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Messages - WriterDan

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16
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 30, 2011, 09:48:21 PM »
Reading Black Halo, by Sam Sykes.  Sequel to Tome of the Undergates.  Pretty good so far.  And he even has a storyline starting up that's not on "the boat".  Whadd'ya know.

Reading Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull to my kids as well.  Starting off slow and way too many big words for them, but it's coming along.

17
Books / Re: Please suggest what to read next
« on: March 23, 2011, 10:04:12 PM »
Try Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet.  They're all in the 300-350 page realm, but pack as much punch as most of the door-stopper fantasy that's out there.

18
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 20, 2011, 07:42:34 AM »
Love to hear that, Fireflyz.  Absolutely LOVE to hear that.

19
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 18, 2011, 07:08:43 PM »
Ending of Wolfsangel was horrendous.

Reading The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham again.  :)  Ah, goodness.

20
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 16, 2011, 04:39:20 PM »
@fireflyz:  Actually took me three attempts to get through Deadhouse Gates because I was really turned off by the girl's story.  Third book was mega-awesome though.  I totally envy you your first read through THAT book.  :)

21
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 11, 2011, 11:17:19 PM »
@fireflyz:  Steve'll probably be around here sometime soon to tell you about this, but...

http://elitistbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/08/gardens-of-moon_9674.html

Finished Blue&Gold by KJ Parker.  Good stuff, but not my favorite of hers.  Look up Purple&Black.  Much better.

Reading Wolfsangel by M. D. Lachlan.  Would be a million times better if he didn't jump POVs all the time.  Still pretty good though.

22
Books / Re: why do editors and agents hate prologues
« on: March 08, 2011, 10:53:12 PM »
Would be my guess that there are too many authors doing exactly that:  writing a "Prologue" that is indistinguishable from "Chapter 1".

My opinion?  Prologues should concern something that happens significantly apart (by time or distance) from the main sequence of the book, which either affects the main sequence directly or portrays concepts that will be key to the main sequence.

Very few authors do this, in my opinion, to decent effect.

The Prologue for the Wheel of Time is an excellent example of a prologue, and it fulfills the above-definition perfectly.  Well, in my mind that bit of writing was actually a Prelude for the series, and not a Prologue for the book.  And yeah, nuance in definition.

Prelude at the beginning of a series (apply above definition to a series)
Prologue at the beginning of a book (apply above definition to a single book)

That's just me though, and I'm kinda nit-picky.

My guess is if you have a prologue done right, one that pulls the reader into the story just as solidly as a good first chapter is supposed to (while still adhering to what it should be, as above) then you'll get an editor's attention, regardless.

(And, as Peter has beaten to the punch here, yet said essentially the same thing, I'll lean back in my chair and grin)

23
Books / Re: How's Scott Lynch doing?
« on: March 01, 2011, 09:08:00 AM »
Don't know if any of you have caught this yet or not...

Found a link to a recent Scott Lynch interview through Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.

The link is here:  http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/the-republic-of-thieves-hardback  Click on the extras tab there to see it.  Four mp3's.

As a side note, Lynch's voice totally threw me.  For the first half of the interview or so, I was asking myself if someone would have the audacity to do a fake interview.  Just his voice in comparison to the pictures of him I've seen on the internet didn't match with each other.  Was a good interview though.  They said that Republic of Thieves is slated for a 2011 release, but failed to give a month.  :(  Ah well, at least it's coming.

24
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 23, 2011, 06:07:44 PM »
Started Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack this morning.  The cover is super-mega-tastic-awesome.  Story so far is pretty mediocre and switches POV mid-stream pretty often  Very well-written though.  Guy can write.

25
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 20, 2011, 05:30:47 AM »
I Don't Want to Kill You rocks.  Went to LTUE today.  Listened to Dan talk.  He said he wanted to make people cry with this one.  Mission accomplished.  Just wow.  Amazing ending.

About 1/4 of the way through Buntline Special by Mike Resnick right now.  If you like books that are driven by dialogue, you'll probably like this one.  It's like 80-90% dialogue with very few tags.  Kinda crazy, actually.

26
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 15, 2011, 09:49:42 PM »
Hawkmoon:  The Runestaff.  Classic stuff.

Also going to start the final Alcatraz from Sanderson tonight with my wife.  At a glance, I wondering what the freak is up with the chapter titles, but I guess I'll figure that out.

And going to finally get to I Don't Want to Kill You next.  So excited for that.

27
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 11, 2011, 10:46:07 PM »
Twinkies for you.   8)

Solid rocket propellant ignition.  I do computer simulation and construction of both steady and non-steady-state models.

Most everyone on my committee is on-board right now.  Well, except for my original adviser.  We have...um...shall we call them, differences of professional opinion.

And since this is a What are you Reading board...

I listened to Hurt Me, by MLN Hanover (Daniel Abraham) on PodCastle yesterday.  Really liked it, right up until the end where we find out that there's been information withheld from us.  Grumble grumble.  Apparently, this was the point of writing the story in the first place though, as evidenced by comments on his blog.  Can the flow of information be handled such that surprises about something the POV character knows aren't presented until the end of the story.  In my unprofessional opinion, the answer is no.  Although, in this case he's done it better than about 95% of all the others I've read who've tried to do it.  And beside the fact, it's still a pretty freaky-good yarn.

28
Everything Else / Anyone headed to LTUE this year?
« on: February 11, 2011, 06:15:44 AM »
Just curious what kind of showing TWGers were going to make at the conference.  I'm planning on Thurs and Fri.  Anyone else?

29
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 10, 2011, 10:02:55 PM »
You're a writer.  What's a dissertation when compared to a 150K word novel?  Shouldn't be any trouble.

The writing will be cake, agreed.  It's the computer stuff I'm worried about.  Nothing I can really do about how long that stuff takes.

30
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: February 10, 2011, 07:31:57 AM »
@Dan -  Though your review for it won't get put up on EBR for a couple of months.  You tease.

Eight weeks!  That's hardly any time at all.  Especially now that I only have twelve to finish my entire dissertation.   :o

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