Monthly Archives: July 2008

Being a writer’s a rewarding thing. It’s always thrilling to finally put the ideas and stories floating around in your mind down to paper. There are lots of rewards, but there are also a lot of negatives to go along with those rewards.

One of those is the effect being a writer has on reading and the way I approach a novel. I remember, back in highschool (that’s my disclaimer so I don’t get mocked…) I was watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek and Dawson, a film nut, was whining becuase he was getting so involved in cinema, and the way it’s crafted, that he was no longer able to enjoy movies as a viewer. He spent more time picking them apart, marvelling or critiquing the technique of the filmmaker, and less time being a fan of the medium and getting lost in the movie.

In a lot of ways I know how Dawson felt. As a writer I often find myself watching the the way the author crafts the story, rather than getting involved with the characters/plot. Of course, there is no better way to learn the craft (besides practice, I suppose) than watching and interpreting the masters at work. I learn a lot about the craft by taking in what my favourite authors do – what works in certain situation, how they handle paticularily hard parts of a novel, etc… – but also what they don’t do.
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The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades

AuthorJohn Scalzi

Paperback
Pages: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: February, 2006
ISBN-10: 0765354063
ISBN-13: 978-0765354068


When I first picked up John Scalzi’s first novel, Old Man’s War, I had every intention of hating it. Scalzi was bloody popular, hilarious, had droves of fans and, well… made me kind of jealous. His novel couldn’t possibly be worth the hype, right?

Almost as soon as I started the novel, though, I realized just how wrong I was. Old Man’s War was great – fresh, funny, brutal, contemplative, full of character – and I simply couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but. I wrote a glowing review and promptly went out in search of the sequel, The Ghost Brigades. Was Scalzi a one hit wonder? Or could he pull it off again?

Yes. Yes he could.
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Jeff VanderMeer, well known scribe of Ecstatic Days recently made an interesting post on what the Internet, its impact on the industry, and how it’s changing the ways authors approach their work.

(1) Choose your level of involvement with the internet, and stick to it. If you want minimal involvement, create a static website about your book or other creative endeavor. If you want medium-level involvement do a blog. If you want more, do more. But decide upfront what your approach will be, how much time you can spend, and whether you can actually follow through or not. As in any area of life, you will be judged by what you do, not what you say you’re going to do. The disconnect between words and actions will determine how much integrity you have in other people’s eyes.

(5) Contribute to the accuracy of the internet. Under the rules of the new transparency, pointing out errors of fact related to your work or your books is perfectly okay in my opinion. The internet is a lovely place but it is also easier, because of the immediate nature of the medium, to post something that contains inaccuracies. Making the internet a more accurate place is a positive thing. Correcting errors of fact is also a proactive way of protecting your reputation.

(6) Understand the negative aspects of the internet and manage your behavior accordingly. Negative aspects of the internet and our electronic lives include: being trained in Pavlovian fashion to check our email every five seconds, having our Instant Messenger up 24-7, and writing on laptops where we can be interrupted at any moment. Some of these aspects of (post)modern life affect our attention span. Others turn perfectly viable tactics into an unsupportable and detrimental overall strategy. In all things, balance is required. As a writer, I feel the greatest dangers of the internet are (1) equating the constant appearance of new information and new correspondence with a requirement to immediately reply/be instantly available and (2) the constant, daily loss of uninterrupted time not only to write but to think about writing. Many writers and others who depend on the internet find themselves controlled by their involvement with the electronic world, without even realizing it. They still think they are in charge, but they are not: their tactics have become their strategy. If this addiction were an addiction to, for example, alcohol, the results would be obvious and the reaction of friends and society corrective. But when it comes to the internet, we’re nearly all addicted, and we receive so much instant gratification without understanding or monitoring the attendant dangers that we often do not even realize what we may have lost.

If anyone knows about this kind of stuff, it’s Jeff VanderMeer. The whole article is worth reading and can be found HERE.

Set to be released just a few days from now in Japan, Atlus, pleasing many fans of the earlier titles, has announced that Persona 4 will be coming to Northa America on December 9th, 2008. It will cost $39.99.

The promotional artwork for the upcoming North American edition of Persona 4

This is surprising considering the release comes just eight months after the release of Persona 3: FES, a “director’s cut” version of Persona 3, and less than 18 months after the release of the acclaimed third title in the series. Weekly Famitsu, a well regarded Japanese videogame publication, recently awarded Persona 4 a respectable 33/40.

Atlus also announced that, like its predeccesor, Persona 4 will ship with a copy of the soundtrack. If the music in Persona 4 is anywhere near as good as Persona 3, then we are all in for a treat!

The North American trailer can be found HERE. You can find the official Japanese web site for Persona 4, including a trailer, HERE. Just be warned that it is very yellow and very Japanese.

In other, related news, Atlus continues to be completely Awesome.

Source: 1UP | 1UP | NeoGAF

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It’s come to light recently that Steven Erikson, author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, has signed on for six more Fantasy novels once he’s done his magnum opus. It wasn’t clear what these books were going to be about, but details are starting to emerge.

James, from Speculative Horizons, recently had the chance to meet Erikson at a book signing and he reports on what he heard.

He revealed quite a lot of interesting stuff. For example, he has signed on for two trilogies after the Malazan series. The first will focus on the early mythology of the Malazan world, while the second will pick up on events after the end of the current series.

Interesting, indeed. This prequel trilogy seems to fall in line with what I was reporting a few months ago, a series of novels taking a gander at some of the Ascendents in their humbler younger days.