Upcoming plans for 2015

I think my favorite time of the year is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s a time for reflection, of looking at what you accomplished in the previous year and setting resolutions for the next one. In that spirit, here are some of the writing and publishing things I’d like to accomplish in 2015:

Publish at least six new books
Put out print editions of all of my books (except for short stories)
Get to the point where at least 50% of my book sales are outside of Amazon

I’ve got a lot of projects on the back burner, and I’m sure that I’ll start lots of new ones in the coming year, but these are the ones I really want to focus on in 2015:

Heart of the Nebula — This is one that I definitely want to release this year. It’s the fourth novel in the Gaia Nova universe, a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and I’m really, really excited about it. For the past month or so, I’ve been in “finish this damn book mode” (which is why I haven’t blogged much), but I’m set to finish it by the end of this week and send it out to my first readers. You can definitely expect to see this one soon.

Sons of the Starfarers — The main reason I haven’t released Friends in Command (Book IV) yet is because my first readers told me it has some serious issues, which need to be fixed by adding another viewpoint character. It shouldn’t be too hard to do that, but before I do a major revision I always try to take a month or two off to work on other things so that I can come at the project with new eyes. I’ll pick up Friends in Command in January, and write the next one, Captives in Obscurity (Book V) immediately after.

Will I finish this series in 2015? I honestly don’t know. The books started as novellas, but each one has been a little longer than the last one, so by the end they’ll all probably end up as full novels. I could probably still do it if this was the only series I worked on all year, but I don’t want to limit myself in that way. Definitely, though, you can expect to see at least the next three books before the end of 2015.

The Sword Keeper — This unfinished fantasy novel has been sitting on my hard drive for about two years, and it’s time that I buckled down and put it out there. I tried to finish it last summer, and the main obstacle was that I had to do some serious world building. For a speculative fiction writer, that should be easy, right? Well … I’m kind of weird in that I tend to do most of my world building from the seat of my pants. But now that I’ve figured out what the holdup was, it shouldn’t be too hard to fix.

These are all books that I want to release before the end of 2015. I’m sure there will be others—perhaps even for story ideas that I haven’t come up with yet. It will be exciting to see how the year turns out!

How going indie is like driving a manual (plus a cover reveal)

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new (to me) car. It’s a 2005 Ford Focus / Saleen: a two-door hatchback that drives like a racing car and gets about thirty miles per gallon (WA-A-AY better than the gas guzzler I was driving before). It’s also a manual transmission, which is perhaps the biggest difference between this and my previous car.

This is my first time driving stick shift, and I have to say, it is a lot of fun! When you drive a stick, each hand and each foot is doing something different. There’s a lot more to keep track of, and if you do things in the wrong order (like braking without engaging the clutch, or starting without giving it some gas), you run the risk of making the car stall or doing nasty things to your transmission. On the other hand, driving a manual gives you a much better feel for the engine and what it’s capable of. You can feel when you’re putting too much stress on it–or alternately, when you can push it a little further.

I usually like to walk everywhere, but ever since I got this car, I just want to drive it! It’s way more fun than driving an automatic, even with (or indeed, because of) the extra challenge. So today, while I was walking to BYU campus (alas, the parking situation there makes driving a major pain), I got to thinking about it, and I realized that driving a manual is a lot like being an indie author.

When you’re an indie, you have a lot more things to juggle, just like driving a manual. This gives you much greater control of your career, but it also makes it easier to stall or screw up. At the same time, because of that extra control, you’ve got a much better feel for the market, and probably a better connection with your readers. And for me at least, the extra challenge doesn’t make it less enjoyable, it actually makes me enjoy it more!

Nothing Found

This week, I had the first day where I sold 100+ books in a 24 hour period. That was pretty awesome! I’ve been running a $.99 sale for Star Wanderers: The Jeremiah Chronicles (Omnibus I-IV), and it got picked up by a couple of ebook sites that really pushed it in the right way. Now that I know how to run a sale like that, I hope to do it again, perhaps for Black Friday. And if you haven’t picked up this one yet, it’s on sale for $.99 through Friday.

