Alledria Hurt's Blog, page 25

May Progress Report [A Cover Reveal in my Future]

It's the end of May and what have I done on my projects. I think I've been pretty productive.

Project One: The Becoming
I completed the first draft at 78,223. There are already things I know are going to come up for either fixing or axing in the rewrite, but for now it is complete. Time to put it in the freezer for a couple of months while I work on something else.

Project Two: She Becomes Death (trilogy)
I haven't made any headway on this project. Granted, I need to print it out and send it to a friend who has already offered to read it for me and tell me where the warts are. I'm thinking I will get that done in the next week.

Project Three: Chains of Fate
I commissioned a cover for this book and it came back amazing. So I have the kicktail cover I was looking for back in April. I've formatted the interior file and set it up on Createspace. The proof copy is in the mail. This is becoming very real. The next thing you know I will be a published author.

Project Four: Dark King Rising
Adding this one to the list. My next novel in progress. It is the next book I have close enough to completion to consider getting a cover for.

I've made some progress and that is good. I am definitely looking forward to next month.

[Review] The Lives We Fear by Dan Otsuki

I’ll be honest when I first opened up the book, I was thinking horror in the sense of blood, guts, and gore. There were going to be monsters and harrowing escapes. That was not what I got. What I got was a well-written tale or two about horror of another kind. More psychological. I won’t say which is better because I enjoy both rather equally. Of the stories offered, I find myself gravitating toward two the most. “A Day in the Future” considers what it would be like to be able to see a day in the future and how that could affect those you love and “Mister Jackson Monroe” deals with time travel. I’m beginning to see a theme in what I picked out. First let’s talk about “A Day in the Future”.

The short story “A Day in the Future” begins with the female lead sitting at a Super Bowl game she has bet on. She bets on sporting events and plays poker for her living. It also introduces us to Marco who will become more interesting later, but for the moment, he is just a meathead there to give us someone for Kayla to work on. What Marco doesn’t know is that Kayla has already seen the outcome of the game, she knows not quite exactly what is going to happen, but close enough. It makes it easy for her to win money off of him. This is followed by Kayla considering what she is going to do. There is a very important conversation she intends to have with her boyfriend, Toby, the male lead and for once she isn’t looking ahead to see what the conversation will be like. It’s quite noble of her really to want to experience the conversation straight through the first time with him, when she could easily see ahead and pick out what would be the best things to say. The conversation goes well. Now, Toby, who was previously kept in the dark, knows about her gift and what she can do. Of course, he’s curious. The beginning of the downward spiral begins the first time he asks Kayla to see his future. He is exhilarated by the fact that the gift has made it so easy. Of course, it makes things easy, it’s a little bit like cheating life. The problem is you can only cheat for so long before something goes wrong. The something is Toby’s project having major setbacks and him resigning from his position. Now he’s unemployed and needier than ever. He begins to rely on Kayla for everything, all the while she is getting more and more frustrated at being treated like a crystal ball. In her mind, he has become less than a person because he can’t think or do for himself any longer, he waits on her to tell him his every move. I can’t even begin to imagine how far gone one has to be to give up all autonomy in favor of a seemingly sure thing, but that’s what he does. Kayla becomes so frustrated, she runs off to Atlantic City, another fabulous gambling town so she can get some time away and maybe force him to become his own man again. I don’t want to give away the ending, but Marco reappears in the story and things spiral further out of control.

All in all, it is a wonderful story about the human spirit and the depths it can sink to if given the right stimulus. The horror is in Toby’s condition as he deteriorates into a near mindless infant in the face of knowledge of the future. Like I said, I can’t imagine falling that far, but my sense of independence is different. I would fight tooth and nail to make Kayla wrong about my future rather than passively accepting her word as some kind of holy writ. But then, I’m not Toby.

“Mister Jackson Monroe” is another story where horror isn’t the first thing I would think about it. Chilling perhaps slightly in the way that the Twilight Zone could occasionally be chilling, but it was more of a science fiction story than a horror story. Maybe I was just drawn to things that departed from the traditional horror genre once I started reading Otsuki’s work. In “Monroe” we start out with a happy, beautiful couple who are spending the day together and then the husband, Jackson, goes out to get food for dinner. He is assaulted in the parking lot by a younger man, Daniel, who is in love with Jackson’s wife, Ali. There’s a gun brandished. Then we are sent back in time to the first meeting between Jackson and Daniel, orchestrated by Ali, years earlier. Now we are following Daniel’s perspective and he is hopelessly in love with Ali. That reality will inform a number of the choices he will make throughout the story. Daniel sees Jackson as a rival and not even a very good one. Jackson might be older and seemingly sophisticated, but he can’t be as perfect for Ali as Daniel thinks he is.

