David T. Allen's Blog

The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley

What does political intrigue, brutal murder, and a bully all have in common? As you might expect, they all play heavily in The Emperor’s Blades. Aside from that, they’re all elements of fiction that I generally dislike. And yet I liked The Emperor’s Blades. Not despite these elements, but rather, for the most part, because of them.

 

 

What I Liked

The World: I’ll admit that during the first 50 pages or so, I found the exposition a touch tedious. At some point, though, the world almost began...

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Despite being a relatively new book, I might be one of the last fantasy nerds to read The Name of the Wind. I’ve heard plenty of hype, but also enough grousing that I went into the book with roughly no expectations.

 

 

Which was an asset. I suspect those who rated it poorly got sucked into the hype and were disappointed when they didn’t feel like the book lived up to those expectations.

Either way, I’m glad I read it. There was a lot to like, but it’s exactly because I liked it that I feel...

My Writing Table

When I first graduated from college, I wanted a huge desk. More like a table, really; I didn’t need drawers or anything like that, just a long, but narrow, workspace. I priced them, even at IKEA, and walked away shaking my head. Way too rich for my blood.

As a poor recent grad in need of most things in life, I kept a close watch on the free listings on Craigslist. One day, a solid wood door was listed. I loaded it into my tiny Chevy Cavalier and hauled it home.

Using a stack of old encyclope...

Academy Pittsburgh Review

A little over four months ago I started developer boot camp at Academy Pittsburgh. Dave took my first day of school photo and I hopped in the car and drove to Allentown an hour earlier than necessary, a list of worries as long as my arm swirling in my head. What if the cost—free—belied that there was something wrong with the program? What if I didn’t like my classmates, or worse, what if they didn’t like me? What if my tangential history with programming wasn’t enough, and the course sped alo...

Sprint 20: Our First Sprint Blowup

July was swelteringly hot and chaotic, and not at all what we originally expected. We had to do a serious pivot in order to re-focus on what was most important. Two milestones we set at the beginning of the year also came into question.

Last Sprint

We had planned to work on our second book in the Bitlather Chronicles series in July, but changed our minds the first week after we received an agent rejection. It made us rethink a few of our choices.

This caused a sprint blowup. Instead of leavin...

Japan Day 7: “Don’t Stare at the Monkeys in the Eye”

It was hard to believe we had another week in Kyoto, but there was still a lot to do. In this article, I cover a monthly handcraft market held on temple grounds, shrines nestled in the bamboo grove of Arashiyama, boats and rickshaws along the Hozu-gawa River, and a mountain park crawling with monkeys.

We breakfasted on the warabimochi purchased the prior day at Nishiki Market.

The matcha powder was a welcome pick-me-up. After watching me lick it off my finger, Leslie said, “Rub it o...

5 More #PitMad YA Favorites

Last week, I wrote about five of my favorite #PitMad pitches. In this article, I give a little more info on what PitMad is and list five more equally great pitches that employ different techniques.

What is #PitMad?

PitMad is a Twitter competition where agents, editors, and publishers can favorite pitches that strikes their fancy. A favorite equates to a request for submission, which usually entails a query, synopsis, and first so many pages of your (completed) manuscript. They typically happe...

5 Of My Favorite #PitMad YA Novel Pitches

Usually, after I wake up, I feed the doggies, let them out, pat them on the head, and get straight to freelance work. After just telling Leslie last week about how we need to get back to querying, I thought the #PitMad competition would be a good warm-up. I like the competition approach, because I prefer to submit to agents that have shown an iota of interest in our work more than cold querying.

My Submissions

Our previous #PitMad entries were a result of hours of work. Distilling the start o...

The “Free” Series: Free Books

You might think people are more likely to give positive reviews to a free book, but I don’t think that’s true. In fact, it can be hard to get any reviews, at all. After a few months of publication and thousands of downloads, less than ten people reviewed Steampunk Fairy Tales on Amazon.

Even though people are getting something for free, they’re still spending time reading it. If people aren’t entertained, then a free price tag won’t make them love it.

Most downloads won’t even result in a...

Sprint 18: Trying To Hit Our Stride

May turned out exactly as we expected: I focused on freelance work, Leslie studied hard, we made some progress in Bitlather Chronicles #2, and we planned our next story for Steampunk Fairy Tales.

Last Sprint

I’m leading the Steampunk Fairy Tales group this time, and we just finished two deadlines: inviting more authors, and getting everyone to confirm commitment. I’m please to say four new authors have joined us, and we expect the next collection to contain eleven stories!

In terms of writing...