Keryl Raist's Blog, page 46

Character Interview: Six

I'd been looking forward to getting to know Six a bit better since I first saw the cover of her novel. It's gripping, to say the least. And honestly, I'm a little intimidated. An angel out of Hell come to earth to battle creatures that destroy human souls, I know when I'm out of my depth. But there's something about the eyes in that picture, something I wanted to get to know more about.

After a bit of footwork, I find myself in Atlanta, sitting in an apartment across a kitchen table from a shy-looking woman who is, actually, a bit on the ordinary side. Jeans, T-shirt, strong, attractive features, but there's nothing that shouts ANGEL about her. (I'd kind of been hoping for wings, but I guess they don't exactly blend. Apparently they are tucked away.)

Her voice is soft and eye contact fleeting as we get to know each other. But as she warms up and gets a little less self-concious through the interview, I see flashes of a brilliant lady getting the lay of the land in a new place.

KR: How did you meet your author?

S: I banged on the inside of her head until she agreed to write my story. At my nagging, she dropped another project to focus on me.

KR: Do you think your author is doing a good job of capturing who you are?

S: Absolutely. I'm not an easy person to get along with. I admit that I can be moody and bitter. My author doesn't seem to mind. She writes me just the way I am.

KR: What was your favorite scene in the book? Least favorite scene?

S: My favorite scene was when I visited a human bar. The bar owner had a beautiful, lopsided smile. He smelled like mint--fresh and earthy. I liked him.

My author has asked me not to discuss my least favorite scene. I wouldn't normally take commands from her, but she promised to let me stay out of Hell for a while if I agreed. She's on my bad side right now.

KR:  Are you hoping for a sequel?

S: I've already demanded a sequel. My author promised me that the next book will be longer. It's a bigger story and will take more pages to tell. I'll give you a hint: All those demons and monsters who escaped from Hell before me are tired of hiding. They're stronger and scarier than humans, and they won't be happy unless they're causing trouble.
KR: If you could change anything in the book, what would it be?

S: I'd make the big decisions faster. Going from Hell to Earth was a tough transition. In Hell, I learned to accept the bad stuff because that's all there was. I had a hard time breaking out of that pattern when I got to Earth. People got hurt as a result. I didn't want that.
KR: What's your favorite food?

S: Bacon! So crispy and greasy. I don't know what Heaven is like, but I bet there's bacon there.

KR: You and me both, Six. So, If they ever make a movie of your book, who is playing you? If there is ever an audiobook, who do you want to do your voice?
S: I don't know who would do my voice, but I'd like Megalyn Echikunwoke (
S: Look out for the sequel. I'll continue to find my role on Earth and discover who I want to be. And of course, I'll be fighting bad guys!We wrap our conversation, and I head back out into the Atlanta summer. I wonder briefly if part of the appeal of Atlanta to Six is the heat, does it feel somewhat familiar to her, but don't turn around to ask. 

Meet Constance

Constance Pruitt (Hellen Grace, Kate Chase, and many, many other names) is just a typical vampire. Except for the snark and hunting and eating other vamps. She agreed to do this interview because I promised her I'd write a story with a Vlad in it for her.

KR: So, thanks for the interview.

CP: No problem. You realize you're talking to yourself, right?

KR: I had noticed that. Though we do have different voices.

CP: True.

KR: Want to tell them all a little about Hunter's Tales?

CP: Hmmmm... Well, let's see... If I don't talk about it, what happens?

KR: I write a story where you have to go back to high school, and just sit through hour after hour of calculus.

CP: Hunter's Tales is a series of short stories about me. The one that's out now (and free on 5/25 and 5/26 here) is about my latest trip to high school.

KR: Aren't you over 350? What are you doing in high school?

CP: I like to hunt other vampires. We're a tasty breed. Prey animals are all twitchy and nervous, makes them sort of bitter. But vamps are top predators. They don't think anything is stalking them, so they're pretty relaxed, makes them taste better. Plus there's nothing more fun than hunting something that's as strong, as smart, and as fast as you are. On top of that turning the tables on something that thinks it's invulnerable adds an extra bit of fun to the hunt.

KR: It's been a while since I was in high school, but I don't remember it being a hot bed of vampiric activity. So, why high school?

CP: It wasn't back when you were there. But thanks to Joss, Stephanie, and the Vampire Diaries lady (I can never remember her name.) the teeny boppers are all Yay! Vampires! and trying to find an immortal love of the ages with their very own Cullen.

KR: I take it you don't approve.

