But, there is a problem.

The manuscript is kind of in a “not worthy of toilet-paper duty” state. Yeah, four years ago when I wrote it, it was a good example of where my craft was. Well, I’ve kind of grown as a writer in four years. I look at the prose, the dialog, everything really, and I cringe. The basic story is still pretty good (although I do want to tweak it here and there), but I am basically looking at 97k words of uselessness. So, I need to redraft.

Let me be clear in what that means. See, a second draft, in my opinion, is after you do a substantial passthrough-edit that might change somewhere around 20-30% of the words. Thus far, I have never actually done a second draft. This is because I am what is sometimes called a “one draft author.” This means I spend a bucket-load of time outlining and plotting and world-building in separate documents, and then I write a first draft that is pretty dang good and needs maybe 5-10% editing done.

Okay, so, I haven’t sold a book yet, so I guess they need more than that, but it feels like I have pretty well represented my potential at the time of the draft with the first draft. I let it set a bit, then look back through it, and find a few changes I want to make, but mostly am okay with it.

So, what is a redraft? I redraft is where the author realizes the first draft was more like a practice run and rewrites the whole dang thing. I have done I once, with my first manuscript, and it did massively improve the book, but gorram was it a painful process. See, this is because I cannot just use the old prep material. I have to look through it all, decided what is good and to be kept, and then I have to decide what needs cut out. It sounds like it should speed the process up, but honestly, I feel like I am slowed down as I double and triple examine everything, both trying to remember what I ignored to begin with in the manuscript, what I have changed in edits, and what I might have once thought was a good idea and now don’t like.

I am thinking of taking a leaf from what Tijervyn has taught me and just (re)write the first chapter, cares-to-the-wind style, and see how I like it. I mean, I know what I need to foreshadow already: I have written this book before, and who knows, maybe the characters will help me decide where I need to take the new parts of the story.

In fact, I probably will do that. I wrote Tijervyn as an exercise, so I had best use these new muscles. A bastard hybrid of organic writing and world-builder/outliner writing. Mwahaha and all that.

First, allow me to briefly mention again that Revenant is for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for ereaders. For $2.99, you get the edited novel plus a bonus chapter/short story “Lessons of Gorlido” that gives back story on Bryon as well as the world in general. It is also a stellar way to show you appreciate the novel. And if you don’t have an e-reader, you can still write a review, I think. I don’t think Amazon or BN force you to buy it through them to review it. Now, onto my “episodic” blog, for reals! Really!

I have spoken before about the strange nature of a serialized novel verses a real novel. There is more of a need for each chapter to be a short story unto itself while also still moving the plot forward, and because of this, chapters are much more like episodes of a television series. And I will make no qualm about admitting that Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and now Battlestar Galactica have all been kind of guide-books for me in this. And I am now remiss because I feel that recent chapters have been getting away from that feeling and been more just chapters in a book. Sorry.

But I am going to try and steer a bit more back towards the episodic again. Normally, that word is evil, but I think it is good in this case. I have usually managed to keep themes to each chapter, but it has been iffy. Today’s chapter, not so much, as it deals with the several different types of faith, both kind of good and kind of bad, that a person can have. From faith in a religion, to faith in yourself, to faith in others. Yes, that middle one is in there, if you look for it. Next weeks chapter, which I’ll go ahead and spoil a bit, is titled “The Secret”, and yes, it has a lot to do with not just that Secret, but with secrets in general. I really like it. Yes, I have it written already, for once.

Anyway, so yes, I am actually going a bit backwards to how I did with Revenant. The episodic feeling was stronger in the first half of that book and weaker in the second, as I said “wait, I have all these plot threads I need to tie up!” For Meister of the Secret, I spent so much time re-establishing what happened in the intervening months and moving people around to where I wanted them that I am only now getting to the episodes. Now, I already have the rest of the action, such as it were, planned out for Meister, but I think it will lend itself to themed chapters better than the end of Revenant did. Here’s to hoping.

Now, this post will make a lot more sense if you have read chapter nine. I’ll be vague for those who haven’t read it, but you might actually want to read it before this. Go ahead, I can wait if you haven’t. Now then. Did I just do that? Yes. Yes I did.

