M.D. Kenning's Blog, page 6

Cover Art Part I: The Art!

Without much further ado ladies and gentlemen : The Cover!

I’m very pleased with it, and it is way beyond my expectations.  The interview of Tatiana, the artist, whose choice easily won my poll will occur this weekend.  I will probably be able to post that early next week, hence why today’s blog is part 1.

So while I wait for that interview I wanted to go just a little into what I liked about it so much. Originally I wanted to focus on the ship, as it was an iconic part of the book.  However when I got the first rough draft back the island so overtook the ship in terms of visual impression to me that I had her reduce the ships importance drastically.  Not to mention that the floating island showed off some of the uniqueness of the world even more than the ship does.

You will also notice two light sources, and this is due to their being the Sun Above and the Sun Below in this book, which the artist incorporated into the final version of the piece.  The font also is striking, and gives the book a slightly different feel then others, and tied into why I fell in love this with this cover.

Book status updates: both versions of the book, the kindle version and the one with my publisher are being formatted right now.  The process will probably take a little over a week for each, so I doubt I will have much news to give on either version next week, but does mean optimistically I will probably beat my July deadline of getting it published foreseeing anything major.

Before I go onto my poll I wanted to share another tidbit about the world since I have gotten to private emails about wanting to know about the Allmother (hey everyone, you can sue the polls for that too : ) ) and her church in this world.  Basically it has many similarities to the Catholic church during the Renaissance era but there are a few major differences too.  One, they worship a creator who is female and therefore the Priestesses in this church are too.  Most women except the poorest families either become priestesses or marry, so it is one of the few ways women have power in this society.  Another difference is instead of having one written book they have a collection of songs and tales told orally.  There are written versions of these tales but the primary ways they are passed on is through song in the church.  Although there are other differences the last I will bring up here is one of the main ways a woman born into poverty can have any amount of control of her life is if she is adopted as a ward of the church, and then eventually becomes a Priestess at that same church.

Now for the poll:

This is kinda meta, it’s a poll about polls.  I have noticed a drop off in the past few polls, so I wonder if people still want them.  Here are the choices.

1)Yes, polls every post please.  I just like answering polls.

2)Continue polls sometimes, but not every post needs a poll.

3)We don’t really need polls anymore.  They were fun when helping with the process and affecting how the book would turn out, but I would rather only see them if it was that level of impact again.

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Also as always, the directions I take this blog depend upon what is said in the comments below!

Airship Pirates and Formatting!

The title refers to the results of the poll last week.  There was definitely less voting last week but more viewers than normal, which is odd.  I will focus on that subject more in a little bit.

In book news, the manuscript completely finished and edited.  It now goes through the joys of formatting, yippee!  The Kindle formatting does not look too cumbersome, and a friend of mine is helping me with that (Hi Rose!) so it might be done before the one that goes to my publisher.  My publisher on the other hand needs the document in a VERY specific format, as once you send it that way, it goes through a computer program and spits out your e book in the various formats that it can publish in.  Due to the same attributes that allows it to publish in so many formats there can be no deviancy from its 96 page style manual, so that one is going to take a little longer to be done!  The good news is there is a certain amount of crossover from what both Kindle and my publisher want so next time I can start off with that format and not have this issue next time as much.

The next good book news is I got the first draft of the cover, and I am seriously impressed!  The artist is working on the second draft (I only had a few minor caveats) now.  It’s a mixed media piece, and does indeed feature a large floating island.

Now to go more into Airship Pirates as per the poll.

This book is vaguely modeled on the Renaissance era when the Medici family was creating all sorts of art and through commerce basically ruling Florence without actually being nobility.  In real life there were few pirates then (more privateers than anything else like Sir Francis Drake who is not horribly out of that time period) and there are other issues that would hurt the historical accuracy of this book.  Thankfully however, this is a fantasy book with floating islands and airships that fly solely due to the magical wood they use, so I am not exactly bound by history.

In the novel when the devastating events that you read in the first chapter happens (if you have not done so already go to the top of the page this blog is on, and click “Sample Chapter” and read it and then come back) some of the survivors hide in the world of air piracy in order not to die like the House Nemeni.  Although some of the floating islands can be large enough to have river commerce occur on the surface of the islands, most actual commerce happens between the various floating city states by airship.  Each noble family in this world has some ways inherited by them to break the Grand Laws of the universe, and one of them allows them to alchemically change wood, so it has different properties than normal.  That’s how the Bleedshot in the opening chapter is created.  The most highly prized wood however is cloudwood.

For whatever reason this wood allows a ship to rise, no matter how much weight is put in it.  You can anchor yourself to an island, but as long as the ship stays on the edges of an island it will remain floating.  If pushed into the center of an island or flying to close over it, it may slowly sink to the ground, but it would not crash.  Since this wood works regardless of weight, the only limit of what ships made of cloudwood can carry is how big the structure is.  This has caused some of the banking and other houses to make giant floating castle like citadels in the sky that have a cloudwood structure inside and a marble structure outside.  This is done mainly for intimidation or security, but does give them a rather large blind spot underneath them.

