Aaron Lee Yeager's Blog: Woot, page 3

Kharmic Rebound

*TRUMPETS AND FANFARE*

Howdy everyone, I am beyond pleased to announce that Kharmic Rebound is now live on the Amazon store here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NI2ZD90

This book was a ton of fun to write, and I know that you guys will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This is by far my best work thus far. These characters are fun, deep, complex, and their journey is wholly satisfying. Here is the jacket copy:

Nineteen years ago, the ArchTyrant and his army were finally defeated at the Battle of Embers. The path of slaughter, which had reduced over a thousand worlds to ash, had finally come to an end.

Nine months later, little Gerald Dyson was born on earth. As the reincarnation of the ArchTyrant, he inherited an astonishing amount of bad kharma, bringing misfortune to him and everything he touches.

Poor Gerald has no idea, of course. All he knows is that wherever he touches something, it breaks, wherever he goes, it rains, whenever he sees an animal, it attacks him.

When the Galaxy Central Computer malfunctions for the first time in history, and sends Gerald a scholarship to the prestigious Central Exeter law school, and when a handful of alien beauties start to take interest in him, he wonders if his luck might be changing for the better. But, a mafia heiress, a soul-eating demon, a huntress who eats humans, are these really the kinds of girls you want to be obsessed with you?

Has Gerald's luck begun to change, or is this just the beginning of the punishment the universe has in store for the reincarnation of the most evil man in history?



What began as a little side project in between Wysteria Books took on a life of its own and became a very large project. It is longer than my other books by nearly a third, so don't try and read it all in one sitting. Just take your time and enjoy the fun.

Now, because I love you guys, everyone who shares the facebook announcement of this book release with their friends between now and the 23rd will be entered into a drawing for a super special mystery prize. What is the prize? Well, you’ll just have to enter to find out.

So, share this post, get the book, enjoy it, and remember to leave a review. Reviews are like sweet ambrosia to us authors. 

Yay! New Book

Howdy everybody!

I am beyond happy to announce that my debut sci-fi novel, Heart of a Traitor, is now live on the Amazon Kindle store.

Yay!

This is the first in a planned series of three, and has been a real labor a love for me. Chronologically this was the first full-length novel I ever wrote, but as is normally the case, I went back after two other novels and re-wrote it almost from scratch using what I had learned along the way. (Learning to write novels is sort of like learning to run a marathon in that sense, the only way to learn how to do it, is to do it for a while.)

Keep in mind, this is a Dark Sci-Fi Novel. That means it is neck-deep in the horror genre, and not something you're going to want to read with your kids, so if that isn't your cup of tea, don't feel bad about passing on it, I'm working on the third Wysteria book right now, and hope to have it out around Christmas.

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Traitor-A...

Here's the teaser copy:

When the peaceful world of Correll came under attack, from the brutal and savage Gunoi, everyone expected the Confederacy to come to their aid. But help never came. Years of fighting backed them into a corner, and facing complete annihilation their leaders made the greatest mistake imaginable. They struck a deal with the demonic entity Drak'Nal, trading the souls of their soldiers in return for the power to defeat their enemies.

Three hundred years later, Nariko and the other survivors of Corell are still searching for a way to free themselves from their involuntary enslavement to Drak'Nal, but they are running out of time. Every time they die, their curse brings them forcibly back to life. Every day they lose more of their humanity, lose more of their true selves, and darkness takes its place.

Nariko had always clung to her faith to give her strength, but now the Luminarch no longer answers her prayers and a second, darker persona is growing within her threatening to swallow her whole and claim her cursed body for itself. All she had left was her pride as a soldier, and now, even that is stripped away from her as she is transferred in disgrace to the Seventh Division, whose leader Inami has gone completely mad from the curse. Inami believes that she has found the key to end their crusade and claim their freedom, but how can Nariko place her faith in a madwoman?

First Draft Complete

*Trumpets and Fanfare*
I am pleased to announce that the first draft of the Isle of Wysteria sequel is complete.

YAY!

8 months of work, whew. The crazy part is that there is a lot left to do. Tomorrow I begin editing, and then once I have it as polished as I can make it, then I turn it over to the editors, who then go over it with a fine-toothed comb as we strive to make this as mistake-free as possible. Because, like the picture says, if you make a grammar mistake, everyone looses their minds.

So, I have basically climbed to the peak of one mountain, only to find another mountain beyond it, but that is okay. Creating a book is exciting, and I am happy to have the opportunity to do it. Creating something and taking an idea and making it real is beyond rewarding in a way that is hard to describe.

