Eric Lewis's Blog, page 2

The First Rule by Steven William Hannah

The First Rule is the first entry in Steven William Hannah’s new series The Blind Age. This story blends conventional fantasy elements with new twists on familiar tropes with a laser-focused story that lets readers know exactly what they’re in for.

In this foundational volume, readers are introduced to main character Venalia, a brand-spankin’-new mint condition Priestess in the land of Altheim. In this world, Priests and Priestesses are called to specific gods based on their personality and talents, and can take multiple career paths that make use of their particular magical abilities. Venalia serves the Mind’s Eye, a god of knowledge and secrets but has yet to choose a path in life. She has returned to her home village of Llantry to perform the funeral rites for the man who raised her, and encounters old grudges stemming from her childhood. If this wasn’t hard enough, a fleeing soldier named Temple arrives in town warning of the approach of the deadly entity known as the Choir, a relic of the old days when dragons tormented humanity. Venalia must decide whether to flee or stay out of duty, even though Temple’s visions tell of her going to certain death to fight the enemy.

The story here is refreshingly non-epic, and I mean that in the classical sense. The plot takes place over a relatively short period of time in a single defined location. This is a great choice for the first book in a series, since it allows readers to get comfortable with the basic aspects of the world without being overwhelmed by lore, as well as focus on the main characters. Here the world-building is built into the story, and the info-dumps are few and brief. The story is much more character-driven than many modern fantasy novels of this length. Sometimes this leads to a bit of navel-gazing and repetition of lines several times, but it’s not too bad. It is told in present tense, which might take some readers a bit of getting used to. However, I found it not much of a chore after a couple chapters. The cover is rather reminiscent of a comic book, but rest assured it’s not. This is in most respects a classic prose novel set firmly in the fantasy genre.

The characters in The First Rule are vivid and multi-faceted, and every character has an arc. Venalia’s establishing incident in her relationship to Llantry is an unfortunate but understandable act committed in childhood, and at the beginning of the story she’s not happy to be back. As someone who left the little hometown long ago and never went back, this was familiar ground for me. Her initial nemesis is a petulant, petty politician on a power trip (alliteration neither intended nor avoided), and the soldier Temple seems brave, but only thanks to his visions telling him he survives, and he’s quite willing to leave others behind when necessary. Even the main villain, which at first seems to be just a monster, develops into something woven into the world and its past. So we’re not quite at Joe Abercrombie levels of moral ambiguity, but the characters are multi-dimensional. The monster is made scarier in that it’s not something that just takes you and eats you but in fact, Pennywise-like, makes its victims want to go with it with a hypnotizing song. So while there’s a good amount of action, much of the conflict is within the mind. Good thing they have a Priestess of the Mind’s Eye. One character’s change is a bit sudden and convenient, but it’s not too jarring.

I’m not sure what the word count is, but it’s definitely not a doorstop. One can finish it in a weekend, so the pacing is brisk without feeling rushed. In fact, there’s one part where Venalia is tarrying at a location and Temple is begging her to hurry up so they can get back, and I felt the same sense of urgency, so that was quite well done.

The book also plays with the idea of irrevocable fate and visions, and I was slightly reminded of Dune, which raises the question of whether seeing the future locks one into it, and whether uncertainty is a valuable weapon in its own right. It also disrupts the default medieval fantasy setting with mention of airships (mentioned but not seen, meaning they’d better show up in later books!) and descriptions of magic in very scientific-sounding terms. The magic system is coherent, and utilizes familiar terms in new ways. Praying to a god is actually a traumatic act that results in momentary catatonia and vomiting, and performing magic physically drains the mind and body. Amusingly, it seems that the “restore mana” potion in this world is a really strong tiki cocktail, made of equal parts fruit juice and rum!

