T.D. Shoemaker's Blog, page 2
May 1, 2018
Goals: May 2018
The Seventh Symphony revision/The Sixth Key planning
I’m giving myself a check for this, even though I didn’t get it fully completed. I did work on it every single day this month, but it was a big job that probably couldn’t be completed in a single month. The Seventh Symphony was my NANOWRIMO book for 2017, and like many NANO drafts, it was a mess when I finally opened it to see what I had created last November. At any rate, I’m working through the big developmental revisions and the continuity issues with The Eighth Octave, and hope to complete the revision sometime in May. I didn’t get to do much planning for The Sixth Key, but I did jot down a few notes as I read The Seventh Symphony. I know my two leads for the book, at any rate.
Blog Post: A River Running-themed post.
Check! I made a fun cast list blog post with pictures showing how I imagine each of the main characters in River Running. Have a look at it here and let me know if my images match the ones in your head as you read the book.
Book review:The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman.
Check! This was probably my favorite book that I’ve reviewed so far in my book review feature. You can read the review here.
Other promo projects:
Oh dear. I get a big empty box for this one. What with starting a new job, entertaining a new puppy, and scrambling to finish a variety of projects, once again I neglected promotion. Next month I have a plan; I’m giving myself one specific promotional task to complete.
My goals for May are:
1) Finish The Seventh Symphony revision: In April I completed my preliminary read-through to get my bearings and see what needed to be done. Now it is time to actually do the revisions and the big chunks of rewriting to get this book into shape.
2) Plan/outline The Sixth Key, the third book in the Solmari Suite: I have a list of ideas and notes already begun from my read-through of TSS last month. I will add to this as I do revisions, and come up with a rough plot outline this month. I have a general idea of my villain and the overall conflict of the book, but I need to fill in some important details.
3) Book review: Firelight by Kristen Callihan: The book is read, I just need to write the review!
4) Blog post on a mystery topic: I’m sure the suspense of what I will write is killing you.
5) River Running Giveaway with Booksweeps, plus my first newsletter! This is my specific promotional task that I will focus on in May.
April 22, 2018
River Running Cast
I thought it would be fun to make a cast list (with pictures!) of the main characters in River Running, for your enjoyment. If you’ve read the book, here’s your chance to see if how you pictured the characters matches up with how I pictured the characters. If you haven’t read the book, take a gander at these characters, and maybe you’ll be enticed into reading their stories.
[image error]Jackson Coal
Tortured veteran of the War of the Rebellion and master of Coalhaven, the largest indigo plantation in Arcana. Jackson’s childhood and experience in the war have embittered him, and few can reach through the hardened shell he presents to the rest of the world. A man of intense characteristics, one line from his mother long ago describes him well: But you’re a free spirit, aren’t you, Jack? A wildfire on the mountains.
Distinguishing characteristics (that didn’t make the picture): a v-scar under one eye, a missing pinky finger on his left hand, courtesy of the war.
[image error]Manda Rivers
Orphaned and abandoned by a cruel step-father at an institution, Manda Rivers still tries to do her best and help others. When a new position opens at Coalhaven Plantation to care for a mysterious and possibly illegal halfmage child, she applies. As a water halfmage herself, Manda understands the dangers halfmages face in a society that shuns them. Manda isn’t afraid to use her water magic, but she doesn’t yet realize how powerful she really is.
Distinguishing characteristics: Dark curls, olive skin, startling blue eyes.
[image error]Grey Lake
Jackson’s ward and Manda’s charge, Grey is seven years old and has spent his life untrained as a water halfmage. His power is great but his control is poor. His mother died long ago, and his father, Jackson’s best friend, died in a secret mission during the war. Can Grey find a place in the new family forming at Coalhaven?
Distinguishing characteristics: brown hair, grey-blue eyes, a mischievious personality
[image error]Alexander Stone
Coalhaven’s mysterious butler, Alexander Stone, has secrets from his past that he will not reveal. Kind and fastidious, Stone is an earthmage with considerable power. Raised among his Nanukata tribe, his facility with magic extends beyond the bounds of Arcanan powers. He allies himself with Jackson in the fight against the fullmage bigots who threaten Coalhaven.
Distinguishing characteristics: dark-honey skin, kind brown eyes, and an unreadable face
[image error]Leah Blazen
Manda’s rival and Jackson’s fiancee, Leah Blazen is a firemage from an old fullmage family whose plantation was attacked by its mundane workers during the war for reasons unknown. Leah has an uncanny power leashed inside the artful firehearts she makes, and her ambitions extend to Coalhaven.
Distinguishing characteristics: strawberry blonde hair, cat-like green eyes, petite and precise form, Leah’s mask-like face gives nothing away.