Also on my to-do list is getting the cover art and internal artwork created, which isn't cheap but I think it is really important to have good quality artwork as it is the first thing people see.

Things People Should Applaud But Never Do

When Mitt Romney said "In America, we celebrate success, we don't apologize for it." he got 19.1 seconds of thunderous applause.

When Barack Obama said "'Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!'" he got 22.7 seconds of continuous applause.

They are called applause lines, and every good public speaker uses them. Okay, physicists don't use them, but if they did, they'd fill more than a dozen seats in an auditorium designed to hold a small city. Why do they use them? Because the longer we clap, the less work they have to do. Whenever a comedian announces that he just had a baby, he is getting paid for the next twelve seconds and all he has to do is stand there and bask. It's the public speaker version of taking a long bathroom break while on the clock. Now, talking a long luxurious drought of water? That's the equivalent of hanging out at the water cooler.

But there are some things that people should applaud but never do. Bizarre Bermuda Triangles of public speaking that we can map out only by the wreckage left behind.

I've Never Had Alcohol
Announcing your sobriety for cheap applause is so common in standup that its almost become cliché. Want 15 seconds of free clapping? Just tell them you haven't had a drink in two years. It doesn't even have to be true, people just love applauding this one. (Somewhat ironic considering that every comedy club since 1933 requires a two-drink minimum to ensure that the patrons are too drunk to notice the sticky layer of despair covering the floor.)
However, announce that you've never had alcohol before, and people will stare at you like you just brought out a bobble head doll and proclaimed your intention to marry it.
This one can be particularly maddening if you realize that in both cases the same basic thing has been said. In both cases no alcohol has been consumed for the last two years, it's just that in one case one has gone above and beyond those two years, assuming the speaker is older then two years, which is a fairly safe assumption as assumptions go.
So why do people clap for one but not the other? Perhaps they feel like they are being judged, or perhaps it throws into sharp relief untidy parts of their own lives they'd rather not pay to be reminded of, or perhaps they feel like they now have so little in common with the person speaking that all they can do is just stare at him like an alien made of rice pudding.

I Just Converted To...
Let's face it, when something makes you happy, you want to share it with other people, and we are usually happy when other people are made happy, even if it is something we don't enjoy ourselves, we can be happy for them. Announce that you love visiting old castles? Applause. Announce that you just met the girl of your dreams and you are so so so in love? Huge applause. Announce that you just converted to a new religion that makes you happy? Dead Silence.


There are some others I thought of. People will applaud “I just got over a long battle with cancer” but not I just got over a long and painful relationship/divorced. People will applaud I quit smoking a year ago but won't applaud I've never smoked. Although I suspect that's similar to the alcohol one.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what you guys have to say, so let me know why you think people don't applaud certain things, or let me know if you've discovered things of your own in the Bermuda Triangle of applause.

New novel 1/2 complete

*Trumpets and Fanfare*
I am happy to announce that the writing on the Isle of Wysteria sequel, called The Reluctant Queen, has officially passed the halfway point. Yay!

Fans of the first book will be happy to find all the things that made it great in spades, plus a lot of new stuff and new characters. All of the buildup in book one begins to pay off in some very big and important ways.

I find I am getting much faster at writing than I used to be. The original Isle of Wysteria took just over a year to write, while this has reached the halfway point after just three months. Its surprising even to me, particularly because I have soooooooooo much less free time then I did back when I wrote the first one. By all accounts it doesn't make any sense, but there you go.
The one thing I can say has certainly made a difference is my little blue-tooth keyboard. It links wirelessly to my iphone, allowing me to word process and write no matter where I am. A good portion of The Reluctant Queen has been written on park benches while my kids play on the slides. Even this blog entry is being written from a waiting room while my foster son sees the dentist. I've been squeezing in every spare minute I can to write, and I guess it is paying off.

It is really fun to come back to these characters and visit them yet again. Athel, in particular, is really fun to write. She has a very strong id, which gives her a high degree of emotive honesty. When she is hungry she eats, when she is happy she laughs, when she is sad she cries, when she is angry she yells. That is not to say she is uncomplicated. Far from it. In fact, I'd say she's by far the most complicated character I've ever written. She has her years of royal training and courtly sensibilities that clash and oppose her naturally carefree and slightly slovenly nature. She desperately desires her freedom, yet she has a deep sense of duty to her forest and her people. She respects and loves her mother, but she also blames her for the conflicted life she lives.

