Eric Kent Edstrom's Blog, page 19

Audiobook Giveaway!

I’m thrilled to announce a giveaway of the unabridged Undermountain audiobook, read by Maxwell Glick.

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Undermountain Audiobook

I’m so happy to announce that Undermountain is now available as an audiobook from Audible, Amazon and iTunes.

Read and produced by LA actor Maxwell Glick

Here’s a sample:

Here’s where you can get the full audiobook.

Audible (if you sign up for a new membership, and Undermountain is one of the first three titles you download, I get a $25 bounty)

Amazon (they take you to audible anyway)

iTunes

Infographic: Understanding Eric

Eric is the author of Undermountain and Afterlife, the first two books of the YA science fiction series The Undermountain Saga.

 

 

Cover Reveal: Shadow of the Oak

My new novella will be out pretty soon, so I figured I’d share the cool cover.

Shadow of the Oak (A Sal Van Sleen Adventure)

Mushkobewun, WI, 1986

My name is Sal Van Sleen. I live in Boringsville, Wisconsin, also known as Mushkobewun. To give you an idea of how little is going on in this town, consider that my friend Billy and I pretty much spend our summers screwing around at Little Hickory dam. Exciting, huh?

That was until my girlfriend’s little sister, Chrissy, got abducted by a nasty, supernatural . . . thing.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t just let something like that go . . .

 

The first Sal Van Sleen Adventure: Shadow of the Oak

Coming soon!

Book Review: Legion by Brandon Sanderson

I was quite excited to receive a limited edition, signed, hard-cover of Brandon Sanderson’s newest novella, Legion, in the mail. Since Sanderson is known as an epic fantasy writer, this slim, contemporary, detective story is a bit of a departure.

The fact is, I bought it the book without even looking at the description. That right there says something about my opinion about Sanderson’s writing. I’m a big fan of his. I enjoyed Elantris, Mistborn, his first book in his new epic series The Stormlight Archive, and of course, his work continuing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, which is outstanding.

Legion is based upon a very intriguing concept. The main character, our narrator, has multiple “aspects,” that is, multiple distinct people in his head, who he acknowlegdes are hallucinations.

The way this story is told, these aspects are distinct characters. They have physical appearances, they have distinct personalities, and they have specialties. One is very knowledgeable about firearms, one is able to read people quite well and understand whether they’re lying, another is a historian and has a huge knowledge about history and philosophy.

Steve our narrator, works as a sort of private detective, a sort of Sherlock Holmes who charges outrageous sums to solve mysteries.

The plot of Legion, which I presume will be the first of a series, revolves around the search for a scientist who developed a camera that could take pictures of the past. I can’t offer much more without spoiling it, but it’s good fun with a bit of action, some sleuthing, and quite a bit of humor.

I should note that Sanderson thanks that his friend, Dan Wells, in the dedication for coming up with the idea. How much of the idea, we don’t know, but Brandon Sanderson executes it flawlessly.

One of the things I found very interesting as a writer is that the writing style is quite different from how Brandon writes his epic fantasies. It’s sparser, much less descriptive, but appropriate for the length of the story and also the genre. It was engaging from the start and filled with humor. I did note a sort of clunky sentence here and there, which I write off to perhaps a shorter editorial cycle, and maybe a few fewer revision passes. But what do I really know? I’m just guessing, and whatever deficiencies the novella had, was made up for by the brilliance of the concept.

I highly recommend this to Brandon Sanderson fans or anyone who likes a good mystery detective story. It very much reminded me of the current BBC Sherlock Holmes television show, and I instantly thought that this character and his host of hallucination personas would be an amazing TV series. Let’s hope somebody in Hollywood is reading this, and has the exact same idea. Get it, read it, love it.

Eric is the author of Undermountain and Afterlife, the first two books of the YA science fiction series The Undermountain Saga.

Awesome Afterlife Video Review

Thanks Alison!

