Benedict Jacka's Blog, page 20

Alex Verus #12 – Risen (Part 1)

(This is part 12 of a 12-part series of author commentaries on the Alex Verus books.  The master post with links to all the parts is here.)

Ending a series, especially a long-running series, comes with a certain amount of pressure.  First impressions count for a lot, but when it comes to a long story, last impressions count more.  The ending is the end, which means that when the reader closes the book for the last time and walks away, it’s the part that’s going to be freshest in their mind, which makes it stand out in their memory.  

Endings also affect the rest of a story in a way that beginnings and middles don’t.  If the first 10% of a story is totally disconnected from the rest of it, readers are often willing to give it a pass – no-one’s going to judge the whole story on that first 10%.  (They might give up and never read the rest of the story, but that’s a different issue.)  Likewise, you can get away with having big chunks of filler somewhere in a book’s middle – some authors do this quite regularly.  But if it’s the last 10% that’s disconnected, then you’ve got a problem.  People think of story endings as like the conclusion to an essay – they’re supposed to follow on from the middle, and if the ending’s bad, people are more likely to decide that the middle is bad, too.

All of this means that an ending has a disproportionate impact on reader feelings.  The more that readers like a story’s ending, the more forgiving they usually are to its flaws.  (“Sure, it starts slow, and the middle drags a bit, but it’s totally worth it once you get to the end!”)  On the other hand, a bad ending can easily sour a reader completely – it’s not unusual for fans of a book or TV series to do a 180 and become anti-fans if it ends badly enough.  Game of Thrones is probably the most famous example – the final season managed to not only destroy all of the fanbase’s goodwill towards the current season, it retroactively tainted their memories of all the previous ones, as well.

This meant that Risen was a really important book.  Not only was it going to have a huge impact on how readers felt towards the series as a whole, it would have a knock-on effect on my future books, too.  If I messed this up badly enough, it could tank my whole career.  So when I finally sat down in the spring of 2020 to start work on the book, you might have reasonably guessed that I was feeling somewhat stressed.  

Oddly enough, you’d be wrong.  I found writing Risen to be quite easy, for three reasons. 

First and most important was that writing Risen involved very few decisions.  I made about half of the big decisions about where the series was going to go back in book #5, had made the other half by around books #8 to #9, and nailed down the shape of the final arc in book #10.  By the time I got to book #12, all the lines had been drawn and it was just a matter of colouring them in.  There were details to fill in and battles to choreograph and conversations to write, but all the big decisions were done, and making big decisions is far and away the hardest part.  Writing Risen was less work than an average Alex Verus book, and much less work than one of the real ‘decision point’ books like Hidden.  

Second, I was pretty sure the book was going to be good.  I get these feelings sometimes with my books – not every time, not even most of the time, but every time that I have them, my readers seem to feel the same way.  I had that feeling with Chosen (book #4), with Burned (book #7), and with Fallen (book #10), and I had it again with Risen.  There were lots of big events that I’d set up and which were now ready to be triggered, and I was pretty sure my readers would enjoy seeing the payoffs.  

And thirdly and finally, I was just an old hand at this by now.  By 2020, I really did feel that I knew exactly how to write an Alex Verus novel, and that gave me a confidence that I hadn’t had back when I was starting out.  

Happily enough, my readers agreed.  It’s now been over six months since the release of Risen, and looking at Goodreads (which is my usual go-to for reader reactions to my books, due to the sheer volume of ratings that books get there), Risen’s my highest-rated book by a long way.  At the time of writing, it’s got a Goodreads rating of over 4.5, higher than anything else I’ve ever written (the runner-up is Fallen, on around 4.4).  As a result, the Alex Verus series has joined the list of fantasy series that are (a) successful, (b) finished, and (c) finished in a way that its readers are generally happy with, which is a nice accomplishment to have.  No matter how things go with my future books, I think at this point it’s a safe bet that for the rest of my life, I’ll be able to look back on the Alex Verus series and be pleased with my work.  

Well, so much for the series.  On to the actual events of the book!