Alder is harder for me to write. He has so many filters to his behavior. He rarely says what he really thinks, and has lived under the pressure of duty for so long that it never even occurs to him to do what he wants to do most of the time. It's too easy for him to vanish into the background if I'm not careful to include him.
And yet, for all of his filters, he is a refreshingly honest character in his motivations. He is hard to write but I love to read him when it is done, if that makes sense. His compassion and concern for others is so simple, his love for Athel is so pure and honest. He has no hidden agenda, no guile, he just loves her with all his heart and wants her to be happy, and wants her to be the best she can be. And yet, despite the simplicity of his intentions, he is not a simpleton. In fact, he's probably one of the most intelligent characters in the series. Observant and thoughtful, if a little naive in the ways of the world at times.

I think that is why they compliment each other so well. Athel is honest in how she emotes, while Alder is honest in his intentions. They have a lot they can learn from one another to grow as individuals and as a couple. Too many people focus on compatibility, I think what is far more important is complimentability.

Musings on Sacred Cows

Sacred Cows



I'll admit it, I have bad taste in movies. At least once a week I find myself in a conversation where someone is talking about some terrible movie, and I find myself thinking, "hey, I liked that...a lot."
Some of my favorite films were huge commercial flops. Titan A.E. - loved it. Treasure Planet - can't get enough. Battlefield Earth (yes, THAT one) love it.
My bad taste is not limited to just movies, either. Take candy, for example. My wife loves high-quality-pure-imported-from-some-place-I-can't-pronounce chocolate, while I like those mostly-wax and ground-up Chinese newspaper Easter peanut butter eggs with no expiration date. My favorite stuff are those nasty vending machine cookies with the pink frosting. You know, the ones that don't contain any actual food content.
Yum.
Anyway, so I was watching one of my favorite bad movies, Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman. I love that movie because it is a vampire movie that contains actual vampires. Not high-school students who go to prom, control their blood-lust, sparkle in the sun, and have abusive dysfunctional relationships.
No, when I look at the vampires in Van Helsing, I think to myself, "THIS is what vampires should be like."
In one scene the winged brides are laying waste to a town, snatching poor hapless humans right off the ground and tearing their throats out. At one point, one of the brides (cause vampires are polygamous) pounces at Van Helsing, only to have him roll out of the way at the last second. The bride instead grabs a CG cow by mistake and crashes into a building with it. In the commentary track the director mentioned that during one of the test screenings the audience was really concerned about that cow. They wanted to know that it had survived the attack, and not knowing was really bothersome to them.
So, about a hundred thousand dollars of Hollywood money (not sure what that would be in real-life money, look up Hollywood accounting for a tasty read) was spent adding in a short clip at the end of the scene where the CG cow emerges from the rubble unharmed.
That quite frankly amazed me. Here we just watched about three dozen humans get violently murdered by nightmarish creatures, and we didn't bat a collective eyelash, but the minute a CG cow got manhandled suddenly everyone's sympathy meter goes haywire.
In writing this is called a sacred cow. It does not have to be an actual cow, by the way, that is just me trying to be clever by using an example that actually involved a cow. A sacred cow is anything that the audience holds so dear that you basically cannot touch it without inciting a revolt.
Now, many educated western people think themselves above having superstitions and sacred totems, but they are dead wrong. In fact, western audiences have more sacred cows than cultures that actually have real sacred cows do.
A huge one for western audiences is animals. Particularly cute ones. You can mistreat humans all you want, but mistreat an animal and be prepared to be drowned in letters. It sometimes makes me wonder about the kind of people we are when throwing a human off a building makes people stand up and cheer (see the end of Die Hard) but if you were to accidentally step on a puppy's paw and make it yelp thousands of people would go start cutting down trees to make the posters and signs they need to protest your work. (Can't people protest without wasting so much paper? It seems like at some point everyone agreed that to be counted as a real protest a certain amount of litter must be created)
Anyway, as sacred cows go, animals have managed to land themselves into the same category as babies in many people's minds. If you don't believe me, the next time you are around a cat person, I dare you to admit that you hate cats. Odds are they will look at you like you just said you hate babies, then punched one right in front of them just to complete the effect. Personally, I hate the fact that I have to pretend to like cats in mixed company. They are filthy disgusting creatures that spitefully treat their owners as if they were their royal subjects.
At least dogs can be taught to do useful things, and exhibit a degree of loyalty towards their owners, so I can kind of understand why people have them. But cats do nothing for you and care nothing for you.
Anyway, I rarely admit this in mixed company, but this is the Internet, and everyone is cool here, so I feel I can totally admit this here without fear of reprisal. Feel free to send any hate mail to StephanieMeyer@yahoo.com
Now, keep in mind, I have never had a cat, and I have never mistreated one, nor do I wish harm to come to them. In my whole lifetime, the amount of cat suffering I have generated is zero. Yet, that isn't enough for some people. The mere fact that I do not like cats makes me a detestable human being, a pariah, in their eyes. One of "them," not one of "us."
What makes me scratch my head about all of this is because this particular sacred cow seems to be unique to city dwellers. (i.e. people who have almost no experience with animals.)
Now, I respect people who love animals, but there is a HUUUGE difference between loving animals and understanding them, and when emotion is not backed up by experience and knowledge it can create problems.
Deer, for example, are viscous, mean, territorial, dangerous animals that kill more humans every year then bears have killed in the last hundred years. And I don't mean like someone hit a deer with their car and ran off the road, I mean deer go out and run people through who happen to stray into their territory.
I know, right? Little Bambi. When explaining this, I once had a woman respond, "How could a deer kill someone?" I responded by saying, "Are you kidding? They have knives on their heads!"
This love for animals coupled with a lack of experience with animals has created a category of critters that most people think are cute, but are actually really really dangerous and should be avoided. Swans, for example, will charge you and hit you with their powerful wings, which are strong enough to snap your arms and spine. And not just because they are defending their babies, they'll do it just to ruin your day. Dolphins kill ten times as many people each year as sharks do. And yes, occasionally dolphins will save someone, but that is rare, they are far more likely to try and forcibly mate with you. Yes, dolphin rape is a real thing and happens every year. I wish I was making that up.
Anyway, the point is, you cannot simply love nature, you must also respect it, and understand it. Life is not a Disney Cartoon. Critters do not sing, and they do not want to be your friend. Mother Nature is a brutal world of kill-or-be-killed, and those critters exist in that world.
Whether you are fighting off vampires or dolphins, the message is the same: Be smart, be safe. And remember, knowing is half the battle.

