Bryce Moore's Blog, page 302

Book Review: Wise Man's Fear

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss



My rating: 5 of 5 stars





The Name of the Wind was one of the biggest things to happen in fantasy in recent years, making a huge splash on the scene, and propelling Patrick Rothfuss from newcomer to fantasy star. But you have to sort of wonder anytime an author has a breakout book--will he be able to do it again? After all, often with first books, the author has had years (sometimes even decades) to work on that one book. There are such things as one hit wonders, and I always worry that the first book in a series will then go on to pull a Matrix, with each subsequent book just proving that the lightning captured in the first was just a fluke.



So. Wise Man's Fear--the second book in Rothfuss's series. Would it be Name of the Wind: Revolutions, or The Name of the Wind Strikes Back?



I'm ecstatic and relieved to be able to report that it's a fantastic read. Easily as good as the first--likely better. It's books like these that bring new fans to the genre. It's got all the hallmarks of a great epic fantasy: engrossing characters, fully-realized world, complicated politics and intrigue, awesome magic system. The works.



Really the only question to ask yourself is what you thought of Book One. If you loved it, read on. If you didn't . . . we can't be friends anymore. :-) If you haven't read it yet, then what are you waiting for? It really is that good.











View all my reviews

Help Save Angel: Somebody Convince Me to Keep Watching

Dear Angel,



First off, I wanted to say how I think you're totally cool and all. Really noble, in a pained sort of never-know-when-you'll-turn-evil sort of way. So go you! But that said, I'm sorry. Things just aren't working out with us. I've given you 29 episodes, and I know you have like 80 more to offer me, but I don't know if I want to keep watching you.



What's the matter? You're just too darned broody. Nothing but mope mope mope, all day long. At least in Season One, you had Cordelia to inject a bit of light and fun into things, but now you've gone and given her a plot arc that made her grow up and mature, and . . . she's becoming boring, too. And don't get me started on your buddy Wesley. I didn't like him in Buffy, and you dragged him back for your own series. Snoozeville.



Last night, I found myself watching the episode all about Darla's history, and I kept wondering what else I could be watching. Maybe we should just call it quits. If you don't have anything other than doom and gloom to offer, then you go your way and I'll go mine. But if you get better--more interesting, less self-absorbed--than could you please let me know? And if you can't let me know personally, then if one of your friends could leave a comment telling me why I shouldn't give up on you, that would work, too.



Because I want to like you. But you're making it hard on me.



Thanks.



Bryce

How to Buy Tickets to Europe, Cheap: 2011 Edition

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, then you already know I bought my tickets to Slovakia yesterday evening. I'd been watching ticket prices for the past two months, and I finally found a deal worth snapping up. When you find these deals, you have to act quickly. Yesterday evening was a six hour marathon of planning departure dates, coordinating times, checking various airfares, and reading a bunch of fine print. But after all that, I got a wicked good deal on the flight. Read on to find out how.



Step one of getting a good airfare to Europe is to be able to realize what a good airfare is. You need to know how much the tickets cost for the time you want to fly, or else you'll have no idea if you're getting a steal or the airline's stealing from you. So I start by looking at prices for the ideal airports: in this case, Portland to Bratislava. Right now, that prices is $1600 for the travel dates Denisa and I wanted.



Of course, I suppose it would help for you to know what search tool to use when looking for European flights. My old reliable these days is Kayak. It's versatile, easy to use, and it searches a ton of sites, all at once. Of course, I don't typically BUY the ticket through Kayak, but I'm not buying anything at this point--I'm just exploring price options. Kayak usually does a good job of including taxes and fees in with their listed price--that's not always a given with many airfare search engines, and it makes accurately comparing prices a real beast. Nothing's worse than feeling like you've found The Ticket, only to discover that there's a $250 booking fee, gas fee, tax, airport security fee, etc. So stick to Kayak, and try to resist the siren's song of other sites. They're just trying to trick you.