Marketing and promotion is one of the harder parts about going indie for me, kind of like how finding the clutch point and starting without stalling is hard when you first drive a manual. The more that I practice, though, the better that I get at it, and the more I enjoy it.

Another area where I think I’ve more or less stalled is in my covers. When I put out the first few Gaia Nova novels, I spent a fair amount of money hiring out artists to do the illustrations, but I did the typography myself. On those earlier covers, it definitely shows. For my later books, I worked with a bunch of cover designers, and seeing their work made me realize that there’s definitely room for improvement on those earlier ones, especially for the print editions.

I’ve decided to redo the covers for those three novels (Bringing Stella Home, Desert Stars, and Stars of Blood and Glory), keeping the illustrations but changing the typography. I tried to find a cover designer to do it, but I wasn’t able to find one that did satisfactory work, and after playing around with them for a bit I think I can actually do them myself. I’ve got a lot more experience with covers and cover design now than I did when I was starting out, and I’ve learned a few photoshop tricks as well.

In any case, here is what I came up with for Bringing Stella Home:

How do you like it? I rather like how it turned out, though I’ll admit I’m still learning. I did the new design just this morning, so I figure I ought to wait a couple of days and maybe seek out some feedback from professional designers before I go through with it.

I hope to have the new edition out before the end of the month. The content and story will all be the same, but the cover and metadata will be updated, and some minor errors such as typos will be fixed. I also hope to do the same thing with Desert Stars and Stars of Blood and Glory. Once the new editions are out, I’ll probably run some sales and giveaways with them, so definitely stay tuned!

As for my other projects, the next book in the Sons of the Starfarers series is out with my first readers, so it’s on track for a January release. My next WIP is The Sword Keeper, a fantasy novel I think I’ve mentioned before, and I hope to get that one knocked out in about a month or so. It’s already halfway finished, so the hard part is just ahead. There are also a couple of Gaia Nova novels that I’ve been meaning to get around to, and probably will before the end of the year.

That just about does it. Look out for more covers soon! I’m definitely having fun with the new ones. 😀

Short stories and switching to Fantasy

Sorry to drop off the face of the Earth for the past couple of weeks. My parents were in town, and between spending time with them, introducing my girlfriend, celebrating my sister’s birthday, and a whole bunch of other family-related things, my blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside.

But don’t worry–I’m still writing! I finished the first draft of Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers: Book III) in the first week of July and sent it out to my first readers. With luck, I’ll be hearing back from them in time to make any necessary revisions and publish that book in August. The first series omnibus (books I-III) will be out six weeks later in September, and book IV will be out … well, it will be out after I’ve written it.

In the meantime, I’ve started a couple of short stories and been making some good progress on those. The first one should be finished in the next day or so: it’s titled “The Gettysburg Paradox” and involves a time tourist at Gettysburg realizing in horror that most of the combatants on both sides are actually time travelers.

The other one is an orc story partially inspired by my friend Sarah’s orc story. This one, though, is less of a love story and more a brutally violent tale of orcs being orcs. It’s probably going to go long, perhaps up to novelette length, though not any further–I’ll trim it fairly aggressively if it does.

Besides short stories, I’ve picked up work on The Sword Keeper again. This is the epic fantasy novel with the enchanted swords, which I started while I was living in Georgia. I haven’t worked on it much since coming back to the States, but last month I basically told my girlfriend the whole story arc of the trilogy, and she really got into it. So that’s my current WIP now, and I hope to finish it before the end of the summer (famous last words, right?).

There are other things I’d like to blog about, but I’ll save those for later. Here are some of my ideas for blog posts:

Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
Why I quit Facebook
Thoughts on character development and likability
Thoughts after watching Divergent
Dating someone on the autism spectrum (I’ll have to run that one by my girlfriend first!)
Y Mountain hike
Random poetry
Places I like to write

Goodnight!

Don’t worry, I’m still alive

Wow, has it been more than a week since my last post? I think this is the longest I’ve gone without updating this blog since coming back from Georgia.

I wish I could say life has been busy, but it hasn’t really. Just another lazy summer in Utah. I did start dating someone recently, which probably explains where all my time has gone. But don’t worry, I’m still writing–in fact, the first draft of Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers: Book III) should be finished next week. It’s taken me a lot longer to write this one than I’d expected, but now that I’ve buckled down, it’s really coming together.