Daniel has it all figured out for a college kid. He knows exactly where he’s going to work and what he’s going to do. Jackson is just a bar owner who happens to have Daniel’s dream girl. Daniel is obsessed. Not just with Ali but also with his work, a project that will allow time travel. It is to the work that he loses his only friend, Paul, who has tried to be a stabilizing force for Daniel’s life. When Paul is killed in a work accident, Daniel is set adrift without a friend and without his work. He begins to drink heavily, which is a terrible answer to how to cope. Finally, lost in a fugue of alcohol and self-pity, he goes to buy a gun. When he sees Jackson in the parking lot of the grocery store, he jumps out of his car and brandishes the gun at him, which brings us back to a very early scene in the story. The standoff only lasts moments. Again, I won’t spoil the ending, but that moment changes everything that comes after it because it brings Daniel to an even lower place where he makes a desperate choice.

Was I disappointed that there wasn’t more blood in the stories by Dan Otsuki? No, not really. Reading them for what they are, they are fine stories. They each have an element of suspense and some even reach for horror in a different way. I would give it a 5 Star rating for the read through. I’ll be looking for more of his work in the future.



This has been an Elite Book Promotion Review. Review copy was provided for the purposes of writing the review.

April Progress Report [The Writing Continues]

I have decided that every month, or maybe twice a month, I will do an update on where I am with my various projects as a way of holding myself accountable to be working on things consistently. This ought to be interesting.

First Project: "The Becoming"
Now 60k+. I've been using it as my CampNaNo project for April and have almost added 30k to it since April 1st. I'm not quite sure what the anticipated word count for this should be because it has outgrown its outline more than once, so now I'm just going along working from the scenes I have left to get to a finish point. Once I finish, it's into the box for a few month growing period while I work on other things. Like...

Second Project: She Becomes Death (the trilogy)
The first book has been completed. The second book has been completed, including a minor rewrite to make it more cohesive. The third book is waiting for my attention preferably when I finish with "The Becoming." Overall, I think the series has potential and I'm proud of the fact that I wrote three books that are related to one another and the plot flows throughout. I've written books that are tangentally related to one another before, but they didn't turn out as well. Testament to many years more practice as a writer.

Third Project: Chains of Fate
I recently reunearthed (that's exactly the non-word I want to use) this project while working on something else entirely. I've rewritten this book a grand total of five times. As a friend of mine put it, "It's time to either publish it or stop working on it." I'm on the fence about whether or not I should go ahead and self-publish it. First it would need a kicktail cover. It would be my first true novel on the bookshelves. It was also my attempt at writing something that might fall along the lines of a romance, but not really. Second, I still think there are parts of it that could be better. However, knowing what I know about writing (again lots more practice) there will always be places where I'm thinking I could write this better if I just had another rewrite. So I cannot necessarily let that be the reason I'm not willing to do it. Do I think it's a good book? Yes. Do I think others will like it? Yes. Do I think there will be those who dislike it? Yes. I sorta wish I had a publisher or even an editor who was behind me saying, "This is good. Leave it alone." I don't, so it's up to me to make decisions about my work which is both freeing and terrifying.

Book Review: The Dragon Business by Kevin J. Anderson

"The Dragon Business" by Kevin J. Anderson is a romp of a read. It's subject matter is the standard dragons and damsels seen in a much more comedic light. You start the book with King Cullin and his son, Maurice. King Cullin is hailed as a dragon slayer, but he fears his son will aspire to much less. So he means to tell him all about 'The Dragon Business'.

'The Dragon Business' is a con pulled off by Cullin and his friends Reeger and Sir Dalbry where Sir Dalbry offers his dragon slaying skills against a fake dragon created by Reeger. It's a lucrative con, but it runs into a problem when all of a sudden there is a real dragon involved. But before you get to the real dragon, you get a real princess, Princess Affonyl. She really doesn't want to be a princess, she was just born into the role. And as part of the role, she's been forced into an arranged marriage with a disreputable Duke Kerrl. Just at the time that Cullin and his group make it to her kingdom, she stages a dragon of her own to escape to freedom. It was all done very well with chiseled out dragon claw marks and a fantastic explosion.

Cullin and his group eventually find Affonyl and draw her into their game. That's when the real dragon rears its ugly head. Along with the real dragon come real knights to try and subdue it. That doesn't go quite according to plan. The dragon eats all but Sir Dalbry of the group of knights and Cullin manages to dispatch the creature after it's been made dull and slow by overeating.

