Andrew Hunter's Blog, page 3
December 20, 2015
Sword of the Spellbreaker is now available!
As young Garrett and his friends struggle to rebuild their city after a devastating attack, the Brotherhood of Necromancers calls upon him to lead an expedition to the North. A sinister force there threatens to consume all who would defy the Red God’s will, and Garrett’s only hope of saving those he loves may be to surrender to the brooding power of the Songreaver within him. Across the mountains, Marla returns at last to the city of vampires, where she must face the ultimate test of her humanity and learn the secret of the draconic power that flows through her veins.
The Dead Goddess stirs, ancient demons stalk the land, and the girl no one can remember finally gets the waiter to bring her drink. Such world-shattering revelations await within the pages of Book Five of The Songreaver’s Tale: Sword of the Spellbreaker!
Thank you all for sticking with me. I know it’s been a long wait for Book Five, but it’s finally live on Smashwords and Kindle! I’ll try to get all the links updated soon, but I wanted to get something out there for everyone who has been asking about the book, and I hope you all enjoy it.
I’m gonna get some sleep now and then get back to work on Book Six!
November 12, 2015
Sword of the Spellbreaker Cover Sketch!
Hello everyone,
We’re getting close to having Book 5 ready to publish. It doesn’t look like we’ll have it ready to ship in time for Thanksgiving, but I’m still holding out hope for sometime in December.
I thought I’d share my latest sketch for the cover art. Let me know if you see anything particularly wonky in the sketch. It’s always good to catch any mistakes before I start painting.
Hope you like it!
August 25, 2015
The Songreaver Returns Soon!
Hello, everyone,
I’ve finally finished the first draft of Sword of the Spellbreaker, Book Five in the Songreaver’s Tale!
In it, we pick up where Book Four left off, with Garrett helping to restore order in the city of Wythr, even as he struggles to preserve his own humanity against the ancient draconic power awakening within him. Far across the mountains, Marla must uncover the mysteries of her past as she returns at last to the underground city of Thrinaar, seat of power for all the great vampire houses. In the North, a brooding evil begins to stir, one that has not shown its face since the reign of the Dragon Queen.
The Girl in Brown just hopes there’s still time to visit the beach.
I’m revising and editing now, and hope to have the manuscript off to my editors before long. With any luck, I’ll have everything ready to publish this Fall.
Thanks for your patience!
November 27, 2014
The Frostwoven Crown is now available!
In this sequel to Songreaver, Garrett must walk a perilous line between his duty to the sisterhood of the death goddess and his loyalty to the brotherhood of necromancers as he seeks to uncover the identity of a traitor in their midst. Yet it is his love for the vampire girl Marla that may prove his undoing when the secret of her true lineage comes to light. All of this would be challenge enough for any young necromancer, even without the power of an ancient sorcerer king awakening within him, but now he’s pretty sure that he’s being followed by something very small and very angry. He’s going to need a lot more zombies.
Whew!
This has been a long road for me, but I am finally ready to share Garrett’s latest adventure with you all. I have to say that the story took some rather unexpected turns for me. I followed Garrett down some scary paths, but I trusted him to find his way through, and he carried the day for me. It can be frightening to let your characters lead the way, but I have been humbled to discover that they can lead you to places you never would have found without their guidance. I am proud of my characters and what they have accomplished in this book, the trials they faced and the victories they’ve won.
I hope you will be proud of them too.
October 1, 2014
The Necromancer’s Nephew Audiobook!
The Audiobook version of The Necromancer’s Nephew is finally available!
My oldest friend and amazing voice actor Heath Allyn has done an amazing job of bringing Garrett’s story to life. I’m still not sure how he made it through all of Norris’s dialogue with his voice intact, but, somehow, he managed it. I’m happy to finally get a chance to share with you all what Heath and I have been working on for the past several months. I hope you all enjoy the final product as much as I have. Please check it out over at the following links if you are interested in hearing a sample of the incredible work he’s done on the book!
Amazon/Audible
iTunes
September 11, 2014
Songreaver News!
Hello everyone! Sorry about the long delay on any news, but the manuscript for Book Four is finally finished and is now in the hands of my Beta Reader. I hope to have the e-book available as soon as the final edits are done, and I’m finished with the cover art.
I thought you might enjoy a glimpse of the rough layout for the cover. I’m sure I’ll probably tweak the sketch quite a bit before I start painting, but it’s always fun just to get something roughed out.