Some bastards of noble families and some Artists can shape wood or marble with their bare hands, and this allows pirates who have members form those families to “carve” a way into these ships or citadels with their bare hands, if they get close enough.  The most famous Pirate is a “Captain Bloodeyes” who has gained his moniker from forcing blood to mist around his eyes in a mask like form during combat, which inspires about as much fear into your opponents as setting your own beard on fire would.  There is only one Captain Bloodeyes at a time, and it is rumored to be a title passed on as opposed to just one person (otherwise, he has been alive for about 200 or so years, which is doubtful considering the life expectancy of a pirate).  The actual book will go more into how they do it (which includes clockwork grappling guns, creative cannon use, and overall rapier sharp wits) but I wanted to give you a small taste of what they do and what it is like this world.  There are islands known to harbor pirates, and if some of the larger noble families were to ever find out extinction would probably be upon them quickly.

Now onto my next poll:

What would you like me to write about next?  Here are my choices –

a) Ok, you said your artist was awesome, so do something about her.  Give her an interview, show any of her art relating to this series, highlight her work however you can.

b) So I here you are talking to other authors.  Give them an interview, I want to know some of the people you have been talking too, and more about what they do too.

c) Reveal more about the world. There was some votes about the Allmother, go into that more.

d) I am stupid and want to hear you complain about formatting more.

Take Our Poll

Also I got some email about people impressions about the book who had never read it before, but I would love to see some in the comments to other than those who participated last time.  I am looking at you Dave.

Chapter 1 is up!

Yup, read the title of this blog, then go click on that new section that says “Sample Chapter” and read Chapter 1 of the book (checked with the publisher, it’s fine ). : ) Now you can comment on here both about the chapter itself, and knowing at least a small fraction of the world.  Like all fantasy chapter ones it has some exposition, but I tried not to make it to impenetrable or pull away from the narrative too much.

Now as for the results of the poll, B was overwhelmingly the winner, and I got some good suggestions both in the comments below, and in private correspondence, so here is the official long form description of the book, followed by the necessarily sparse short form (which had to be 400 characters or less including spaces). The short form is only required by certain publishers, and was quite pain to cut down to its current form.

Now the long form:

In a reality of floating Islands with a Sun Above and a Sun Below, every noble House has its own abilities to break the Grand Laws of the Universe. Cenive is a floating island filled with art, culture and, most of all, commerce. Long ago the Church and most of the other noble Houses banded together to annihilate the domineering House Nemeni who created clockwork marvels that once let their banking empire span all of the floating islands. Now years later the remnants from that house have emerged from their hiding places that span from the Church to a Piratical Airship to enact a well-planned revenge. Unseen forces and traitors cause their plans to careen out of control and quickly, a small remnant finds themselves on the brink of destruction. At the heart of it lies a prophecy of flames and destruction, but is it of extinction, or making way for something new to rise?

And the short form:

In a realm of floating islands, every House has abilities that break the Laws of the Universe.  The Nemeni, the bankers whose clockwork marvels let their empire dominate, was destroyed by its enemies long ago. Now a remnant has emerged to enact revenge but their plans fail with deadly consequences due to a prophecy of fire and upheaval. Is it one of extinction, or a rising from the ashes?

I hope by my next Teusday blog I have more details about he cover art, which has already been started.

Honestly my main revelation and discussion point this blog was the actual chapter itself, but I do have a Poll too.

This time the poll is pretty simple, what do you want to see next here?  Certain blogs will occur when they are relevant (cover, formatting, etc) but I plan on doing blogs in between the milestones, so what do you want to see more of?

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Lastly, thank you all for when you share this by face book, twitter, etc, I can see the amount of individual views jump  versus non blog days, and that’s honestly my best chance to market this book without a traditional print publisher.

Allmother’s Fire

As you can see by my title of this blog, “Allmother’s Fire” will be the name for the series. It was what I was leaning towards before the poll, and same with my editor. Your votes and comments indicated to me this was the best path, and I definitely look at the comments almost as much as the votes. In fact later in this blog, I will put a little bit of information about the series pertaining to the comments, so if you are curious are about things and want me to answer just put them in the comments below.

The actual title of the book will contain a little bit of jargon in it, but I am hoping the less jargon title of the series will help. Book One is titled, “The Fall of House Nemeni” and the reason for it will be apparent both early and later on in the first book, for two different reasons. The short of it, it’s very descriptive about the book, and you can’t have a revenge story without something falling apart.

Ok now for things related to this poll. I am going to give a few possibilities to give for the book description. This is like what would be on the book flap or the back of the book if published in a non e-book manner. Let me know which one would want to read by the description of it, and as this is not set in stone yet I will take suggestions in the comments for this blog too. Keep in mind by it’s nature it’s a smaller description then the back of many books according to the restrictions on description size and none of these have been tossed towards my editor yet.