For his good deed, Cullin is given the hand of a princess (not Affonyl) and finds out he really isn't cut out for being a prince. How he eventually becomes king is not covered, but Maurice is suitably impressed by the story of his father's life.

Reeger turned out to be my favorite character, he's a pragmatic cynic who deep down has a soft heart and great loyalty. He doesn't smell very nice or have good manners, but he is true to himself and his friends.

Pick up a copy of The Dragon Business on Amazon HERE

Book Review: Stranded: Stranded by Anthony Francis

Stranded is a short story collection about being stranded in space. The three stories are written by Anne Bishop, Anthony Francis, and James Alan Gardner. Though each story deals with the same subject matter, they are each unique. The third story in the set is "Stranded" by Anthony Francis.

"Stranded" follows the adventures of a group of teenage space faring refugees and an ultra-advanced centauress named Serendipity. They meet on an unexpectedly hostile world which has been left fallow for a thousand years. The refugees are the leavings of a spaceship, once well populated, now run by a group teenagers having a civil war along gender lines. They crash while trying to find a place to repair their ship. The centauress is suffering from living in the shadow of a family members and wants to make her name out in the frontier, so she space hops until she is on a world that has long been ignored and buys it with her inheritance. Only to find that it has a history.

I think my favorite part of the whole story is the interplay between the Serendipity and her family. There is nothing as hard as trying to live up to the expectations you think others have of you. It must have been unbearable to try and carve out a spot in a family tree full of the exceptional. Behind that, the descriptions of space travel.

I gave this story a 3.5 out of 5.0 because while I found the story compelling and the characters interesting, it just didn't grab me the same way earlier stories in the book did. I find myself liking "A Strand in the Web" more. The entire book, all three stories, was well-crafted and interesting.

Pick up STRANDED at Belle Books HERE

Objects: Stories of Things

My first book, Objects, is available now through Amazon. I've already set up my Goodreads Author page to help promote the book. Here we go into the wide world of self-publishing.

Book Review: Stranded: A Strand in the Web by Anne Bishop

Stranded is a short story collection about being stranded in space. The three stories are written by Anne Bishop, Anthony Francis, and James Alan Gardner. Though each story deals with the same subject matter, they are each unique. The second story in the book is by Anne Bishop "A Strand in the Web".

The characters in "A Strand in the Web" are somewhat typical teenagers doing a less than typical job. They are on assignment to repopulate a world, starting from the ground up. Many years previously, humans had left living on earth and moved into space. Now as part of their 'Atonement' for something done long ago, they refurbish worlds that have been destroyed. They do this through Restoration. The group we are following are Restorers yet, but they want to be and this assignment to bring back a portion of the planet will get them closer to their goal.

Willow, our focal character, is assigned to care for the trees of this project. Something which is made harder by the incompetence of several other team members. After being unceremoniously removed from the team following an altercation, she finds herself on a new project, restoring an island as a Restorer (a position she doesn't yet have) would. She initially brings in only one teammate, here friend Stev, but they end up as almost a full team when her friends Thanie and Whit join them.

The idea of bringing back an entire planet is intriguing and looking at it from the nuts and bolts perspective gives you a new appreciation for how hard it is to get things back in 'balance', a term that is used often throughout the story and a concept that each character strives for their projects.

Throughout the story, I was struck by the sincerity of the characters and their beliefs. From Willow who is a strong as the tree from which she derives her name to Stev who tries everything to be a good friend and somehow maintain a touch of distance. The characters as much as the idea intrigued me. 4.5 out of 5 You can pick up Stranded from Belle Books HERE

Book Review: Stranded: A Host of Leeches by James Alan Gardner

Stranded is a short story collection about being stranded in space. The three stories are written by Anne Bishop, Anthony Francis, and James Alan Gardner. Though each story deals with the same subject matter, they are each unique. The book begins with James Alan Gardner's piece "A Host of Leeches".

"A Host of Leeches" is about a young girl, Alyssa, who finds herself stranded on a space station which is the retirement home for advanced, sentient, weaponry after she has come down with a highly contagious plague. There are no other people in the story, only the sentient robots.

One of my favorite parts is the description of the situation:

"Herds of intelligent battle-tanks roaming the grassy plains. Nuclear bombers and fighter jets basking in the sun. Gunboats in the rivers, artillery on the shore, and mole-machines underground. Lots of smart self-aware robots whose codenames include the world 'megadeath'."

On top of that, she is dragged into a power struggle between two of the robots: The General and the Lorelei. Each are highly advanced intelligences with quite different ways of doing things and Alyssa as the anomaly in the situation is requested by the General to take down the Lorelei. All because he cured her of the mystery plague. We find out later he was lying through his speakers.