Another important note is that if you're going to fly to Europe, going in the summer is a Bad Choice. In fact, it's pretty much the Worst Choice. Fall would be great. Late winter is also good. Spring is okay. Summer? Very bad. How bad? Try 2-3 times as much. If I were looking for this flight in fall, my expectations of a good fare would be dramatically different. Hence the need to know a ballpark figure for how much tickets at that time are going to cost. (Kayak also has a feature where it will show you what the ticket prices have been doing for the past few months--going up, going down--based on purchase date and travel dates. Very handy for historical research.)



Anyway. I'd done all that legwork ahead of time, and I knew that a few months ago, the tickets were around $1200. Now they were up to $1600. Unrest in Libya and the Middle East is a beast when it comes to plane tickets. Bottom line: ticket prices were going up. There's always a chance they'll come down up until about a month before you're leaving, but it's risky to wait too long. A month before your departure date, ticket prices spike up. So buying early is good. But not too early--I usually shoot for about 3-4 months out. I could probably wait for 2 months out, too--but I get too nervous, and I've usually found a good price by then, anyway.



$1600 for a family of four comes to $6400, and that was officially too much. So now that I have a baseline, the goal becomes getting that ticket for as cheap as possible. The first step is the easy one: find alternate airports. Not a whole lot of people fly in or out of Portland or Bratislava. Lots of people fly in and out of Boston and Vienna. Boston is an extra two hours from Portland. Vienna's an extra hour or so. So it will mean longer travel times, more hassle, but potential big savings. In my case, it brought the price down to $1300/ticket. $5200 total. That's a savings of $1200, just for a bit more hassle. If it were a short trip, maybe it's not worth it. For a long trip, I think it's a no-brainer.



But still: $5200? That's expensive. And we can go lower. The trick with Europe is that they have really cheap airfares for flying from one European city to another. They nickel and dime you to death on baggage fees and other ticky tack stuff, but if you're willing to fly spartan, then it can save you money. The trick is getting to Europe. Kayak has this excellent tool called Buzz. You put in your departure airport, the month you plan to travel, and the continent you're flying to, and Kayak shows you the cheapest fares to cities in that area. You're not guaranteed to get those cheap prices--but it gives you an idea of what deals there are to where. In my case, I discovered that Iceland Express was doing a sale to London right now for $650 and up per ticket. Searching for the specific dates, and I found tickets for $800/person.



That's a pretty darn good price. But it's far from a lock. See, getting to London won't do me much good if I can't get a flight from London to my ultimate destination (Vienna). And not just from London: from the right airport in London. (If you really want to save money, you can try to switch airports, but do you really want to do that to yourself? It's a personal call. If you're single, maybe. If you have small children . . . not so much.) So I moved on to the next phase: searching for fares from London to Vienna.



At this point, BE VERY CAUTIOUS. Your safety net is gone. You need to make sure your layover will be enough to give you wiggle room. You don't want to have a flight delay make it so you miss your connection. Since you're not booking through all the way on the same airline, the airlines don't need to feel sorry for you and change tickets to ensure you make your destination. So be careful.



In this case, I found a budget airline that flew from the right airport at the right time (4 hour layover in London) for $200/person (including their baggage fees and other fee garbage). So now I'm down to $1000/ticket, $4000 total. Overall savings of $2400. Things are looking up. But when you're deep in the throes of cheap airfare searching, you don't just stop there, my friends.



You keep pressing forward.



At this point, $1000 a ticket was an okay price. I could live with it, but it's a huge hassle, and I wasn't sure there wouldn't be something better coming along in the next few weeks. But this is where I busted out my ace in the hole: children airfares. Some (not all) European airlines will give you a discount on international fares if you're a child (3-11). They'll give an even better discount if you're an infant (0-2). I have no infants in my house anymore, but I do have the kidlets. Kayak won't show you these discounts: you have to leave and start poking around the individual airline sites to find them.



Iceland Express does the discounts. To a tune of $500/child, including taxes and fees. A bit of quick calculation later, and I found myself looking at the total cost of $3400. Divide that by four, and it averages out to $850/person. Total savings: $3000.