I really enjoyed this first book, and it follows the modern prescription of “stand-alone with series potential” very well. The story is wrapped up satisfyingly with several surprise twists along the way, and sets up the next books, whatever they end up being. It appears well-positioned for an episodic format, leaving the exact plot wide open but with an established world that can then focus on the story going forward. It seems particularly amenable to a kind of fantasy-mystery genre blend, which I’ve enjoyed in the past. The next book in the series is titled The Rain That Makes The River and should be out this year.

 

Steven William Hannah’s website: https://t.co/qJtU1153lq

 

Pairs well with: Beer

Beer.

 

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Iron Curtain by Bowen Greenwood

Iron Curtain is the latest in the Sherman Iron detective thriller series by Bowen Greenwood. The books follow the eponymous small town Montana reporter as he fights to publish the truth while dodging bullets from the vicious drug cartel that has taken up residence. In this fifth installment, the story stands alone and can be read by itself, even though it’s clearly (the final?) part of a larger saga.

After having survived the cartel headed by the cosmically evil Ramsey Castro, Iron’s testimony is key to putting the druglord away for good, either behind bars or in the ground. When the prosecuting attorneys finally have a judge who can’t be bought, their hopes are dashed when that very judge is murdered right before Iron’s eyes. An assassin of frightening skill and brutality demands the release of Castro, or else more people will be killed. The race is on to catch the killer, and Iron must once again become as much a detective as a reporter and enlist his rapidly dwindling circle of friends and allies to stop the rampage.

Full disclosure, I have not read the previous books in this series, but although it would certainly add to the richness of the story, it’s so deftly-told that it’s not strictly necessary. The backstory is woven into the narrative seamlessly, not feeling at all like an infodump or a “previously on…” Honestly I miss this kind of semi-episodic storytelling. These days every book or TV series is one extended soap opera where you dare not miss anything or you’re lost and a lot of the pages or runtime is filler. That’s definitely not the case here though, as this story has precisely no fat, going at a break-neck pace of action.

The tone is somewhat reminiscent of classic noir thrillers, and I could almost hear Bogart or Cagney’s voices saying these lines, even though they’d be way out of place in small town Montana. It evokes a sense of nostalgia even if one hasn’t much real exposure to the genre, and even with the addition of modern technology as an integral part of the plot, I found myself reminded oddly of one of the less supernatural episodes of Twin Peaks as much as a Perry Mason novel. This is a story that could only take place in a small town, with a growing sense of dread as the bodies begin to pile up and a sort of slow-motion train wreck of panic builds in a way that just wouldn’t happen in NYC or LA. Cracks appear in Iron as the loss of his friends takes a real emotional toll on him in a way that might not be portrayed in similar stories of the past. The little details along the way—the brand of boots the killer wears, local businesses and even minutiae of the legal system particular to the area—all give the setting a sense of (here’s a Million Dollar word for you!) verisimilitude that keeps it from feeling like a set-piece thriller. Some characters do fill an archetype role—the slimy defense lawyer, the corrupt officials, the tough-as-nails prosecutor, the hacker—but this serves to orient the reader within a familiar framework to move the story forward.

Iron Curtain is a pretty quick read, as action thrillers tend to be, and I plowed through it in a weekend. I found the prose refreshingly straightforward, clear and unaffected. Like all the good stories of the genre, the climactic scene was unpredicted yet inevitable, with little bread crumbs dropped along the way that end up paying off. And of course there are a few clues that in retrospect are intentionally revealed so that the reader can kind of guess something and then feel smart when it’s confirmed later. I see what you’re doing! I’d recommend this and the entire series to readers wanting quick action, clever twists and a classic, determined hero who won’t give up because it’s the right thing to do but also flawed enough to be relatable.

