Frank Hofer's Blog, page 11
February 9, 2013
From an Amazon.com Discussion
From an amazon discussion: Posted on Feb 8, 2013 6:18:39 PM PST
Luna_tic says:
Just finished ” Duck Blood Soup” and found it a great read. Well written and and a few new turns, thanks for the RTR! Now I see some more new reads so let’s drop by a all night library and pick something up.Anyone here on goodreads.com?
February 7, 2013
Customer Review – More from Sharon
This review appeared on both amazon.com and goodreads:
I’m ready for more
A delightful surprise. I do begin the free download indie books with a bit of apprehension and truly the title of this is a bit ‘off-putting’. Don’t let that slow you down, the title makes sense after you get into this book. Definitely one of my rare 5-star ratings and I’m afraid, if the quality of subsequent books holds up, it’s going to have to go on my ‘must buy’ list.
Good introduction of the characters and their world, though I think more detailed descriptions of the varied races might have been useful as I found myself at a bit of a loss with some to start with.
Characters are very well developed and the author has managed to make the various races unique rather than the usual run of vampires, giants and fey. The ‘villain’ of the series seems rather one-sided but the other characters are very well developed. Good plotline, well written action and a reasonable conclusion though obviously more story to come with lots of reasons to want to go on to the next volume without resorting to a cliffhanger.
February 6, 2013
Putting My Foodie Hobby To Use
Some people find the title Duck Blood Soup a bit umm, unusual. We’ve even had a review say “the title of this is a bit ‘off-putting’” but follow that up with “Don’t let that slow you down, the title makes sense after you get into this book.”
Whenever I talk to someone from a different culture, the conversation invariably turns to food. I like to think that people can set aside their differences and enjoy good, unique food. Ages ago I met someone from eastern Europe who mentioned that she used to eat duck blood soup. I’m sure my reaction was just as is yours, and the same as one of the characters in the book. A few years later I became friends with people from the Philippines and they mentioned “chocolate soup” – also a blood soup. About 10 years after that my brother and I started writing our book.
Early in the novel we’ve got a state dinner between long-time allies. We’ve also got different races with different dietary requirements. I needed a dish that all species could eat, some humans would enjoy and think of as normal, while others would find repulsive. Duck Blood Soup was just what I needed for that chapter.
Duck Blood Soup wasn’t the original name of the book, but after we wrote the chapter, we decided that the name change fit.
If you’re a foodie, you might be interested to know that I have actually eaten most (but obviously not all) of the culinary masterpieces described in Duck Blood Soup. Most were created around 10 years ago by Chef David Kinch of Manresa and the rest by Chef Christopher Kostow who at the time led the kitchen of Chez TJ and is currently at The Restaurant at Meadowood.
Fans of Food Network’s Iron Chef America may have seen David Kinch destroy Bobby Flay in Battle Cabbage in 2009. It was one of the most lopsided victories in the history of the show.
And no, I’ve never tried duck blood soup.
Putting My Foodie Cred To Use
Some people find the title Duck Blood Soup a bit umm, unusual. We’ve even had a review say “the title of this is a bit ‘off-putting’” but follow that up with “Don’t let that slow you down, the title makes sense after you get into this book.”
Whenever I talk to someone from a different culture, the conversation invariably turns to food. I like to think that people can set aside their differences and enjoy good, unique food. Ages ago I met someone from eastern Europe who mentioned that she used to eat duck blood soup. I’m sure my reaction was just as is yours, and the same as one of the characters in the book. A few years later I became friends with people from the Philippines and they mentioned “chocolate soup” – also a blood soup. About 10 years after that my brother and I started writing our book.
Early in the novel we’ve got a state dinner between long-time allies. We’ve also got different races with different dietary requirements. I needed a dish that all species could eat, some humans would enjoy and think of as normal, while others would find repulsive. Duck Blood Soup was just what I needed for that chapter.
Duck Blood Soup wasn’t the original name of the book, but after we wrote the chapter, we decided that the name change fit.
If you’re a foodie, you might be interested to know that I have actually eaten most (but obviously not all) of the culinary masterpieces described in Duck Blood Soup. Most were created around 10 years ago by Chef David Kinch of Manresa and the rest by Chef Christopher Kostow who at the time led the kitchen of Chez TJ and is currently at The Restaurant at Meadowood.