I’d like to blame Battlestar Galactica for the last couple paragraphs of this chapter, but that’d be unfair. I had been toying around with the idea of what happened for a while, and it really comes down to one thing. Characters don’t always make the decisions we want them to. Sometimes they make bad decisions. Sometimes they realize the decisions were bad, and sometimes they actually don’t turn out to be bad decisions at all, just ones that we wished they would not have made. The decision at the end of Chapter Nine could still yet be any of these, although I will admit, it wasn’t the decision I wanted made.

But, you say, you are the author! You can make the characters do whatever you want them to. Yes, technically you are right. But moving my characters around like marionettes on strings does not a good story make. They are people. They have problems and issues, and sometimes it’s a cointoss which way they will fall. This particular instance was a coin toss for a while, but between me wanting to have a chance to explore and discuss the ramifications of certain decisions, it also came down to one thing. Part of me wanted this to happen because part of me is in every character. So perhaps when I say I didn’t want this to happen, perhaps it is just one of the other characters responding. But, that is good. If everyone got along and made decisions the others agreed with, then it wouldn’t be much of a story. Next paragraph is spoilery, so be warned.

And as to Kira sleeping with Gavrial, I’ll admit, part of me says “But, no, wait, she was Markus’s romantic interest? Isn’t she?” Yeah, well, this is where I blame BSG. I can’t count the number of people I’ve said “But wait, no, those two were supposed to be together! What!?” Lost is probably partially responsible, too, although they didn’t mix up romance so much as just kill all the women off to get a reaction. I won’t be doing that, as I think it is a cheap trick. Regardless, the other reason I went the path I did was because if Kira just kept pining for Markus, it would turn Markus into a Mary Sue. “Oh, woe is me, Markus, sweet Markus, he has forsaken me and I shall just swoon because he is so amazing.” No, Markus is a whiney emo bitch at times, and bit of an asshole others. That turns people off. Gavrial has actually shown a willingness to change and be there, and while I’m not going to say that Gavrial and Kira will be rosebuds and tulips for ever (or even in the next chapter we see them), I will say that another part of me says “Go Gavrial, take that pity sex!”

That is the crassest I’ve been on this website. At least I wasn’t channeling any G.R.R. Martin and being super explicit, eh? Right. See ya next week.

So, I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a Sanderson expert. I’ve read all of his published work except for his thesis and that new media tie-in piece he did, and I am acquainted with him from conventions, and I correspond with his assistant Peter from time to time. So, I sometimes feel a little biased when I review one of Brandon’s books. Well, biased isn’t the right word. See, I love Sanderson’s writing, and Alloy of Law has been no exception, but I’m not going to give anything he writes a five-star pass. In fact, I might be more tending to be harsher in my criticism, or at least more specific, as I am conscious of my propensity to want to give him a five-star pass, thus I raise the bar. Is it fair, no. Is it me and still an honest review, yeah. Anyway, spoiler-free! So, on with the show!
Alloy of Law is a sort-of sequel to the Mistborn trilogy, only it takes place 300 years later and with entirely new characters and a new take on the magic system. Now, our main character, Wax, is not a mistborn himself as Vin was, but instead is a “Twinborn”, a man who can use 1 of the 16 metals for Allomancy and 1 of the 16 metals for Furuchemy. In his case, he can push metal with his Allomancy and store weight with his Furuchemy. I won’t go into that more, because the book actually does it ad nauseum. More on that in a bit. Anyway, Wax is a law keeper from the world’s version of the Wild West that has returned to civilization to take his place as a house lord, but is quickly drawn into the investigation of a mysterious set of crimes.

So, as always, the good stuff first. The writing is strong and enjoyable, much as I’ve come to expect from Sanderson. The story, much like the prior Mistborn novels, is very character driven, with strong personalities and plenty of banter that hides info dumps and “slow parts”. This book is also meant as an entry point to the Mistborn world, and I even tested that by having a friend of mine read it that had not read Mistborn and then discussed the book with him. In this highly unscientific method, Sanderson succeeded. He doesn’t give any spoilers for the prior books while still leaving plenty of hints and clues for those of us that have read them. If you don’t get the hints and clues, you still enjoy the book. If you do, you get a chuckle or a “oh…” type moment.

