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Topics - jwdenzel

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Reading Excuses / How to get your stuff read by Brandon Sanderson, and possibly Tor Books

« on: April 01, 2009, 06:55:20 PM »

All,

As many of you know, I'm the webmaster over at Dragonmount.com, one of the large WHEEL OF TIME fan sites. I'm in frequent communication with Brandon Sanderson -- we talk about once a month on the phone.

So the other day I mentioned to him that I've been involved in Reading Excuses and he was thrilled to hear its going well. He expressed some interest in reading the best we have to offer. So we came up with a plan.

We need to pick 5 submissions from what has been submitted so far, and send them over to him. He'll read them all, and then at the JordanCon convention in mid-April, he'll give the best one to Tom Doherty (the president of Tor) to read with his personal recommendation.

Submission Criteria:
- Must have already been submitted and reviewed by RE members
- Must be the fantasy or sci-fi genre
- 3500 word limit
- It has to be polished. Free of typos, etc.
- A 1-page synopsis of the entire novel has to be included.

It's up to us to choose the 5. Our deadline to decide and get the submissions to Brandon is in one week: April 8. What do you guys think?

(As a starting point, I'll nominate one of Reave's Crystalheart chapters, as well as one of Hamster's Soul Taker chapters. Thoughts?

Reading Excuses / 3-30- 09 - jwdenzel - The Gates of Heaven: Ch. 6 - Ch. 7

« on: March 30, 2009, 05:00:06 PM »

Thanks again for reading. The story is returning to Aric again.

There has been some discussion in previous threads for this story that the narrator isn't really working. That's excellent feedback, and I appreciate it. I'd like to try and work this out, so any other ideas would be appreciated.

My plan with the archmage narrator was to have him carry us between character POV's. Each time the chapter POV switches, the narrator is there to "pull us away" from one character and lead us to the next. I do not anticpiate there being a lot of POV changes. 75% of the book is from Aric's POV. The other 25% will be from Nola's, and one other character you have yet to meet.

One idea which was suggested (and I had initially ruled out while writing) was to use the archmage as the "bumper" at the start of each chapter. I'm OK with that, but its sorta become a fantasy cliche IMO. (Not a bad one. I just didn't really want to use it for this book.)

So once more, because we are switching from Nola's POV (in the chapter prior to this) back to Aric, I inserted a narrator section.

Thoughts?

Thanks again!

Reading Excuses / 3 - 23 - 09 - jwdenzel - The Gates of Heaven: Ch. 4 - Ch. 5

« on: March 23, 2009, 07:13:11 AM »

Hi everyone,

Thanks for reading this submission. If you missed the earlier chapters, that's OK. You can pick up right here and not be too lost. (Or you can email / PM me if you want the earlier chapters, too)

This submission is lovingly dedicated to Frog, who in her review of my last submission, said this about the King's sword:

Quote

Quote
"It will speak for itself."
That's one spiffy sword.

You have no idea, my friend.

Looking forward to everyone's feedback!

J

Reading Excuses / 2 - 9 - 09 - jwdenzel - The Gates of Heaven: Ch. 2 - Ch. 3

« on: February 09, 2009, 09:00:28 AM »

Thanks for reading!

I lovingly dedicate chapter 3 to Necroben who previously said:

Quote

Minor point: Armor is not a good idea anywhere around deep water.

Indeed, Ben. Indeed.

----
I have specific notes and questions, but I'll wait a bit before I bring them up.

Reading Excuses / How far into your book are you? How long will it be?

« on: January 29, 2009, 12:22:34 AM »

The subject says it all. How far into these novels are each of you? How long do you think they'll end up being?

Are your books the first of an intended series? Or just stand-alones?

To answer my own question and kick things off, I'm only about 25,000 words into my book (entitled, for now, The Gates of Heaven). I have a full outline for it, and my guess is that it will be about 100-150,000 words. It's a stand-alone, but I suppose if I one day have millions of fans drooling for more I could find some more stories in the same world. The ending of "Gates" is pretty conclusive though, and I'd never want to drag it it out longer.

I'm currently writing chapter 10. So I suppose I have some more stuff I can share with you now, but I fully admit that I'd rather be well ahead of you guys; my fist readers.

J

Reading Excuses / 1 - 19 - 09 - jwdenzel - The Gates of Heaven: Prologue - Ch. 1

« on: January 19, 2009, 05:20:16 PM »

Thank you all very much for your feedback, big or small.

-J