 

Bowen Greenwood’s website: https://www.bowengreenwood.com/

 

Pairs well with: Wagner Valley Brewing Co. Dockside Vienna Lager

As a long-time ale fan I might have come to expect little from lagers, but this isn’t always the case. This amber lager from Wagner Valley Brewing packs an admirable course of flavors into a bottle at 5.1% ABV and 21 IBUs. I’d normally recommend something like this for spring, but it has been a frighteningly mild winter around here (which I’m sure we’ll have to pay for soon enough!), so I don’t feel it’s out of place at the moment. It pours a dark red-brown with little to no head that dissipates quickly. Mild aroma of caramel and vanilla with a very mild sweetness that’s not cloying at all, with a malty and slightly floral taste that’s just the tiniest bit toasted. Crisp and clean with just the right amount of carbonation. It develops into a dry finish with a discernible bitterness that IPA fans might find a pleasant surprise. This won’t knock anyone’s socks off, but for an easy drinking lager it definitely pulls its weight.

 

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The Year of Betrayal

No, that’s not the title of my next book, though it would be a good one. The year of betrayal is how I’ll remember 2022. A bit dramatic, yeah, but what else do you expect from me? This year was when the last flickers of my authorship goals were unceremoniously snuffed out. Oh, I’m not giving up, but the possibility of seeing my fantasy trilogy on a bookstore shelf–any store, any shelf anywhere–is now zero. How did that come to be? Well, come along children, and hear my tale of woe…

Warning: Lots of naughty language below

The Birth of The Heron Kings

Sometime in 2014 I began drafting The Heron Kings. (Side note: almost every time I type the title my fingers insist on typing “Heorn Kings” and I have to fix it. Like, 85% of the time.) It was a prequel to the story I’d been pecking away at since 2006, and was to be the origin of my ornery forest rangers. The file in my Lit folder is still called “HKO.” If I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in the first old attempt, this one was little better. The first draft took me about eighteen months and was at most 127,000 words I think. I did what I thought was a sufficient amount of revision (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) and started drafting my query. Anyone who’s been through this for the first time will know that of course neither my manuscript nor my query were ready. I’d workshopped the first chapter on AbsoluteWrite a lot and sent the query through the ringer, so I figured that was good enough. Nope. I sent out 81 queries before getting even a partial request. I eventually sent out 243 queries over the next year and a half, resulting in four partials and eleven fulls, leading to 238 rejections and zero offers. By this time I had gotten some excellent feedback, including from a few of those Twitter pitch events where you can get help from actual authors and agents. I cut the number of POV characters from a dozen to three, and the word count to 97,000. It became a much better product than it was at the beginning. Unfortunately, by the time I did this I’d already been rejected by all reputable agents. Seemed I was destined for the trash bin of self-publishing.

At the very tail-end of 2018 I received two nearly simultaneous offers. One was from a small press that accepted unagented submissions. The other was from a supposed agent of a brand-new literary agency, not based in NYC. Yep, you know where this is going. Understand, by this time I was desperate for anything, and I accepted the agent offer even though I had a publisher offer in hand. I don’t know why I did this, I guess I wanted the veneer of legitimacy, even if the veneer was only a few microns thick. My agent added little to the publisher offer. Nothing at all in fact, since the contracts are always “take it or leave it.” This notion I read every so often from professional advice-givers about negotiating contracts as a debut author is laughable. You don’t get to negotiate. There are thousands of other nobodies just like you just as desperate for a publication. There’s no motivation for even a small publisher to bother going even an inch out of their way for you.

I won’t go into the details of the contract. It doesn’t matter, it was pretty standard. In many standard contracts the license period is very long, authors have no control over the cover and no control over the price and no control over the marketing. Small presses are kind of halfway in between large publishers and self-publishing. Your mileage may vary, but in my estimation they are the worst of both worlds, not the best. The model seems to be to toss everything possible at the wall and see what sticks without any extra effort. Their marketing usually consists of a few blog tour posts and a few social media posts, maybe a few more things if there’s money and someone remembers to get around to it.