Fans of Food Network’s Iron Chef America may have seen David Kinch destroy Bobby Flay in Battle Cabbage in 2009. It was one of the most lopsided victories in the history of the show.
And no, I’ve never tried duck blood soup.
February 5, 2013
Engineering with Magic
This is a guest post we wrote for another site:
Engineering Magic – Frank Hofer of The Brothers Hofer with edits helpfully provided by James
When my brother Jim suggested that we write a fantasy novel, I agreed to work with him under the condition that we didn’t write “sword and sorcery.” I wanted a society with a late 18th or early 19th century level of technology with a blending of science, engineering, and magic.
As we started building the world for our story, we took time to define the rules; the physical laws by which our world would operate.
Jim has a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Food Engineering. Contrary to what you might think, Food Engineering has nothing to do with creating recipes. Rather, it is the engineering involved in designing industrial machines for food processing.
I have a BS in Computer Science and spent a dozen years in satellite operations where I had to apply knowledge learned in past engineering courses. I think it’s safe to say that we both have a pretty strong technical background, and as such wanted the physics of our world to be internally consistent and well thought-out. And above all else, no Deus Ex Machina; all problem resolutions must be resolved using the laws of physics set in place elsewhere in the book.
A central plot point of Duck Blood Soup is the introduction of a new, magical, non-polluting power source based upon scarce resources. The applications that immediately came to mind were military and commerce – power and greed. We spent a considerable amount of time researching basic designs for airship kept aloft and controlled by this new, magical substance, as well as steam powered locomotives which leveraged this new pollution free power source.
As the story developed we considered how the new substance would affect the lives of the people in our world. Who could afford the new inventions and who would be stuck using technology that was invented before its discovery?
Firearms, specifically muskets and early rifles played a key role in Duck Blood Soup. We needed to find out about conditions in arms factories of the time period as well as the manufacturing processes used at the time. We spent time researching how muskets work as well as early pitfalls in musket and rifle design. The research into early firearms provided a sense of reality to our manufacturing process, weapons availability, and usage in battle.
A real concern we had was applying what we had learned about the laws of physics to the world we were creating. Obviously magic violates all sorts of rules, giants would be crushed by their own weight in our world, human sized creatures might glide but never fly on an earth-like planet, and so on.
We knew all of that going in, but there were some rules we would not break: we would not violate the laws of thermodynamics. If a wizard used magic, it took energy. Use a lot of magic and the wizard would become exhausted and risk death. A fat wizard? Not possible if you assume that casting a spell burns calories. A spell that lasted forever? If you moved something by magic it would stay where you put it but any other spell would gradually fade away.
Likewise, a well-educated wizard would understand both the laws of magic and the laws of physics and could use this knowledge to his advantage. There is one battle scene where an army wizard uses some basics knowledge of physics to provide a magical solution to a physical problem.
By applying what we learned in engineering classes, I think we created a world that is consistent with most laws of the universe, and provides limits and rules to physical laws we break to add concepts such as magic.
February 2, 2013
Customer Comments: Sharon
Finished the book and enjoyed it a lot. Reviews up soon. I still think the title is a bit *odd* to put it kindly, but I understand why it was used after reading the book and I do like what you’ve done with the Sangre’s … not your sterotypical vampire at all.
Will be interested to see where this goes as I suspect we’ll be seeing more battle scenes and I think some of those could be … well, interesting. I think it will also be interesting to see what the young magicians can do once they get some training.
January 31, 2013
Writing with a Distant Partner
This is a guest post we did for another site:
Writing Duck Blood Soup – Frank Hofer of The Brothers Hofer with edits helpfully provided by James
How do you write a novel when your writing partner is two time zones and 1500 miles away? That was the first question we had when Jim suggested that we try our hand at writing a fantasy novel. We had just concluded our ill-fated attempt at writing humor. Our fans were each other and a couple of friends. We knew that our web site would never be The Onion but we were having a good time and got some practice writing something other than technical documents.
After a few weeks of no posts, Jim asked me how I planned to continue being creative and suggested writing either a fantasy or a science fiction novel. I agreed to work with him under the condition that we didn’t write “sword and sorcery.” I wanted a society with a late 18th or early 19th century level of technology with a blending of science, engineering, and magic. Since I didn’t know anything about steam punk at the time, I coined the phrase “muskets and magic” for our effort.
