Benedict Jacka's Blog, page 74

More Reprints!

In more good news, Fated and Cursed are being reprinted again in the UK!  This will be the second reprint for Cursed, and the fifth reprint for Fated (seems I missed a few along the way!)

Encyclopaedia Arcana #48: Advanced Divination (Part One)

Divination is one of the more poorly understood types of magic; this article will look at some of the common misconceptions about seers and practitioners of probability magic.

What Are The Limits?

One uncommon (but regular) question asked by novices who understand the basics of divination magic is why diviners aren’t invincible.  After all, they can see the future – shouldn’t they be able to solve any problem, defeat any challenge, avoid any danger?  There are two answers to this question:  a short one and a long one.

Short Answer

The precognitive abilities of diviners are limited by available time and by intrinsically unpredictable events.

Long Answer

Say you’re playing chess on a computer against a chess program.  The program always plays at the same level of difficulty.  Whether you win or lose depends wholly on how well you play; the program simply reacts to your choices.  You’d expect to almost always win (if the program’s skill level is below your own) or almost always lose (if the program’s skill level is above your own).

Now let’s change the scenario.  Instead of playing unaided, you have a ‘cheat’ program, called Diviner.  Diviner lets you predict the chess program’s moves on an if-then basis.  So if you type in a king’s pawn move, Diviner might tell you that your opponent will respond with its queen’s knight.  You can then input another move in response to that, and Diviner will tell you the program’s move in response to that.  You can map out the entire game, and Diviner’s predictions are always 100% accurate.  Given enough time to run the predictions, you should win every game.

Now let’s add a chess clock that places a time limit on every move.  This limits the usefulness of the Diviner program – you can’t spend hours at a time analysing every possible move.  Instead of using Diviner as a sledgehammer, you have to use it more like a scalpel, picking the places where it could most effectively be used in the limited time available.  Diviner is still a major advantage, but it’s not as good as it was.

Now let’s change things up again.  Instead of playing against a nonintelligent program, you’re playing against a human being.  Now Diviner’s predictions aren’t 100% reliable anymore, because creatures with free will are – by definition – not entirely predictable.  Your opponent might make a bad move because he’s having an off day, or because he’s chosen a suboptimal strategy, or because he wants to make you feel like you’ve got a chance to win.  On the other hand, he might have a sudden flash of inspiration and choose a brilliant move that neither you nor he had noticed before.  Diviner will still accurately predict his moves most of the time, but not 100% of the time – and the further you try to predict the moves in advance, the less accurate the predictions get.

Finally, instead of taking it in turns to move, we’re going to make it so that the game is played in real time:  both you and your opponent can move whenever you like.  Now if you stop to use Diviner, your opponent might make another move while you’re trying to figure out what to do, and the predictions Diviner was making are going to be suddenly obsoleted by the changing conditions.  You’re going to have to run Diviner and the chess program side by side, and if you get too caught up in Diviner you won’t be paying attention to what’s actually happening in the game.  In this last situation, how useful the Diviner program is depends completely on how you use it.  If you use it badly it’ll actually make your play worse, because you’ll be wasting time on useless predictions while your opponent’s beating you.

All In The Technique

Almost all human-on-human interaction involving divination falls into the last category, which makes applying divination magic in complex situations very difficult.  A diviner not only has to be efficient and quick with their predictions, they have to know when not to use divination: in time-critical situations it’s often better to act first and use magic later.

This is the reason speed of prediction is so important for a diviner.  When time is in short supply, then how quickly you can sort through possible futures is much more important than how clearly and how far into the future you can see.

First Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of the publication of Fated.  (The UK edition came out on the 1st of March, 2012:  the US version a couple of days earlier.)  I had an Encyclopaedia post written for this week, but decided to spend this entry looking back on the past year and taking stock instead.  So, it’s been a year since the Alex Verus books were released into the wild – how are things going?

One of the weird things about being a writer is that it’s very easy to end up very disconnected from the sales and reading end of your books.  The further along in the creation process that a book gets (first idea, notes, first draft, edits, copy-edits, etc) the less involved the author gets.  While you’re planning and writing your novels you’re absolutely, 100% responsible for every last detail that goes into them.  Then the edits come along and you’re still mostly responsible, but other people are involved.  Then there are the copy-edit and proofreading stages, which require less and less author input.  And by the time the book gets onto the shelves, you’ve more or less dropped out of the picture completely, and it’s just as well because by that point you’re busy with the next book anyway.