I signed a contract for The Heron Kings in March 2019. The manuscript was already in the hands of the editor, and edits, including line edits and proofreading, continued until September. About a month later I received an image that was to be the cover. It was awful. I had a minor panic attack when I saw it. It had this very generic bird on a shield thing in the middle, with bright red-orange swishes in the back and a fire graphic below. It told you nothing of what the story was about and looked like a ripoff of the Hunger Games. The bird graphic was a stock image, which I knew because I’d seen it on sites that licensed them while assembling my own little heron picture you see at the bottom of every blog post. The image file said V6 at the end of the name, implying they went through five other versions of this without even showing it to me. I told the editor all this, and he said there was no time to completely redo the cover. I asked them to at least change the background to dark green, and I suggested a different title font. This they did quickly, since it was all just assets thrown together in software. It was a slight improvement, but out of embarrassment over my earlier tantrum I simply replied, “Perfect!” It was not perfect. But there was nothing I could do.

The book was scheduled for release April 24, 2020. Smack in the middle of the pandemic. Figures. It got some mentions on blog tours, but little attention otherwise. It got some nice editorial reviews with some good quotes to use, and even a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which I mention at every opportunity not out of pride but desperation. I hoped this guaranteed a good reception. It did not. There was a mediocre 3.5/5 review in Grimdark Magazine, a place I’d been trying to get stories published for several years without success. They said the violence was “over the top” in many places. Yep, too violent for a magazine CALLED GRIMDARK. Thanks Adrian.

Sales were weak upon release. Weak, but not zero. It was disappointing. Turns out tweets and FB posts do nothing. They’re nothing. They’re worse than nothing because they’re nothing masquerading as something. Now, all this time no specific actions were asked of me, other than to like/retweet/whatever the nothings the publisher was putting out. Blog tours are useless these days, or so the experts say and my experience bears out. Editorial reviews don’t influence readers. I spent a LOT of my own money on paid ads that led to zero sales. I bought and reviewed multiple books by authors new and established that I thought were similar in some way to my work, in hopes they’d return the favor. That’s what all my “book and beer review” blog posts really are. Nope. Not a one. The only thing that works these days, according to those I’ve asked who have had success, is word of mouth. People who like the book talking it up and recommending it on multiple venues. Good example is Reddit. You go to the /r/fantasy sub, you see people reccing books all the time. Other people’s books. Because self-promotion is not allowed. That’s a common theme- people will tell you you HAVE to promote your work everywhere you can. Except everywhere that it might lead to results, you’re not allowed. Turns out the way to become popular is to already be popular for something else. Guess how well that works for me. I’ve never been attractive, or popular, or whatever else. I just wanted to write a story. Something I thought it didn’t matter what you looked like or how charismatic you were. But really it’s just the same beauty pageant everything else is. No one talked about my book on any platform, no one recommended it even when somebody asked for exactly the type of story it is. One bright spot was the BookBub deal. If your book is selected to be a BookBub daily deal, it pretty much guarantees some sales. Of course you pay dearly for this listing, so who knows whether it will be a worthwhile investment. The book was selected beginning September 22, 2020. I didn’t even have to look up that date since I remember it so well. The Ebook was set at 99 cents and it got somewhere around 1000-1400 downloads over the next few weeks. That created enough momentum that it eventually earned out its (tiny) advance and eventually did about 40% above that. I even got a royalty payment. Cool.

 

Flight and Flop

I had sent the MS of the second book, The Heron Kings’ Flight, to the editor around June 2020. This was the actual story I’d been working on since grad school, rewritten to not be terrible. The rewriting went very quickly, so I was excited about it. I heard nothing for four months, and finally broke down and very politely asked the editor if there was any interest sometime in October. I’ve only recently worked out that the reason for this silence was not the time it took him to read it but to see if the first book sold any copies. He said that he loved the book as much if not more than the first (Note what I just said: the acquisitions editor of a publisher flat out told me this book was as good or better in quality than the previous one), and I was sent the contract in the beginning of 2021. Since my supposed agent had stopped replying to my emails, I assumed that was no longer operative. Good riddance, he’d done absolutely nothing for me. Again, standard contract. We went through edits and proofreading, same as before. It was a smoother process this time around. They sent me the cover in late 2021, and it was the same as the first, just with a red background and some maple leaves instead of fire. Whatever, not like I expected any different. At least it was getting published. They insisted on branding this book as “Book Two of the Heron Kings Series.” I did not put this anywhere in any version of the MS I sent. This was their decision. They decided it was a “series.” This will be significant later. All this despite the fact that the first book’s product page doesn’t even link to the second.

