Brondt Kamffer's Blog, page 11

fantasy clichés 1

The first of two episodes to come this week (as I have to make up for the missed one last week) discusses fantasy cliches. I have a second podcast on the subject to come next week, a pair to this one, and both of them stemming from the previous discussion of the "grown up" nature of modern fantasy. This episode looks at older fantasy cliches such as the boy hero, the enigmatic wizard, and the magic sword.

Direct Download – 23:14 – 21.4mb mp3

In the podcast I mention this brief essay on swords

chapter 7, part 2

[*To subscribe to this serial novel's exclusive rss feed, click the "book" icon in the "Other ways to follow" box on the right of your screen.*]

[*This is a work-in-progress and may not fully reflect the final draft*]

During those six months of self-imposed denial of all things relating to the mage Abacus, including visits alone or accompanied by Hero to the mage's tower, I developed a finely tuned sense of self-hatred.

The root of this is not so difficult to understand if you have ever found y...

chapter 7, part 1

[*This is a work-in-progress and may not fully reflect the final draft*]

The months passed us by rapidly, the first year of specialized training on route to becoming Hymanni being filled with study dawn till dusk. All my free time was taken up in the mage's tower or in the mage's book in my dormitory, from which I continued to learn the true history of Aaria and the magic all Synths relied on.

I will now share an extended excerpt from Abacus' confessions as it prefaces the most important...

podiobook: union of renegades by tracy falbe

I have recently begun listening to audiobooks. I have never been one for listening to books rather than scanning them line-by-line with my own eyeballs, but I have found audiobooks to be an enjoyable way to pass the time of a morning commute that can sometimes take up to an hour, if the LA traffic is bad enough. What prompted this change in attitude? Well, I was watching an old episode of Frasier a few weeks back, and the characters at KACL radio were reenacting one of the original radio...

chapter 6, part 2

[*To subscribe to this serial novel's exclusive rss feed, click the "book" icon in the "Other ways to follow" box on the right of your screen.*]

[*This is a work-in-progress and may not fully reflect the final draft*]

Weeks passed. Aside from my regular visits to Deryn Lhopri's office, where I read from the book I was quickly beginning to realize was some kind of forgery of the manuscript I'd found in the mage's tower, there was little to mark the progression of time for me. I was not...

chapter 6, part 1

[*This is a work-in-progress and may not fully reflect the final draft*]

I spent the following few days waiting for punishment. It was strictly illegal for a student my age to engage our ether in any way outside of the oversight of a professor. My assailant was also under a ban restricting his use of ether, such that he might have been on the receiving end of some rather nasty stripes himself if I had chosen to report him. But the University does not expel students, and there is a very good...

fantasy, all grown up

Well, I am finally back to producing the podcast. It has been a while, but I have a few new episodes lined up in which I will be discussing general subjects related to the fantasy genre. In that sense, we might think of this as the General Series, season 2. This should occupy me through to December, at which point I will break from teaching and be able to produce a lecture series on another fantasy novel.

Direct Download – 22:29 – 20.7mb mp3

This episode basically deals with the changes in...

introducing "time of the awakening"

Today, I present another sneak peak at a recently-released fantasy novel. The author has a vision for his ten-book series unlike anything I have ever seen, and so I invited him to pen a little write-up about the project. I'm not sure these 400 words come anywhere near to doing this series justice, so I encourage you to follow the link through to the author's website and explore more of the world of the Generation of Legends. Trust me, you'll be blown away as well!

Author/Artist:  Kirk Yuras

Gen...

chapter 5, part 3

[*To subscribe to this serial novel's exclusive rss feed, click the "book" icon in the "Other ways to follow" box on the right of your screen.*]

[*This is a work-in-progress and may not fully reflect the final draft*]

That evening, after my discussion with Deryn Lhopri and after I had looked at the book she'd set before me, I could not help but return to the jounral I'd found in the mage's tower. I chose to return to it alone, not wanting to stir up new feelings of anger and betrayal—and...

weekly update i

Having set myself a weekly target last week, I can solemnly declare two things: 10,000 words a week may just be too much given my schedule at the moment; that being said, I have also been rather lazy.

I only managed under 4,000 words this week, and I can honestly say that I had the time to meet my goals, but I was just too burnt out from work to bother doing so. Case-in-point, on Thursdays I am free of teaching responsibilities, so I took a sleeping pill Wednesday evening (I suffer insomnia...