This means that authors tend to end up surprisingly under-informed about how their books are selling.  I sometimes get asked how many copies I’ve sold, and I usually have to admit that I have no idea.  I do get royalty statements, but only biannually and when they finally arrive they’re always three months late.  Even when you do get sales figures, it’s hard to translate them into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ unless you know a fair bit about the industry.  If a book sells 5,000 copies is that a lot or a little?  What’s the threshold for ‘good’ anyway?  10,000?  20,000?  More?  This is then further complicated by how long the book’s been out, what the profit margin is on the editions that are selling, the likelihood that it’s going to keep selling in the future, the relative economic climate and the state of the industry, the phase of the moon, the price of tea in China, the alignment of the stars and the probability of the awakening of an elder god, etc.

So it’s tricky for me to figure out how well or badly my books are doing.

With those disclaimers out of the way, however:

From what I know, the Alex Verus series seems to be doing well, possibly very well.  The books have continued to sell following their release, and the sales of books 2 and 3 are a high percentage of book 1, meaning that people who buy the first tend to like it enough to buy the others (which is a big thing for a series).  Both my UK and my US publishers seem very happy about the way things are going, hence the contract for books 4 and 5 – I’m not going to predict whether they’ll want books 6+, but right now, chances look good. The number of readers picking up the series on sites like Goodreads has actually increased from last year, and Fated is still getting new reviews even now.

One result of all this is that I’ve become a lot more confident about working on an ongoing plot for the Alex Verus series.  Back when I wrote Fated I didn’t honestly expect it to get published, and when I wrote Cursed and Taken I had no idea that there’d be a fourth book afterwards.  Now it feels more as if I have some breathing room, and I can start making the individual books fit into a larger story.  (No matter how good the individual episodes of a series are, sooner or later you want something longer-term.)  Book 4, Chosen, is going to kick off the major story arc of the Alex Verus series, and from Book 5 onwards each new book is going to progress that story in some way.  Probably.  I’m still sketching out the details, but I do have a solid idea of where the story will end up and who the primary antagonist will be . . . not telling anyone, though.  :P

So for now, things look positive for the Alex-Verus-verse.  More later!

Review Day

It’s been months since I’ve done one of these, so now that the Master and Apprentice series is done at last, I thought I’d go back and collect a bunch of reviews!  Turned out that there were a LOT more than I remembered, so I haven’t linked to all of them – only the ones I especially liked or which I thought were interesting in some way.

I’ve been told by other more experienced authors that I shouldn’t read reviews.  I kind of see their point, but for now I’m carrying on doing it.  Every now and again I get a really nasty one, but for the most part they’re either complementary, fair, or both.  (Besides, I do find a lot of the feedback useful.)

In other news, Alex Verus #5 is creeping along steadily.  I’m finding that as the ongoing story becomes more and more central to the series, the writing seems to be becoming more character-focused.  The downside to this is that with each instalment the backstory becomes more extensive.  I do wonder if I’ll eventually get to the point where it just isn’t practical to keep doing recaps anymore . . . ah well, I’ll worry about that when it happens.

Anyway, on with the reviews!  Sorted by book:

Fated

Ross Hamilton at Words By Ross

Review at Bear Mountain Books

Review at Urban Fantasy Fan

Jacey at Jacey’s Journal

Cursed

Review at Bear Mountain Books

Joshua at The Only Winning Move

Taken

Clay Stafford from Killer Nashville

Rebecca at Book Chick City

Bart at Bart’s Bookshelf

Vinca Russell at SFCrowsnest

Renee at Fangs for the Fantasy

Fergus McCartan at Fantasy Book Review

And finally, for a slightly-late Valentine’s day theme, Natassia at Literary Escapism has written a love letter to Alex Verus, which I absolutely loved.  I’ve never had anyone do that for one of my characters before.  :)

Next Friday will be the first entry in a new Encyclopaedia Arcana mini-series, this one on Advanced Divination.