This time around I was not a shiny new debut author. I didn’t realize how much this would affect things. The book got a positive Publishers Weekly review, but not a starred one.  Okay, no problem. But it didn’t get any other editorial reviews from trade publications or fantasy blogs. I was excited when a review from that old bastard of a mag, Grimdark Magazine, came out. Surely this one was going to be glowing, since the writing was far superior and the characters more fleshed out.

3/5. Fuck. I didn’t even read it. To this day I got no idea what it said. It doesn’t matter.

Very few ARC requests on NetGalley. Only a couple blog tour posts. One very nice review from a blogger in the UK, but that’s it. The book was released May 17, 2022. Zero sales. Not. One. Sale. On RELEASE DAY. About a week before release I received a demand from the publisher. They wanted me to make videos of myself. A lot of them. Answering inane questions and basically putting on song and dance acts they could post on TikTok. Also, I was to assemble a Spotify list of at least 30 (popular? current?) songs to go along with them. Excuse me? Excuse the fuck outta me? Let me explain a few things here. I’m over 40 years old. Old, fat, and close to bald. I’m not pretty or engaging, as I mentioned above. I am introverted almost to the point of being hikikomori. Go look that up if you have to. I almost had a breakdown just over sending them an author photo. I almost sent a fake photo of someone else. Seriously. I barely know what TikTok is. In fact I just had to go look it up to type that sentence just now to make sure I spelled it right. There was no way I was going to do this. You want to interview me? Send me the questions, or at most ask me over audio. There was no universe where me doing this was going to increase sales. I made this clear in as polite a way I was able, given the anxiety their demand gave me. I received no further communication from them. Still haven’t to this day.

So, yeah. No sales. No BookBub deal this time. I can’t put into words the panic and disappointment this instilled in me. Here’s a screenshot of the scAmazon sales rank so far:

Total sales over all markets and formats? Ten. Seven US, three UK, zero anywhere else. Ten copies. Now, I don’t care how small you are. Being able to sell only ten copies worldwide is not even within the realm of believability. As I mentioned, this has nothing to do with the book’s quality, according to someone who’s job is to evaluate exactly that. Don’t you dare tell me my unwillingness to dick around making cringey videos of my ugly ass is responsible for that. You want me to do real marketing? Fine, tell me what to do. Cause I’ve done all that nothing with the “social” media posts, all the nothing with paid ads out my own pocket, the stealth self-promo in places where it’s not allowed. Tell me what to do that actually works. Cause I really do not know.

 

Best Of Luck…

I sent the MS of the third and final volume of my trilogy, The Heron Kings Rampant, to the editor in July. This was the grand finale to my fantasy series, a poignant conclusion to a centuries-spanning saga of vivid characters, exciting adventures and thought-provoking themes. Again, silence. Again I waited four months before very politely asking about it. This time, the result was, unsurprisingly, very different. I was done. They would not publish the last book IN THE SERIES since sales of the second book were nonexistent. Nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. The editor, who I had believed was a good guy, as everyone appears to be as long as things are going smoothly, actually gave me the form rejection line “best of luck in finding another home” for it. What? Tell me how the last book in a TRILOGY can go to any other publisher? That’s makes no sense. You insisted on calling it a “series,” stuck it with shit covers, did no marketing, and when it inevitably sold no copies, dropped the whole thing as though it was some unfortunate, completely unforeseeable happenstance? Are you fucking daft?

