Adam Heine's Blog, page 27

Books I Read: The Alloy of Law

Title: The Alloy of Law

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Genre: Steampunk Fantasy

Published: 2011

Content Rating: R for action violence



Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, the world has been reborn and is in the midst of an industrial revolution, with trains and guns, skyscrapers and electricity -- and outlaws and the lawmen who bring them to justice.



Wax Ladrian is one such lawman, retired after his last job ended in the death of the girl he loved. He's just getting us...

Differences Between Querying and Submissions

You may or may not know by now that Air Pirates is out there on submission. Meaning honest to God editors are reading it. Submitting to editors this way is very similar to querying, but there are some differences I've noticed.



Disclaimer: This is based on my limited submissions experience so far. Your mileage may vary.



DIFFERENCE #1: Responses. I get them.

For better or worse, "no response means no" seems to be more and more common among agents. But on submissions, so far I get answers. Eve...

In Which I (Yet Again) Discover Why I Don't Self-Publish

[Some of the links below go to TV Tropes. You have been warned.]



These days, there is no end of people who say, "Why are you still putting yourself through the misery of traditional publishing?" Some folks say it nicer. Some are meaner and use words like "broken," "obsolete," and "dinosaur". I've talked about my reasons before, but I've come to realize that the thing behind it all is an illogical personality quirk.



I am trying to get the best ending.



Before I go on, understand that I don'...

The Secret to World Building

"Part of the attraction of the Lord of the Rings is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."



                               -- J. R. R. Tolkien, Godfather of World Bu...

A Lesson on Color

Okay, I know I said we weren't supposed to hate on the haters about the whole Rue and racism thing. And I don't intend to hate, but there was one tweet in particular that, two months later, still nags at me:







So I guess "dark brown skin" is not the same as "all the way black." I'm not entirely certain what color palette they were using, but in the interest of teaching instead of hating, I'm going to give a color lesson.*



Presented here are people with varying skin color. For each image, I...

A Common Query Problem (also Kung Fu Panda)

Disclaimer: The only query slush I read is on the internet, but there's a lot out here, and I read most of it. So don't knock it.



THE PROBLEM

Every query letter is different, but I've seen a lot lately with the same problems. It looks kinda like this:



Paragraph 1: Hook.

Paragraph 2: Innocent World.

Paragraph 3: Inciting Incident (often repeating the Hook).

All his life, Po wishes he could be a kung fu master, but he gets more than he bargained for when he's mistakenly named the legendary D...

Who's Your Favorite Villain?

I am a huge fan of sympathetic and redemptive villains. So my favorite villain of all time is . . .






FIRE PRINCE ZUKO


Honestly, he had me at Agni-Kai.



Runner-up villains include:


Darth Vader
The Operative
Lord Ruler 
And climbing the charts for me is Jaime Lannister, but it remains to be seen how sympathetic he will become (before George Martin kills him).



So who's your favorite villain?

Uncle Iroh on Revision

When I talked about why I don't hate synopses, some of you were disappointed. I talked about how I got myself to actually write one, but you wanted to know how to write one well, to which my completely useless solution was "Make it sound good."



It's good advice, but not very practical. Drafting is (for me) the hardest part of writing, but revision is where real novels are made. It's something you have to be good at to make it in this business. Unfortunately, it's not something I can give an...

Getting better at something is a very, very, slowly, gradually, very, very slow thing

And that's all I have to say about that.







(Totally unrelated, my agent sister Daisy Carter is having a Q&A with our agent on her blog. So if you've got any questions for Tricia Lawrence (and maybe want to win a free book), head on over there!)

Why Should You Get an Agent?

(Remixed from a post over two years ago, when self-publishing wasn't quite the thing it is now. I'm still of the opinion that agents are a Very Good Thing. Opinions on self-publishing can be found here.)



When I first started querying, I didn't know if I should query agents or editors. I
was only vaguely aware of what agents did. Based on my experience with
real estate agents, I knew they handled the legal stuff and took a cut,
that was about it.

I wanted help with the legal stuff, and
preferr...