Comrades in Hope (Sons of the Starfarers: Book II) should be out by the end of the month, barring something crazy like my editor or cover designer dropping off the face of the Earth. Once they get back to me, all I’ve got to do is run through the edits (which shouldn’t take longer than a day or two) and format the thing (which also shouldn’t take longer than a day or two). So if you’ve read the first book and are eagerly awaiting the second, you shouldn’t have to wait longer than a couple of weeks!

I’m not sure what cons I’ll be attending this summer/fall. I thought I was going to Westercon, but it turns out my parents are going to be in town that week, and considering that it falls on the fourth of July (which also happens to be my sister’s birthday–who also happens to be pregnant), it looks like I have more important things to do that weekend. Besides, I want to start a new 4th of July tradition with my girlfriend this year: watching Gettysburg.

In any case, it looks like I won’t be doing too many cons this year. Maybe Salt Lake Comic Con, but I don’t know about that one yet either.

Once I’ve finished Strangers in Flight, I’ll probably take some time to work on a novel. There are three projects that I’m thinking about working on:

Star Wanderers: Children of the Starry Sea — I’ve been wanting to write a Star Wanderers novel for some time, but haven’t actually started it yet. It would definitely be fun to revisit the characters from that series, and it seems that a lot of my readers would really be interested in it too. It would also be a good way to tie things in with Sons of the Starfarers, and give some direction to the later books in that series.

The Sword Bearer — I explained the plot of this one to my girlfried, and she really liked it. That got me excited about it again, so I’m thinking very seriously about taking that project off of the back burner for a while. It’s a long-form epic fantasy that will probably turn into a trilogy–very different from the stuff I’m writing now. Still, it has a lot of potential, and the story is definitely solid. If I do pick it up, I’ll probably rename it The Sword Keeper, so that book 2 will be The Sword Bearer, and book 3 will be The Sword Wielder.

Star Wolf, AKA Heart of the Nebula — I’ve been meaning to finish this one for some time, so I might as well knock it off. With the last round of revisions, I got about halfway through, but it’s still very messy, so this would definitely be a project. However, this is the one that is closest to actually being publishable.

So that’s what I’m up to right now. I’ve got a lot more to say, especially about my girlfriend, but for now, I think I’d better get back to writing.

So what should I work on next?

Now that Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) is published, I’m back in the position of trying to figure out what to write next. Usually, I just do this on my own, but this time I thought I’d run it by my readers and see what you guys have to say. Here are the options:

Heart of the Nebula — This is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home. It follows James, Lars, Stella, and several new characters as they struggle to keep the Colony from falling apart following the collapse of the New Gaian Empire. This one is mostly a space opera story, with lots of action and political intrigue. It also explores the wolf/sheepdog analogy that Danica brought up in Bringing Stella Home, with Lars’s rebuttal.

Mercenary Savior — Another Gaia Nova novel, this one showing the origins of Danica Nova and her band of Tajji mercenaries. I’ve got a lot of ideas for this one, though I’ve only written the prologue so far. This is going to be a military sci-fi story, with lots of action, lots of violence, and (hopefully) a few heart-wrenching moments as well. Danica, Roman, Mikhail, Artyom, and several of the other mercenaries will appear in this one.

Empress of the Free Stars — Yet another Gaia Nova novel, this one a direct sequel of Stars of Blood and Glory. It brings back Princess Hikaru, now the Empress of Shinihon, and shows her struggle to ensure the safety and freedom of her people in the face of a Federation that is fast transforming into an autocratic, totalitarian empire. Colonel Webb is at the heart of the political intrigue in this one, and the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been.

Sons of the Starfarers — This is the spinoff series I’m writing to follow up Star Wanderers. It takes place in the same universe as the Gaia Nova novels, except a thousand years before, and will eventually show the origins of the Hameji and tie all of these books together. This is the one I’m most excited to write, as it brings back a bunch of characters from Star Wanderers and puts them into some interesting situations. Hopefully, it will have the same stuff that made Star Wanderers so great while adding a bit more action/adventure stuff into the mix.