Risen starts off with an action sequence in Sagash’s shadow realm.  Although both the events and the location are important, the chapter’s main purpose is to showcase just how much Alex has changed.  Back in Fated, Alex was a shopkeeper who whiled away his time selling novelties to tourists.  He was snarky, somewhat lonely, moderately powerful, and generally content with his quiet life and his small handful of friends.  Hardly anyone paid attention to him, and on the whole, he liked it that way.  Fast-forward to Risen and Alex is one of the most notorious and feared mages in Britain:  a cold, ruthless, and driven battle-mage who cuts through a small army of jinn without slowing down.  Alex’s interactions with Ji-yeong also demonstrate how far he’s come from his old passive, conflict-averse self.  While Alex is calm and fair towards Ji-yeong, if she’d attacked him there on that rooftop, he would have killed her instantly.  Ji-yeong senses this, and acts accordingly.  As a Dark apprentice, she’s quick to pick up on power disparities:  she realises that she’s a predator facing an apex predator, and is careful not to provoke him.

While the first chapter of Risen shows the growth in Alex’s personal power, the second chapter shows the growth in his political power.  In Fated, hardly anyone even knew Alex’s name;  now, when a Light Council delegation meet with Richard’s cabal, Alex has a seat at the table.  He might be the least powerful of the factions at the meeting, but when he talks, people listen.  

But all this powering-up has consequences.  Back in Fated or Cursed, a single man with a gun was a threat to Alex, and a mage or a group of adepts was a lethal danger that usually sent him running.  By Risen, this is no longer true.  Between his divination mastery, the fateweaver, and his arsenal of imbued items, Alex has become so enormously powerful that he can go through situations that would kill other mages without even breaking a sweat.  While this can be satisfying for a reader, it also means that the street-level adventures that Alex used to spend his time on in the earlier books just don’t really work anymore.  It’s not until halfway through the book that Alex comes up against any enemies that seriously threaten him, and when he does, it’s only because they’re ridiculously powerful (jinn-possessed mages with the combat power of a small army).  This works for Risen because all the storylines are converging and, as it turns out, ridiculously powerful enemies are exactly what he’s going to have to go up against.  But it’s also a sign that, one way or another, the story’s drawing to an end.  Alex’s enemies in Risen are the kind of things that can threaten entire nations, and it just doesn’t make sense to have him going up against those all the time.  

The two major threats to Alex in Risen are Richard, and the jinn-possessed Anne, and most of the book is spent on either building up to his confrontations with them, or dealing with them and their forces.  Since both of them have a lot of forces, this makes the latter half of the book very action-heavy, but I tried to include enough breaks to give Alex and the readers some time to react to what was happening and reflect a bit on the changes.  These parts ended up being some of my favourite bits, especially Alex’s conversations with Luna.  

Of the two threats, Anne and the jinn end up being the more straightforward.  The jinn sultan is a creature out of its time – for all its power, it’s not a match for the combined strength of humanity, and the only reason it causes as much trouble as it does is because the Council and Drakh’s cabal are spending most of their energies on trying to backstab one another.  As soon as the Council forces are free to focus on the jinn, they overrun them quickly.  There’s a reason that mages, rather than jinn or magical creatures, rule the world in the Alex Verus setting.

Of course, for Alex, it’s more difficult than just ‘defeat the jinn’ – he wants to do so while also protecting Anne, which in turn requires dealing with her mental problems.  Alex eventually solves this in a way which again highlights how much he’s changed.  The old Alex would have tried to talk Dark Anne and Light Anne around and come to some kind of diplomatic solution, as he did in book #9, Marked.  Unfortunately, the solution at the end of Marked didn’t work – if anything, it made things worse.  The new Alex no longer cares about playing nice, and uses his new powers to solve the problem with brute force.  Although the book doesn’t make it clear, this ‘solution’ was essentially a desperation move that carried a high risk of leaving Anne mentally crippled or catatonic, and Alex only does it because by this point he’s completely out of other ideas.  Luckily for him, Anne has two things going for her:  her own mental resilience, and some outside help in the form of Arachne’s last gift.  