CP: Just a tad. The Cullen wannabes... (Constance shudders.) I consider it an honor and a duty as a vamp to destroy any undead twit sprinkling himself with glitter so he'll sparkle properly.

Look, vamps aren't stupid, and a lot of them are pretty lazy. The easier food is to get, the better. So some of them have decided high school is a great place to find a compliant, steady feed. Someone who will provide them with a long term snack and adore them unconditionally. I like to go in, look like that girl, and then, when he's sure I'm ready to be let in on his "big secret" and made into a snack, I turn the tables on him.

It's fun.

KR: So you don't eat humans?

CP: Rarely. A vamp hunt may take long time, and I might get peckish, but for the most part these days I just eat vamps.


KR: So, you're what, a cross between Blade and Hannibal Lecter?

CP: You wrote me. Am I?

KR: Well, I'd say you're somewhere between Sherlock Holmes (the new version with Benedict Cumberbatch), Hannibal Lecter, and Dexter, with a Burn Notice sort of story structure.

CP: I can see that.

KR: Who's the guy on the cover? Is he a "Cullen?"

CP: Do you see any sparkles? Let's just say, he's what's makes this next high school interesting.

KR: Ahhh... Well, thanks for the interview. I think everyone has a bit of an idea of who you are.

CP: (Smirking) No problem. Out of curiosity, do you talk to yourself regularly?

KR: I'm an author. I talk to myself all the time.

CP: So this sort of thing isn't abnormal for you?

KR: Nope.

If you'd like to get to know Constance better, Hunter's Tales is available for free today on Amazon.

Indie Book Review: The Converted

A man with a dark past escapes to a new land hoping for a new life and atonement for past sins. Welcome to one of the great Western tropes. Many careers have been made on this basic plot, and I'm thinking C. R. Hindmarsh, author of The Converted, might be one of them as well.

Hindmarsh adds some new twists to the tale; it's not precisely a Western, in that it appears to be set in a fantasy world.  But it's a fantasy world with trains, guns, a mostly 1880s tech level, wilderness, Indians (Skia), and a powerful elite. There's even the local mayor who stands up to the rampaging savages, soldiers who don't really know what's going on where they are, and a stand off at a public hanging.

So, all in all, everything everyone loves about Westerns are in this book. If it takes place in New Alania instead of Wyoming, well, who really cares?

The twist, instead of a dark past of Civil War crimes (or heroics) our Dark Hero was a failed geneticist, whose experiments killed a slew of children.

It's a good twist. Everything other than the genetics looks pretty well set for the 1880s, but the rich and powerful have figured out how to vert (convert) genes and are walking around with different colors, different skin types (scales for example). It's not so much that the powerful have more money, they're practically a different species by the time this story gets going.

But of course, there's a dark secret involving the verts and the rich and powerful. And it's the job of the hero to get to the bottom of it and seek redemption along the way.

The cast of characters is wide enough to cover almost all of the basic Western roles. There was no whore with a heart of gold, but I think that was the only one who was missing.  They are competently drawn, interesting, and worth following.

This is a tidy and solid western. (Even if it looks a little different.)  If the drifter, one step ahead of the law, rides into town, finds things aren't the way they should be, grows a spine and a conscience, and then, with the aid of a few new friends, goes in and saves the day, overthrowing the corrupting influence is your idea of a good time, go read The Converted, you will enjoy it.

Story Teller's Art: The Cabin In The Woods

Okay, so it's not much of a secret that I think Joss Whedon is one of the greatest working story tellers.  Now, sure, he uses mainly visual media, but we novelists can still learn quite a bit from what he's doing.

Specifically, we can learn from The Cabin in the Woods, which is not just an absolutely brilliant bit of cinema, but it's also a really fine bit of storytelling. (Go see it if you haven't, and take notes.)

So, let's talk about the structure used in The Cabin in the Woods and why you should keep it in mind as you write.

It begins with the title sequence, and this is the equivalent of the preface in a novel. It's just a few images, but they are nicely symbolic of the main conflict and what is going to come.

Now, of course, as writers, we can't just whip up a few images and some evocative music and let that do the job for us. But we can produce a scene that, if it does it's job, not only gives us a bit of information that doesn't neatly fit into the rest of the storyline, but is also a good symbol for how the rest of the story goes.

Good authors are fine with the whole information-that-doesn't-quite-fit part. But in the hands of a great story teller that preface will symbolize the whole story (or mood of the story, or theme of the story, you get my drift) in one tight scene. The balancing act is doing it so you give a good allusion of what is coming, but not giving the whole thing away.