Edenfall — This one is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second book in what will eventually become a trilogy. Basically, about fifteen years after Michael and Terra settle down on Icaria, a military expedition arrives from Earth, shattering the idyllic life they’ve made for themselves. They try to convince the military people that there is no alien threat, but before they can do that, the ghost ship comes back, throwing everything out of balance. This story is mostly from the point of view of Estee, Michael and Terra’s daughter, whose whole world is changed when the other humans appear.

Lifewalker — I’ve mentioned this one only a couple of times on my blog, but everyone who’s read the first chapter tells me that they want more. This one is a completely different project from anything else I’ve done. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale told from the point of view of a man who lives out his natural life where everyone else is infected with a disease that kills them at age 25. After the first chapter, the he starts down the ruins of I-15 with a bible, a bicycle, and a copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, searching for the mythical city of light known by the forefathers as Lavegas. Little does he know, that place is now populated by cannibals.

The Sword Bearer — An epic fantasy about an ancient brotherhood of sentient swords who pass down the knowledge and skills of each bearer down through the generations. The brotherhood has been broken, and the few swords that haven’t been lost have driven their bearers insane to the point where they’re now amassing an army to conquer and enslave the whole world. The only sword who hasn’t gone down that path is the one prophesied to be wielded in the final battle to defeat this great evil, but it hasn’t taken a bearer for almost a thousand years–that is, until a curious young tavern girl from the mountains accidentally stumbles upon it.

Those are pretty much all the major options. I have a couple ideas for other books, but nothing that I’ve really started. Even though I have my preferences, I could go almost any way depending on what you guys want to read. So if there’s one or two that you really want me to work on next, feel free to let me know!

Nanowrimo anyone?

November is coming up, and with it, nanowrimo. I’ve always wanted to participate, but every time it rolls around, it seems like I’ve got another project going on that’s more important.

This year is no exception, but I think I have a way around that. The goal for nanowrimo is just to write something–it doesn’t have to be any good. I’ve got a bunch of projects I’m currently working on, including Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) which I hope to publish by Thanksgiving, but I think I can still do a just-for-fun sort of thing on the side, with the understanding that it doesn’t have to be serious.

What I think I’ll do is write a story where all of the characters from all of my previous books get caught up in some sort of a weird time-space dimensional warping thing, so that they end up in books where they don’t belong and universes where they never existed. It should be a fun way to revisit some of them, especially the ones from the Gaia Nova books, which I haven’t really done much with in a while.

It’s probably not going to make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read my books, but who cares? That’s not the point. I may or may not put it up somewhere for people to read, but it may have some stuff from projects that are either unfinished or unpublished, so it might be a little obtuse even for the fans. However, it seems like a really fun project, one that I can really run with, and that’s all that really matters for nanowrimo.

As far as my other projects go, right now I’m working on a heroic fantasy novel that’s a prequel of sorts to The Sword Bearer. I have no idea where it’s going to go, but I’m taking a page from my favorite writer of all time (David Gemmell), with lots of violence, lots of blood, and lots of true grit and heroism.

At the same time, I’m still working on Sons of the Starfarers off and on, though I may end up putting that one on hold for a while as I figure things out with this heroic fantasy story. It will get done, though–it’s definitely a story I’m itching to tell. In a couple of reviews and emails, readers have asked whether I’ll ever write an origin story for the Hameji. Well, that’s what Sons of the Starfarers is going to be, though the connection might not happen until well into the series.

There’s a couple of other Gaia Nova books I’ve been meaning to write for a long, long time, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to them anytime soon. This nanowrimo project might spark something, though, since I’ll be revisiting a lot of those old characters. And even if the nanowrimo novel itself is pretty bad, if it gets those projects on the back burner simmering again, then that will definitely be something.

Dang, I really want to get started with nanowrimo now! So many wacky ideas … it’s like writing fanfiction for one of your own books! In any case, I’d better get back to writing before I get too excited. Don’t want to spend so much time thinking about writing that it becomes hard when I actually sit down to do it.

Later!

No Trope Tuesday this week

Hey guys, sorry but no Trope Tuesday post this week. I’m on the train, traveling from Utah to Massachusetts. Right now we’re at Grand Junction Colorado, about to head into Glenwood Canyon in a few hours. Lots of beautiful country out here.