Make sure to follow her reviews at wingedreviews.com

Book Review: Gone by Michael Grant

I first learned about Gone from a review of one of my own books. The reviewer suggested that anyone who liked the Gone novels would like mine. This raised my curiosity for obvious reasons. So I read it.

The story of Gone starts when the main character, Sam, is in high school history class and his instructor disappears in front of his eyes. The students soon figure out that all of the adults, in fact all of the kids age 15 and older, have disappeared. Poof. Gone. They also find a strange, impenetrable barrier enclosing inside a 20 mile diameter area centered on a nuclear power plant.

Many kids looked to Sam for leadership. He was known as a bit of a hero for saving a school bus full of kids when the driver had a heart attack. But Sam doesn’t want to be a leader. All he really wants to do is surf and of course spend time with the unattainable Astrid, a beautiful blonde brainiac.

Soon a groups of teens from a different school called Coates Academy, known for being home to troubled kids, arrives in town and the charismatic leader Caine takes charge. Caine has a number of toadies and minions that do his beck and call. Among these are the beautiful and cruel Diana, the tech whiz Computer Jack, and the horrifically sadistic Drake.

Apparently some strange things started happening prior to the disappearance of the grown ups. Some of the kids were developing special powers. Sam can shoot lasers. Caine can use the force and throw objects. There’s the chameleon. There’s one that can teleport and there’s one that’s really fast. And of course, they’re on both sides of this conflict between the Perdido kids and the Coates Academy kids.

There’s a neat little romance plot that goes throughout between Sam and Astrid. Our heroes are 14 years old, so it’s a constrained and appropriate romance. The focus of the book is certainly on figuring out what happened and dealing with in inevitable problems that occur.

I particularly liked the story line of I think it was Albert, a kid who took charge of the local McDonald’s and started to operate it, serving up chicken nuggets and interesting waffle burgers (the buns went stale). I also enjoyed the plot line with Lana who for most of the book is separate from the main story line. She has a horrific experience that leads her to discover her own powers.

I found Gone to be very fast paced, without excessive description and exposition. While the idea that suddenly all of these people would disappear at a specific age is far fetched, Michael Grant does a reasonable job of explaining why this happened. It doesn’t really matter, since I like far fetched plots.

I highly recommend Gone. It’s an easy read, an interesting one, and very engaging. It forced me to stay up well past my bedtime to finish it, and I struggled to sleep afterwards as I relived the climatic scenes of the story.

Eric is the author of Undermountain and Afterlife, the first two books of the YA science fiction series The Undermountain Saga.

Title Reveal: Shadow of the Oak

If you’ve visited the works in progress page, you’ve noticed a novella project that’s been advancing pretty quickly. I can now announce the title.

Sal Van Sleen: Shadow of the Oak

Shadow will be the first in a new series of novellas. Our hero Sal Van Sleen and his friends Becca and Billy will have all kinds of adventures in the small town of Mushkobewun. I’m classifying this series as YA urban fantasy with a good dose of humor. I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you will enjoy reading it. I might be able to get the second one out this year too, but that all depends on some other things I’ve got cooking.

The cover design is in process, but there is a lot of work to do to get the novella ready for prime time.

Most of my time is still focussed on Book 3 of The Undermountain Saga, which is going pretty smoothly. I expect to finish the first revision by the middle of next week, if not sooner. After that? I start right in on revision 3.

Editing, Editing, Editing

I’m about halfway through the first revision pass of book 3 of The Undermountain Saga. It’s going pretty well, but I had to do some chapter juggling and write a missing couple scenes. This is pretty much how it goes. I’m enjoying the book. It’s pretty fast paced!

70,000 Words (My Incredible, Insane, Awesome, Productive Two Weeks)

About two weeks ago, I began “writing” my third novel. Now, the work didn’t begin that day because I had spent quite a bit of time outlining, making sure I understood the plot and, in general, how I was going to end the story. Because it was the third book, and final in a series, I wanted to make sure I could tie everything up.