Next we move onto what would be chapter one in a story.

I've seen 'how to write' sites that say your first page/chapter should introduce your main character and lay out at least the foundations for your main conflict. (They especially say this of YA books.)

To this I say, "Bollocks!"  How many of us have read sad little books where page one is: "Hi, my name is Blah. I'm the main character. Here's what's going to happen." I've read it. I know you have. Resist this temptation. It's a writing class 101, novels for dummies, technique.

Your first bit should introduce an important character, place, or theme. (And yes, this may indeed be the main character, but it doesn't have to be.) It has to be interesting. And it should set the tone. That's it. We do not need a massive plot dump on page one. We don't need the first paragraph to be a description of the Hero or main setting.

Cabin starts with a secondary character talking about how his wife is baby-proofing the house, even though they've only just started fertility treatments. It gives us a view of one of the places where the action will take place. But what it does more than anything else in those first few seconds is establish the fact that the movie will be funny and that there will be something going on besides the traditional five kids go into the woods thing. We get tone, and a hint of what may be coming.
 
Then it move onto introducing the main characters.

And then, finally, we get to the location for the main action.

Likewise, other very successful novelists have used this technique to good effect. Remember Harry Potter?  Yeah?  Okay, the first section of the first chapter is all about the Dursleys. Hogwarts doesn't even show up for over 100 pages. Can you imagine how flat Harry would have been if JKR had taken the first page advice?  Yeah, not so cool.

Next up is what Jim Butcher, of Dresden Files fame calls the "murky middle."  This is where most of the action goes and where tension comes into it's main power. And tension, that wonderful trick of the writer's art, is what makes readers keep turning pages.

What Whedon does so well, and what many of us in writer land need to work on, is building tension in a stair step manner.

Imagine, if you will, a graph. On the vertical side you have tension. On the horizontal side you have plot. In most stories the resulting line will be a fairly straight diagonal with a sharp drop off after the climax of the story. Some of these diagonals will be very vertical, lots of tension, not a whole lot of plot (this would be your traditional horror story) some are almost a flat line (this would be any story that is too predictable). But most of us will have some sort of diagonal or curve.

Whedon has something that looks like a set of stairs. Moments of just fun plot. Moments of sheer tension. Some little diagonal bits in between.  Now, the reason he does this and we all go Yippiee! is that he allows us to breathe and moves the plot forward.

Lots of times you run into the issue where an author wants to slow down the tension a bit, but forgets to keep the story moving forward. Anytime you've read a romance where the action stops dead so the characters can gaze longingly at each other, you've seen how that works. Or if you prefer, an action flick where everything stops for the completely unnecessary sex scene with the clunky dialog (I'm looking at you, Conan!).

Readers like down time. They especially like a little downtime before the big push to the climax. But the point of down time is to give them a chance to calm down before rehooking them into the cannot-put-it-down action. It's not a very effective use of a breather if you have to abandon the plot to do it. Joss remembers to keep his plot moving, while giving the viewer a safe place to catch his breath and calm down for a few moments before ratcheting things up.

On top of that, by using this pattern of action interspersed with calm, and a setting for each, Whedon provides the viewer with an expectation of what will happen at any given time, so when we hit the climax and he twists that expectation, we're squeeing with joy amid the mayhem of the movie.

We can do this, too. It just takes attention to detail, plot, and the intelligent crafting of theme to go with the different scenes in our stories.

Okay, I hope that dissection was useful.  Any of you seen a movie/read a book lately that you thought was a really good map of how to build a story?  Tell me about it in the comments.

Fantasy Sage: Finding Your Club

I was recently writing about looking at genre as a collection of clubs you can use for marketing your book. If you play by the rules, you get access to the members of that club and can encourage them to read your work.

The tricky bit is finding which club you belong to.  Now, there are tons of genres out there, so I'm not about to go and try to define them all. I will however, link to a collection of genre descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fantasy_genres  Because Wikipedia has an article on everything!

http://www.focusonfantasy.com/2009/11/fantasy-types/

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp   Good long list with Sci Fi and Horror sub genres as well.

http://www.bestfantasybooks.com/fantasy-genre.php  Tons of good info here.

Okay, Keryl, I went, I read, I found that I wrote a Romantic Fantasy in an Arcanepunk world.  What can I do with that?  It's not like that's on the category list at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

True. Most booksellers aren't quite that precise in their genre categories.

What you can do with this is find communities that like what you write. You can use this to home in  on blogs that write about what you write (or better yet, review it!). You can search for groups on Goodreads, Shelfari, Librarything, etc that focus specifically on your sort of work.