One of the nice things about traveling by train is that it gives you lots of time to relax and do things without any outside pressure. Hopefully I’ll get some good writing done before I arrive at my destination on Thursday. The Sword Bearer is coming along slowly, and I just got the notes back on Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) so that should be enough to keep me busy.

Anyhow, the train is about to leave again, so I’d better cut this short. See you guys around!

Writing at a stroll

I haven’t been writing too much these past few days, or revising much either, but I have been rereading a lot of stuff and getting myself back into the fantasy world of my next big novel. I’ve made a few changes, but decided to keep most of the stuff that I wrote while in Georgia, and that amounts to about 50k words. Just today, I finished the chapter where I’d left off, so now I’m ready to go full steam ahead.

I changed the title from The Sword Keeper to The Sword Bearer, since the story is more about Tamuna than Ivanar, and I may end up adding a subtitle since this is going to turn into a series. Right now, the tentative deadline for the first draft is September 30th, which should be plenty of time to finish it, even with all the traveling I plan to do for the rest of the month.

The projected total word count at this point is 120k words, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. I’m in the middle of Part II, at about 52k words, and while I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happens in the next three chapters, there’s a lot in the middle that I don’t know about. I know how the book is supposed to end, but how to get there is the question, and I’m not sure if it will take me 120k words or 90k words, or upward of 150k words (though I doubt it). I’ll probably have to discovery write most of it.

I’m looking forward to that, though. Some of the best stuff pops out of my head when I have no idea what’s supposed to happen next. Characters take on a life of their own, and reveal some really surprising things about themselves that end up becoming central to the rest of the story. But to do it well, I need to spend some time just thinking about things in a loosely structured way, allowing myself to get immersed in this world. That’s why I haven’t been pushing myself too much.

At the same time, I’ve picked up work on another Star Wanderers story, mostly as a way to keep putting words on the page when I just don’t feel up to working on The Sword Bearer. This is either going to be Part IX or Part X, and frankly I’m really worried about botching it up. A lot of you have really enjoyed the Star Wanderers stories so far, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like this one too once I’m done with it, but I’m going some places in this book that really make me uncomfortable, and I’m not sure how to do it without crossing the line that makes me never want to make it available for the world to read.

I dunno. I’m probably angsting about it too much, and should just write the thing and see how it turns out. But for now, that’s a background project to keep things fresh while I work on The Sword Bearer. And really, I should probably work exclusively on the novel for the next week or so, just to get some momentum going. One day, I’ll be really excited to work on it, while the next, I can barely bring myself to open the manuscript. That’s how I tend to be when I haven’t yet latched onto a project, which seems to be most of the time.

Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) is in the alpha reading stage right now, though if you would like to give it a read, feel free to shoot me an email. I only let people I know in real life read my unpublished stuff, though, and even then only if we’re close friends. Depending on the feedback, it could come out anywhere between the end of August (unlikely) to the end of September (more likely).

This is another one I’ve angsted a lot over, so I’m not sure when it will be ready but I know it will be before the end of the year. Part VIII, on the other hand … Part VIII is probably on the verge of being ready right now, and I really want to get that one out soon, so all the more reason to publish Reproach!

That’s about it for now. I’m heading on the train back to Massachusetts on Tuesday, where I’ll be for most of the rest of the month. I might put together that A to Z blogging challenge thing as an ebook, just to publish something while I’m on vacation. That would be a good diversionary project, something to do while on vacation. Though I certainly plan to write as well–at least 2k words a day, hopefully. Gotta build up that momentum.

Speaking of which, it’s 2am and I should get some sleep. Gnight!

Why I don’t like George R.R. Martin

I was thinking today about George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and the fact that I’ve more or less given up on the series after reading the first book. A lot of my friends are rabid-at-the-mouth crazy about it, both the books and the TV miniseries, but I’m just not all that into it.

Don’t get me wrong—I can see why other people like it so much. The story is engaging, the political intrigue is deliciously complex, the world building is wonderful and immersive, and the fantasy tropes are played quite well. I enjoyed a lot of things about the first book, and intended to read the rest of the series after finishing it. After all, it’s one of the most important works of epic fantasy to come out in the last few decades, with people calling George R.R. Martin an American Tolkien.

