Adam Heine's Blog, page 13

First Impact: THE ANKULEN by Kendra E. Ardnek

It's been a while, but we have another First Impact Critique,
where we take a look at your queries, first pages, back cover copy, and
more. You want to make an impact right from the start. We're here to
help you do that.



If you'd like to submit your first impact material, send it to firstimpactAE@gmail.com. Details here.








This week we have the back cover copy for a fantasy by Kendra Ardnek (I see what you did there) called THE ANKULEN. My overall thoughts are at the end. As always,...

Dead Boys, Invisible Girls, and Teens That Can't Read Minds

I apologize for the blog silence. I'm deep in the drafting tunnels of a certain science fantasy novella and/or role-playing game. I'll resurface once I get this novella worked out. Until then, please see the last part of the official blog schedule.



But I'm sending this missive via miner's canary* because there are three very important books I need to tell you about. All of them are cool, written by exceedingly cool people, and I think I'm in the acknowledgements of two of them (which ones? Y...

On Objectivity

First Impact: HARD TRUTHS by Anonymous

It's time for another First Impact Critique,
where we take a look at your queries, first pages, back cover copy, and
more. You want to make an impact right from the start. We're here to
help you do that.



If you'd like to submit your first impact material, send it to firstimpactAE@gmail.com. Details here.






This week we have a query for an upper middle-grade fantasy called HARD TRUTHS. My overall thoughts are at the end. As always, this is just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.



Query...

Three Kickstarters I Would Throw All My Money At

1. A successor to Crusader: No Remorse. This game destroyed an entire quarter of my second year in college. Oh, man, but it was a good quarter.



You play an elite super-soldier, trained by a dystopian government that you spend the entire game betraying and fighting against. Technically, it's an action game, but it's a smart action game. You have to decide which weapons you will bring with you on each mission (of those you can afford). You can either sneak through missions or blast your...

First Impact: THE FIRE LOTUS (First Page) by Renee Ahdieh

It's time for another First Impact Critique, where we take a look at your queries, first pages, back cover copy, and more. You want to make an impact right from the start. We're here to help you do that.



If you'd like to submit your first impact material, send it to firstimpactAE@gmail.com. Details here.






This week we have the first page for THE FIRE LOTUS, the YA urban fantasy from Renee Ahdieh, whose query we critiqued last week. My overall thoughts are at the end. As always, this...

First Impact: THE FIRE LOTUS by Renee Ahdieh

It's time for another First Impact Critique, where we take a look at your queries, first pages, back cover copy, and more. You want to make an impact right from the start. We're here to help you do that.

If you'd like to submit your first impact material, send it to firstimpactAE@gmail.com. Details here. 




This week we have the query for THE FIRE LOTUS, a YA urban fantasy from Renee Ahdieh. You might remember we did the back cover copy of this book last year.

My ov...

7 More Things You Never Wanted to Know

A follow-up to this post.



8)

Cardboard people freak me out.



9)

Most days, I sit down at the piano to plunk out the Pirates of the Caribbean theme. Also, I cannot pull out my guitar without playing "The Ballad of Serenity" at least once.



10)

When I count things slowly, I always end up saying "two-WHOOO" like that owl from the Tootsie Roll commercial.



11)

In 6th grade, I spent an entire church service drawing the map of Bowser's Castle from Super Mario Bros 3.





12)

I have seen every singl...

First Impact Update

First, the randomly chosen winner from among March's critiquers is . . . . . KayC! Please e-mail me to let me know whether you'd like the 20-page critique from me or the $10 gift certificate from Amazon or B&N.



Second, as you may have noticed, there have been no First Impact posts for a while. This is not due to my over-busyness, but rather due to the fact that we have run out of First Impact submissions.



Honestly, no submissions is okay with me (see the aforementioned over-busyness), t...

Final Torment Info

So the Torment Kickstarter is in the last week of its campaign. We've raised over $3.25M, but we hope to raise even more to make this game bigger and better, to make a game that truly lives up to the Torment tradition.



So this is the last you'll hear me plug it, but I wanted to bring to your attention a couple of things, including one bit of news that hasn't made it to the Kickstarter page.



Bit #1: Pat Rothfuss is on our writing team. I know, right? MIND. BLOWN. It might even be part of my...