Once we had a technology time period, we needed a story. Giants versus gun wielding soldiers seemed like a good starting point.
We needed some people in our story of course. Harry Potter was really big at the time, and I always felt that Hermione Granger was not only underutilized, but should have been the real hero of the series. To me, she seemed smarter, more rational and level headed, and overall a better wizard than Harry Potter. With that in mind, Jeunelux was born. She would be the first of many strong, independent female characters, including women in combat roles, as a head of state, and a general in the army.
A couple of years after we finished the first draft of Duck Blood Soup I finally got around to reading Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy – The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass and realized that Lyra was the female character that I wanted Hermione to be. My Jeunelux and Pullman’s Lyra had a lot in common.
Our initial plot ideas were discussed through email, but we knew that we needed a better methods to actually write the book. The physical challenges of remote writers wasn’t that big of a deal. We are both computer nerds so setting up a secure FTP site to keep our work was pretty simple. Microsoft Word with change tracking enabled allowed both of us to see the edits the other made. We also added notes between brackets so that they would be easy to find.
The interpersonal challenges could have been an issue but were not because of our professional backgrounds. I spent a dozen years flying satellites so I came from a culture where it is not only expected but required for people to critique and correct your work. When a multi-million dollar satellite’s health and mission depend upon being right all the time, you either welcome people checking and correcting your work or you don’t last long in the business.
Jim and I both worked in software development environments where other engineers comment on your designs, point out problems, tear apart your work and insist on changes. While writing Duck Blood Soup we got in to our professional software development mind set – nothing said is personal, we want to write the best novel we possibly can, and we must be critical of both our own and each other’s work. If something wasn’t right, or wasn’t consistent, or seemed cliché, flag it to be fixed. If you insist on having a big ego, writing with someone will never work.
The software development mindset also helped with the overall book creation. We would have very general guidelines for chapters; this is what has happened going into the chapter, that is what the output of the chapter should be, anything else is just implementation details. After a chapter was written by one author, the other would “refactor” it by pointing out problem areas or suggesting different ways to accomplish the desired result. Passing chapters back and forth also allowed us to sound like a single author. The reader really doesn’t know who initially wrote what chapter or concentrated on particular characters.
For example, we wanted to look at different aspects of the magical creatures we used. Since Giants are common in fantasy novels, we would make sure that ours were unique. And when one author added blood suckers, the other pointed out that their ethics needed to be defined along with their special powers. Each time one of us came up with a species, the other would always ask, what is special, what hasn’t this been done before?
The professional attitudes and communications skills we developed over the years in our “paying jobs” were really put to use when we wrote Duck Blood Soup. Putting our project ahead of ourselves gave us something we can point to with pride.
January 30, 2013
Kick Someone
Joshua is an author who writes muskets and magic type fantasies and he just launched a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of getting his book The Cerberus Rebellion into print. See details here.
January 29, 2013
Customer Review: S. Danner
January 24, 2013
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Duck Blood Soup (The Caldarium War) (Kindle Edition)
I have to start this review by saying that I am generally not a die-hard fantasy novel fan. I’ve read Lord of the Rings and that’s about it.
So I read this book on a recommendation from a friend, and I was absolutely not disappointed! The book spends about 5-6 chapters building up the characters and plot, but after that, it’s pretty much non-stop action that leaves you continuously wanting more. The authors do such a good job of laying out the worlds of Eizenfeng and Ozeanchor and its people that you almost like you’re watching a great movie rather than reading great book.
The 2 things that I really appreciated about this was the modern vernacular used throughout the book and the fact that while it is a fantasy novel, and that the races of people introduced in the book are unique rather than traditional fantasy races like elves and dwarfs. That said, absolutely anyone could pick this book up and enjoy the story it tells, it’s not just another fantasy novel filled typical cliches and verbiage.
On Amazon
January 26, 2013
Engineering with Magic
We have a guest post on engineering with magic at Guild of Dreams. Check it out if you’d like to see our thought processes on magic when we wrote Duck Blood Soup.
Remember, you can see our first guest post at http://mgddasef.blogspot.com/2013/01/long-distance-writing-collaborations.html where we talk about writing a novel with someone when you’re 1500 miles and two time zones apart.