What really happened was aliens had come to Earth and infected Alyssa, and many others, with themselves. They are communal cells, which behave something like algae. They infected the humans because on their world, that's what they do. They ride other low intelligence lifeforms for their own purposes. Except all it did was make the humans very sick. They finally removed themselves from Alyssa when they realized how close to death she had come. Giving her the cure the General claimed he had done. With the plague mystery solved, they are left with the small problem of what to do with the communal cells, but I'll let you read the story to find out what happens and why the leeches are an important component.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and it's a fairly quick read. Gardner does a fabulous job of giving an amazing situation enough touch points to keep you in the story. 4.5 out of 5.

Pick up the book from Belle Books HERE

Book Review: Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick is a powerhouse in the world of Science Fiction. Known for stories that have lead the groundwork for several other works, most notably "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" becoming the movie "Bladerunner". Just recently, I got stuck on a piece I was working on and found myself looking for something, anything, to hang my hat on to keep it going. (I have since given up that piece for lost, but it got me to go to the library.) I picked up a four volume set of Philip K. Dick's work which included "The Man in the High Castle", "Ubik", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch". "The Man in the High Castle" was the first in the volume.

I think what strikes me most is the almost unfinished quality of the work. Dick doesn't tie everything up in a neat little bow, he leaves threads hanging loosely all over. The story of Frank Frink ends with him going back to his workbench, much more preferable than what might have happened to him. Juliana Frink meets Abendsen, the man who used to live in the high castle, and walks out of the whole thing with a few of her questions answered but what is going to happen to her or the writer is far from concluded. Tagomi has a heart attack and our last view of him is him resting as others move around him and tend to him.

The story doesn't so much seem to end as it trails off.

I believe this was the intention. The story doesn't end because truthfully stories don't end in neat little packages. All of it tied up with "The End" tacked on. What I don't know is whether it seems satisfactory to end it that way. On one side, I want the neat ending, everything tied up in a little bow, everyone taking their bows before the final curtain. On the other, the work is what it is and the ending it has is the ending it has. It can't be any more or less than what it already is.

The second thing that strikes me is the level of detail he goes into regarding the political systems of the two winning nations. What they've made of the world since they were fortunate enough to win the war. It seems almost as if it could be true, which is parallel in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the book within the book. It turns out to be true as well according to the I Ching.

Finally, there are two books which draw all the characters in one way or another, the fictional piece The Grasshopper Lies Heavy written by Hawthorne Abendsen which it seems almost all of the characters in the book are reading or planning to read; and the I Ching or Book of Changes, the oracle a number of them refer to throughout the story. Both pieces are integral to the plot. Dick supposedly wrote the entire book using the oracle as a guide. But every character has some connection to either of the two texts. I find it interesting any time a fictional work is mentioned in a work of fiction, especially when it is quoted throughout.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It wasn't precisely what I went looking for. I was researching cyberpunk, but it was definitely worth the read.

Pre-writing

Catching up on my podcasts, if you don't know Writing Excuses you should, and came across this one about pre-writing.

According to the podcast, pre-writing is all the before writing writing that is done on a manuscript. In my particular case as part outliner/part discovery writer, it means looking back at my outline and then brainstorming neat things to happen to my characters on their way to the plot point I'm looking at for the day. However, what struck me as interesting about this podcast is that it also notes things about tone text and music as a way to get into a specific headspace.

Music to get into the right headspace is something I've explored previously, however, I've never made it as narrow as is suggested. Instead, I tend to think in terms of entire albums. The idea of parsing that down to one or two songs, or even a single youtube video is almost mindblowingly simple. Something I will definitely be trying out to see if it cuts down on the amount of time it takes to get into a specific mind frame.

The other thing they discussed was tone text. I suppose this could be done using your own text by simply reading back over it before beginning with anything new for the day, but they discussed using an outside text (such as Jane Austen) in order to preserve the sound of the writing as you are working your way forward on a manuscript.

I will admit, none of this is groundbreaking, and perhaps if I took more creative writing courses it would seem less interesting to me, but I found this interesting and thought it would be good to share.

If you haven't already, check out the Writing Excuses podcast. It's well worth the 20 minutes or so a week.



In other news, I'm reaching the end of "Winning his Kingdom", She Becomes Death book 3. It's a bittersweet nearness for me seeing as I've been in this world with these characters for the better part of three years now. Yet, somehow, I've got to tag a 'The End' onto this story and let them go on to whatever fate may hold for them. Plus, I can always come back to the world if the need strikes and maybe it will.