With further apologies to Jane Austen, I present to you the second chapter of MAGIC & MANNERS, which is what happens when I get it into my head to wonder what PRIDE & PREJUDICE would be like if it was not a lack of wealth that beleaguered the Bennet sisters, but rather an excess of magic… Chapter One is here or here, if you want to read it on LJ. Chapter Two commences behind the cut. :)
I just finished reading Carol Berg’s THE DAEMON PRISM (which, like nearly everything Carol writes, is on my list of Favorite Books), and it got me to thinking about what makes epic work and what makes it work on a huge, international bestseller level. Carol’s epic fantasy usually focuses on a handful of people, rather than a cast of thousands, like (for example) GRRM. They’re very different storytelling styles and obviously bring different things to the table, both of which I find appealing in different ways. I wonder if one…
LET IT BLEED is book 3.5 of the WVMP RADIO urban fantasy series by my friend Jeri Smith-Ready, and is what happens when the publisher decides they want four books instead of five and the author turns the salient events of book four into a novella to offer her readers for free so she can wrap up the series in a way she feels is satisfying. This is in every way awesome. And the novella is, in and of itself, fine. My problem is with a decision Jeri’s made for…
Revisions on SHAMAN RISES are taking a ridiculously long time, because I have to keep looking up details–names, aura colors, locations–in other books. I have only had to resort to Twitter twice, although it might in general be faster to ask Teh Intarwebs instead of searching my own manuscripts. :) I also finished watching the first season Downton Abbey last night. I think…that I will probably not continue on. The final episode left me disgusted with the two older sisters, I loathed the Lady Grantham/O’Brien story, and generally don’t think…
I went through the entire SHAMAN RISES manuscript in one pass today. This may have been a mistake, since it’s nearly impossible to retain any degree of impartiality after about a hundred pages in one day. But I’ve done the first revision pass, and holy crap, that book hits the ground running and doesn’t let up. And either it hangs together a lot better than I thought it would or I’m far too close to it right now to see its glaring errors. After a few detail fixes and a…