We have a winner. Since we were flying through London, I gave us a five day layover on the way back, because hey--free trip to London. And since we're flying into Vienna, why not have a short stay there on the way out? I'll be getting all of that, and still be paying less than I would for a Portland to Bratislava flight. Much less. Oh--and Denisa's $3600 dental bill? It'll be more like $850 tops in Slovakia. So yes, we'll be paying a fair bit this summer for vacations and dentists, but we'll be paying much less than I thought we would.



I am very pleased. Six hours of search time, $3000 saved. That means my search effort earned me about $500/hour. #winning



Anyway--there you have it. If you have any questions, ask away. I'm happy to give advice.

So What Happens When You Go Bankrupt?

First of all, a big fat disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. Not even sort of a lawyer. What follows is based on some conversations I've had with bankruptcy lawyers, and it's limited by my memory. I asked the questions because there seemed to be some interest from my faithful readers in hearing more about the "get out of debt . . . or else" topic that came up a while back. Some had wondered what happens when you go bankrupt. Why is it so bad? After talking to several people, I discovered there seems to be some wildly differing ideas on the process, so I thought it might be useful to go over what I learned. Ready? Here we go.



Let's set the stage first. You're in debt up to your eyeballs, although maybe you've been doing a fair job of hiding it. You've got several credit cards--all maxed out--you've got student debt, two mortgages, a car loan or two, you're behind on your utilities payments, and you're basically at the point where you have to decide which bills to pay each month, based on how overdue they all are. That said, your actual life hasn't changed all that much yet. You're still buying things when you can, still living in your home, still driving your car. You're on the edge, but you haven't gone under.



Then, it happens. You have an unforeseen debt pop up. Maybe the car engine goes, or you have damage to your home, or some unexpected dental bills--but in any case, you're no longer on the edge. You're now getting phone calls from creditors, and since you were already on the edge to begin with, you start sliding into real crisis.



What can happen? For one thing, your creditors will be in a rush to garnish your bank accounts and your salary. What does that mean? It means that if you owe people money, they can contact your employer or bank and tell them, "Hey--we know you owe this person some money, but he owes us money. From now on, we want you to pay us X% of whatever he makes, or give us X% of his bank account funds." Yes, they can do this to you. Yes, they will do this to you. At this point, everyone you owe money to is realizing you're likely going to go under, and it turns into a big game of Hungry Hungry Hippos to see who can gobble up what they can while it's still there for gobbling.



Up until now, you've been able to make sure that what money you make goes to things you actually really care about: your car, or your house, or your XBox Live subscription. But once your wages start getting garnished, that freedom goes out the window. You now are forced to pay some bills, and your other creditors start gathering the torches and pitchforks to come after you, as well. You are now in real danger of losing things you really value.



It gets to the point where you really are in trouble, and there's just no way you're going to stay afloat anymore. So you start looking into filing for bankruptcy. As an individual, there are two "chapters" you can file under. Chapter 13 is where you work with a central figure to pay off a certain amount of your debt over the next three or five years, with clearly established monthly payments. At the end of that time, then you're back in the clear. It's the preferable Chapter, for the most part. Once you file, all those nasty creditor phone calls go away, and you get some protection.



Of course, if you've made it far enough to need to file for Chapter 13, chances are you really haven't learned your budgeting lessons. You make the payments required for a month or two--maybe even a year. But old habits are hard to break, and sooner or later, you start getting behind again. You miss your bankruptcy payments, and your "protection" goes away. Creditors start clamoring again, and it's time for the final step: Chapter 7.