In a nutshell: once you know which club you can enter, you can go find the members.

When you are marketing something as specific as a book, you do not want to cast a wide net. Spamming everyone on Earth about your book is not only a waste of time, it annoys readers. (And you don't want annoyed readers.) You want happy readers who are already primed to like what you wrote. Finding them, and dangling your book in front of them maximizes the likelihood of not just a sale, but a good review as well.

So, hope that was helpful!

Indie Book Review: An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom: Son in Sorrow

A while back, I reviewed An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom: Lovers and Beloveds. And I really enjoyed it.  It was a glorious mix of epic politics and an erotic coming of age that just made me happy all the way through. Did I have some quibbles? Sure, but they were minor, and the whole thing was just a lovely book.

Recently, MeiLin Miranda sent me book two in the series, Son in Sorrow, and I'm happy to say, I love this one. Lovers and Beloveds was a good, solid, first book, and Son in Sorrow is even better.

These books cover so much and so deeply they are hard to categorize, but I'll try. These are the stories of what it takes to go from being a boy to a man to a king.There are scads of boy-turns-into-man stories out there, and usually they just scratch the surface, as if making a few hard decisions and killing monsters is enough to do the job. It's not. And Miranda does a brilliant job showing this.

These stories deal with not just the idea of making hard decisions, but also the soft ones, the ones that look easy on the surface but ripple outward over the years. In Lovers and Beloved the joys, erotic and emotional, of love were studied. In Son in Sorrow, the pain of love lost, jealousy, and the desire for revenge are on the menu.

This is love bound by the larger world filled with political intrigue. It's not enough that Temmin, now twenty, has to sort himself out, but he must do it on a grand stage as the Heir of a mighty kingdom, in the eyes of everyone and with scores of men out to plot his downfall.

Like Lovers, Son in Sorrow is filled with first rate world building. This reads as a history of a real world, just one you've never met before.  Like Lovers, the story in story technique is used to great effect as a way to help young Temmin understand what he needs to know to help grasp at least some of what is going on around him.

Unlike Lovers, Son in Sorrow spends more time with the secondary characters. Plot threads only hinted at in Lovers get picked up, taken along for a quick tantalizing visit, and then left to germinate. Characters who flitted in and out of Lovers get their own screen time, and I'm eagerly awaiting to see where they go. A few new ones pop up as well, and seeing how well Miranda has done with the first two books, I'm happily anticipating and debating where they'll come in later in the story and how.

This is an author who does her homework. The Greater History is a complex and EPIC tale, and so far, more than 600 pages into the series we're still meeting new characters, learning new history, and setting up what is going to be an absolute corker of a tale. Yet, with the fact that this is all set up for a greater story, the bits we've already gotten do not feel unimportant or rushed. There's no sense of the author biding her time, just waiting for all the characters to get into place. This planning for the grand show to come is just as important, and interesting, as what I hope will be heading our way in the future.

So, that said, out you get for a copy of Lovers and Beloveds and Son in Sorrow. Read them! Then bookmark Miss Miranda's page so that you can get in on the next one as soon as it's out. It will be well worth your time.

Fantasy Sage: Genre Is Your Friend

You've written your story, you've polished it until it shines like a gem in full sunlight, you've got cover art, a website, and you're sitting in front of your computer, filling in the publication information, staring at the little line that asks you what categories your story belongs in.

For many of us, this is the acid moment, the second where we have to finally declare what genre our story is.

Some of us have it easy. You've written a three hundred page story with one main character and two secondary characters about a war between the elves and dwarves. You click fantasy, and head onto the next question.

But a lot of us don't fit easily into one block or another. What if you've got a story set half in the real world, half in a steam-punk alternative reality, and there's a romance in there between a vampire and a fairy. Is that Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, or Paranormal Romance?

So, you sit there, finger hovering over the mouse, debating which to pick. As you sit there, you start to get annoyed, why pick a genre? The stupid things are just nasty and constraining. You're an artist, telling the story the way it needed to be told. Only half-baked hacks write for a particular genre. And who the hell gets to determine what makes a genre? Who says a Romance has to have a happy ending? And why do Epic Fantasies have to be set somewhere other than Earth?

Well, maybe you didn't do that.  I did. I was pretty annoyed that I had written this brilliant work, and it didn't quite fit. And trying to shoehorn it into categories that didn't really fit bothered me.

Time and talking to readers has changed my opinion. I am no longer in a snit about genres.

Here's the thing: genre does not exit for you. It's for the readers. Readers want to read certain sorts of books. They like different types of plots, settings, character types, and endings.