Forbidden Planet this Thursday

I’m going to be at Forbidden Planet again this Thursday, but not for my books this time: Francis Knight is launching/signing her debut novel Fade to Black.  Look me up if you’re there!

Encyclopaedia Arcana #47: Master and Apprentice (Part Six)

Once a novice has become an apprentice, they’ve cleared the biggest hurdle.  Apprentices have their own problems, but (except in really bad cases) they have a better time of it than Orphans do.

Daily Life

Apprentice life varies so much that it’s hard to generalise about it.  Being a mage’s apprentice can mean anything from staying with them in an extradimensional shadow realm accompanied by other apprentices and by magical creatures, to getting an hour of extra lessons after school a few times a week while you go on living in your parents’ house.

The one constant is teaching.  Apprentices receive tuition directly from their master, and also from other mages to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how well-connected their master is.  As a general rule Light apprentices tend to enjoy the widest variety of teachers, due to the Light apprentice program and its offshoots.  A minority of the younger Light and independent apprentices attend one of the small number of all-magical schools, prior to turning 18.  (No, none of the schools are called Hogwarts.)

The Program

Once apprentices reach adulthood, the main educational institution available in Britain is the Light apprentice program.  The program is similar to a university, where apprentices sign up for various classes taught by a Light or independent mage.  Class sizes are small, usually under 10 and almost never more than 20, and vary greatly depending on the teacher.  Potential subjects include focus use, magesight, mage history, gating, and duelling, as well as more specialised seminars aimed at mages of a particular type.  At the time of writing, there are two such programs operating within the British Isles:  the primary program based in London, and a secondary, smaller program which operates out of Edinburgh.

Getting into the Light apprentice program can be tricky.  Although technically any apprentice has the right to apply, an unknown applicant is likely to receive either a form-letter rejection or no reply at all – whether an apprentice is accepted mostly comes down to how well-connected their master is with the Council.  Light mages and independents with good contacts can usually secure a place for their apprentices without much trouble, but other mages have to work for it, and doing so may require either a trade of favours, or for the apprentice to pass a formal assessment.

Dark apprentices in the Light apprentice program are extremely rare.  This is partly due to prejudice on the part of the Council, and partly because Dark mages tend to look down on any teaching the Light faction could offer.

Graduation Day

Assuming nothing goes wrong, an apprentice will stay with their master until they graduate to the rank of journeyman.  This can be done in several ways.

If the apprentice in question is a member of the Light apprentice program, then the most common way for them to be recognised as a mage is to complete their journeyman tests.  These are Council-sponsored and Council-organised exams intended to test an apprentice’s mental and magical maturity.  Any apprentice of 18 years of age has the legal right to take their journeyman tests, but nowadays most apprentices don’t take them until their early twenties.  The tests have long waiting lists, and have an unfortunate tendency to get mired in politics:  whether an apprentice passes or fails can have more to do with how influential their master is than how skilled they are.

If an apprentice passes the tests, they are officially a mage.  They’ll take on their mage name, and gain all the associated rights and responsibilities under the Concord and Council law.  Once this has been done, their master has no further legal authority over them, and is no longer responsible for their actions.

Chosen & Alex Verus #5

No Encyclopaedia this Friday (the last one in the Master and Apprentice series will be published next week, after which we’ll move on to something else).  Instead I thought I’d give you an update on general happenings in the Alex Verus series.

Copy-edits on Alex Verus #4, Chosen, are all done.  I’ve even seen the cover (the UK one at least) though I won’t post it just yet since it was only a draft version – it looks good though!  Effectively the book’s finished, which makes it a little bit weird that you’ll have to wait for the end of summer for the book to be released, but that’s publishing schedules for you.  Provisional release dates for Chosen are:

UK release:  September 5th 2013 (Orbit)

US release:  August 27th 2013 (Ace)

The positive side to the long wait time is that I’m effectively ‘ahead of schedule’ for writing the other Alex Verus books – the first draft of the as-yet-untitled Alex Verus #5 will almost certainly be finished before Chosen is released.  Speaking of Alex Verus #5, I’m in the middle of writing it at the moment, and I’m about 15% done.  It’s due in at the end of June.