The Necromancer’s Nephew Audiobook
In other news, our audiobook production of “The Necromancer’s Nephew” is in its final stage of production. Thanks to the great voice actor, my old friend, Heath Allyn, Garrett’s world comes to life in an all new way. He’s done an amazing job of portraying these characters, and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you.
Thank you for your patience. This is an exciting time in the world of Rhaema!
July 25, 2014
The Nature of Cakes
I was dreaming last night, and in this dream, I noticed that I was hungry. Perhaps thinking of my son’s upcoming birthday party, my thoughts turned to cake. At that moment, an angel appeared in my dream, a huge bald man wearing a white chef’s jacket who walked through a nearby door, carrying an enormous sheet cake. The cake was eight inches thick and nearly a yard across. It was iced in a rainbow of colors and piped with decorative swirls along the edges.
“Time for cake!” the angel laughed. He produced a large carving knife and handed it to me. “Cut it up for us, will you?” he said.
I took the knife and started doing some mental calculations. I made light marks with the blade upon the icing in regular columns and rows, trying to divide the entire cake evenly before I made the final cuts.
“What are you doin’?” the angel asked me.
“I’m gonna cut the cake,” I said.
“That’s not how you cut a cake,” he laughed, “Lemme show you how it’s done.”
He took the knife from my hand and began to slice the cake with large, bold strokes at odd angles, leaving the cake divided into pieces of widely varying sizes.
I stared at him incredulously. “Why’d you do that?” I demanded.
The angel pointed toward the people standing in line, waiting to receive their portion of cake. The first in line was a small, grinning child.
“Look at this child here,” the angel said, “You think this little bitty baby is gonna eat a big ol’ piece o’ cake? No! Give that child a little piece o’ cake!”
The toddler scampered off with a little plate, holding a little piece of cake, just the right size for him.
“Now this boy,” the angel said, clapping a broad-shouldered young man on the back, “This boy plays football! Give this boy a big piece o’ cake!”
So saying, the angel scooped up one of the large, irregularly-shaped pieces from the middle and dropped it on a dinner plate before passing it with a fork to the hungry young man.
Together, we served the rest of the people in line, before he and I enjoyed the two slices that we had set aside for ourselves. It was a very good cake. I finished my piece and looked sadly at the empty, crumb-strewn table. We hadn’t saved any for later.
The angel saw my downturned expression and grinned at me. He brushed the crumbs from the tablecloth and winked at me as he walked back into the other room.
“You know what time it is?” he asked as he came through the door again, carrying a giant, three-tiered cake, “It’s cake time!”
I grinned back at him and showed him what I’d learned about cutting a cake.
April 7, 2014
My Advice to a Young Writer
I was recently contacted by a young writer, asking me for some advice about pursuing a career in writing. I am honored that someone would consider me a role model, and I am posting my response here, in the hopes that others might find it useful as well.
Thank you very much for writing to me, and I’m glad that you are enjoying the Songreaver’s Tale. It means a great deal to me that I have inspired you in some small way to write, and I hope that you will continue to hone your craft and someday inspire others as well.
I will try to answer your questions as best I am able, beginning with the shortest answers first. You asked when I would be done with the next book in my series, and the answer is, I wish I knew. I am using a technique called “Discovery Writing” for the Songreaver’s Tale, which, if you unfamiliar with it, means that the characters drive the story. I work from a very rough outline of where I want the story to go, but, when placed in the scenes, sometimes the characters behave in ways that I did not expect them to behave. If, for example, it doesn’t make sense for Garrett to know how to put on a complicated article of clothing that he needs to wear to an event, the question arises how will he do it? Then the answer presents itself that he needs help. Who then is on hand who may, unexpectedly, know how to properly wrap a Satyr’s headdress, and what does this reveal about that character’s backstory? It’s a fun way to write, and it makes for better, more unpredictable, stories. The drawback is, of course, that you are then at the mercy of your characters to some extent. So, I suppose that I hope to have the first draft of the fourth book finished sometime this summer, but that’s really up to the characters.
As a side note, I wouldn’t recommend Discovery Writing for any school projects with tight deadlines. You should probably just stick to the outline for those.
You also asked about good publishers to contact, and I am afraid that I can’t be much help to you there. My own writing career has been something of an experiment so far. I am self-published, and my books exist only in e-book format. The truth of the marketplace, in my experience, is that publishers have only a limited number of print runs that they can afford to gamble on each year, and, to stay in business, they have no choice but to make safe bets on what they think they can sell. Even a very good story may languish for years, trying to find a publisher that can take a chance on it, and I never had that kind of patience, so I did it myself.