[image error]Wilcott Blazen
Wilcott is Leah’s father, the head of the Blazen family, a fire fullmage, and a member of the Indigo Wells Purchase Bureau. He knows about the mysterious spellwork known as magemarks that tortures Jackson, but he is reluctant to share his knowledge without something in return.
Distinguishing characteristics: A shorter, rounder man with apple-y cheeks.
[image error]Elijah (Lige) Lake
Elijah, a water fullmage, was Grey’s father and Jackson’s best friend. He was killed in a secret mission at the end of the war.
Distinguishing characteristics: Tall, with brown hair and brilliant blue eyes.
[image error]Daniel Lake
Daniel is Elijah’s father, a water fullmage with a long history of advocating for fullmage blood purity. He hates halfmages and their uncontrollable powers, and is one of the leaders in their legal and vigilante persecution. A member of the Indigo Wells Purchase Bureau and one of the most powerful men in Arcana, he would do anything to capture his illegal grandson and strip Jackson Coal, the Leveler rebel, of his property of Coalhaven, which produces so much magical grade indigo.
Distinguishing characteristics: tall and sinewy, with greying brown hair and blue-grey eyes
[image error]Rose Westerly
An airmage from the Akwa Islands, Rose is the cook at Coalhaven, and Manda’s first friend there. Rose is good-natured and friendly, and teaches Grey about the way the Akwa Islanders use magical grade indigo in their magic karpeti.
Distinguishing characteristics: dark curls and skin, with a splash of freckles across her nose
April 15, 2018
Book Review: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman
[image error]Review: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman
Book Genre: YA Historical Fantasy Romance
Romance Heat Level: Bell Pepper (clean romance, kissing only)
The Dark Days Club is a fantastic fantasy (see what I did there?) set in Regency-era London. A myriad of social foibles a la Jane Austen mix with a magical and unseen world in which spirit beings hide inside humans a la Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series.
I am bowled over (in the best possible way) by Alison Goodman’s seamless writing. First of all, she’s a top-notch story-teller without distracting little quirks that often crop up in even popular works (don’t get me started on the often-hissing vampires in Meyer’s Twilight saga). I was impressed by the ease with which she wove in a boatload of research. Regency dances weren’t just named, they were choreographed and danced in vivid detail. Parts of London hitherto only read about, I saw in vivid and living three-dimensional color as though Ms. Goodman had visited these places and then brought me along with her and pointed out everything. Historical details sparkled in scintillating accuracy. I know this type of stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but having written historical fantasy myself, I am simply in awe of Ms. Goodman’s knowledge and skill at weaving it into story.
[image error]As you might know from previous posts, I am always on the lookout for romance-well-constructed. I suppose I’ve read too many books where the romance reads as a formulaic ritual: boy meets girl, boy and girl go through three to five building-romance scenes, boy and girl seem good to go, boy or girl does something atrocious and there’s a moment of doubt, and then ah, love, twu love.
While a good romance can certainly use a formula like this in its construction, it goes a step further, I think, to double down on chemistry and connection between the two leads. Goodman’s protagonists could flood a lab with their underlying intense glances and their word games. WORD GAMES. You guys, there is not much better in a romance than a conversation that meets multiple levels of expectation in a reader’s mind. Goodman does not disappoint here.
I will admit to something: it took me a bit to get into this book. I had just come off the high of reading An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (did you read my review on it?), which was packed with action, angst, romance, fantasy, and more, and I had a tough time changing gears to the more sedate London scene of 1812.
That said, once Lady Helen met Lord Carlston, electricity ignited in those pages, and I read the rest of the book in one sitting, going the next day to the library, and checking out the sequel. At that point, I didn’t know that Book 3 of the series (The Dark Days Deceit) has yet to release in NOVEMBER OF 2018 (*sobs*), and I have since considered everything from traveling to Australia and personally knocking on Alison Goodman’s door, begging for an advanced copy of the book, to hounding her editors to see if they’ll give me an early copy.
[image error]Ms. Goodman, if you see a harried-looking American holding copies of your first two books and staring wild-eyed at you in line at a book-signing, be not alarmed. I just got really into your story. It’s all good.
Unless the ending isn’t happily-ever-after. And then there will be tears, and howling, and general misery. Please don’t do that to me.
Excellent book. Excellent, excellent. All five stars, and more if I had them.
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March 31, 2018
Goals: April 2018
My March goals were:
Release River Running into the Wild!
This goal I can unreservedly give a big, happy CHECK. Release day on March 6th came off well, with a bunch of giveaways and winners. I had a great time interacting with people on Facebook and I hope some folks bought River Running. If you haven’t bought it, you still can, right here. When you’ve read it, warm an author’s heart and leave a review!
Book Review: These Vicious Masks, by Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas
CHECK! If you’d like to read the review, head over here.
Finish final edits on The Eighth Octave and send it out to beta readers.