Being one book ahead makes these kind of posts (and talking to readers in general) somewhat weird for me, since when readers ask me about the next book in the series, I’m spending all my time thinking about the book after the next book in the series.  It’s going to be even weirder when we get close to Chosen’s release date, since by then I’ll have finished #5 and I’ll be planning out the book after the book after the next book.

That said, since Chosen’s all done now – and since, due to having just finished the edits, I’ve been reminded of the story again – I can give you a sneak preview of some of what’ll be in it!  In Chosen you can expect the following:

Anne and Variam have joined Luna and Sonder as Alex’s friends and companions (at least to begin with).
Cinder and Deleo are back.
Several new characters are introduced, including a number of adepts and a Council Keeper.
An old character is returning.
There’ll be a lot more information about Alex’s past, especially what happened during his time as an apprentice.

The book’s also going to start the move towards a long-term story arc for the series.  It won’t reveal the details, but by the end you’ll know who the one initiating things is.

Right, that’s enough vague hints.  Time to get back to working on the new book!

Going to NY Comicon!

It’s been decided – I’m headed to the U.S. of A for the New York Comicon this October!

Official dates are October 10th to October 13th, though I’m probably going to be in the city for much longer than that so that I can see the sights (I’ve been to NY before, but it was years and years ago).  I’ve never been to any convention anywhere near this size, though, so it’s going to be quite an experience.

Other things I’m looking forward to include seeing my New York family again, and actually meeting my US editor, Anne Sowards, face to face (we’ve been working together for years, but we’ve never met) More details closer to the time!

Encyclopaedia Arcana #46: Master and Apprentice (Part Five)

New mages can be brought into (or failed to be brought into) magical society in three ways:  they can be born into it, they can be recruited, or they can fall through the gaps.

Children of Privilege

Some mages are born into magical society:  either they’re the children of established Light, Dark, or independent mages, or they have one as a family friend.  Their magical abilities will be noticed early, and they’ll be taught about the magical world while they’re still young:  often it’ll happen early enough that they’ll be sent to an all-magical school.

For these lucky few, their transition into magical society is easy.  They’ll have the opportunity to learn about how the magical world works in detail before they have to step out into it, and they’ll make contacts and friends early.  They aren’t guaranteed to succeed, but they have all the advantages, and if something does go wrong they’ve got a support network to get back on track – occasionally they’ll become Orphans, but this is vanishingly rare.

Mages born into magical society form an “aristocracy” of sorts among mages.  They don’t occupy all the positions of power, but they’re disproportionately represented, especially among the Council.

Brought Into The Fold

The vast majority of mages spend their early childhood outside magical society.  For them, the magical world is nothing but a fairy tale . . . which makes it quite a shock when their abilities develop and they suddenly find themselves scrambling to catch up and figure out what’s going on.

At some point in this process, usually while the mage is in secondary or high school, they’ll come into contact with an established mage.  Most often the way this happens is that the mage will spot the novice and approach them, but in a minority of cases the novice will seek out a teacher on their own initiative.  The initial meeting is usually tense, and the way it plays out will depend on the novice’s attitude and the mage’s own objectives.  In the best case the novice will end up apprenticed to a master.  This master will usually not be the same mage that found them – there are mages, most often from the living family, who work as “finders”, seeking out novices for those who are interested and can pay.

Once apprenticed, the novice will be brought into magical society.  Since the world is new to them, they’re at an initial disadvantage relative to those born into it, but they do at least enjoy the legal protection of the Concord.

It’s Cold Outside

Some mages don’t get apprenticed at all:  their powers develop, but they don’t sign up with a master or formally enter magical society.  These mages are known as Orphans.

A mage can end up as an Orphan for many reasons.  Many novices simply never get spotted, either because their powers are naturally hard to detect, because they’re cautious enough to keep a low profile, or in some cases because there just aren’t enough mages to cover all the potential places out there where a new novice might be growing up.  Enchanters and other magic types with natural “stealth” abilities are particularly good at this, and usually won’t be found unless they want to be.

In other cases a mage will approach the novice but will be rebuffed, either because the novice doesn’t want to learn to be a mage, because they do want to learn to be a mage but don’t have any interest in joining magical society, or because they just don’t trust the person they’re talking to.  And sometimes the initial meeting between the mage and the novice just goes really badly wrong, either for the novice or for everyone.  In this case the novice is best advised to flee – if they can.  However it happens, the mage is left aware of magical society, but outside it.