I’m not trying to dissuade you from contacting publishers once you have a book under your belt. I’m just warning you that you must approach it like a business, and never, ever take rejection personally. You still will, of course. We all do, unless we are sociopaths, and sociopaths make terrible writers.
As for how much authors usually make, the old answer was very little or very much. Fortunately, times are changing, and now it is possible to make a comfortable living as a writer, even without becoming a phenomenal, Rowling-sized, success. This leads me to your question about what courses to take and the career path that you should follow as you build yourself as a writer.
In my experience, getting a job doing something you love, for somebody else, is simultaneously a blessing and a curse, particularly if you are in a creative field. When you go to work every day, using your talents as a creative person to do a job that you don’t feel passionate about, or worse, you have your passion twisted into some heartless corporate mold, it is very easy to become burned out. On the other hand, it is a good way to learn more about your craft as a business, especially what not to do. Thus, I would be very wary of suggesting that you become a copywriter or an editor, if writing is what you want to do for the rest of your life.
My advice instead, would be to pursue a symbiotic career path, something that will help you when you take the writing “full time” and pay the bills in the meantime, without crushing your creative soul in the process. Marketing and Publishing are great fields to learn your way around, if you eventually want to make a name for yourself. I don’t mean to sound mercenary, but you should not underestimate the value of a solid bankroll to smooth over the transition to full-time writing when the time comes. Or do something completely unrelated, but fulfilling, a job that doesn’t take up all of your free time or leave you too exhausted to slip away into your own worlds when you sit down to write.
Speaking of which… Ergonomics… very important. I spent eight years hunched over a desk in an office, and my back has never forgiven me for it. I’m typing this right now at the standing desk I cobbled together in the back room, because sitting at a desk for more than three hours in a row earns me a trip to the chiropractor these days. Trust me on this. Your back and neck won’t be young forever, and I really wish that I had listened to the old guys that gave me the same advice, back in the day. At least I dodged the Carpal Tunnel bullet. My programmer friend wasn’t so lucky… ouch. Take care of yourself and make sure that you get enough exercise. Walking is my favorite. I work out a lot of story problems while walking. I know it seems silly now, but you’re a writer. You’re in it for the long haul, so stay healthy.
As for courses that you should take, English, lots of English. History is good too. You’ll need enough Math to handle money and such, but don’t waste your time on Calculus. Science is great for expanding your mind, just don’t bite off more than you can chew and blow your GPA. Remember, your education, your writing, your life, it’s all a business. I know that can be hard to hear, but you have to be a little cold-blooded in order to protect the thing that you really care about… that time you spend alone with your muse, bringing something amazing and new into the world.
Get the best Liberal Arts education you can squeeze in, but be very wary of graduating with a Liberal Arts degree. Be especially wary of “Art School” degrees these days. I have one. The debt almost killed me, and I know plenty of art school graduates who are currently languishing under mountains of student loans. People with Liberal Arts degrees are underpaid everywhere they go, because the people with the money really have no concept of what we do and have a hard time spending it on “something my kid could do”. I lost track of how many times I saw Marketing Directors get themselves into trouble because they thought they could write and edit their own copy.
When you are shopping for a college, admissions counselors will make a lot of promises to get you to take those loans, but you’ll never see those people again after you graduate, and the debt will still be with you for a very long time. Don’t pay for a college degree you don’t really care about, and never pay for a degree that won’t pay for itself after graduation. (And, no, you can’t trust the admissions counselor’s word on that) Do your research, and get the education you need to protect and nurture your dreams.
The best thing you can do starting out, is to work out a viable career path that gets you to where you want to go. Keep in mind that, in life, plans never seem to work out, but goals do, and the plan is like a path of stepping stones to get you there. You may find that you need to jump to a different stone than you had intended, from time to time, but, as long as you keep your eyes on your ultimate goal, you’ll get there. Planning ahead also makes parents feel a bit less terrified for your future when you have it all laid out with solid numbers to support your decisions. Show everyone that you know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there, even if, secretly, you have no idea what you are doing. The old “Fake it ‘till you make it” saying does have some merit. Also, it’s a lot easier to talk your way out of having to take Calculus, if you can convince people that you’d be better off with a semester of Web Design or Business courses.