I never cared about money when it came to these books. This isn’t a business for me but a hobby, and hobbies tend to cost money, not make it. That fact seems utterly incomprehensible to people for whom it is a business. I offered to give them Flight with no advance if that would help it get accepted. The advance was token anyway, so it didn’t matter to me. To get Rampant made I would gladly have not only waived the advance but even financed production myself. The only value a small publisher has is the few things they can do that an author can’t do for themself, like getting editorial reviews and deals. I have a good paying job and few expenses. The money was nothing to me. But none of that mattered. I was dropped.

I asked about buying my rights back early, before the termination of the license term. Given the lack of communication I’ve received thus far, it’s no surprise that I’ve heard nothing. It’s not like they have any interest in making money off these books, so I don’t see why not. But companies big and small all seem universally obsessed with infuriating as many people as possible, no matter the money cost to them. Just take a look at the garbage coming out of Hollywood to see the proof of that.

The only route left for Rampant is self-publishing. I know how that’s going to go. I’m not already popular, so no one is going to buy it. I can count on two or three specific people who I believe will buy it, but no more than that. My self-published short story collection is FREE and doesn’t even get many downloads. I have already contracted an editor, but he won’t be able to start work until March. I commissioned new cover art for all three books months ago and I’m only waiting on the last one at this point. So things are in motion, but I’m well aware that they’re in motion toward a place I never wanted to go.

I don’t think my books are great works of literature, even genre literature. I don’t harbor delusions of fame and fortune. But I think they’re good books. Good enough to be published by a Big (Five? Four? Who knows, we don’t do anti-trust anymore) publisher, or even a not so big one. But quality is not the determining factor. It never was, and yeah, I’m a little bitter over that.

So, 2022 was the Year of Betrayal. Who betrayed me? The publisher? Well, I can’t say. Hanlon’s Razor. Surely their unwillingness to communicate and work with me is disappointing. The inability to sell books without luck is annoying. Did I betray myself? Yeah, that’s more likely. I did it years ago, submitting and querying my first book long before it was ready, cutting off any possibility of reputable, legitimate publication not just for that but the next two books as well. I’m 50,000 words into my fourth book, which is set in the same world as the Heron Kings trilogy but is a separate story. I don’t feel it’s very exciting though, and I doubt it will attract the attention of any real agents or publishers. This is still a hobby, and I have learned not to expect much. Thing is, I’m a loser and I don’t have anything else. This is it. And it sucks.

Happy New Year.

 

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So…anyone know a good editor?

I’ve been dropped by my publisher. After branding these books as a series (not my idea) they’ve decided not to publish The Heron Kings Rampant, the final volume of the trilogy. Class move, guys. I’ll add more later, but I don’t have the energy right now. FML.

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A Dishonored Themed Book Nook

A Dishonored Themed Book Nook

I’ve been seeing these ‘book nook’ things pop up lately. They go in between books on shelves, and they look like a little miniature world, sometimes with clever tricks to make them look like they lead off into another space larger than they are. For some reason most of them are themed on Harry Potter, which I’ve never read or seen and have no interest in. But some of them are generic enough they can be altered to fit other aesthetics. You might know where this is going.

As I mentioned in several other posts, Dishonored is my very favorite game and the only one I still play on a regular basis. I have about 600 hours logged over all the entries, mostly in the first main game. I have done little prop projects like the mana potion vial and power rune, multiple pieces of wall art from the game custom made, and I have some fanfiction published. So I decided I’d like to do a Dishonored themed book nook as well.

I bought a kit off Etsy that was one of the most common HP themed ones, but with no recognizable text. It  was easy to put together, and I spent a couple weekends and change painting the major elements in acrylic, using screenshots of buildings and architectural elements from the game as a guide. I then added specific elements like posters and graffiti, objects from the game like potions, rats, a plague corpse, pipes and vents, whale oil tank, loudspeaker, etc. using paper and clay. I printed off shrunken versions of posters, ads and banners and taped them onto the walls. Some of the pieces of the kit were adapted to serve as platforms, so a pennant became a Lord Regent’s banner, a magic shop sign became an Overseer outpost logo.