Heart of a Traitor is complete

*Trumpets and Fanfare*

I am happy to announce that Heart of a Traitor is finally complete. YAY! :)

Woot! It feels like I just finished running a marathon, but I am so proud of the results. This started out as a simple revision, something that would just take a few week, but turned into a massive and complete rewrite. I can honestly say that this book contains some of my best writing to date.

Those of you who know me will recognize the way that many of my experiences over the last year have metastasized their way into the story. That is how the creative process works. Everything you experience and everything you are becomes the catalyst for creation, and becomes integrated in what comes out of you.

This is a story about choosing to hope. This is a story about having things happen to you that change who you are. This is a story about recognizing what you have lost. This is a story about forgiveness.

Sometimes I worry a little that people might be a little surprised because the tone is so completely different from my other works. This is some pretty heavy stuff, but this story is very dear to me and really comes straight from my heart, so I think that ultimately you have to be true to yourself and stand by what means a lot to you, so that is what I will do. :)


Here's the pitch:
Humanity is on the brink of collapse. Psychic entities formed from a million of years of negative emotions are waging a war with a single purpose: The destruction of all humans. What is worse, is that many humans have become traitors, worshiping these demons and serving them in exchange for power. The Confederacy is desperately trying to hold back the tide, but they are running out of ships, and they are running out of soldiers.

Nariko and here people are not traitors, but when their planet was besieged their desperate leaders turned to the Demon God Drak'Nal and sold the souls of their people to it in return for the power to defeat their enemies.

Now Nariko and her people wander the stars, hunted by both sides, desperate to find a way to end their curse and free their souls from bondage. But they are running out of time, for the curse is slowly turning them into demons themselves.




Now is the fun part, I get to hand over the manuscript to my crack team of editors for revisions, and once those are done we are ready to publish. :) I'm still waiting on some of the internal artwork, but the cover art is already complete, I just can't figure out how to include it to this blog post. :(

Next week I will begin working on Book 2 of the Isle Of Wysteria series. The title will be, Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen.

Heart of a Traitor 1/2 complete

Hit a huge milestone today. The rewrite for Heart of a Traitor is 1/2 complete. It's all downhill from here, or so it is said. It is quite an experience rewriting a book I haven't looked at in nearly a decade. On the one hand, I've had quite a lot of positive moments when I realize how much I have grown as a writer since then, taking scenes that were good and making them excellent.