Chapter 7 essentially consists of liquidating your assets. In order to have your debts discharged, you need You're allowed by law to keep a certain amount of money for your assets, depending on state exemptions. For example, if your state has an exemption for cars of $3000, and you have a car that's worth $10,000, then your car will likely be sold, and you will get $3000 for it, with the other $7000 going to the people you owe money to. This same principle usually applies to home equity, as well--your house can be sold, but you're entitled to a portion of that equity, depending on the state exemptions. Non-exempt property will be sold to pay back your debts. It all depends on how much you owe, how much you own, and how it will be handled. Many Chapter 7 filings end up not selling off any property, because it's all under the exemption threshold.



In Maine, $5000 of a single car is exempt; $47,500 of a home if you have no dependents; $95,000 of a home if you do. You can find all this information online.



Anyway, it's more complicated than I'm making it, but hey--I'm not a lawyer. I'm just trying to illustrate what can happen. Basically, if you're forced to file for Chapter 7, then you'll emerge from it with some money for basic house and car, and most other debts wiped clean. (Student debt, tax debt, and some other debt isn't wiped--you have to pay those back eventually) Of course, getting any credit for the next while will be difficult, and you'll pay a lot for the credit you do get. So don't expect credit cards in your near future.



What it boils down to from my perspective is that you can either choose to start living within your means now, or you will be forced to live within your means later. And for a good year or two of your life--maybe more--you will not have a very pleasant experience. Then again, this is just from what I've read. I've never gone through bankruptcy--I suppose I might be painting it as being worse than it is. Heck--maybe I'm portraying it as too lenient.



Anyone have anything to add? Any questions? Discuss away!

How did the Idea for My Novel (Vodnik) Originate?

My editor's sent me a ginormous questionnaire that my publisher has its authors fill out in order to help them market the book. Since I'm back in writing limbo (not really enough time--I think--to work on a different project, but no current work to be done on Vodnik), I've been using my writing time to answer their questions. There are a few answers that I think would interest my faithful blog readers, so I thought I'd take the time to post my response to one of them today. I might post more responses in the future, depending on if I think you'd like to see them. Anyway--the prompt for this questions is "How did the idea for this story originate? What interested you about the material? What inspired you?" My answer turned out to be a tad long--sort of like asking for the time and getting the history of the clock. I'd say I like to hear myself speak, but that doesn't quite work for the written word. Here you go:



I know that typically it's really hard for authors to say where they got the ideas for their books, but that isn't the case for me and this novel. I can pinpoint many of the exact dates and places where the ideas came to me. For example, it all started November 2, 2000. 

I actually ended up writing this book because my first choice for a date had to cancel on me. I had tickets to a concert in Salt Lake for November 4, and a few days before, my date had something come up. So I was scrambling at the last minute to find someone else to go with me, but everyone I asked already had plans. On a lark, I asked a girl who sat near me in my German phonetics class: Denisa Križanová. I'd been in a couple of study groups with her, but I didn't know her that well. Only that she was from Slovakia, which sounded wonderfully foreign.



Six months later, we got married.



It was always very important to me that we travel to Slovakia so I could get to know her family and see where she grew up. The first time I saw Trenčín Castle, I was blown away by it. I had just started writing books in earnest, and it seemed like a wonderful setting that I could use at some point in the future. I'd lived for two years in former East Germany, and I'd also been fascinated by the way formerly-Communist countries were handling the transition to the next phase in their histories. Slovakia was in the same boat.



One of the places in the town that stood out to me the most that first trip was also one of the most unassuming: a fountain in the shape of a small man perched in a well, water spouting out of his mouth in an endless stream. I asked Denisa what it was supposed to be, and she told me about vodníks for the first time. The basics are simple: according to legend, vodníks are little green men (green skin, green hair, green suits) that live in the water. They fill their days by waiting to trick villagers into getting drowned, then the vodníks steal their souls and keep them in lidded teacups.