Look at that, another CHECK– maybe I’m not struggling as much as I thought! I’ve received some feedback already, but still waiting for more before I head into another revision.
Submit River Running to some book bloggers in hopes of pushing publicity and finding its market niche.
Hmmm. This would be a big, fat, zero. I didn’t even consider this or research it. Oops.
Let’s try researching contests again. It’s a good idea; I just need to get it done.
Hmmm. Hmmm. Yeah. Apparently this isn’t something I like to do. Eclairs may be required as a motivational tool.
My goals for April are:
1) The Seventh Symphony revision/The Sixth Key planning: I’m planning to read my rough, rough draft of The Seventh Symphony for the very first time. I’m hoping my latest read-through of The Eighth Octave is fresh enough in my mind to help me work through the continuity issues that are sure to crop up. Then, I hope to make a rough outline for Book Three in the Solmari Suite– The Sixth Key.
2) Blog Post: A River Running-themed post. Admit it; you’re tantalized.
3) Book review: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman. Look for this post around the middle of the month.
4) Other promo projects: Video, book trailer, giveaways, contests. I have a whole bunch of ideas for promotional projects swimming around in my head, it’s just hard to find the time to manifest them. The hardest part of being a writer for me is this task of marketing. I don’t enjoy it, and I’d rather spend my limited time on other activities, so generally, I do. I’m not sure what it will take to push me over the marketing roadblock. Eclairs may be the best starting point.
March 19, 2018
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (about Fantasy)
I know quite a few people, and a significant percentage of those people would say they like to read. Far fewer would say they like to read the fantasy genre, unless they happen to be under age 25. As a fantasy fan who is–ahem–somewhat older than 25, I thought I’d give you a list of reasons why fantasy still appeals to me.
[image error]Entering new worlds through books.
1.) Imagination, Imagination, Imagination: More than any other genre, fantasy lets authors and readers explore new and different possibilities in their fiction. There is freedom in fantasy, freedom to present your ideas in diverse ways. Fantasy is the most open genre, a broad, blank palette for the imagination to roam free.
Consider J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle Earth. The enormity of this world that he built from nothing is mind-boggling. He inserted a creation story (The Silmarillion), before inventing an entire, workable, conjugatable language (Elvish), as well as producing a massive, epic war between Big Good and Big Evil, in which (spoiler) Big Good eventually prevails, but not without the bittersweet tang of loss and hard struggle. There’s a reason why Tolkien’s work is a classic fantasy and stands in the annals of highly respected fantasy works. Though there are a multitude of fantasies that have followed Tolkien, many with provocative, imaginative worlds that are just as epic and enveloping (Martin’s Westeros, Rowling’s Hogwarts, even Collins’s 13 Districts as examples), Tolkien set an enormous precedent.
[image error]Heading to Hogwarts?
2.) Learning: Fantasy is often somewhat demanding reading, in the sense that you have to learn and integrate information about a whole new world and how it works. You have to focus and pick up on little details, logging new information into your memory. I suspect that this labor is one reason some readers dislike fantasy. They feel like they are “wasting time” learning something “useless” that has nothing to do with “the real world.”
Hey, I’d argue that putting your brain through its paces to learn something new is always beneficial, on many levels. Reading fantasy helps you with abstract thinking, with making connections between the specific and the general, and with understanding a bigger picture in the structure of the world. Fantasy worlds are coherent, and often have a lot to say about how our “real world” and human nature work.
I did not grow up reading Harry Potter, but I caught up quickly in college when a friend recommended it to me. I devoured those books, reading each one (all 900 pages in some) in a day. I remember reading this portion of The Chamber of Secrets:
“Good, aren’t they?” said Malfoy smoothly. “But perhaps the Gryffindor team will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms, too. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives; I expect a museum would bid for them.”
The Slytherin team howled with laughter.
“At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in,” said Hermione sharply. “They got in on pure talent.”
The smug look on Malfoy’s face flickered.
“No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood,” he spat.
Harry knew at once that Malfoy had something really bad because there was an instant uproar at his words. Flint had to dive in front of Malfoy to stop Fred and George jumping on him.
Bullying is a problem as old as Cain and Abel, but in our mad, mad world of horrific headlines every few days and social media rants, it seems that we as a society have highlighted its effects (and well we should). Rowling is only one author among many who take their pen onto a platform and use it tie parallels between current events and fantasy worlds. While “Mudblood” was (originally) a made-up term, meant in Harry Potter’s magic made-up world to be a foul, offensive term, there are plenty of words we could insert into these sentences that would place us right back in this “real” world, and the connection hits home.
Do you get angry when you read novels? How about happy? Sappy (*raises hand*)? Sad? That’s the connection that authors strive to make with readers, and it can happen even in fantasy, “worlds-different” though it may be. 
