assist the Sadiri in their mission to contact the groups of Cygnians with high percentages of Sadiri DNA.

Through the various adventures of the team, the book explores what psionic powers like telepathy and empathy would mean to a society, and to individuals within that framework. I personally appreciated the thought that went into this aspect of the book. I haven’t read too many pieces of science fiction that give very much consideration to the ethics of mind contact, especially in such a subtle, thoughtful way.

I also enjoyed the facility with which the book blended science fiction and romance. Lord managed to build an interesting, cohesive world with a unique flavor and background and take the reader through the process of Grace falling in love with Dllenahkh, her Sadiri counterpart, without sacrificing any aspect of the story to the different genres she was blending.

As a whole, I think this was a lovely piece of science fiction, easy to read and entertaining. It’s definintely not as hard hitting as some other pieces I’ve read, not as deep and with less emphasis on science, but it has it’s own merits, for instance, what science the author does touch on is interesting and well thought out. I certainly enjoyed it and would recommend it to both lovers of SF and romance.

I give it four out of five owls. 

Visual Character Design

Readers like characters that they can get attached to. That’s a simple fact. The process, however, of creating a distinctive, well fleshed out, sympathetic character, is not simple. There are a lot of things involved in bringing a character to life. They need back-story, personality, flaws, virtues, desires, goals, fears, and their own way of looking at the world. They also need a description, which is harder than it sounds.

And why is that? Because, as with every other type of description, balance is an issue. Spend two pages on the description of one building and you risk your audience yawning and skimming, maybe even putting the book down. Only mention that the building has a door, and no one can be sure what the place looks like.

The same goes for your character. Listing him as having brown hair, brown eyes, and light skin begins to form a picture, but nothing concrete. Say: spiky brown hair, slanted brown eyes, a long nose, and skin that burns instead of tans, and you’re better off. This guy still isn’t very distinctive. Add a scar or a tattoo, a distinctive piece of jewelry, but don’t add them for no reason. Tie it to the story.

An example of this, Katniss Everdeen wouldn’t be the same without her mockingjay pin. It seems fairly irrelevant to the first book. It serves well as a device to bring in some back story and to set Katniss apart from the other tributes coming into the hunger games. But in the context of the trilogy, it’s much more significant as a symbol of defiance.

Another example, Atticus O’Sullivan from the Iron Druid Chronicles has tattoos on his right arm, and a singular necklace with an iron medallion and a handful of powerful charms. Both are important to the story. The tattoos are part of his magic, and the necklace is partially protective, and partially a druid’s toolkit.

One way I recommend working with the visual aspect of a character is by drawing him out. If you’re bad at drawing, like I am, you might need some help with this. Start with a body blank. Here’s a link to a male blank. Here’s one to a female. You might need to alter them in paint (or equivalent program) a bit to suit your needs. I guess you could even do the whole thing in the computer. I print them out and use colored pencils.

The one thing I haven’t found is a similar blank for a child. I had to make one myself. It’s rough and cartoonish compared to the two I linked above, but it works for both boys and girls.

Image by lamichaud

See?

Here it is uncolored. If you share this, give credit where credit’s due. Thanks!

Keyboards and Infidelity

Image from music123

I finally received and plugged in my new keyboard. It’s a lovely, black Kensington. Already, I can tell the difference between an hour spent typing on this new board and my old one.

My frustration level is pretty much zero, instead of being in the high thirties (out of a hundred). My old board, while not as bad as a mechanical typewriter, had really stiff keys, a few of which took concentrated effort to press. I don’t even have to think about typing on this new one. The best thing is that this keyboard doesn’t intersperse the words I type with strings of repeated nonsense.

It’s a beautiful thing.

The little bit of editing I worked on this morning was a breeze compared to the way it worked before I replaced my old keyboard. It got me feeling a bit frisky, and I cheated on my novel with another story since it felt so nice to type up new material on this lovely new keyboard.

There, I’ve confessed. I worked on a piece of science fiction (about an invasion of aliens with high regenerative abilities) instead of polishing my high fiction novel.

I don’t feel guilty.

Work Space

Image from Web Design Hot!

Recently, another writer that I really respect told me that she thought every writer should have a space devoted to their work, preferably a whole office. I liked the idea in theory, but when it came down to practice, it didn’t work very well for me. I have exactly one room to my name, no way to put together a proper office. I’m also a bit of a rover. I tend to like to write in whatever room in the house is cleanest. Sometimes that means sitting at the kitchen or dining room table, others it’s the couch in the living room or the futon in the sun room. Sometimes I sit on my bed.

Note that my desk never entered into the list of possibilities. I’m still not sure why my desk wasn’t a good place for me to write.  I have a few ideas now, but no solid facts. It didn’t matter how clean I got the desk, I just couldn’t write there for very long. It was as if the desk had been designed to stifle creativity.

I knew part of it was that I have a crappy keyboard that does this weird thing where it will randomly reproduce a sequence that I’ve already typed (I think this means that its buffer is bad). It looks like this when it happens: sequencece, , is importatant. This tic makes writing a lot harder since I have to stop and edit out the junk every few words, but shouldn’t have made me feel like my muse had left me.

This problem had been puzzling me for a long time. Then I had a conversation with a friend about the pros and cons of being left or right brained, and we had a moment of confusion where neither of us could remember which side was the “creative side.”

“Don’t people look to the right when they’re coming up with a lie?” she asked. In the end we had to look it up to be sure, but that simple question sparked an idea. Normal, right-handed people do tend to look up and to (their own) right when they have to imagine something.

My desk was set up so that the monitor and keyboard were to the left. It made me wonder if I wasn’t hindering my own creative process by forcing myself to behave in an unnatural fashion, that is looking up and left while I was trying to be creative.

Based on this one sketchy idea, I came home and rearranged my desk. The monitor and keyboard are now on the right. I’ve also finally given in and ordered a new keyboard (my computer won’t use the USB ones I found at the local electronics store).

Here it is all clean and nice. I was going to do a before picture, but forgot. Let it suffice to say that I took three boxes worth of stuff off the desk before I could do anything with it.

Image by lamichaud

The keyboard hasn’t come yet, but I have found that I can now work at my desk. It’s not as comfy as sitting on the couch with my lapdesk and laptop, but I can do it. In fact, my desk seems to be a better location to sit and edit than anywhere else in the house. I can’t say for sure that moving the monitor was the perfect solution to my problem (I’d still rather sit and write anywhere else), but I no longer feel like the creative side of me shuts down when I sit at my desktop.