So many aspects of the creature seemed strange: teacups, dripping water, green hair? Then again, when you think about it, our own creatures from folklore are just as strange. Why silver bullets for werewolves? And why garlic for vampires? What was most strange was that they had a fountain dedicated to a soul-stealing creature right in the middle of the town, and children came to play in it. (Though again, we have Count Count on Sesame Street, so maybe it isn't so strange, after all.) Even stranger, Denisa insisted that vodníks weren't really all that sinister. They were mischievous, but they weren't evil in the same way vampires are evil. Creatures in Slovak folktales aren't "evil" or "good"—they just are. It's the humans who can be evil or good. Vodníks do what they do not from some innate desire to be wicked or mean—that's just who they are. In any case, the creature's mythology crept into my head then and made itself comfortable. I couldn't forget it.



My second novel took place in Slovakia in the 1600s. There was a countess who lived not far from Trenčín: Countess Bathory. She's now regarded as one of the worst serial killers in history, having purportedly killed hundreds of girls in her area, then bathing in their blood so she could stay young forever. A real winner, and one of the historical figures that served as the models for Bram Stoker's Dracula, but a person who really wasn't that notorious in America. I decided to make her the main villain of the book, and I have her a sidekick vodník, sinister and evil. The main character was a minor noble, a teenager named Katarina—Katka for short. That book never quite worked for me: the tone was too dark for my typical style, and I found I did better when my main characters could be contemporary, so I set it aside and went on to other projects, hoping to find a way to use some of it at some point in the future.



When it came time for my eighth book (in 2006), I initially wanted to write a book about a haunted house. However, as I brainstormed what sort of house it could be, I found myself gravitating toward making it a haunted castle, instead. I mean—why have a house when you could have a castle? And then as I worked with the castle idea, it all suddenly clicked: this shouldn't just be some castle, it should be Trenčín Castle. I turned back to my old Bathory book and looked at it for some ideas. (Never miss a chance to steal ideas from yourself.) Like I said, the medieval setting hadn't worked for me before, so I decided to set it in the modern day this time around. The original plan was to have the main character live at the castle, with the main conflict focused on freeing a girl who was trapped inside a tree at the castle. The girl's name was Lesana (les is the Slovak word for forest, hence the choice of name).

To get an overview of various folktales I wanted to use in the book, Denisa and I called up her brother, Miloš, who knows pretty much every Slovak folktale known to man. Through that conversation and further research, I started drifting away from the haunted tree idea (thank goodness—it hadn't been working, anyway) and toward a book which drew heavily on Slovak mythology and folktales.

Anyway—that's where the core idea for Vodník came from. The actual writing of it proved to be a much more difficult journey than any of my other books had been, but that's a story for another day.

Snow Day! (And the Revenge of the Dentist)

Yes, it's April 1. And yes, it's a raging blizzard outside. And you know what? I love it. Especially the gift of a snow day this late in the year. Sure, TRC will have to make up the day later on in the year, but such is life. At least I won't have to make it up. :-)



And on more somber news, Denisa's appointment with destiny the dentist came and went. Verdict? $3600 of tooth repair that needs to be done this year. Insurance could cover $1000 of that, but you don't need to be a math major to figure out that's $2600 we'd need to find somewhere to get her teeth into shape. She needs a bridge replaced and a new crown. I swear--sometimes the woman seems like she's got her heart set on becoming royalty. Bridges? Crowns? Of course, give her a few more years, and her mouth will be worth a king's ransom. :-)



So . . . Slovakia is back in the cards. She's figuring out how much the work would cost in Slovakia, and when we could go. Good thing I was looking at our finances for the start of the month and we look like we can afford it. Book deals help with things like that, as does bread baking. Although perhaps we won't be building staircases into my garage attic this year, after all.



Such is life.



Anyway, suckers. Enjoy work while you're there and I'm not. And Happy April Fools! I hear Gmail has a new motion interface. Check it out!