But the truth is, I just wasn’t all that into it. And the more I think about it now, the more I’ve realized that this isn’t the kind of series I would enjoy at all.

The strange thing is, I’m a HUGE fan of David Gemmell, who writes almost the exact same sort of thing. Immersive fantasy worlds, dark and gritty characters, shades of gray, lots of fighting, lots of sex, lots of brutality, the realization that anyone can die off at any time … the list goes on and on. And yet, there’s something about David Gemmell’s books that turns me rabid-at-the-mouth and has me squeeing like an otaku fangirl, whereas with George R.R. Martin, all I can manage is “meh.”

I think the reason for this is that Martin’s characters basically fall into one or both of two camps: victim or victimizer. There isn’t any middle ground—at least, none that anyone can stand on for long without dying in some horrific and brutal way. The story requires the characters to all become monsters, and anyone who isn’t willing to do that meets a horrible, tragic end.

There were only two characters in A Game of Thrones that I really cared about: Arya and Ned Stark. Ned was the only character who really tried to stand for something, and Arya was just a spunky little girl who resisted all the stupid girly stuff in favor of more practical stuff like street smarts.

The trouble was that Ned was a complete idiot, trusting in the honor of a guy who explicitly said “do not trust me” and making stupid decisions that ended up getting half of House Stark killed or captured. It’s almost as if Martin purposefully set him up to be a straw man character—that he wanted this one character to represent all the goody-goodies of the world, and knocked him off in the most brutal way possible. It’s like Martin killed him off to make a point, and had the story drive the character rather than the character drive his own story.

And Arya … I forget exactly what happened to her, but she basically became a victim in such a horrible, twisted way that I could tell she’d be scarred for the rest of the series. If she didn’t die off herself, she’d probably become a dirty street rat—the slit-your-throat-for-a-copper kind, not the Disney version. So yeah, I pretty much gave up on her.

Jon Snow was okay, but he was so far removed from everything else in the story that I just got bored with him. Tyrion was funny, but he was also a pervert, and all the reasons to sympathize with him basically revolved around “I’m a dwarf, everyone mistreats me”—again, the victim vs. victimizer thing. Lady Catelyn was pretty cool, but I always saw her as more of a supporting character, and while I found myself rooting for Daenerys at the end, it was only out of frustration with all of the other douchebags in Westeros—I just wanted her to come over the sea and claim the throne so that everyone else would die.

It was a pretty good book, I’ll admit—other than the fact that I didn’t really like any of the characters, everything else was quite enjoyable. It certainly held my attention long enough to finish the thing. But I didn’t really feel compelled to read the next one because I frankly didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. You could give me a list of all of the ones who die off, and I would just shrug and say “oh well.”

In contrast, with every David Gemmell book I’ve read, I fall in love with the characters after reading just a paragraph or two in their viewpoint. Drenai or Nadir, civilized or barbarian, I not only like the characters, I fall deeply in love with them. I care about them right from the outset, even the ones with a dark past, like Skilgannon or Waylander. In fact, Waylander is probably my favorite of them all.

The fact that I know that some of these guys are going to die only makes me more invested, because even though Gemmell kills of most of his characters in any given book, the main characters’ deaths almost always mean something. Maybe they have some awful secret that they finally are able to give up, or maybe they’ve been running from a fate that they finally gather the courage to face. Or maybe they just happen to be in a circumstance that requires them to give up their lives, and they rise to meet the occasion. Not every death is cathartic, but Gemmell never kills off a character merely for the sake of killing off a character, whereas with Martin, I get the sense that that’s sometimes the only reason.

But the biggest difference between the two is that with Gemmell, the victim vs. victimizer paradigm just doesn’t exist. Gemmell’s books are all about unlikely heroism—characters in situations that require them to be something more, or do something beyond looking out for just themselves. Anyone can be a hero, because a hero is nothing more than someone who does something heroic. No matter your past, no matter your fears, no matter your weaknesses, when the chips are down, we’re not all that different.