However, I've also had quite a lot of "holy crap what was I thinking" moments. Especially with the sci-fi jargon! Oh...my...heck, I don't know why I included so much techno-babble back then. Maybe I had picked up by osmosis some really bad habits from watching too much Star Trek, or maybe I thought it was required or something and people would miss it if it wasn't there, like the "it's a small world" ride at Disneyland.

Anyway, if this were being done on paper I would have already depleted three red markers by now with all the techno-babble I have eliminated. The story is now character focused, which makes for a better read, I think.
After all, the first and most basic rule of writing is (or at least should be) that the reader has to care about the characters. If they don't care about the characters, then they certainly aren't going to care about the conflict, the world, its history, or anything else. All the drama, tension, anticipation, sympathy, etc. Basically, anything the reader feels while reading can only happen if they first care about the characters.

Wanna' see an example?

Oh, I TOTALLY shouldn't be doing this, but I can't resist. You guys are never going to respect me after this, but I can't help myself. Okay, let me grab something out of the overflowing waste bin of sci-fi jargon that is no longer in the book:


“Hardly,” she commented. My bodies’ cellular-stasis is reset daily by immaterial induction.”
Don Kielter looked at her with a furrowed brow.
“Didn’t you ever attend open-temple days for the Verussiah?” she asked. “I thought that was required for the nobles on Ardura.” Don Kielter shook his head slowly.
“I hate dumbing things down,” she sighed. “Okay, where does a thought go after you have it?”
His expression of confusion only deepened. He looked as if he were watching a small animal crawl of her mouth.
“In the ether, matter is intangible, and thoughts are tangible. The ether is a reflection of the thoughts of all sentient life. Have you ever heard of the galactic-mirror dogma?”
Don Kielter shook his head slowly. Nariko rolled her eyes.
“Both realities actually occupy the same space, but ether matter is phased at the autrino-level, so the two normally don’t interact, except in living things, which bridge the gap between the two realities. As a living thing, you have both a physical body, and an ether aural body, which separate at death.”



Ugh, just look at all that mess! It's a disaster!

It doesn't really mean anything to the reader, it barely gives any useful information about the way this world works, it certainly doesn't mean anything scientifically. It's just me wasting the reader's time by imitating the way scientists talk. It's like watching a puppet show in serbian.

(PLEASE LET ME EMPHASIZE THAT I HAVE GOTTEN MUCH BETTER AT WRITING SINCE 2001, SO PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ME BY THIS STANDARD)

Okay, back to work, and by work I mean playing Mario Party 9 with my daughter who has been patiently waiting for me while i wrote this.

I forgot how much fun previews can be

It's been years since I tried to go to any movie that wasn't made for little kids. Don't get me wrong, there are some really great kids films out there. (I really enjoyed Wreck-it-Ralph when I went to see it with my family.)
It's just that finding a babysitter is like a 5 hour process, and spending 5 hours just to get two hours without my little ones in tow just feels like a bad exchange rate, so I normally just don't go to movies anymore.

However, I'd really been looking forward to seeing the Hobbit. My kids and I even read it together over the summer to get ourselves all psyched up for it. So, I was all ready to start making phone calls when my wife suggested that our littlest one would probably be able to handle it.
I don't know why I agreed. Maybe it was because the lazy part of me saw an opportunity to NOT have to make 5 hours of babysitting preparations and it took over.

For whatever reason, I convinced myself that it would work. We snuck in a ton of food and snacks (diaper bags are great for contraband), we took a commanding spot on the back row so that no one would be bothered by the light from my I-phone if my little one needed to play crepe-maker. I even stretched out my giant legs to dissuade people from sitting too close to us.

Long story short, I saw the first fifteen minutes of the movie before my little one was making so much ruckus that I had to take her out into the lobby and imagine how cool the stone-giants must have looked like while my little one stacked booster seats into a rather sophisticated fort. (It's always fun to pay full price to sit in the hallway outside the theater)

However, the one bright spot was that I was able to see some real fun previews. The one that really caught my eye was pacific rim, which looks to be a michael-bay style action film about giant anime robots.

GIANT-ANIME-ROBOTS

Consider me sold, although I think "pacific rim" has to be the least-helpful title you could give to a giant robot movie. Just call it "Giant Freakin' Robots, the movie." At least then people will know exactly what they are getting. Pacific Rim doesn't tell us anything. It's even a little misleading. It sounds like a war documentary...which, come to think of it, I also would watch. So, really, they got me hooked either way.