If Just 20 of You Read This . . . (Google Analytics)

So here we are at the end of the month. Can you believe it's time for April already? Craziness. And we're supposed to get 8-15 inches of snow tonight into tomorrow. I love Maine. :-)



But that's not why you're reading this post. I'm here to report on some hard numbers for my blog. Why? Because they're interesting to me. Since I left livejournal behind, I've been able to track actual views and visits to my blog, and I'm a numbers sort of a guy. What have I found? Well, for one thing, this month I set a record for the number of visitors to my blog. 332. That's not too shabby, for me. Back in July, I only had 131. So I'm approaching tripling my visitors in just 8 months. Of course, the record for a single day's worth of visits isn't likely to be broken soon: I had 158 the day I posted my review of The Way of Kings and mentioned it on Brandon's Facebook page (which makes me wonder how many visitors he's getting a day--better that I don't know.)



Anyway, if just 20 of you read this post (and that's about average for a day of visitors for my blog), then I'll set the new monthly record for my site: 644 visits in a month. Exciting!



What else do I know about you, my many visitors? Most of you are in Maine or Utah. On average, you visit 1.39 pages each time you come. You stay for a whole minute and six seconds. Hardly any of you arrive by search engine--most of you come from Facebook or Twitter. My most viewed post is that Way of Kings review, followed by my analysis of why Jar Jar Binks' dialect is so awful. Then comes my post on board games on the iPad, Mormons and True Christianity, and finally my Sunday talk on tithing.



Since I've been tracking, I've had visitors from Russia, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Greece, Pakistan, Israel, the Philippines, Venezuela, Colombia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, China, Australia--the number 2 country after the US is the Czech Republic. Slovakia is number 7. So every continent but Antarctica, where the spammers haven't managed to set up shop yet. :-)



Anyway--wherever you come from, and whyever you show up here, thanks for stopping by! It's great to know I'm talking to an actual audience, and not just myself.

No Offense, Bruce Lee, but . . .

I've been watching a wide variety of films lately--not reviewing most of them, simply because I haven't had the time, and there have been other things to blog about. But today's a slow news day for me, so I'm going to catch up on something I've been meaning to write about. I love me some martial arts movies, and while I've seen most of the big names over the years, I realized I was really lacking in the Bruce Lee department. I've seen Enter the Dragon, and . . . that's about it. So when I saw The Chinese Connection/Fist of Fury was on instant streaming, I gave it a go.



Hmm . . . .



Not really too impressed with it. The plot was disjointed, the acting really subpar, the picture awful (not the movie's fault, I realize)--but the worst offense were the fighting scenes. They were just . . . okay. It was dubbed, which I hate. Does anyone know if Bruce Lee really made those ridiculous sounds when he was fighting, or if they were dubbed in? I mean, it sounds like the epitome of a bad spoof of a Kung Fu movie, which I realize is likely because people were imitating these very sounds, but still . . . it just doesn't work. So I finished the movie and filed it under the Two Stars category, mainly giving it credit and a nod of thanks for providing an essential stepping stone to allow me to enjoy Jackie Chan movies and Iron Monkey today.



Then I saw it had been remade by Jet Li, now called Fist of Legend. Not only that, but the fights were choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping--the genius behind Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Kill Bill, Iron Monkey, Drunken Master, and Black Mask fame. It wasn't on instant streaming, but that sounded like a movie worth an actual wait for the DVD.



It was.



The story was actually engaging and faceted. The acting was great. The production values were excellent. And the fights were fantastic. Just a great example of a martial arts movie firing on all cylinders. I loved it. So Bruce Lee, I totally respect you, and I'd never say this to your face (because I value my life), but Jet Li totally wins this round. Sorry.



And in other news--thanks to four of your clicks yesterday, my blog made a whole $5.11. Thanks! :-)

Payment for Vodnik (and a Word from My Sponsors)