Learn to use the Internet to your advantage, and start building a solid online presence. I wish that I were better at this myself. You will exist, for others, as your online presence, and you should work to establish your “brand identity” online. Be someone that people want to have as a friend, or at least appear that way. Be nice to people, and don’t complain about your life constantly, at least not online. You need to seem a little bigger than life, like you are slightly above it all, but not arrogant.
As for personal development, READ. Read a lot, especially the kinds of things you don’t normally read. If you read Science Fiction and Fantasy all the time, try picking up a detective novel, or a history book. I’m not talking about a History textbook, but rather a more modern narrative about historical events. Try wandering randomly around the library or the bookstore, if you don’t already. Get back into the shelves that you’ve never visited before, and just start pulling out books that catch your eye. Your personal reading time is where you don’t have to obey the rules. You don’t have to have a plan, just open a book and start reading. If the book has something to say to you, it will draw you in. If not, put it back and move on to the next one.
You have to “fill the tank” to have fuel to write with. At the very least, even a bad book may spur you to say, “I can do better than that!”
Pick up some books on writing style. Pay attention to modern writing as well. What we learn in school gives us a solid foundation to build upon, especially Grammar, but we need to know when to break those rules and how to do it because we know exactly what effect we are trying to achieve by doing so, not just because we think it makes us seem edgier. When in doubt, err on the side of clarity. If you don’t know if your reader will understand what you meant by something you wrote, chances are they won’t.
Eventually, you’re going to have to publish. When you’re ready to step out into the arena and let your writing take its hits, you’re going to have to thicken up your skin a bit. Make friends with someone who likes to tear apart bad movies and books and doesn’t mind shredding into your work. This part is going to hurt a little, but it is necessary. You have to have a good Beta Reader to tell you when your characters are being stupid, or that you forgot that the King of Bardlandia already smashed the Orb of Fiery Doom back in Chapter 7 of the second book, so why is he still carrying around the Orb Case? You can’t let this stuff get past you. Once your work hits the Internet, every crack in your armor is going to be magnified a thousand times, so make sure they are small cracks to begin with.
You’ll need to find a good editor too, I mean after yourself, because you are your own first line of defense. Keep in mind though, that, no matter how many times you’ve read and re-read your work, you will never see all the mistakes, because your brain will insist on seeing it the way that it intended to write it, and not how your fingers managed to bang it out on the keyboard. Let someone else proofread for typos and grammar problems, because you and your Beta Reader are probably going to be too caught up in the story to catch all the little things.
Oh, and once you do publish, you will get negative reviews. Don’t respond to them. Don’t ever try to explain yourself or justify a mistake. If it is a mistake, fix it and move on. If someone just hates unicorns and wants you to “die in a fire”, they are trolls, and you should never feed the trolls. The really painful ones are when someone you respect says something negative about your work, and, in that case, the only thing you can do, and I mean the only thing, is to thank them for helping you improve your craft and silently vow to make them eat their words by doing so much better in the future. When you decide to take up the mantle of a writer, you can’t expect to be treated fairly ever again. People will say cruel things and behave quite monstrously toward you at times, because you had the audacity to stand up in front of everyone and say, “I have a story to tell.”
It is a great honor to be a storyteller. The world needs more of us. We do something wonderful and truly magical. We create. We bring new things into the world, things that have never existed before, and make them real. It’s a big responsibility, and you are worthy of the task.
August 31, 2013
Songreaver Map
Along with the latest book, I finally got around to transferring all my sketchy notes into something resembling a map!
Behold the glory of Western Rhaema, the scene of so many of Garrett’s adventures in the Songreaver’s Tale.
On a side note, scaling an image down until it will actually fit into an eBook file, and keeping it legible in the process, was an adventure unto itself.
I hope you like it!
Songreaver
Book Three of the Songreaver’s Tale is out! This one is called “Songreaver” and finally explains what exactly that is!
Here we have a lovely scene of Garrett and Ghausse, out for a ride.
“On the road home from a hard-won victory against the armies of the Chadiri dragon lord, the young sorcerer Garrett encounters an insidious new threat, unlike any he’s faced before. With the help of his friends, a ghoul, a vampire, and a girl who doesn’t exist, he must find the secret of an ancient magic that slumbers far beneath the tomb city of the death goddess.”
I’m very pleased with the direction the story has taken in book three, and I hope you will enjoy it as well!
The book is available now in your favorite eBook format:
iBooks (Coming Soon)