A) After a coalition of all the other power players on the floating island of Cenive destroy it’s powerful banking House patricians, a few remnants of that House hide for years. They flee and eventually settle in the seemingly dissimilar worlds of the Church and Air Piracy. Eventually this is not enough for them, and they come back together to exact revenge on everyone that was responsible for the massacre all those years ago. Other forces seem to be at play however, and now even those last few survivors face complete annihilation due to what appears to be traitors amongst their allies. At the heart of it all lies prophecy of flames and destruction, but is it of extinction, or making way for something new to rise?

B) In a reality of floating Islands with a Sun Above and a Sun Below, every noble House has it’s own abilities to break the Grand Laws of the Universe. Years ago the Church and most of the other noble Houses banded together to annihilate the domineering House Nemeni who created clockwork marvels that once let their banking empire span all of the floating islands. Now years later the remnants from that house have left their hiding places that span from the Church to a Piratical Airship to enact a well-planned revenge. Unseen forces and traitors from within cause their plans to careen out of control and soon the few survivors find themselves about to be destroyed. Their only hope lies in finding each other, and attempting to make a final stand.

C) Cenive is a floating island filled with art, culture, and most of all commerce. House Nemeni, the dominant House of the island filled with masters of coin and clockwork marvels, falls to a devastating massacre caused by all the other Houses on the island. Years later the survivors of this purge plan to leave their self-imposed exile as Air Pirates and working within the Church that might have betrayed them in the first place. Something else has plans that directly interfere with the remnants of House Nemeni, and only if the fractious survivors re unite do they have any chance of staying alive.

So in the poll, where it says A, B, or C, that is what I am referring to.

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Finally to respond to one of the comments in particular, they were hoping the book did not have a lot to do with Religion, I wanted to explain a little more. This being a fantastical version of the world of Medici controlled Florence, the Church has a large role in tithes world, but for more people it was about secular power and that is largely reflected in the book. However it is a fantasy and between the abilities the nobles have and the fact that the Priestesses (yes it’s a matriarchal religion) seems to nullify their abilities, there is more going on with the Religion then just secular power, but not necessarily what it’s constituents thinks is happening at all.

Due to how some changes in the cover process, I will not have that in my next blog as the poll choice, but something tying into that may show soon. So we will see what it ends up being in two days. By the way if anyone has a twitter account, let me know, I am still figuring that one out, and want to run back to the safety of facebook and other tools like it.

Of Twits and Clockpunk

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Disclaimer: This post was made less than 24 hrs after dental surgery on fun medicine, on a tablet. If something does not make sense here, it might be not just you.

So today I took the next few steps down the media trail, and added a facebook and twitter account, as apparently all of this is important when publishing e-books. Without agents and a publisher to promote you, you must self promote, and I expect to be active on a lot more forums than I used to be, all with a nice shiny blog link in my signature. The hardest part of this for me of course was signing up on twitter. I am sorta at philosophical odds with a platform that encourages tiny rapid bursts of information spelled like a 7 year old with a sugar rush but when I signed up today I found a most disturbing truth.

It’s actually fun, and fascinating and not just in a train wreck way. However if I start using hash tags in my normal emails, my friends have my permission to eviscerate me.

The less I focus on that the better though, so on to other topics.

First is that I will be closing the old poll.  MD Kenning will be my official name on most things, and in the few places a full name is required, it will be Miles Dale.  I originally had another name that started with the letter M, but since my wife and I plan on calling our future son that name, she requested I not use it.  So Miles it is .  Now I wonder what the proper punctuation use with a smiley face is, and if it should go after the period.   I’d like to  blame that curiosity on the Vicodin, but I probably have a friend who would know the answer to that.  Anyone have any idea?

My next poll is for my series name.  I tend to like series names that are not to jargon filled like  ”The Shmazacalifragilsitc Chronicles,” which would only make sense to a reader of that series.  Not that the above is a real series (I hope) but I have seen plenty like it.  I prefer ones that sound vaguely fantasy-ish but as a concept even if it brings up mythological resonances to a reader still does not look like word vomit.  So ” A Ballad of Winter and Summer” is fine with me, or “Disc of the Father God’ would even work.  So without reading the book, but knowing what I prefer, here are the choices:

1)The Allmother’s Fire

2)Clockwork Islands

3)Imperfect Cogs

4) A Tale of Airships and Vengeance

Yup, I am aware most of you have not read it, but which sounds like something you would read?

Finally, a brief explanation of why this is more “clockpunk” than Steampunk, as someone asked me what is the difference.  Mainly this is set in a more Renaissance inspired era than Victorian.  So less goggles and more piratey.  No to mention some of the most impressive “magic” in this world (which is more inspired by Renaissance era thinking of people have Dominion over different domains)  directly uses clockwork to break “The Grand Laws of the Universe,” but I will go more into that after the book is published.

Now to rest up, and start finalizing book names base on the series name I will use.