The final threat is Richard, but this commentary is already long enough for one post, so I think we’ll split it into two.  The second part will come next week!

Looking Back

Well, the new book is done, hopefully for good this time.  Now that I’ve had a few days to recover, here’s a look at where we are, and where things are likely to go!

This rewrite has taken me about four months – I scribbled down the first notes of what would eventually become the plan back in early February, which I wrote about here.  The rest of February and all of March was spent on planning, I started the new version in April, and now here we are.

Although I find rewrites to be hard work, the good news is that I’ve also found them to have a big impact.  Every time that I’ve rewritten one of my novels, the jump in quality has been noticeable – everyone who reads both versions invariably tells me that they like the new version more.  I think a lot of it has to do with coherence.  When I write something new, it’s still very fluid and unformed, and there’ll be all sorts of completely new stuff thrown in, ideas sprouting off in unpredictable directions.  This is fun to write, and hopefully fun to read, but does mean that the end result can feel a bit incoherent, like it’s trying to go in lots of directions at once.  When I go back for a rewrite, one of the things I do is rework those ideas, adjusting them to be consistent with each other and to call back or ahead to the other story elements that didn’t exist when I first put them in.  The result tends to be a much tighter story.

The trade-off of all this is of course how long it takes, but one nice surprise that has come out of this particular rewrite is how supportive all of my readers have been.  Having to tell your readership that you’ve decided that your new book isn’t good enough and that you’re going to be putting publication on hold while you spend the next 3 to 6 months rewriting it instead . . . well, it’s not exactly the kind of news you want to be giving.  But pretty much everyone who’s responded, whether online or in person, has told me some version of “that’s fine, focus on making it good, we’ll wait”.  So, thanks for the patience!

I’d like to be able to tell everyone that the book’s now in the queue and give you all an idea of how long you’ll have to wait for it to come out, but unfortunately, as I wrote about back here, we’ve now got to the stage in the process where I no longer have full control over the timing of things.  The book’s publication date is now up to my publishers, which will depend on two things:  the slot that the book gets assigned to, and how much they want changed.  I’m hoping that my publishers won’t ask for any extensive rewrites (given how long this last one took, it’d be pretty soul-crushing to have to do another), but even if my suspicions are correct and they like it, the final publication date is still up to them.  If I had to take a guess, I’d bet on this book coming out in the summer or autumn of 2023, but I don’t know exactly when.

At some point I’m also going to start putting up some online material for the new series, the equivalent of Alex Verus’s Encyclopaedia Arcana.  I haven’t decided whether to do this before or after the first book’s publication – I have a lot of material for the new setting, but one of the features of the first book is that the reader learns a lot of things as the protagonist does, and I don’t want to spoil the story.  I’ll have a think and decide closer to the time.

And that’s about it!  Again, thanks for everyone’s patience.  It’s been a long road getting here, but at this point I’m pretty sure that all of the hardest work is finished.  As usual, I’ll let you know as soon as I know more.

Finished

New book is done.  (Again.)  I sent the manuscript off to my publishers two days ago, exactly on time.

I’ve been working on this pretty much flat-out for the past month and now that it’s finally finished, I’m exhausted.  I’m going to collapse for a bit.  More details next week!

Deadline Time Again

Big rewrite on the new book is nearly finished.  Judging by word counts, I’m at about the 95% mark.  About one more chapter and I’ll be done.

Rewrites are rarely fun, and I’ve been occupied with this same book for more than a year now.  It’ll be a relief once it’s finally sent off.

Ask Luna #186

From: Kitty

Hi, Luna.

Lately, I find myself thinking a lot about poor ol’ November. I hope he’s doing okay. He’s all on his own, after all. I wonder if he’s developed any new interests, or if he’s remembered anything about his life before becoming a bound synthetic intelligence. Is junk mail piling up in his box? Is he lonely? Maybe you could peek in on him–then give us an update, hmm?
Thanks,
Kitty

I talk to him from time to time – he’s actually been helping me out on a couple of personal projects, and he’s been a really big help.  I don’t think I talk with him as much as Alex did (or does), though.  I get the feeling he much prefers Alex’s way of talking with him – email is a big climb-down after you’re used to speed-of-thought telepathy.  

