The joys of novel writing

So I'm reading through my first draft and I realize that I drop one of the main characters about half way through the book. He's just... gone.

Now the book is the first volume of a trilogy and he has lots more stuff to do in the later books but it just left the book feeling unbalanced. So I took a longer chapter that needed some splitting, cut it in half and tacked 2500 words about him to the end of the first half.

This solves the problem of having not enough about this crucial character and, simultaneously, provides me with an even 20 chapters. I like that number.

It also brings the novel up to 96000 words which is edging on the upper limit of what I wanted but that's alright too long is better than too short at this point.

I have had a request to post a short story up here. I may do so sometime in the next few weeks but it will take some time. Although I do have some short story ideas I want to flesh out the novel has to take priority and, at this point, it needs more work.

Turning to Wikipedia, I've been very active in a discussion on the notability of this random pseudo-scientist from South Africa. This guy touts this nonsense about how all the pyramids in the world are starmaps and, well, the whole ancient astronauts thing. Anyway I seem to have angered his fan club and they are now accusing me of having a vendetta against him.

A little hint to the "pyramid power!!!" people: I don't even remember this guy's name when I am not looking at it on my watchlist. That is how unimportant he is to me. I don't know him, don't care about him, and don't have anything against him. He could very well be a very sociable fellow in real life. But his books should be shelved in Sci-Fi / Fantasy. And apparently a very small number of people think his hair-brained theories are actually real! And that is just silly.

L. Ron Hubbard silly.

Just made plans for Labour Day. Huo Guo and Mahjong with some good friends of mine. It's going to be sweet.

More on Brust

As I mentioned in my last post I've been reading a book called "Dzur" by Steven Brust. Now part of what I enjoy about Brust is his willingness to experiment with the structural elements of his books.

Within this particular volume each chapter is preceded by a short passage recounting a course of an extravagant meal the protagonist has at the beginning of the story. Now I love to cook and so I find this particular peculiarity to be especially pleasant.

I've even tried my hand at cooking a dish derived from this fantasy feast and it worked quite well; Mr. Brust seems to have at least enough knowledge of good cooking to devise recipes nearly as novel as his books.

The other thing I like about Brust is that he keeps his stories short and simple. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't get intimidated by epics. It's just that I find that some of the excesses of Robert Jordan and his ilk tend to tire after a while. A fantasy author whose books don't generally seem to exceed the 100,000 word mark is a refreshing change.

Of course there is a down-side to it. I'm almost finished!

Oh well... I guess it's to the library with me again.

Initial Post

Well, this is it, I've finally got around to starting one of these things. I should have been blogging a while ago, I mean, it's not as if I don't like to write. I just always found that by the time I finished the writing that I hope to one day get paid for I was feeling tapped.

Anyway, I picked up a delightful new Scotch, McClelland's, which has a sharp lemon sort of nose but tastes strongly of campfire smoke and peat. I sat down for a glass and picked up a new guilty pleasure of mine. "Dzur", a novel by Steven Brust, is a tight and entertaining fantasy novel of gangsterism and soul-eating super-weapons. It is certainly worth a read.

Speaking of reading, I am now in the edit phase of the first draft of my own novel. This is the second time I've taken a crack at a long work of fiction; the first work being just barely readable enough to sheepishly show to my wife and family. This time I'm much more satisfied with the result although it requires a great deal more polishing before it's ready for an agent to look at.

Over on Wikipedia there is lots of fun coming from the Ancient Astronaut types. I just don't get why people feel this compulsive need to download rather simple feats of monolithic architecture to fictitious aliens; it just seems, well, silly. Face it people, it's not hard to build a pyramid. A basic knowledge of levers and a heap of manpower is all it takes and the ancient civilizations who built the darn things had both.

I'm all for people having an active imagination; I only become concerned when they mistake a fantasy for reality.

Well that's all for tonight, more to come in the future.