The ending came to me first, which was a wonderful blessing. So one feverish day, I jotted down about 1000 words of an outline detailing what happens at the end. And then I just started outlining from where I’d left off in book two. I got about half way through the outline when I ran out of patience for the outlining process and decided it was time to start writing.

Let’s get back to the title of this blog post. It was an incredible, insane, awesome, productive two weeks, because on August, I printed my outline and dictated the first few chapters into my handheld Olympus voice recorder while driving to a kettlebell workout.

I’ve blogged before about dictating my first drafts, most notably here. My argument in that post was that what makes dictation productive is that you can speak way faster than you can type. And since you can’t look backwards on the screen, there’s no temptation to edit and re-write the same sentence or paragraph over and over. The idea being, don’t perfect your story in the first pass—just get it done. Then in revisions, you can tweak all the language, and improve the style and grammar, and make things more “writerly.”

As of yesterday morning, I had finished the first draft of my novel. But I also drafted a novella during that period of time. And I got the first 1,500 words of another novella started.

Now, I expect my novel to end up at around 70,000 words, maybe as many as 85,000 when I’m done. The dictated first draft was only 53,000. Why is that? It’s because when I’m dictating, I don’t do a lot of descriptive writing, and sometimes I skim over scenes that I haven’t quite thought through.

It doesn’t really matter how long the novel is, as long as it’s good. But here’s the thing: my word count total over the last two weeks of August, and with a three days to spare, was 70,000. I didn’t even dictate stuff every single day of that period of time. I had several 8,000-word days, which is pretty productive by anyone’s standards, and that does not include the words I typed on those days, which was often significant when I was working on outlines. I would often type 1500-2,000 more words in addition to my dictation.

This process is made even more amazing by how fast I get my transcripts. When I’m done with a chapter, I upload it to a website called iDictate.com. This blog post was transcribed by one of the lovely or handsome transcriptionists that work with iDictate. I am absolutely astonished how fast iDictat turns around these recordings. The recordings range from four to 30 minutes long, and often I’ll upload three or four of them at a time. It’s not unusual for me to get an email from iDictate three or four hours later saying the transcription is done. I once had a turnaround in an hour—and that was without requesting their rush service.

The quality of the transcripts are good. I write science fiction and fantasy, so I have lots of strange words, names, and lingo that doesn’t always make sense to someone who doesn’t know the story. When I remember, I try to spell the words, but it’s a little bit of a hassle. I am aware that you can provide them with a list of vocabulary that they can refer to while transcribing, but I haven’t yet done this.

Because I’m writing fiction, dialogue formatting is an issue. It’s a little bit hit or miss with iDictate. If someone’s familiar with how dialogue should be formatted, then it turns out pretty good. Many times they would have to rely on changes in my tone of voice to know whether a different character was speaking. When I’m dictating, I get so wrapped up in the story, I often speak in the voices of my characters. Sometimes though, these voices not distinct enough for the transcriptionist to tell the difference. When I remember this, I include dialogue tags so that it’s clear. Although, I often have to go and edit those out after the fact because I don’t want them. I’m aware of one writer who actually dictates the punctuation the same way you would if you were using voice recognition software like Dragon. I have successfully used Dragon on some occasions, but when I’m writing science fiction, it’s actually quite comical how it turns out, and it’s no where near as accurate as a human transcriptionist.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who are intrigued by the idea of dictating fiction, but who just don’t feel they can afford the expense. This is understandable because transcription service for a 2,000-word document can cost you $20 bucks. My response to this is to find a volunteer or do it yourself. Although, the latter does have the disadvantage of double work, and there’s always the temptation to edit while you’re transcribing, which I think this is a huge mistake. It’s much better to have that huge block of text as you’ve said it, and then start going through it, fixing it as you go.

But what about the quality of the storytelling? What about the quality of the writing? My answer to this is that the storytelling, assuming you have any ability to tell a story, is really good. I think it’s improved because you get caught up in the scene, you see it playing out before your eyes, and you report it. And the quality of the writing is natural. It tends to flow, though I tend to speak in lots of run-on sentences.