From: Celia

Hey Luna!

So in Castle Reach, Variam somehow got the mistaken idea Alex owned a Jaguar. How did Variam find out Alex had kind of sort of stolen the car, and how did Vari react? Any idea whose car it was? Was there any fallout from the theft/unauthorized use?

Any idea if Hermes has ever met that special blink fox to settle down with? Still keeping my fingers crossed for fox cubs! (Kits? Pups?)

I was there when Variam found out, and he was startled at first, asked why Alex would need to steal a car second, and then just found it really funny.  It was one of the things that helped him warm up to Alex, I think.  (And no, I don’t know whose car it was.)

I don’t know if Hermes has found a girlfriend, but he does disappear for long stretches of time without telling us where he’s going, so I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he has one and he’s keeping it under wraps.  

From: Bret

1. In a previous question you mentioned that when fire mages go up against other they use physical weapons such as guns or swords or magic that doesn’t involve heat or fire do you know what are the non heat magic attacks they would typically use? Would force/kinetic magic be the main one since Sal Sarque apparently had access to it are their other kinds as well? And does Landis or Vari have magic that is good against other fire mages or are they just use physical weapons?

2. Landis mentioned that he was involved in previous military actions do you know what kind? I only ask since the War with Drakh as far as we know was the only large scale conflict that would have those types of engagements. Do you have an idea of what types of missions Landis went on that he became so competent at leading men into battle? Was it lower level Dark Mages causing trouble, missions with the other Councils, or something else? Again not looking for in depth details just how he got so good in a time of presumably relative peace.

3. Is it possible to detect/sense when Alex uses the Fateweaver? Have you with your magic been able to sense when he is using or is the fateweaver’s magic in general undetectable when he uses it?

1.Kinetic is the most common, I think – it tends to be the one fire mages have the most natural affinity for.  Vari just carries a nonmagical backup.  

2.Peace is a relative term – the Council has quite a lot of low-level fights that they get into on a regular basis.  The Order of the Shield are also the ones who get assigned the ‘black-ops’ style missions that aren’t officially supposed to exist.  I get the feeling that a lot of the jobs that Landis has done are the kinds of things that doesn’t get talked about and never officially happened.

3.I can’t sense it at all.  My magesight is pretty bad, though, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  I’ve never been much good at the sensing spells that mages always seem to have up their sleeves.

From: Alex

Do you know what the common abilities of mind, charm, and chance adepts are? Not looking for an in depth answers just what the common types are.

Mind – reading surface thoughts.  Charm – making people like you.  Chance – just general short-term good luck.  These are all the most common by a mile, so much so that people sometimes get surprised when they run into mind, charm, or chance adepts that CAN’T do those things.  They’re all among the most basic spells that mages of those types learn, too.

Alex Verus Short Stories – Update

I wrote a post last year talking about Alex Verus short stories in which I sketched out ideas for a few different pieces of short fiction set in the Alex Verus universe but with different viewpoint characters.  I’ve still been getting the odd question on the subject, so here’s some information about where things are with that.

I do have one particular short story in the Alex Verus setting that I’ve been wanting to write for a while.  I’d actually been hoping to do it this spring – unfortunately having to do this rewrite has really derailed my schedule and cost me pretty much all the free work time that I’d thought I was going to have.  I’ve had to prioritise, and when it comes to my priority list, writing a new short story is definitely below finishing the current book.

To be honest, time shortage is becoming a problem for me in general, and it’s making the prospects of further short stories look not all that great.  Like I said back in the post where I first announced all this, my main job is and will continue to be writing novels.  Short stories are a fun experimental side project that I try to squeeze in when I have the time, and unfortunately, right now time’s in short supply.  I’ve had several family- and personal-related commitments this year that have really piled up, and while I’ve managed to do all those and also keep up progress on my new book, it hasn’t left me with much time to do anything else.  Possibly that might change in the future, but right now I’m just overloaded.  (I still have emails that need answering from January or something . . . come to think of it, I should do those too once I’m done writing this post.)