On to what I didn’t like so much. One: I can tell this was (I think) a bit rushed in the production due to Wheel of Time. This kind of doesn’t make sense, seeing as Sanderson completed this nearly a half year before it hit the bookshelves, at least that is when the advanced copies were starting to appear, but from what I have followed of Brandon, Alloy was really just a spin-off exercise on writing he was doing to stretch his mind that ended up becoming book length. Because of that, it has some weaknesses.

The first is that I think Brandon goes a little overboard on re-explaining the magic. Yes, I have three much longer books under my belt explaining this magic system to me, and this book is supposed to cater to new readers as much as returning, but when there are asides in the last fight repeating, and I do mean fully repeating, how the two halves of Wax’s magic work and interact, it seems a little overboard. Also, the last fight’s choreography was a bit trite, even if the major points were pretty awesome. The stuff that connected them was, well, not hard or boring to read, but after a while I started saying “I get it, Wax can shoot the wings off a fly at 100 yards.”

My final complaint is that the ending was… well, lacking. Several times in the novel, they go on and on about the “reason behind the crimes.” They set up a master-mind king-pin type character that Wax has to face off against. Okay, that is well and good. Wax never faces off against him. Again, not all bad. The ending is very much saying “There will be a sequel”. But what makes all this annoying to me is that, in all of the marketing and blogging about this book, it was marketed as a “Stand Alone”. That means the main drive of the plot, if not every single thread, is wrapped up in a tight bow by the end. That this book is probably half the length of a normal Sanderson novel really makes me feel like I got half a book, not the whole one, especially with all of the major plot threads.

So, spoiler-free short? This is a great book, but Sanderson leaves us hanging a little bit with it. I know recent marketing schemes have called it “A Mistborn Adventures Book”, so hopefully there will be sequels.

Okay, I want to be very blunt: today’s chapter has nothing to do with the Occupy movement that is currently going on, and is not meant to in any way comment on it. That said, I cannot help but acknowledge that there is some level of commentary inherent in the text, and that future chapters dealing with the rebels and the protests will likely also have something along the lines of commentary in it. Don’t you just love dichotomy?

My first assertion comes from the fact that I’ve been planning the mood and feeling of the rebellion and protests since the beginning. I mean, seriously, before I even wrote chapter one, I knew there would be rebels, and they’d be on the fringe and kind of not taken seriously, and there would be massive malcontent protests in the factories with walkouts and all this Occupy type rhetoric. Granted, this isn’t the first time in history that we’ve had the working class getting in a snit over the rich, and I was more thinking of Marxist observations at the time I was planning. So yes, this isn’t all just a spontaneous “I’m going to write about Occupy in the 1890s!”

BUT

I also know that, as a writer, my writing is molded and a product of all I experience. So the recent malcontent in the economy, the bank and car company bailouts, etc, probably could have had some subconscious trigger. But, I really don’t want to preach, so I promise you I’m not going to go down that path. In fact, I’m probably going to continue to treat this topic the same way I do with any. My characters will find the way through it that is natural to them and the story, but I am sure their answers will all of pros and cons they all have to deal with.

Also, I hope to treat this with the same way I treat religion. It is my hope that from my writing, you cannot tell my actual opinions or beliefs on religion. Steampunk is actually an interesting medium for this, even in a secondary world, because part of the conceit of steampunk is that religion is there, in some way, and while you can have the characters going on their own quests of faith or lack thereof, the world is typically much like our world religiously speaking. No proof, and plenty of pros and cons to toss around.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Next week will probably be my review of Brandon Sanderson’s new novel, Alloy of Law. Just a heads up.

First off all, yes, I’ve been reading a lot of Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. How’d you guess? This chapter is a bit of homage more to Lovecraft than Howard, granted, but I think there is more room in Tijervyn for the unthinkable and eldritch than for barbarians. It is also more Halloween-ish, and yes I’m a weekend early for that, but whatever. And who knows, perhaps a Conan or Sword and Sorcery-type feel will work its way in. Or perhaps I’ll just write a short to scratch the itch. Whatever. This isn’t what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Jak and Gust.

So, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for anyone who didn’t catch it. Jak and Gust are lovers. Did I make a big deal of it in the story? Nope. Am I going to? Nope. At least, not any more than I would of any two characters that are romantically involved. Now here is the really funny thing, though. I had no clue they were lovers (or gay at all, for that matter), until I was plotting this chapter, and it hit me that it would be really poignant to have Gust be the one that actually found Jak. Then, it just kind of hit me like a lightning bolt. Why has Gust been giving Markus so much harder of a time about Jak than everyone else? Why do they both not speak Sentatian after years of working with a Sentatian gang? Why were they two peas in a pod before it the fateful events at Dunny Manor? Lightning, I tell ya.

See, when I first made these characters, they were just two close friends. I did not think “and this couple will be gay” when I was plotting out, because I’ll be honest, that just isn’t something I had ever really thought about on my characters. Yes, I was guilty of ye olde heteronormative bias. I thought I was being fairly progressive by having these two dark skinned foreigners that have equal status to everyone else in the gang, and no one really notes one thing or the other about them. So, yes, it surprised me when I figured out this new depth about them.

And you know what, that is part of the fun of writing organically. If I had hard plotted this trilogy out, I probably wouldn’t have really left the room in the outline for me to even think to do this, let alone actually been able to work it in without major rewriting. I love learning my characters. It is like getting to know a good friend even better.

And I could get into a long winded discussion of LGBT in fiction, but I’ll save my thoughts on that for next week. Yay.

All around is darkness, and who knows what lies in it. Your high power flashlight barely penetrates the gloom, and you could swear you see something moving. Life should not be here, yet somehow, it is. Where are you? Millions of miles away in the cold depths of space? A thousand miles lost in a massive, dank, lifeless cavern? No, you are merely a few miles away from the normal. You are on the ocean floor.

Why is it that nearly a quarter million miles away (the surface of the moon) is more acceptable and less terrifying than five miles below the water? Why does the claustrophobia of a deep-sea submarine weigh in more than the endless vacuum of space that has honestly less material between you and it? And why can we talk about putting astronauts on the surface of Mars as a feasible, decade-attainable goal, but setting up a space-station like research facility or mining/living operation even a few miles down in the ocean is still a complete idea of science fiction? It isn’t just because we don’t want Cthulhu to eat us.

Well, an obvious, scientific answer is that the Ocean is quite a bit more of a challenge, technically speaking. Once you are in space, you are in space. You are in a vacuum, and if you can survive solar winds to get away from Earth to begin with, you have gotten past the worst part. But the ocean, well, that is a whole other ball of wax. The deeper you go, the stronger your craft as to be, down to seven miles at Challenger Deep with 8 tons per square inch. So far, only mini submersibles have gotten people to these depths. Imagine trying to build a city or station down there?

But there is more to it than that. Why else would Lovecraft place R’lyeh in the depths of the Ocean? Why else would James Cameron be actually on point to go back down to Challenger Deep just to get some footage for Avatar II? (I wish that was a joke.) I even just finished reading a Lovecraftian style story by John Wyndham, The Kraken Awakes, from 1953 that never even had to visit the Deeps to make us fear them.

I think, in part, it is because the place is just not inhospitable to us, it seems to mock us. Life does exist down where it just plain seems it should not, and not just microbes. No, we are talking some strange stuff. One would wonder if Lovecraft was actually somewhat prescient in the hideous imaginings he had. Add to it that the place is devoid of sunlight. Any light we do bring with us just doesn’t go as far as we’d like in the dark murk. And let us not forget the recent watery discovery of microbes that don’t even use the same building blocks of life as everything else on the planet. (And yes, I know Mona Lake isn’t that deep, but it is still watery and inhospitable, arsenic and all that.)

And this shows in our legends and myths. Still to this day sailors are superstitious, even without going below the surface. I can’t say I’ve ever heard the same of aviators or astronauts. (No, they are just extremely paranoid, which isn’t quite the same). You don’t hear astronauts worry over meeting aliens, not seriously. After all, we can see what is out in space for quite a ways. People are still trying to catch a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster, though, and salty enough sailors probably can tell you some monster stories of their own.

So tell me, any particular frightening aspects of the deep ocean that captivate your minds?