Genre is a marketing tool that allows you to find the readers who like the sorts of things you write. And the number one thing to keep in mind about being a successful writer is that you've got to find your market. Genre is the first step in targeting the people who want to read your book.

Imagine, if you will, a group of clubs. Each club has members, and the members all agree on the same things. One club wants stories that focus on the building of a relationship, with some sort of magical aspect, and a happy ending. This is the Paranormal Romance Club, and if you write a story that follows those rules, you can have access to the members of that club. The PR Club has cliques: some of them like erotic romances, some like chaste romances, some like elves, some like vampires, some like fairies. Follow the rules of the clique, and you can get access to those members as well.

Now, if you've not followed the rules, but barged into the club anyway, you're going to annoy the members. They are going to start writing bad reviews of your book. Remember, for most of us, the way we are going to sell books is to make readers happy, and then they tell other people about the book, and on and on. Give the readers what they don't want, and you'll soon find your writing career torpedoed.

Lucky for you and me, there's an almost limitless number of clubs out there. The work is finding which ones will welcome you, and then working with them. It's much easier to get people who want what you wrote to like it than it is to convince people who are looking for something else that they want your book.

Let's put it this way: if you are selling Orange Juice, it's not helpful to label it Diet Soda and hope that when people taste it they'll be so blown away that they decide they want it anyway. It's a much better plan to make up a big Orange Juice label, and then go hang out in the Citrus section of the Fruit Juice aisle. If you're feeling like cross promoting, go over to the Fruit section and let them know what you've got there.

Same thing with genres. No matter how brilliant your romance is, if it doesn't have a happy ending, you don't get access to the Romance Club (and if you barge in, you aren't doing yourself any favors). You need to go find the Love Story Club, Women's Fiction Club, Chick Lit Club, or something else that fits and go there. That way you'll have happy reader, writing great reviews, and spreading the good word about your story.

So, genre is your friend; it's just your job to go off and find which ones you belong in. 

Fantasy Sage: Point of View

An issue I often see writers struggle with is point of view. Not just what it is, but how to use it to it's best advantage. So let's talk about it. Why is this important? After all, POV isn't generally something we plan out in advance. We start writing and whatever is there, that's the POV, right? Well, if you're hoping to keep your reader skipping about happily in your story, they've got to be able to figure out what's going on and when and with whom. Keeping your POVs straight will make this a lot easier.

So, first off, what are the options:

First Person: I went to the kitchen for breakfast. 

You've got the basic idea. This is the point of view where you are slipping into a main character suit, wearing his skin, and going about his life. You are in his head, thinking his thoughts, feeling his feelings, and doing his job.

Second Person: You drink a glass of milk, put the half-full glass of milk in the cupboard, and then wonder what the hell you were doing.

This is where the author is telling the reader something from the reader's POV.  This POV is usually a sign of literary fiction. I can't for the life of me think of a single well-known fantasy tale in this POV. So, it's not that you can't do it, it's just that almost no one does.

Third Person Limited: He went out for breakfast, after passing his roommate who was taking milk out of the cupboard.

This is the handi-cam view. Your reader sees, hears, and does everything the POV character does, like he's watching a live feed from a little camera perched on the character's shoulder.

Third Person Omniscient: By nine o'clock, all of the members of the Aching house had finished breakfast.

This is the narrator's voice, or the God voice. You know everything, see everything, and can reveal anything. Think of a TV show, where the camera is hopping about showing you whatever it likes, this is the literary equivalent of that.

Now, just about everyone can write first person without any issues. It's pretty easy to tell when you've slipped out of it.

I saw John walk across the street.

Look, there's Bob, thought John.

Just about all of us, even in full on editing induced blindness, can twig to the slip there.

And almost no one writes fantasy in Second Person, so we'll just ignore that.

For most of us we start to get tripped up in 3rd Person. Often the issue is we think we're writing 3rd Person Omni, but what we're really doing is hopping about from one 3rd Limited POV to the next. This annoys readers and make it difficult for them to follow the story.

This is 3rd Omni:

The sun rose brilliantly over Summer Valley, just like it had every day since the dawn of time. Birds chirped in the branches, proclaiming their personal territory to all who would listen. John sat back, thinking about the wonderful beauty of the world he lived in. Bob, on the other hand, was wishing the birds would shut the hell up. Due to imbibing seventeen mojitos the night before, he was feeling a wee bit tender in the head.