However, while I’m not sure I’ll be able to find the time for any further short stories, I do really want to write this one particular short story.  I’m not going to go into details about who it features, but it functions as a sort of extra epilogue to the Alex Verus series as a whole.  As with Favours, it’ll be a bit of an experiment, but it’s an experiment that I really would like to do.  So while I can’t make any promises about a wider set of short stories going forward, I’m pretty sure I’m going to do this one.  I just can’t promise when!

Rewrite Month

As of this week, I’ve got exactly one month until my deadline.  The rewritten version of Book #1 in the new series is due on June 15th.

It’s pretty common for writers to miss deadlines, but in this case I’ve got additional reasons not to – I’m going to have a lot of personal-life-related stuff starting around mid-June, so if I don’t finish the book by then, everything is going to suddenly get much harder.  On top of that, my contracts with my US and UK publishers are for multiple books, each of which has their own delivery date, meaning that any delay for Book #1 is going to make it that much difficult for me to hit my delivery dates for Books #2 and #3.

All of this means that I’m really committed to finishing this rewrite by June 15th.  I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure I get there.

Unfortunately, this is going to mean a fair amount of work.  At the moment I’m working my way through the manuscript from beginning to end, making the changes I’ve written about here, here, and here.  It’s been going quite well – I’m about 50% of the way through, as measured by chapters/word count, and I’m finished with the really difficult early bit (when you’re doing a rewrite, the hardest part tends to be the first third or so, where the important characters and story elements get introduced), and I’m much happier with the new Version 5.  However, the last 15% or so is going to be slow going.  I’ve come to realise over the course of this that the last 3 or 4 chapters of Version 4 of the new book are just a write-off – they were taking the series in a direction that wouldn’t work at all in the long run and I’m going to have to delete them all completely.  This means I’ll have to write about 30 pages or so of a completely new finale and ending.

Rewriting 6 chapters and then writing 3 new chapters, and doing it all within a month, is doable for me – even once I add in time for editing, it’s the sort of deadline I’ve been able to hit before.  However, it does mean that my next month or so is going to be pretty tense.  Expect my blog posts to get briefer and briefer as June 15th approaches!

Alex Verus #8 in Germany

The German translation of Alex Verus continues to move along – this week’s release is volume #8, Bound.  It’s coming out on May 16th in paper, ebook, and audio.

The German editions are being released at a steady rate of one every six months, so with this, we should be almost exactly two years from the release of Book #12!

Rewriting Characters

Still working away on the rewrite of the new book.

One interesting difference between the start of this series and Alex Verus has been how I’ve handled the characters.  In the early Alex Verus books, I made up new characters all the time without thinking about it too much – often they’d be created completely off the top of my head and I’d only come up with backgrounds for them much later, if at all.  This gave the characters a lot of room to expand in unexpected directions, but it also meant that I had to do a lot of work later on figuring out quite basic things about characters that I’d introduced early on but had never really decided on the details for.

For this new series, I’m trying to work out some sort of basic biographical information for all of the really important characters right from the start, along with a general idea of where they’re going and what I’m intending to use them.  It does make this book a bit slower to write, though, since I’m taking the same sort of treatment that only Luna and Alex got back in Fated, and applying it to maybe 6 or 7 characters instead, including some who don’t have very large roles in book 1 but that I’m planning to use a lot more over the course of later books.  Let’s hope it pays off in the future!

Ask Luna #185

From: Kevin

Hey Luna just two quick questions.

Have you ever heard of Death Magic and Mind Magic forming a hybrid? I heard Life could with Mind as personal enhancement effects if Death was mixed with Mind and would it be similar to that or not?

And have you ever seen/heard of Elemental Mages creating attacks from behind like Richard did with that Jarnaff the Force Mage and Alex as opposed to the regular hand to sight spells most elemental mages use?