The best part is the turn in the alley that provides some internal space in the back corner. I used this to place an Outsider’s shrine made from balsa wood and a little rune and bonecharm made of clay. The turn also gives, if one doesn’t look too closely, the impression that the street continues on outside the bounds of the box. I ordered some colored LED strips to add to the outside and inner bits to light up the scene. The final product still looks amateurish, especially now that everyone owns a 3D printer and can make exact replicas. But I enjoyed it and I think it turned out well enough for my own amusement. Here are some pictures:

 

 

 

 

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Some “Booktok” video trailers for The Heron Kings Books

Recently my “publisher” tried to coerce me into making some inane videos of myself on…shudder…Tiktok. Christ. Of course I refused. If you look at any other section of this site you’ll know I’m not too interested in plastering my ugly face all over, well, anyfuckinwhere. It won’t sell any books and it’ll just mortify me. But according to the Kidz on teh InternetzTM that apparently decide things now, “hashtagBooktok” videos are now yet another must for anyone wanting to promote any book. Sigh. It never fuckin’ ends, does it?

So, in lieu of the previously described bullshit, I threw together some book trailers for The Heron Kings and The Heron Kings’ Flight in the most annoying video dimension I’ve ever had the misfortune of battling with. I posted them on, let’s see. Tiktok, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and probably other places I can’t remember. So far no views or engagements. Big surprise.

Except for the vertical format, I did enjoy making them though. They took a few hours each. I did one on Saturday and one yesterday. I used mainly OpenShot for the video assembly and editing, with some help from Canva and some sites that provides free and license-free music & images for download. Don’t recall which ones, but they were near the top of search results. This was the first time I’ve ever done anything like this (and on Linux no less, which adds its own layer of headaches, but I refuse to go back to Windoze) so they’re a bit rough. But I did enjoy it, and maybe you’ll enjoy the goofy results as well, if only to laugh at. I also did an extra little “aggressive book marketing” video at the bottom there just for fun.

Also, cause I need internal links for SEO, subscribe to my newsletter!

 

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The Heron Kings’ Flight is Out

Nothing more to say at this point. Book’s out. Do as you will.

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The Heron Kings Rampant is Finished!!!