This is Head Hopping:

John watched the sun rise brilliantly over Summer Valley. He basked in sunlight and the lovely sounds of chirping birds. This is so beautiful!

I want to kill myself. Shut up birds, shut up, shut up! God, how many of those mojito things did I have last night? Bob collapsed into the chair next to John, scowling at him and the world in general.

How do you know if you're head hopping? Third Omni requires a narrator's voice. If there's nothing in your story that's not being directly experienced by one of the characters, you are not writing Third Omni.

Okay, so we've got a handle on what the tools are. Let's talk about how to use them.

I break stories into three main categories when it comes to POV balancing: Single, Ensemble, or Epic.

A Single story is pretty simple. You follow one POV all the way through. A book that follows this pattern is set in First Person or Third Limited. You're either in the head of the main character, or hovering behind him, seeing and doing what he sees and does.

This technique is good for straightforward stories, the sort where your main character is involved with everything that needs to happen, so he can tell the entire story.

First person especially is good for stories where you're really working on focusing on one character's arc. You're in his head the whole time, so you can really get into him. Third Limited works better in stories where you want a little distance between your reader and main character.

A Single POV line is not so hot for anything with multiple plot lines or multiple main characters.

This isn't to say that this sort of story doesn't have secondary or tertiary characters. But they aren't vitally important to the story.  Harry Dresden is a very good, and very complex example of a Single POV. He's the star of the books and the story is all about him. There are secondary characters (Bob) but the story won't collapse without them.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, takes us into the next category, the Ensemble.

In an Ensemble you've got a main character (maybe two, rarely three, and if you've got four you're writing an Epic), and a collection of vitally important secondary characters. For an ensemble Third Limited and Third Omni are your friends. The main character is the POV character. Maybe (rarely) the author wanders off to a new POV if something vitally important is about to happen that the readers just have to know about.

To use a TV reference:  If you're writing NCIS, you need a Gibbs. All of your characters together are magic, but there still needs to be someone to lead the team. You can wander off for a bit and focus the story through the other characters, but you always come back to the main character (s) in the end.

But Keryl, I've got seventeen characters, all telling the story, and no main character. Okay, Harry Turtledove, this is where Epic comes in. You've got a ton of characters and you swap between their POVs. But, each time you switch to a new POV character there's a separate storyline with it's own main and supporting characters. (Here's a hint: if in chapters 3, 8, 19, 34, and 45 John is the POV character; he's a secondary, non-POV character in chapters 7, 14, 22, and 48; he gets mentioned a few times in 4, 16, 44, and 60 by yet other POV characters, you're writing an Epic.)

If you are writing an Epic, stick to one POV per section. Each section has a complete bit of plot: John finds the Chalice of Epicness. Tell that section from John's POV. The next section has a complete bit of plot: Bob responds to John finding the Chalice. Write that section from Bob's POV.  Do not write finding the Chalice of Epicness from John, Bob, Phil, Andrew, and Collin's POVs in one section. (Of course you've got a ton of characters finding the Chalice of Epicness, it's an EPIC!)

With an Epic you are following the story of a collection of characters. At the end of your tale you should be able to take all the bits of plot for each character and construct a complete storyline for that character. That storyline weaves in with the other storylines to make your full Epic. Think DragonLance: Tanis has a story, Raistlin has a story, Sturm, Laurana, Tasslehoff, ect... all have their own stories. Put all those stories together and you've got the Chronicles.

Epic generally run Third Person Limited.  Third Omni, unless you really work the narrator's voice, will be confusing in a story with a ton of equally important characters. First person in an Epic is just asking your readers to kick you. If you've got seventeen characters and they're all telling the story using I, me, and we, your readers will have a hard time following them.

Now, are these written in stone? Did Moses drop this tablet off at my house, telling me to go forth and spread the good word about POV? No.

Just like with everything else, you can break any and all of the rules. There are always trends and styles that will bend these rules. (For example, Third Omni with an actual narrator who is almost a character works well with Steampunk because it stylistically hearkens back to the writing of the Victorian era. But it's significantly less appealing in a gritty, modern set Urban Fantasy.) But keep in mind, if you want to write good (and once again I mean good in the sense of able to satisfy a large majority of the people who buy your book) fiction, making it easy for your readers to follow the story is more important than really cool POV swapping technique.

Happy Writing!

Indie Book Review: Prophecy Of Kings: The Trilogy

Prophecy of Kings: The Trilogy got added to the To Be Read list after seeing a 'Please Review My Book' thread on Amazon. I read the first chapter, it looked good, and onto the list it went.

Months later (because I'm not setting any speed records for book reviewing) I picked it back up again.