So, Facebook has been in the news lately. Granted, this social network isn’t exactly about writing, but I’ve never been too hard and fast on this being exclusively a blog about writing. I will make a tangent somewhere along the way, I promise. In fact, I’ll make it at the very beginning. Facebook was stopping me from writing Wednesday night, and I turned it off, along with Twitter, Google+, and even my email. The only thing I kept open was AIM/MSN, and no one bothered me there. Suddenly, my writer’s block vanished and 1500 words appeared on my screen. It was magical. So, was I just distracted? Well, yeah, but there is more I want to say. Below the break.

So, small story time. A little over a year ago, I finally broke down and acquired a smartphone. I had been resisting the device, as I was not all that interested in having a tether. On the other hand, I did the same with a regular cell phone for a long time too. Sure enough, just like the cell phone, I quickly became dependant on my mobile internet. Why? To keep up with social networks, of course! In the writing business, social networks have become huge. Authors need to be on Facebook and Twitter, and I’d imagine Google+ is going to be huge too. So, I dived in both feet first. I then found I was spending way too much time checking social media after work (as I could not access it at work). If only there was some device that let me spend idle moments checking it. Oh wait!

So yeah, I got the phone. I got into twitter and facebook. I actually am glad I did, as they have helped me nurture friendship with people I don’t see that often, but still like. And phooey to all those people that say it is exhibitionist and screaming into the void hoping someone hears you. No, I am telling an amorphous group of people who actually do care about my life what is going on in it.

Rant aside there, Wednesday came along, and Facebook changed to the new stream, which was the bastard love child of “Top Stories” and “Recent News”, with a dash of the green-and-black screens from the matrix. Way too much data all over the place, and kind of disorganized. At first, I despised it. Actually, I still do, but now I’m learning how to interface with it. That silly ticket at the to actually lets me jump into conversations nice and fast without having to completely reload the screen. Okay. But it became too much. The ticket is always moving and it kept drawing my eye. I could never get my attention focused, and I kept making comments.

And then I turned it off and wrote. When I was done, I checked back, and guess what, IT WAS STILL THERE! No, not that I was expecting it to go back to normal, but instead, it didn’t blow up and leave me behind. In fact, I didn’t really miss anything, despite being offline for several hours that I would have spent continuously reading updates and commenting on threads. How is it that 2 hours of net time of not doing a thing didn’t make me miss anything?

I think it comes down to a simple thing: massive immersion in any digital medium (or anything really) has a massive diminishing return compared to light interaction. All this sitting around on facebook chatting at people is great and good, but so is actually going out into “meatspace” and chatting with your friends. Or focusing on your writing, or just sitting and watching a movie (preferably with a loved one). I had become what I feared: a techno-junkie addicted to the internet. I think I’m going to cut back some. Hopefully, you all won’t notice. Because, really, while I may enjoy spending countless hours at my computer, I’d rather do it leaving something meaningful behind, such as my writing, or not feeling like I’m stringing pearls without a knot. Maybe this new resolve will make the recent writer’s block I’ve been suffering with these past two chapters go away. From now on, social networks stay off while I’m writing. We’ll see how this works out. (And I told you I’d get it back to writing!)

Anyway: a couple changes: The “New to Tijervyn” button now goes to the Tijervyn Archive Page. The Main Tijervyn page will only have the current volume on the bottom for its archive.

Also: I am discontinuing the podcast. I didn’t really have the time to get it fully promoted and set up in iTunes, and there just wasn’t much interest in it. I’m sorry to the 2 or 3 of your that listened to my soothing voice, but podcasting just has to go. Hopefully this means I spend more time writing, right?

Presently, Legends of Tijervyn is on hiatus due to Kass having discovered this thing called a college homework load. Perhaps next semester, if she isn’t buried under paper, we can get a second issue.

Meister of the Secret will update weekly on Fridays, the same as Revenant did. As to the full eBook of Revenant, I am about ready to throw that up on Amazon and the like. I’ll probably do it that way at first, as getting the estore set up is still running behind from a lack of time on my part. But I have the goods (hi-res versions of the art panels), so I am motivated to do it, I just have to find the time to learn how to program Zen-cart and become a fully official business in North Carolina.

See ya next week with a more writer-ish blog!

Rust on the Blade, by Richard Fife: Chapter One.