The counter argument I’ve heard is that all of this heroism stuff is superfluous, and Martin is trying to get beyond it, kind of like the 19th and 20th century philosophers who were trying to get beyond morality. The thing is, if that’s the case, then Martin has to have the darkest and most depressing view of human nature of almost any fantasy writer alive. If his point is that there’s nothing intrinsically heroic about anyone, that being a hero is just a matter of rising to a role and becoming a figure in one of the stories that people tell to make sense of the world—if his point is to show that every hero is really just a douchebag, there’s something about the world that he’s really missing.

In Gemmell’s books, there are douchebags who rise to the heroic roles required of them—but in the act of filling that role, something about them changes, and you see that they’re really not as evil as you thought they were. Because in Gemmell’s view, people are essentially good and everyone is redeemable, even the rapists and murderers. One of his darkest characters, Skilgannon the Damned, learns at the end of his story that the difference between salvation and damnation is allowing yourself to receive the light—that the only thing damning you is yourself. Whether or not you agree with that, you have to admit that’s a pretty optimistic way of seeing the world.

In the end, that’s why I love David Gemmell’s books so much—not just because anyone can die, but because anyone can be redeemed too, sometimes at the very same time. From what I’ve read of George R.R. Martin, it seems that he redeems no one—that to the extent I’m rooting for any one character, it’s only because I can’t wait for them to kill or brutalize all the other horrible monsters in the book. And frankly, I find that pointless and tiresome.

There are moments in almost every David Gemmell book I’ve read that stand out to me with great clarity, so that sometimes while I’m standing in line at the grocery store, or walking down the street to the library, they pop into my head completely unbidden. With George R.R. Martin, that has never happened to me, even for the books of his that I’ve enjoyed.

I dunno. Everyone is different. Maybe George R.R. Martin really strikes a chord in you, so that you feel for him like I do for David Gemmell. Maybe you actually like some of the characters whom I’ve dismissed as douchebags. Or maybe you don’t read fantasy for the same things I do. This post isn’t to knock you for that, it’s just to point out and analyze why I don’t like George R.R. Martin’s stuff as much as most other fantasy fans seem to. And if you do feel about this the same way that I do, then my point is to declare that that’s all right. You can still be a fantasy geek and not like A Sword of Ice and Fire or anything else by George R.R. Martin, no matter how much it’s hyped. That’s perfectly okay.

I’m writing an epic fantasy right now, and it’s not going to be anything like A Sword of Ice and Fire. It’s probably not going to be much like any of David Gemmell’s books either, but Gemmell is certainly a bigger influence on me than Martin. We’ll have to see how it turns out.

Last chance to get my books 50% off on Smashwords!

Hey guys, just a heads up that tomorrow and Wednesday are the last days to get all my books 50% off on Smashwords for the annual summer sale. Everything is under $2.50 USD, and the $.99 stuff is free! That might seem like a pretty steep discount, but I actually earn as much from each sale as I would for a trade paperback sale if my books were traditionally published, and I don’t mind passing on the savings to you.

Also, my friend and fellow writer Ben Keeley did a blog post about our low-key backpacking trip up Rock Canyon, so if that interests you, you can check it out on his blog. That rattlesnake was pretty freaky! Good thing he was about as eager to get away from us as we were to get away from him. We didn’t climb any mountains on this one, but we did find a gorgeous campsite on the side of a steep ravine. I definitely want to go camp there again sometime.

I’m taking it easy as far as the writing goes, but making some progress on The Sword Keeper. A lot of it right now is gathering ideas and reviewing what I’ve written so far (eleven chapters, or about 50k words). The first chapter requires some changes, but the rest I’ll probably let stand as it is and pick up where I left off. Once I’m fully immersed in this story again, I think the rest will come quite readily.

In the meantime, here’s a video of Mariam Elieshvili singing “ჩვენ ახლა ერთურთს,” chven axla erturts. I have no idea what the lyrics mean (something about looking for love in each others’ eyes), but Mariam’s voice is amazing and I think I may have a small celebrity crush on her. All this Georgian music definitely puts me in the mood to work on The Sword Keeper, kind of like how all that Arabic music helped me to write Desert Stars.

… and now I want to go back to Georgia. Again. :'(