I didn't finish the trilogy.

I read all the way through the first book, and it's okay. There's nothing terribly wrong with the story or the plot. But it's not great, and the characters didn't do much for me. It's a very basic, generic high fantasy: A Young Prince With A Destiny teams up with the Recovering Alcoholic Warrior. They both get roped into a dubious quest by The Dark Mage. Eventually they're befriended by The Good Elf. There's an overarching plot involving the return of Great Evil and a lesser quest plot to see about Finding The Good That Can Save Us From Great Evil. Mostly though, book one sets the scene and introduces characters.

If that plot and those character types are your idea of a good time, grab a copy of this, you'll like it.

As for me, I'm a fan of character driven plot. And I like my characters smart. They can start off innocent and trusting (stupid), but they've got to have a pretty quick learning curve. It absolutely kills me to watch characters make the same mistakes over and over and over.

Which is part of why I drug through this book, reading a page or two at a time and feeling no compelling need to keep going. Kaplyn, The Prince With A Destiny, doesn't ever seem to learn anything. Now, by the end of Legacy of the Eldrich (Book One) that slow learning curve has bitten him, badly. So my hope is that in Dragon Riders (Book Two) he's finally learning. But I wasn't hopeful enough to do more than skim the first few chapters of Dragon Riders.

The world building is okay. Not great, not terrible. It's a pretty standard medieval-esque world filled with standard fantasy critters. The magical system was slightly off the beaten track, with the Dark Mage (technically a sorcerer) gaining his power by working with demons. The Elves (Alvalah) are all albinos, but besides that, they're the standard forest-dwelling, nature-loving, vegetarians.  There's a tiny bit of politics, but it's forgotten about nineteen sentences after it gets brought up.

The formatting and proofing is okay. It's not great. In my copy random squares pop up in the text. Why? I have no idea. It doesn't look like some sort of bad translation of a non-standard character. They're between words, not in the middle of them. It's not every page, or even every chapter, but it is often enough to make an impression. The proofing needed help, too. Mostly punctuation issues, the sort of thing that if you're into the story you don't notice, but if you're already dragging through it, sticks out big time.

The writing is (Are you sensing a theme, yet?) okay. It's competent. I'll forgive a lot for gloriously sparkling snark infested dialog, and that just wasn't there. And I'm always happy to see beautiful word choice, and that wasn't there, either. Once again, it's not bad, there's nothing terribly wrong with any of this. But there was nothing about the writing that made me want to keep turning pages, either.

On a story edit side, I'd say the Quest For Good to Save Us plot line could have used some more urgency. We're told the Great Evil will be showing up in sixty years. Which isn't precisely the sort of timeline that makes readers want to go ripping through the pages to see if the good guys save the day in the nick of time. We get some more urgency toward the end, which helps.

There's a nice almost twist at the end. Alert readers probably know it's coming from about the 80% mark, but the characters are genuinely surprised.  Actually the end is the best bit of the book, but slogging through 200 pages to get to the decent twenty pages didn't thrill me. And I'll admit that I'm still a bit fuzzy on what precisely happened in the end. Not that I can't tell you what happened in a blow by blow sort of way. I'm fuzzy on what precisely one of the characters thought he was doing at the end and why.

So, all in all, it's okay.  I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I know fantasy readers come in many, many flavors, and this is a story that will appeal to some of them. Just not me.

Indie Book Review: Each Angel Burns

I ended up reading Each Angel Burns by Kathleen Valentine because of the debate as to whether or not it was a "Catholic" novel. A while back it was reviewed on a Catholic fiction site and the reviewer didn't think it was much of a Catholic novel. This resulted in some discussion and controversy. Now, while it's true that I'm not wildly qualified to judge this, I'm not any sort of literary scholar, I do know basic Catholic theology and I like to read. So onto the To Be Read list it went. Months later, I'm adding my two cents to the pot.

But before we get into that, let's talk about it as just a novel.

As a novel it is elegant and graceful, with characters I enjoyed and a writing style that mirrored the gentle souls of the main characters.

The story line is... meandering... and honestly I could have handled a few less detours from the main plot. None of them are terrible or badly written, but one in particular made me want to yell, "No, Valentine...the main plot, stick to the main plot!"  I truly enjoyed these characters and wanted to spend time with them, but by the time we were reaching the climax of the story, the fine eddies of extra storyline were getting on my nerves.