UPDATE July 22: After three rounds of edits, I just sent the final revised, polished draft off to my editor. Word count 109, 673. That’s all folks, The Heron Kings trilogy is FINISHED. And none too soon. I am so, so tired. Now to wait about eight months with fingers crossed…

~~~ o ~~~

This will be a very short entry, mostly just to mark the day and approximate time that I finished the first draft of my third novel, The Heron Kings Rampant. May 1, 2022 at 7pm. The draft stands at just under 110,000 words. I really didn’t expect to finish today, especially since I spent a lot of yesterday writing articles in promotion of Book #2, The Heron Kings’ Flight which comes out in about two weeks. But I started and just kept going, and as I felt the end getting nearer I just didn’t want to stop. I wrote…wait for it…7,469 words today! That is by far a record, but it was easy because I’ve been formulating the ending for a long time, and it was just the formality of typing it out. I started at about 8:00 this morning, enjoying an egg, avocado, onion & pepper jack bagel sandwich and black coffee as I wrote, and hit the final save button at 6:21 this evening. Whew! This will almost certainly be the final Heron Kings book, as I’ve fully told every part of the story I wanted to tell, and I feel satisfied with what the saga has become. This one took a long time to write, almost two years from start to finish, although the majority was written in the last seven months. You can read a draft of the first chapter here.

I still have lots of rewriting, editing and revising to do, more than for my second book, but probably less than for the first. But this step is usually easier for me, since I find it easier to fix an imperfect product than to face a blank page. I now know what the story is, so I can go back and set things up before paying them off, foreshadow, fix things that don’t work, plot threads that go nowhere and all that fun stuff. It’s a lot like time travel I guess. And there’s no telling if the story will ever even get published, which depends entirely on factors out of my control. But for tonight, I’m done. I think I’ll have a glass of mead…

 

 

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First Draft of The Heron Kings Rampant is Finished!!!

This will be a very short entry, mostly just to mark the day and approximate time that I finished the first draft of my third novel, The Heron Kings Rampant. The draft stands at just under 110,000 words. I really didn’t expect to finish today, especially since I spent a lot of yesterday writing articles in promotion of Book #2, The Heron Kings’ Flight which comes out in about two weeks. But I started and just kept going, and as I felt the end getting nearer I just didn’t want to stop. I wrote…wait for it…7,469 words today! That is by far a record, but it was easy because I’ve been formulating the ending for a long time, and it was just the formality of typing it out. I started at about 8:00 this morning, enjoying an egg, avocado, onion & pepper jack bagel sandwich and black coffee as I wrote, and hit the final save button at 6:21 this evening. Whew! This will almost certainly be the final Heron Kings book, as I’ve fully told every part of the story I wanted to tell, and I feel satisfied with what the saga has become. This one took a long time to write, almost two years from start to finish, although the majority was written in the last seven months.

I still have lots of rewriting, editing and revising to do, more than for my second book, but probably less than for the first. But this step is usually easier for me, since I find it easier to fix an imperfect product that face a blank page. I now know what the story is, so I can go back and set things up before paying them off, foreshadow, fix things that don’t work, plot threads that go nowhere and all that fun stuff. It’s a lot like time travel I guess. And there’s no telling if the story will ever even get published, which depends entirely on factors out of my control. But for tonight, I’m done. I think I’ll have a glass of mead…

 

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Model 1767 French Grenadier’s Sword

 

 

Here’s the latest hit of my steel addiction. This is a Model 1767 French Grenadier’s sword made in Klingenthal in 1792. It’s a pretty short, handy little blade, and it slightly predates the typical briquet shape you see everywhere. I wanted something a bit more unique, so I probably spent way too much for this. It was made right in the middle of the French Revolution during the reign of Louis XV, and has “Rep” for Republic inscribed in cursive on one side of the blade just above a flaming grenade logo. Below that are some inspection stamps that help date the manufacture. On the other side of the blade is another grenade and “GRENADIER.” The spine is inscribed with “Klingenthal.”

The sword came with the original scabbard made of leather and brass, but it has become dried out and misshapen so that it no longer fits properly. The blade has been through a lot, with a great deal of deep pitting and black rust. It has seen some harsh cleaning at least once, and numerous dings and nicks all along the length. These aren’t really complaints, just observations. Another interesting thing to note is that the blade is sharpened. It’s not still sharp, but definitely has an edge, so it almost certainly saw service at some point. Unfortunately there is some movement of the blade in the hilt, both forward/backward and side to side. There is a large gap between the blade and the brass of the guard, and a crack on one side where the brass was welded together. But it’s not loose enough to where it seems about to come out. There was probably a leather washer covering the gap between the blade and the guard at some point but it’s no longer there. The spine has a nice gradual distal taper from the base up to about 5 inches from the point, where the back becomes beveled into more of a spear point. Though short, the sword has a lot of blade presence, and could be used to deliver powerful cuts as well as serve as a general tool.

Here are the stats:

Total length 71.8 cm (28.25″)
Blade length 58.4 cm (23″)
Grip length 9.2 cm (3.63″)
Blade width 3.5 cm (1.32″)
Blade thickness 1.6 cm (.63″)
Weight 942 g (2.08 lb)
Balance 9.8 cm (3.9″)

 

And here are the rest of the pictures!

 

Here’s also a little bonus- this antique bass field microscope I picked up. No idea how old it is. It’s pretty basic, the focus is done just by sliding the upper part up or down. The light is supplied by a mirror, which is partly desilvered. It might be minimally functional but makes for a nice little display, and it came in an attractive blue velvet lined wooden box.

 

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