Being an Orphan really sucks.  They have no legal protection under the Concord, meaning that any mage or adept who feels like it can exploit, abuse, enslave, or even kill them.  Some are lucky enough to find support networks:  other adepts or apprentices who can help them out, or a mage who’ll take them under his wing.  Others are alone, living on only their wits and their half-developed magical talents.  They exist on the fringes of magical society or completely outside it, with few to notice if they finally disappear.

Ask Luna #7

From: Allandra

Hi Luna! In your first adventure with the fateweaver, you manage to alter your curse to a good luck power and channel it to Alex. may I ask you how do you do it and is it possible to do it from then onwards?

Oh yeah, that one!  At the time, the way I figured it was that my curse brings bad luck to everything it touches around me, and good luck to me.  But it’s all one integrated spell – it’s not like there are two separate parts to it.  So it ought to be possible to project the good-luck aspect outside myself, right?  Well, that was what I tried, and it worked.  I’m still proud of that – it was a nice feeling to do something the mages couldn’t for once!  

After the fateweaver thing I spent a while practising, trying to see if I could do it again.  It took a bit of work, but I did – only problem is, I can’t do it every time.  Sometimes I can’t quite get it, or I do but it suddenly slips.  And that’s a bit of an issue, because as far as I can figure the good-luck thing needs me to TOUCH whoever I’m giving it to.  Which means that if it screws up midway through, all of a sudden I’d be touching them with my normal curse.  And if they were in enough trouble that they needed the good-luck power but suddenly got a dose of the opposite . . . yeah, you can probably guess why I don’t want to take that risk.

The good news is I did manage to get the failure rate down the longer I practised it.  Maybe I ought to give it another try, we’re out of duelling season anyway.  

From: Ellen

Hi, How does someone give up their magic?

Wanting to, basically.  It’s not hard.  Your magic is based off your personality, right?  So if you really, really don’t want to have the ability to use and sense magic, and you keep wanting it long enough, then the kind of person you are will change.  Once it changes enough, you lose the ability.   

I see it happen from time to time – someone just vanishes out of class, and when I ask what happened I get told they dropped out.  I guess if that’s what they want, it’s better for them.  Of course, they’ve actually got a choice. 

From: Catherine

How do your parents get together if your mother is indeed a cursed adept? Wouldn’t ur father be cursed too unless he is immune to magic?

From: Wordwizard

Dear Luna:

I remember reading that you inherited your good/bad luck curse at birth, unlike the predecessors in your line–which implies that your mother died giving birth to you–which seems distinctly UNlucky–unless it was through a deliberate action–was she MURDERED? I also wonder how any infant could survive to riper years if every care-giver who touched it got injured or died through bad luck….I hope this is not too painful a personal question for you to answer–it’s just that the facts of your existence do not seem to add up!

Yeah, I figured this one’d come up sooner or later.  

I did think about just deleting these two, and if I’d got them a couple of years ago I probably would have.  Since you’re reading this, you can probably tell that I didn’t.  

 Okay, let’s take it from the top.  

The curse on my family tree affects the youngest female descendant of the original ancestor of mine who got cursed.  That means it doesn’t just go ‘down’ the family tree, it goes ‘sideways’.  So if the victim dies childless – which they do – then the curse hops to another part of the family.  Which means that somewhere, some distantly related family suddenly gets a curse on their youngest daughter that’ll hurt/kill anyone who gets too close to her.  The more they try to help the worse it gets, and if they’re normals (which odds are they are) they won’t understand why or how it’s happening or how to stop it.  Hopefully you should be beginning to understand by now just what a sick bitch the mage who came up with this curse was.  

Next:  adepts and mages aren’t born able to use their magic.  It grows with them and only develops to full strength as they get close to adulthood – sometime in their teens, usually.  For me it was earlier.  I started noticing things when I was ten, everyone else started noticing things when I was thirteen, and by the time I’d hit sixteen it was ‘don’t touch me if you want to live’.  Meant I got to have a normal childhood until I was thirteen or so.  I’m still not sure if that made it better or worse.  

As for ‘are my parents immune to magic’ . . . they’re not.  They also don’t believe in it.  I’m going to leave it at that.