Almost all of the main action takes place in flashbacks. And once again, they aren't badly written, but they do add a distance from the events, and I would have liked the immediacy of going through most of the main plot points first hand. One of the flashbacks I completely understand, and fully see it's value. But most of the rest of them followed the pattern of the main story moving ahead a day or two, then one of the characters would remember the night before. In that sort of case, there wasn't much need for the flashback.

It's a little rough on the proofreading front. As any of my regular readers know, I've seen much, much, much worse recently, but I wouldn't call it a clean copy, either.  Call it a solid B effort for proofing.

So, all in all, as a novel, I liked it. I read it in two days, and when I wasn't reading I was thinking about it. That, to me, is a sign of a good novel.

So, it's a good novel, but is it a Catholic novel?  It depends on what makes a Catholic Novel a Catholic Novel. I'd say it's a novel decorated with Catholicism, but not actually a Catholic novel.

It's certainly dressed in the physical details of Catholic life. Most of it is set in a deconsecrated convent. And like the convent most of the characters were, once upon a time, Catholic, but no longer practicing in any meaningful way. There are still the trappings of a Catholic life, but, with one exception, the spark of faith that makes those trappings alive has long left these people. At one point, one of the characters says, "We're meant to be Catholic..." and I think that's a good way of looking at it.  Not, 'we are Catholic,' but 'we're meant to be Catholic.'

I'll take this one step farther with the actually Catholic character, a priest named Pete. In his own personal journey, I can see flashes of Catholic thought and ideas, but in the way he interacts with the other main characters, his best friend, Gabe, and his one time love, Maggie, there is nothing distinctly Catholic about his actions. When it comes to how he deals with his friends, he could have just as easily been a Pastor, and much more easily been a Rabbi.

In fact, besides Father Pete's sexual identity in relation to his faith, and the setting, there's nothing specifically Christian about this story, let alone Catholic. If there was anything in this book specifically relating to salvation by Jesus, I missed it. I'd say the only concrete theological idea espoused by this story is: where love is, there is God also. That's an idea that's not difficult to place in any given tradition.

For me, the question of the 'Catholicness', let alone Christianity, of this novel comes from the actions of the Father Pete.  Pete is a compelling character, one I'd very much enjoy sitting down to dinner with, and not because he's described as the most gorgeous man in the history of maleness. Not to say I'd mind that, but I digress... He's a scholar, a dedicated servant of God, a man of intellectual depth and vibrancy, and a deep, deep well of compassion.

And, while his compassion feels very comforting, it underlies his devotion to his Lord, and if I correctly understand the hierarchical and rigid standards of Catholic theology, undermines it. Given a situation where his best friends are falling in love and committing adultery together, he is pleased for them. Gabe's wife is cheating on him. Maggie's husband is corporeal evil on two legs. Gabe and Maggie are just about perfect for each other. So, for most of us, being pleased at our friends' happiness would be an appropriate response. At least, if we weren't priests.

But Pete is a priest. This is a man who sees his two dearest friends, people he supposedly loves, throwing their souls into mortal peril, and he is pleased for them. Divorce and adultery are great big deals in Catholic theology. Marriage is a sacrament, and breaking that sacrament is a mortal sin. And while separation, and in some cases divorce, are allowable by Catholic doctrine, remarriage without an annulment is not. And, while it's true that in Catholic theology there's no such thing as a direct ticket to hell, moving in with your girlfriend while you're still married to your wife is skating awfully close to the edge of it.

Pete mentions his concern for their souls, once, but his actions: never suggesting Gabe seek marriage counseling or try to reconcile with his wife, let alone suggesting Gabe and Maggie have a chaste relationship, and being willing to officiate Gabe and Maggie's wedding once Gabe's divorce (Annulment is never mentioned either, just Gabe's divorce.) is finalized, shows that he's significantly less worried about their eternal souls than he is for their comfort in this fleeting life.

Beyond that, there is the fact that, by the end of the story we are shown that God clearly approves of all of this as well. If you believe that sex is integral to love, and that wherever love is, there is God, then this book is fine. That would be something that I personally believe. But that's not Catholic theology.

So, perhaps this is a gentle subversion of the Catholic Novel. It is a book that lovingly touches on the accoutrements of Catholicism, but they are only setting. It is a novel that creates an intensely sympathetic priest, who, while living up to the letter of his vows, places more value on this temporal life than the life eternal to come. A man who is more interested in his friends being happy than good.  And there is a version of a God who gives laws, yet smiles when they are broken. I think Valentine's deconsecrated convent is a perfect metaphor for this story: it is beautiful, steeped in traditions and memories that those inside appreciate on an esthetic level, but have no intention of living by.