Guess what I got in the mail today? That's right! An actual, real, printed check, worth actual real money. (I assume--I haven't actually, really cashed it yet.) It's one thing to be working with a bunch of imaginary amounts and figures in your head, but when you see a real, tangible check, it somehow seems like a lot more--at least when you're a librarian. (We're not exactly movie stars and sports heroes, you know.) So while I won't be going out to the Mercedes dealer just yet, I'm already looking at some potential Things To Do With The Money. What I really wanted to do was take a trip to Slovakia to do some research for the next book (assuming I get to write one). However, airfare to Europe is a beast right now, and I'm no longer sure I can swing Denisa, me and the kids all going. Then again, Denisa's going in for a dentist appointment on Thursday, and we all remember what happened last time that happened. If it comes down to paying $4000 to a dentist or paying $5000 to take the fam to Slovakia AND fix the teeth, then my decision is pretty much made up. However, if I don't get to spend some of my Vodnik money on airfare, then I'm also looking at starting on a home office for yours truly. It'll be a multi-step project, with step one being the construction of a new set of stairs heading from the main part of my house up into the attic above our garage. From there, I'd be creating this enormous master bedroom/office loft area, complete with skylights, dormers and lasers (because everything's better with lasers).



Or maybe I'll just go out and buy a whole lotta pudding. Chocolate pudding never goes out of style, right?



Anyway--excitement all around here.



And while I'm discussing all these exciting financial matters, you're no doubt wondering what YOU can do to contribute to my ever-growing success. That's the ads to the right of this post and beneath it? (If you have ad blocking software on your browser, you'll have to turn it off to be able to see it.) If you click them, I get money. Click a text one, and we're only talking about a few cents. Click an actual picture, and we're talking anywhere from a whole shiny quarter to a dollar or two. Now, I'm not saying you should start clicking just to pay me money. That would be click fraud. But if you saw something that caught your eye once in a while and clicked a picture to check it out . . . I wouldn't say no to that.



And then there's Amazon. Remember: if you're going to buy something from Amazon, just come to my site first. Use the search box on the right, and then shop at Amazon as normal. I'll get a percent of everything you buy that trip. I won't know it was you who bought it, but I'll be very grateful. Again--I'm not saying to buy something you wouldn't be buying anyway. I'm just saying that if you're going to use Amazon, why not stop by here on your way. Then, instead of those Greedy Fat Cats getting all your money, THIS greedy fat cat will get some, too. And if any of you out there have something like this set up with Amazon, let me know. I can't use my own Amazon search box, so I'll gladly use yours, instead.



Ain't advertising great?

Vodnik Acknowledgements (And a March Madness Winner!)

In my break from revising, I'm trying to get other elements of the book in order, including my acknowledgements page. Since Vodnik has been an effort that spanned years, I have quite a few people to thank. The trick is, I'm afraid I'm going to forget someone. That's where you come in. If you've read and commented on Vodnik at any point in its long illustrious evolution, could you post a response or send me an email? Here's what I have so far--but I'm sure I'm forgetting some people. (And PLEASE don't take it personally if I've forgotten you. It's so not on purpose!)

This book has been a long time in the making, but it wouldn't have gone anywhere if it weren't for two key people: Denisa Križanová, who introduced me to Slovakia in the first place, and her brother, Miloš Križan, who provided volumes of information and insight on Slovak folklore, history, and anything else I might need an answer for. Special thanks also go to my editor, Stacy Whitman, and my agents: Joshua Bilmes and Eddie Schneider. My writing instructors at BYU also helped me in many ways: Louise Plummer, Dave Wolverton, Chris Crowe, and Doug Thayer. I'd like to thank members of my writing groups: Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson, Isaac Stewart, Kimball Larsen, Holly Venable, Heather Kirby, Eric James Stone, Sally Taylor, and Bradley Reneer. In addition, I've had a variety of readers for this book: Robb Cundick, Ted Cundick, Wilson Coltrin, Audrey Stone, Kristy Kugler, Molly Reed, and Betsey Hyde. Thank you all so much! Writing can be a very solitary experience, and having friends there to cheer you on makes all the difference.

And in other news, March Madness continues, but my blog bracket challenge does not. Not a single one of us could get even one of the final four correctly, so we have a winner: Reed Nielsen! Congrats, Reed! Let me know which of the FABULOUS PRIZES you've chosen to receive. Thanks for playing, all--and come back next year, when methinks I might have an actual copy of Vodnik to award to the winner. Autographed, even. :-)