But since it’s widely believed that one must re-write over and over and over to make your novel or story good, you have to understand, you don’t just copy the transcription into a file and upload it to Amazon or send it to your editor. It still must go through the same rigorous revision that you would do on anything, whether you typed it or not. Because people are concerned about how stupid they’ll sound dictating fiction, I’ve decided to just let them get over it by listening to one of my dictations.

Here you will see a brief section that I dictated, you’ll see the transcription, and then you’ll see how it turned out in the final work. You’ll notice, there are some pretty dramatic changes, but some things stayed exactly as I said them.

Transcript
First Revision


Sweat poured down Danny’s brow and into his eyes and he and Em strode through the long corridors of the Tangoga sub-city deep beneath Undermountain. He was dressed for the mission—short-sleeved t-shirt over a long-sleeved t-shirt, jeans and sturdy hiking boots that Tangoga had manufactured for him. The weight of his backpack laden with all the supplies he might need on Tangoga Prime added weight to every stride making him even hotter.Behind him, Em huffed under the weight of her backpack. She wore jeans and boots, a tank-top and somewhere along the line had given the Tangoga a sketch of a design for a tight-fitting leather jacket that she now wore.They came to a bank of elevators. “I think this is it,” Danny said, and commanded the doors to open. They got in and started to ascend. They were under the Temple of the Strict and had to use the Tangoga corridors and passageways to get as close to Shaggy’s quarters as possible without being seen. They had been waiting in the sub-city for a while, waiting for word from Shiv that Shaggy was out of his quarters.“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked Em for the third time. She didn’t answer directly. Instead she studied him with her dark intense eyes. “Are you sure you want to go?” she asked.(191 words/2:05 minutes)
Sweat dripped from Danny’s brow and into his eyes as he and Em strode through the long corridors of the tangoga sub city deep beneath Undermountain. He was dressed for the mission—short-sleeved tee over a long-sleeved one, jeans, and sturdy hiking boots the tangoga had manufactured for him. His backpack added weight to every stride, making him even hotter.Beside him, Em huffed and walked with her eyes fixed straight ahead. She wore jeans, boots, and a tank-top. Somewhere along the line she’d given the tangoga a sketch for the tight-fitting leather jacket, which she had just removed and tied the sleeves around her waist.”This is it,” Danny said as they came to a bank of elevators. He commanded the doors to open, they boarded and started up. Using the tangoga service passageways, they would come into the Temple of the Strict very close to Shaggy’s quarters. Only minutes earlier, Shiv had signaled via Danny’s trainer that Shaggy was away.“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked Em for the third time.She didn’t answer directly. Instead she studied him with her intense eyes. “Are you sure you want to go?”

Dictating is a skill. I was very self-conscience the first time I tried dictation, and I’m sure that my delivery was stilted and inefficient. But the more that I’ve done it, especially in the past two weeks, the better I’ve gotten. I became so accustomed to talking while driving, I started a novella with no outline or even any concept of what it was about just because I was inspired to tell a story. I got the transcription back and laughed out loud. I thought the story was hilarious and it just had to be finished. I got so excited about it that I went for long walks and dictated the rest of it. It ended up being 20,000 words long— a short novella. This is great because now when I get tired or stuck with my novel, I can switch to editing the novella. And when I’m driving, I can continue to create—like writing this blog post. Or when I go for a walk I can finish the other novella I started. I may even start another one as soon as I finish this blog post.

In a busy life, one has to find writing time where one can. And it doesn’t mean you have to be chained to a keyboard. In fact, you can make use of your exercise time, your commute time, or even a leisurely walk in the neighborhood. So my challenge to you is, the next time you’re drive last longer than ten minutes, get out your smartphone and use the voice memo feature.

Start telling a story.

Eric is the author of Undermountain and Afterlife, the first two books of the YA science fiction series The Undermountain Saga.