Death/mind hybrids are mental combat specialists.  They tend to specialise in stuff like direct mind attacks, mental paralysis, and inflicting damage on a target’s brain.  It’s probably the most feared and disliked combination of magical abilities that you can get – people already don’t trust death mages, and they really don’t trust mind mages, so you can imagine how they react to someone who’s got the worst abilities of both.  I’ve never met one in the apprentice programme, and if there was one, they’d probably be keeping their magic type a secret if they knew what was good for them.

Elemental mages have some ways of attacking a target from behind, but it’s a lot harder than attacking in a straight line, and most of them don’t do it.  

From: Alicia W.

Hey, Luna! How’s things?

I hope you & Vari are holding up OK given the current state of affairs.

I was appalled Saffron had the gall to send you an email pestering you about Alex, but I loved your response! (Ask Luna #182) I literally laughed out loud at the idea of her camping out on Trafalgar Square for days or weeks hoping Alex will show up (which of course, he won’t). Do you think she’ll set up camp there in hopes of catching him? I think she might be desperate enough to try it.

Anyway, as fun as that thought is, the reason I’m writing today is because I am fascinated by gate stones & other magical items. They come in such a dizzying variety of forms. Alex has described a few gate stones in the books, like the one to the ravine outside Arachne’s lair which was carved out of a piece of wood. And there was that cup that made everything put in it taste of chili sauce. And, of course, there was that book that made you forget about it as soon as you looked at the first page.

1. Can any mage create a gate stone, or does it require a space mage to do it?
2. Do mages use a ritual to lay the spell down on a magic item? If not, can you tell us a bit more about how it’s done?
3. Can either you or Alex create your own magical items?
4. What’s the coolest or weirdest gate stone you’ve come across?
5. What’s the coolest or weirdest magical item in the Arcana Emporium right now?

Stay safe!

Alicia

Vari is . . . okay.  I hope.  

Creating a gate stone is actually more about your skill with item creation that your skill with gates, so you don’t need to be a space mage, or even a mage, at least in theory.  Alex told me that I’d be able to do it, and actually thought I might have a talent for it – I’ve been working on it in my spare time, but I don’t have much of that these days, and you really need a teacher to get the hang of item creation, at least if you want to get any good.  It’s the kind of thing that Arachne would have been really good at, but, well . . .

There’s a technique for creating gate stones that uses actual gemstones – those are pretty cool, though kind of expensive.  Another technique I’ve seen uses actual fruit or berries that are grown in the target area.  Then you eat them to cast the spell.  It apparently makes them much much easier to make, but obviously they don’t last very long, so kind of the opposite of gemstones.  

And as for the weirdest item . . . it’d be one of the ones I don’t tell anyone about or keep on the shelves.  Let’s just say that I can see why Alex kept a safe room with a big lock on the door.

From: Nana

Dear Luna,

1. Did Anne tell you how she got Alex out of the shadow realm? I assume it must have taken some time for the Fateweaver to transform his body. How did she manage that before the isolation ward made it impossible to go back?

2. I’m also really sad about Sonder. He had his flaws but he didn’t deserve to die How does Anne feel about killing him seeing as she was actually friends with him as opposed to everyone else she killed while being possessed by the jinn?

3. Have you had enough time to get to know the “new” Anne better? I hope you’re not scared of her anymore!

Have a nice day!
Nana

1. Never actually asked.  Gate stone, I’d guess.  The main defensive wards were down by then so it would have been doable, but not easy.  

2. I haven’t asked.  Honestly, I’m a bit afraid to.  That whole month is kind of a huge minefield for both of us, and we’ve sort of silently mutually agreed to avoid it, at least for now.  I mean, if I ask her, and she tells me about how bad she feels about it, that’s one thing.  But what if she doesn’t particularly feel like that?  What am I going to do then?

3. Yes, a bit, and yes, I am.  She’s comfortable to talk to, but again, we haven’t had ‘that’ conversation.  And again, the biggest reason I haven’t brought it up is because I’m not sure what answers I’ll get when I do.